It begins on a cold night in January, Sophia buys a 1/2 dozen carton of eggs to prepare the Chocolate Champurrado Tart crust for a cooking class she is teaching.  There is an extra egg so I hardboil it for my salad. As I am eating I happily exclaim "I think this egg has two yolks in it!" "Oh yeah. They all do." Sophia says that all of the eggs in the carton had two yolks.  Every single one.

I know that double yolks happen from time to time. My first (and only) encounter with a double yolked egg was an exciting novelty. Not so this time. We call the egg company and they explain that sometimes chickens lay eggs with two yolks. Yes, we say, but this was ALL OF THEM. The woman replies, "Some people would consider it lucky."

Not satisfied. I google it:

"double yolk eggs"

I find countless blogs and online forums where others are experiencing the same thing:

Thursday January 4, 2007: Multi Yolk Eggs

Monday June 30, 2008: Freaky Eggs

Saturday October 18, 2008: Tainted Food? Double Yolk Egg

Saturday January 3, 2009: Double Yolks: An Omen of Plentitude?

It seems that eggs with two yolks are so prevelant that there is even an online debate about the calorie difference between eggs with one yolk and two (no consensus). 

From google I learn that 1 in every 1,000 eggs has a double yolk. I learn that early layers (spring chickens, if you will) are the most common perpetrators and that eggs get double yolks when ovulation occurs too quickly. I also learn that it is an inherited trait in certain (unspecified) breeds.

I am still not satisfied.

I call my dad because he teaches biology.  "Twins are pretty rare, especially in the chicken world." He promises to investigate further.

This is not over.

Emma and I arrived in Veracruz this afternoon at 1 pm. It was an easy bus ride on ADO, one of the many luxury Mexican bus lines. We went to the hotel where we thought we would have stayed, the Hotel Imperial, but soon realized it was not for us. The lobby felt like an underground parking lot and the bathroom in the room they showed us looked worse than any dormitory I have seen before. I faked a phone call telling us to leave and meet someone else, and we scrambled out of there quickly. Thanks to Emmas good eye for nice things, we quickly spotted the Hotel Diligencias across the zocalo. My grandparents had recommended it to us, so we checked in and could relax.

We went downstairs to a restaurant called Villa Rica, which specializes in seafood. I had coconut shrimp, which came with a tamarind dipping sauce and a coconut dipping sauce. The tamarind one tasted like BBQ, and the coconut was super sweet, yet irrestistble. We also shared a crab salad with red onion and jalapeno and a plate of fried plantains.

We then went to the office of the Secretary of Tourism in Boca del Rio. The guy there, Hernan Cortes, could not believe we had actually found them. He said that we were the first tourists to make our way over there. Honestly, we were surprised ourselves, because it was on the 4th story of a building in a mall, and not conspicuous at all.

Anyway, after some investigation about our episode, we ended up walking the malecon all the way back to our hotel and finding the danzon in the zocalo. From what I learned from Carlos, our 80+ old dance instructor, the Danzon began in France in the 1700s. It was then taken to Cuba, where it took on its Latin rhythm, and then came to Veracruz with the wave of Cuban migration in the late 1800s. Anyway, tonight there was a live band playing and lots of cute old couples dancing in the main square. I was lucky enough to have been invited to dance by Carlos, an elderly gentleman with impeccable manners. Not only do the men invite you to dance, but they hold your hand while escorting you to AND FROM the dance floor. They are not finished until you are seated again after the song is over.

After the danzon ended, we headed over to Plaza de la Campana, where we listened to Son Cubano. Emma was getting extra special attention from Carlos, who was teaching her how to dance. One dance, while I was with Carlos, another man escorted her to the dance floor. Well, you should have seen how jealous Carlos got, because he made sure Emma knew that she did not have to dance with other men if she did not want to. When the other man came back to ask her to the floor again, Carlos told him that he did not want him messing up all of his work. It was very funny. We were lucky that the other man had a sense of humor and did not start a fight with our dance expert extraordinaire.

It was a magical evening, with lots of live music on every corner, and people dancing with real feeling from their hearts. If you ever come to Veracruz, make sure it is a Saturday!

Valle de Bravo

We just spent a lovely weekend in Valle de Bravo, which is a lake resort in the State of Mexico, about 2 hours away from Mexico City. We got there on Friday afternoon and drove through the town to get a glimpse of all of the sites. The first stop was at a small panadería on the corner, where they sell the best conchas in the WORLD. They were wonderfully crunchy and had a really authentic flavor. Later we went to the Hotel Batucada for a margarita, and then home for a dinner of artichokes with vinaigrette and smoked salmon on toast. The next day was a full day of work (although there was also a lot of preparations that went into the trip beforehand also).

The next day I woke up early and went with my grandmother to get the tortillas, which are made blue on Saturdays. They process both yellow and dark corn, which creates a blue masa. We went back home and had a full breakfast of molletes and chilaquiles; my aunt Lupita was determined to give us the full Mexican experience. By then my uncle Nacho had arrived, so we began to cook and get our luncheon together. We made three excellent plates: a crown made up of two types of beans, a nopal soufflé, and pork pibil with achiote. Dessert was also great and combined campechanas with vanilla ice cream, cajeta, and pecans. Campechanas are a specialty of Valle, and are crispy desserts made of puff pastry glazed with sugar. To start off our lunch I made everyone a Paloma Pura, a tequila and grapefruit cocktail with fresh basil. After lunch we headed into town to a photo exhibit and a walk around some of the shops. There are beautiful artesanal shops with handmade napkins and tablecloths, which make excellent gifts.

This morning was our last morning in the tranquil lake valley surrounded by pine trees. We had another great breakfast with huevos ahogados (eggs poached in a tomato sauce), the leftover beans, and a fresh fruit salad of papaya with blackberries and granada china (similar to a passion fruit). Did I forget to mention the nata? ? My aunt buys cheese from a local ranch, where they also make nata, which is a sort of clotted cream. Things like nata always taste different from place to place, because it is made with raw milk from local cows and picks up the taste unique taste of local bacteria (in a good way). We spread the nata on our conchas an on our campechanas, boy was it good! Nacho took us on a long boat ride around the lake, and then we were off to town. We went to the church with the famous black Christ, who was not destroyed in a horrible fire that took down the original church, and is now considered miraculous. We finished up the trip with a wonderful lunch and came back to Mexico City in time to shower and check our emails before we head off to San Miguel de Allende tomorrow!

We are in our third week of homemade pastas with our video about how to make Pistachio Lovers Pasta. Homemade pasta might not be the first dish that comes to mind around the holidays, but we thought it would be something different. When you have something so tasty as pistachio pasta dough or whole wheat hazelnut dough, you do not need to over do the topping. Melted butter or olive oil, some sage, and Parmesan cheese is enough. It is the fact that it is homemade and rustic that makes it appropriate for special family dinners.

Now that we are edging out of the holidays and well into the depths of Winter, there is no reason why you can't still make a homemade pasta dish. During these hard economic times, we will all be eating more at home, which is actually an opportunity to be more creative in the kitchen. I hope to hear back from people with suggestions for what to top our Pistachio Lovers Pasta with (meant to be for pistachio lovers or pistachio "lovers pasta", get it?). In our video you can see me cutting across the length of the rolled out dough with a knife, but I found a helpful suggestion from Sugarlaws. She rolls the dough into a spiral and then slices through with a sharp knife. This is better way to do it, so that you get nice, even pieces of pasta.