Other random updates from the D.F.

For those not in the know Mexico City is also known as the Federal District or Distrito Federal or for short the D.F.  This is good to know (so as to prevent the blank stare of not comprehending) when someone says to you, "oh you guys live in the D.F., that is where I am from".  BTW, it wasn't me with the blank stare.

So here are a couple of random tales from the D.F.
The lawn-care story. 
Sometime just before Christmas a group of three men gathered on the lawn by the children's play area of our complex (which we can see out our windows). They had garden forks which they were stabbing at the ground with. I thought initially they were looking for something but it turned out they were just aerating the lawn (man is cheaper than machine here). After this was complete they spread what looked like dirt but smelt like s@#$ all over the lawn and cordoned the area off with yellow tape. A couple of days later they were back and proceeded to rake the lawn taking off the excess manure or fertilizer depending on how you want to view it. After this was complete they started with the watering process. Thankfully the smell was mostly gone upon our return from Cancun.

Food, Grocery Shopping and Unexpected ingredients. 
It is taking a while to adapt to the supermarkets here.  Now, we were certainly not expecting to have a Lakewinds Coop in the neighborhood so we were pleasantly surprised by the things we found at The Green Corner a little organic store not too far from us.  We have two other Supermarkets quite close to us and they both have a pretty good range of things, of course to make things complicated each store has things that we like that the other does not.  Currently my strategy for dealing with this is to shop one week at Superama and the next week at the Chedraui.

Dylan loves to eat tortillas as tacos or quesadillas, so a quick throw together lunch has been a tortilla with refried beans and vegetables warmed in the pan.  This was great until I took the time to read the ingredients of the refried beans we had purchased and found monosodium glutamate (MSG - yes even with the ingredients in Spanish I was able to pick this out).  I also found MSG in the turkey deli meat that we had purchased.  I know!  I should have known better and read the ingredients beforehand but shopping takes long enough when you are in a store that you are not familiar with, with brands and products you are not familiar with and on top of that you are stocking your pantry from scratch.  Well lesson learnt - we are back to reviewing the ingredients on all unfamiliar products before they come home with us.