Kitchen Mastery

To blend or not to blend.
More than once in a Mexican household, I've noticed that the oven of the stove is used to store pots and pans. Otherwise, the oven is not used. How do they make flan? I don't know. But, my guess is that the huge majority of Mexican women (the sexist remark is used deliberately; after all, this IS Mexico, where 99.9% of domestic engineers are women) don't use the oven at all.
If you wanted to completely disrupt Mexican society and bring the entire country to it's culinary knees, all you would have to do is eliminate all blenders. That's right, you heard me correctly, blenders; or Osterizers, or Mixmasters, or whatever; the things we had before Cuisinart. In most of the Hispanic world they're called licuadoras.
I have this sneaky suspicion that when a Mexican woman goes to prepare a meal, she automatically thinks "What can I put in the blender?" You use a blender to make mole, to make some kinds of salsa, and other things. There's always margaritas for the gringos. When I have gone looking for places to stay that offer some sort of kitchen, there may not be a refrigerator, there is definitely no oven, but there is absolutely, postiviely, a blender! Most important of all, the blender is used to make those fantastic fruit drinks.
For starters, there is cebada, which is this magical chocolate concoction. It's made with just a light amount of chocolate, a hint of cinnamon, and then blended with water and ice so that it's not heavy. On a hot day, it is remarkably refreshing. It's like chomping into a Snickers, but with a fraction of the calories and being refreshing as well.
Then there's the fruit!! I wish I could remember all the exotic fruits. At one buffet restaurant, they had a bank of fruit juices in big serving dispensers. I went sampling one after the other. Heavenly! Guayaba, tamarind, pineapple, watermelon, strawberry, orange, papaya, and the list goes on and on.
In parts of South America, they will offer batidos, or licuados. Here they're often called simply aguas. And they're probably a lot healthier than diet Coke.
When traveling, I can't walk past one of those fruit juice stores without stopping. Yesterday, in Compostela, I ordered a "mixed fruit" drink. Into the blender went freshly squeezed orange juice, some strawberries, and some other exotic fruit I didn't recognize, together with ice (after all, I'm a gringo). It all ended up getting poured into a plastic bag, about 6 inches wide by 12 inches tall. Then the straw went in, and then she tied the top of the bag in a knot, and voila!, I was good to go.
In my humble opinion, this makes a great breakfast. It gives you a good natural sugar high to start the day, and is quite filling.
Hasta luego!