Cooking, Part 1

Part of the rationale for renting a house while we're in Oaxaca is so that we can cook meals. Cooking is of course cheaper than eating in restaurants. But that's not really the prime reason. Every time I've visited a market in Mexico I've been frustrated by the fact that I was there solely as an observer. Oh, I might buy a few pieces of fruit to eat immediately, but I had no way to cook meals, making my wandering aimless.
So when we planned this trip, I loved the idea of being able to visit the markets for my food. Finally I could visit as a participant, reviewing the stands for the things I needed, purchasing the unusual or interesting, bargaining for my purchases, and then cooking! I brought along my copy of a A Cook's Tour of Mexico. Now I could finally use the book without substituting half the ingredients, and could actuallly make Oaxacan food in Oaxaco. Yah!
WEll, things haven't gone exactly to plan. The supper I just finished was a jar of Prego tomato sauce over penne, topped with cheese. (Fresh Oaxaca string cheese, but still....)
The truth is that good cooking requires a number of things: time, energy, and a knowledge of where to shop. When we're doing a lot of sight-seeing, we're short on the first two elements. And overall we're still falling short on the third. After a couple of false starts we found a couple of good local markets, including the one in the church square a few blocks away. But we haven't yet encountered some of the ingredients that we're looking for. Or perhaps more precisely, we haven't identified them yet. It's one thing to know that you're looking for epazote or avocado leaves, and another to find the vendor that has them or recognize them when you do.
And finding good examples of any given ingredient is another challenge. My first attempt at cooking black beans fell short beause I'd inadvertently purchased the world's oldest. Or at least that seems the best explanation of why they took more than two hours to cook to marginal tenderness, even after presoaking. Because if all beans take as long to cook as those, it seems hard to fathom how beans could be a staple here. There's no way they could be economical enough, from a pure fuel cost standpoint!
At any rate, it's time to try again. Maybe the second set of beans will cook a little more expeditiously....wish me luck! I'm about to put them on.