Farm Fresh Junk Food

 In the United States, I would often hear of the fresh movement or organic movement where many strived to eat as much natural local grown food as possible. Here in Guadalajara there is not need for such a movement, everything is genrerally local and fresh. Of course, you can go to Walmart or another big box grocery store and buy apples from Washington, Bannanas from Nicaragua or beef from Argentina, but if you walk down the street you can also buy all of those items that literally have been grown within 25 miles of where we live.

The local market thrives here in every colonia (suberb) of Guadalajara. As new comers in the fall, we were often scared to avail ourselves of the delights of the local butcher or market vendor, but as we have been here longer we make less trips to the box stores and spend more time shopping daily and enjoying "fresh food". Of course, most of this fresh food is the "same" foods we buy at the box stores only sitting in crates in a local open air market, on the side of the street or cut freshly at a store front butcher. I bought a bag of the avocados to the right today. 

Today I got a real "farm fresh" treat. I fall into the small group of devoted fans who love the pork rind or as it is called here "Chicharron de Cerdo". Normally, I have always bought these pre packaged off the shelves of my local corner store, today I got special introduction to the pork rind. As I was walking today, I walked past one of our local butchers and outside he had just started a large vat (looked like a giant wok) of boiling oil (above). I stopped to watch and a I did he brought out a large bin of freshly butchered pig skin (small fact, it looks much better after it is fried!). He dumped it into the oil and let it fry. As he pulled it out, I could not resist but ask for a "bolsa chica" small bag. As he put them into the bag they were still crackling from the oil. I began popping them into my mouth and they were both wonderful and scary at the same time. They had a familiar flavor with a stronger pork taste. For the most part, it was truly a bag of "farm fresh" fried junk food. But as you find with truly fresh food, every once in a while you get a rind that exposes a little to much of the pig's flavor.

For the most part, I have tried to spare this blog the updates of my excursions into local cuisine (3 weeks ago I had pickled pig's feet for the first time), but this was to tasty an experience to pass up!