Why I Hate Las Vegas

A few weeks ago, I attended a work conference in Las Vegas. It was my first time there, and with any luck, I’ll never go back.  Unlike most of the people who go to Las Vegas, at least I can say I went for my job.  But….ugh. I’m just going to cop out right now, and simply list my reasons Why I Hate Las Vegas:

- Giant mega-hotels, stretching for miles. What is the fun in this? PLEASE TELL ME.

- Disneyland prices and “entertainment.” We accidentally caught the “Siren Show” at Treasure Island and I thought my eyes and ears were going to start bleeding. Do people really like this shit?

- Girls all glammed up like they have somewhere important to go. Wait, let’s be more honest, they were slutted out. But they’re in Las Vegas on vacation. Isn’t the point of vacation to not wear clothing that restricts your breathing? To not wear shoes that could send your ankles to the emergency room? Why not be cute and comfy and entirely not silly looking? Even the cocktail waitress at the Mirage pool played the part, wearing next to nothing to try and earn an easy tip from drunks (this doesn’t work so well when you’re waiting on me, and I only order one drink while I wonder to myself what you’re going to do with your life after you lose your looks and no one wants to give you big tips anymore. I hope you have plans, cocktail ladies.)

- It’s not a walkable city. I had to attend a cocktail party at the Planet Hollywood Hotel. I thought this would be a quick walk from the Mirage, because looking at the map, it was four hotels away. But because these hotels must each comprise numerous restaurants, theaters, a casino and possibly some sort of egregious display of man’s triumph over nature (in my hotel’s case, a white tiger display and a dolphin area, as if tigers aren’t enough) these hotels streeeeeeeeeetch for blocks and blocks. So, I showed up late and…

- I was so, so thirsty, I ran to the bar and demanded a club soda. And the rest of the trip, no matter how much water I drank, I felt like I had just eaten hot sand. I don’t mind the desert, I didn’t mind being thirsty, but I did mind my constant obsessive thought that an area so arid was and is not meant to support this ridiculous fake city.

- The “you-are-going-to-have-fun-or-else” attitude. One day when Brendan went and visited an old high school friend who lives in Las Vegas, I decided to spend the day by the giant Mirage pool. Everything started out OK as I sat around with other solo adults, reading a New Yorker and listening to music on my iPod. Then, as the day wore on, the piped-in crappy 80s music got louder, and by the time I decided to take a dip, the pool was full of “Spring Breakers” — waxed, tanned men and women wearing plastic bead necklaces and wading around with drinks. Yuck, I thought, realizing they were all peeing in the pool. I had only one escape: my hotel room. It took 14 (crowded) minutes to get there, since the Mirage hotel rooms are hidden away and I had to walk past an indoor shopping mall before I could find the elevator, as if I might want to stop, shop and ultimately spend $20 on a snowglobe of the Mirage, to remind me of the urine-soaked pool.

- The lines of tourists everywhere. Lord, save me, the lines. One morning, in search of breakfast and caffeine, we discovered we were at the mercy of the hotel and all the touristy traps outside on the Strip. First we tried one of the coffee places in the Mirage. The line was at least 50 people deep. No way (and who are these fools who pay to get in a long line for coffee?). So we went across the street to Denny’s – a 20-minute wait (to eat bad food and drink bad coffee!!). No way. So we went to McDonald’s, and yes, waited in line, finally ordered coffee and then went downstairs to Chipotle and ordered burritos for breakfast (I simply do not eat McDonald’s breakfast food, unless there’s a nuclear holocaust, and I’m running for cover, and the closest cover is McDonald’s). This was how the rest of the trip went: waiting in line for bad food and bad service.

- We got home to Mexico City to discover the Mirage charged us $75 for drinks ordered in the high-roller bar. AHEM. Not only did I not step foot in a high-roller area, I sure as hell didn’t order any damn drinks. But if I were to, I’d order more than $75 of alcohol. Dios mio.

THE TINY BITS I DID LIKE

- We rented a car (great idea if you didn’t really want to go to Vegas but have to) and drove very far north on the Strip, where it gets gritty, grimy and even somewhat cultural. We had a delicious cheap Cuban meal (and cafe con leche) at a tiny dive restaurant. And yes, no wait. Then we headed to a gigantic swap meet (even in late October, the heat was killer, so we didn’t last long).

-We also drove to Valley of Fire State Park. Nature, ah, nature. Always a good thing.

-I got to hang out with my work team, and they’re a great bunch.

