The Tuesday Mercado at San Miguel

I think the senoras are making gorditas, but I'm not sure.  Anybody know. The senoras we saw used their bare fingers to turn and remove the tortillas from the hot griddle.  Their fingers are so callused I'm sure they can't feel anything.

All kinds of good protein inside and outside a  cabeza de vaca.  Brains, meat on the cheeks, so on and so forth.  It's actually not my area of expertise.

Chicken feet.  We asked the vendor what they were called in Spanish and he said "Patas de pollo."  I would imagine that if you bought a number of these you could make quite the soup or broth.  Ask Julia Child.

Add a chicken head, cabeza de pollo, and you've got yourself a meal.  The vendor of the patas offered up this delicacy, I think, knowing we would grab our cameras and begin clicking away.  I'm absolutely positive we're not the first gringos to be enlightened this way.

The Mercado was fascinating.  Mobile restaurants, mobile hardware stores, vegetable vendors and lots of other types of things, used and new.  But certainly the most numerous and well-attended booths were used clothing.  Great piles were examined piece by piece and rejected or selected. I have to think that most of the clothing was used and donated to Goodwill or the like and so much of it ends up in Mexico.  The first time I came to Mexico, in 1965 or '66, all the rural Mexicans wore the traditional white cotton garments.  Now it's t-shirts with "Led Zepplen" silk screened on it and a pair of jeans.