-Speaking of, I went with a few of them to the Double Down Saloon (way off strip) which serves ice-cold Shiner Beer, the best damn Texas beer. Finally away from slot machines, I almost lost the ringing in my ears. It was sort of like stepping into a bar in New York City, except it had video poker at the bar. I felt relaxed.

Boozy Times: Drinking Pulque with Tepoztecatl

A mural showing how pulque is made, at a museum in Tlaxcala.

Mexico has at least four major alcoholic beverages to its credit:

• Tequila
• Mezcal
• Sotol
• Pulque

Like tequila and mezcal, pulque (pool-kay) is made from the fermented juice of the maguey, a type of agave (which is NOT a cactus but a big aloe vera-like plant — and a classic symbol of Mexico. We even own one.) These plants grow into giant monsters, by the way. Sotol is made from a yucca-like desert plant.

Until last weekend, I had not tried pulque. It made me a little nervous. Why? Brendan tried it not long after we moved here, and declared the texture “similar to snot” (think: aloe vera gel). And most traditional pulquerías are kind of dirty and gross — the pulque is ladeled out of big plastic buckets and the conditions are not exactly what you might call sanitary.

Yeah, not selling points for Joy. But to not try pulque is pretty lame for someone who lives in Mexico. So I had slowly been working up my nerve.

ORIGINS

For a long time, this was a drink of the poor. Originally, before the Spanish conquistadors arrived, it was a fancy traditional drink for the Aztecs and other Mexican cultures. Tepoztecatl, in fact, was the god of pulque, drunkenness, and fittingly, fertility. Then, once the indigenous people were treated to hundreds of years of brutality by the Spanish, their favored drink started to disappear and thrived only in a few, shabby pulquerias.

In recent years, pulque has made somewhat of a comeback, as college students here in Mexico make it fashionable to drink pulque. As a result, there are now sanitized pulquerias perfect for leery patrons like me. Pulqueria La Tia Yola in Tlaxcala was upscale, clean, cheery. I ordered a flavored pulque made with pine nuts. Brendan got the pistachio.

I'm drinking my pulque from the traditional green-glass vessel.

How was it?

Fortunately — very fortunately — it was not snot-like. More like sipping a watery yogurt (Brendan, who now considers himself a pulque expert after having tried it exactly one more time than me, branded Tia Yola’s pulque “weak.”) It tasted healthy, which is a strange feeling when you’re in a bar.

BOTTOM LINE

Overall, I’m not exactly eager to try it again, but am glad I worked up the nerve to tie one on with Tepoztecatl.

A saying about pulque -- basically, that pulque drinkers first turn a little red like a turkey, then you're all chatting and animated, like a monkey, then you're an over-aggresive lion..and lastly, a pig.

Another Mexico City Bargain: Gorgeous Hand-Blown Glassware

Recently purchased: 6 cocktail glasses (second photo), 6 drinking glasses (first photo), one large margarita pitcher (first photo) and 6 glass stirrers (both photos. Yes, that’s a whale. And a calla lily).

Total cost: $30 USD.

Drink pictured here? Sotol-mango-pineapple smoothie. Joy’s own special adult beverage creation.

Drink pictured here? Sotol and diet grapefruit soda. A Brendan creation, I think, mas o menos.

I Heart You, Paloma (The Drink, Not the Bird)

Oh, yums. Muchas gracias a mi amiga Susana for introducing me to a new drink, La Paloma. So delightfully simple, it’s right up my “three ingredients or less” alley. Plus, it’s a pretty white color, hence the name.

Ingredients:

• Tequila
• Fresca (use the diet version if you want to spare yourself some calories)
• Ice

Directions:

In a highball glass filled with ice, add one shot of tequila, and top off with Fresca. Drink.

In an Absolut World

Manana, I head up to Texas for two weeks. So, a parting shot — and free advertising for Absolut. This billboard sits above the corner of Nuevo Leon and Sonora, a busy intersection in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City.

Clever, eh?

Me Gustan Mucho: Mojitos y Cochinita Pibil

Last night I made real mojitos, following this recipe.

And then Brendan ordered cochinita pibil, which arrived fresh and steaming to our door about 30 minutes later, with a side serving of tortillas, sliced red onions and habañero salsa (muy picante, as in just smelling it makes your tongue burn. Not lying).

Taking a bit of the pibil, wrapped up in a hot corn tortilla, and then taking a swig of mojito: Flavor purrrr-fection.

A Day of Firsts: Drinking Tepache and Pulque

(tepache 01 Originally uploaded by dgonzale80)

Yesterday, along with eating an extraordinary amount of tamales (including pineapple-stuffed tamales) at La Flor de Lis — a restaurant that’s located only two tempting blocks from our apartment — Brendan and I tried two ancient drinks, tepache and pulque.

I had tepache with my tamale meal. It’s a dark yellow-orange liquid, shown above in the photo, sold in some restaurants and many mercados, as an agua fresca. Technically, though, it’s not that fresh, since it’s fermented pineapple juice. According to Wikipedia, because it is so easy to make, it’s popular with Mexican inmates, who can make it in their cell. If you’d like to make it yourself, here’s two recipes: Tepache 1 and Tepache 2 (includes photos).

To me, it didn’t taste much like pineapples (a favorite flavor and fruit of mine), but was still quite sweet and tasty. It has a little alcohol in it, too, never a bad thing on a Saturday afternoon. I’d definitely order it again.

And, later last night, Brendan ventured off to a pulqueria to try the famed drink of the Aztecs, pulque. It is made from fermented maguey (a type of agave, the same thing tequila is made from). Women traditionally weren’t allowed in pulquerias, but Brendan reports that the one he visited in downtown Mexico City was mostly filled with local college students and a few tourists, somewhat diminishing the once-very-masculine ritual of drinking pulque.

The history of pulque in Mexico is extensive and could be its own book. Let’s just say that Brendan’s assessment of the drink was that the “flavor was OK, but the texture was like mucous.” (Similar to when you break off an aloe vera stem, and it’s all goopy and sticky. Ick). I can’t provide you with any recipes, unless you have one of these growing in your garden.

Picture of a dude sippin’ some pulque:

(9IMG_9927 Originally uploaded by locaburg)

A Reason to Visit Us Now: Noche Buena Cerveza (y Flores)

Many, many good things are from Mexico. Like the poinsettia. Around these parts here in Mexico, the poinsettia is known as the noche buena. In the right climate — this one, of course — the poinsettia is not a mere flower symbolizing Christmas, it’s a big tree. See what I mean? Gorgeous, huh?

It’s also the name of a damn, damn good dark beer. It’s made by FEMSA — the same people who make Tecate and Dos Equis. As they say on their web site:

“The only Christmas beer in Mexico, Noche Buena is a dark beer, with a strong flavor and characteristic. True connoisseurs of beer await its release each year between October and December, when its rich qualities provide the perfect complement to the spirit of the holiday. With its emblem of the flower festival poinsettia (or Good Night), this beer inspires those who enjoy it to give the best during the holidays by delivering the best quality and flavor available in dark beer.”

The hitch? It’s only available this time of year. Come and get it now!

(Noche Buena Originally uploaded by toltequita)

Random Recipe: Joy’s Just Peachy Margarita

It’s been a long week, even though it’s Tuesday. The solution: Joy’s Just Peachy Margarita.

Ingredients:

• One shot of tequila (less is better here – tequila doesn’t really mix well with peaches (esta sabor loco!) but with enough peach nectar, you won’t notice, nor care. Yes, work with me, folks – I’m culling from ingredients already in my fridge to invent a new drink.)
• 8-10 oz of peach nectar
• Splash of agua mineral con gas

Add ice, drink up.

It’s a lovely color, no? I wish I had a blender, cuz I totally want to try it all slushy.

Random Recipe: No-Calorie Agua de Jamaica (Hibiscus Flower Iced Tea)

Wow, I have even more appreciation for food photographers after trying, in vain, to capture the garnet red of agua de jamaica. It’s a really stunning deep red color, and it’s hard to capture if your crappy corporate housing has a patio that doesn’t catch the full Mexican sun. (I can’t wait to move into our apartment, which gets tons of sunshine).

Agua de jamaica (pronounced huh-mike-ah and in English means Hibiscus flower water) is similar to a Kool-aid berry flavor, but has a subtle smoky, spicy flavor to it. It’s got three main ingredients: dried jamaica flowers, sugar and water. I opted to make a no-calorie version today using Splenda, and it was great.

Best thing about the tea, other than its taste: It’s loaded with chemicals that are good for you, but be warned: it’s also a mild diuretic.

Ingredients:

- 3/4 cup dried jamaica flowers (be sure to rinse them off first)

- 2 1/2 cups water

- Splenda, to taste

- Ice, and lime for garnish

Directions:

Bring water to a roiling boil. Add hibiscus flowers, stir over heat for about a minute. Turn off heat, and let flower water sit for about 10 to 15 minutes. Using a thin mesh colandar, strain out flowers. Let tea mixture cool. Then, pour into glasses and add desired level of ice, Splenda and lime squeezes. If the jamaica flavor is too strong, add more water.

(Note: Hibiscus flowers can stain, so try not to spill on your Old Navy sweatshirt.)