3 Bedroom House for $27,000 US? There's a Hitch But Still…

Last Monday morning I had my usual twice-monthly massage in the nearby area of Riberas del Pilar, which is between Ajijic and Chapala. Kelly and I usually go together and do errands while we are out.

A friend of ours, Miguel Roman, works in real estate out of Ajijic -– that link takes you to his site. It happened that he had just listed a house in the town of Chapala for $35,000 US. Kelly had directions to it and decided that with nearly an hour and a half till he would be picking me up, he'd go find the house.

An adventure followed.

He found the right neighborhood and parked a couple of blocks away, before the road turned into a rugged path. He wandered around and found a house that had the right number. There was a Mexican woman in the yard, and she confirmed that the house was for sale.

She was most hospitable and asked him if he'd like to see it. So he went inside with her and took quite a few photos. In fact, he was late in picking me up.

Over a restaurant lunch, he showed me the photos. I was intrigued too. So back we went for me to see it as well. It was a pretty typical Mexican house, with three bedrooms and a bathroom. As you can see in the photo, there were steps from the bedrooms down to the main living area, which was indoor-outdoor, and with a view.The owner said she wanted 350,000 pesos for it. At today's exchange rates that is under $27,000 US but everyone tends to convert mentally at 10 pesos to the dollar, as the rate was just above that for a long time.

Well, to make a long story short, this house wasn't the one Miguel was selling, though the two were near each other. The street names were confusing and there were no street signs. I think he sold his listing, a 2 BR 2 bath unfinished place.. it was hardly on the market at all before he got an offer anyway.

We slept on it and decided to pass on this house ourselves. We are happy here and not eager to tackle a huge project like that. The real magic of that place was the view, and while it was very good from her living room (or would be if you trimmed the trees), you'd have to build onto the roof to get the full panorama. She said the house had been constructed with that in mind. This photo shows her roof, with Chapala below, and just a part of the view of the lake. So I phoned the woman's brother's house and asked them to pass the word on to her.

Back to the title of this post. The hitch on this house we saw is that you have to walk uphill to it and can't get your car less than a block from it. Those steep paths!

BUT STILL I think it's great evidence that deals can be found everywhere. I bet if you spoke some Spanish and wandered around asking people if they knew of houses for sale, you'd find interesting possibilities. You'd need to check them out carefully… Mexican real estate is a buyer beware matter. But still…

If You Have a Lemon Tree, Make Lemon Curd

Okay, I know that isn't exactly the way the old saying goes. But it's what happened around here this afternoon. It's the time of year when our lemon tree goes bananas. We have banana trees too but they are not going bananas in this cooler early winter season. It's getting into the 40s at night now, and the sunny 70s temperatures of midday aren't lasting so long into the late afternoons.

But back on topic. For the next two or three months, we'll have an abundance of lemons. Not those seedy sort of sweet things that a lot of our friends have but real tart lemons. Actually we haven't bought lemons in years, as the tree keeps producing at varying levels all the time. The wind knocked a bunch of lemons off the tree this week so even after we gave a lot away, we still had a bunch in the house.This picture shows mostly green ones, but some ripen to yellow before falling.

"Lemon curd!" I thought. Don't know why – I had never made it before and am not sure I have ever even tasted it before. But I googled lemon curd and found a bunch of recipes along with warnings that it could curdle and and need to be strained to remove unappealing bits of cooked egg white that hadn't blended.

This was beginning to sound like too much work for my style of cooking when I can across an article about a foolproof way to make light, luscious lemon curd. That sounded good, so I printed out the article and the accompanying lemon curd recipe. It's just lemon juice and a bit of grated peel, butter, sugar, and eggs.

I didn't have a small pan with a thick bottom so I decided to double the recipe and use my big stew pot. It was a fair amount of mixing, and that was by hand, but the results were worth it. And it was foolproof.

Some lemon curd is in the freezer, and a jar is in the fridge. The article says it will keep a week in the refrigerator but I doubt ours will last that long.

It's quite tart – yeah, I did use a little more lemon juice that the recipe called for, didn't want to waste those lemons – sort of like the yellow part of lemon meringue pie on steroids.

I think it will become a regular part of our Mexican cuisine.

In the US or in Mexico, Family is Sweet

I'm finally getting back into my regular routines after our trip to California, still savoring all the great connecting and visiting that happened there. Kelly went to a week-long natural building building conference while I made the rounds of family and a few dear old friends. We both started and ended in San Francisco, where our daughter lives, and I was also in Berkeley and Sonoma County, both places where I lived long ago.

Let's see, in my family, I saw my daughter (step-daughter actually but I call her either one) and her partner, my niece and her three kids with a glimpse of her husband, my sister-in-law, two nephews who are brothers, (one with wife and two daughters, one a new baby), another nephew with a wife I'd never met, two former brothers-in-law, and the new wife of one of these fellows.

Sounds very Mexican, don't you think? I'm resisting the temptation to draw out a family tree for you, but when I planned out the itinerary, I was aware of how Mexico has affected me. Family is so important here that it has become more important to me too. I also saw five old friends who are like family to me.

We Americans tend to scatter geographically and our family life pays a price. There's also the matter that many (most? all?) families have dysfunctional aspects. Still, getting older, I find that my family means more to me than it did in the past. I am connected to these people in ways that have such deep roots.

One ex-brother-in-law was newly out of the hospital from a successful cancer surgery. I hadn't seen him in close to 20 years. Don't think I'll wait that long again to go back to my old stomping grounds. In fact, I briefly entertained fantasies of living again in Sebastopol, California. (I used to run the public library there and when I stopped in, both librarians there remembered me. Nice!) But I don't think I could afford California nowadays.

Back home in San Juan Cosala, I've chatted with various Mexican friends. They understand perfectly why I would make a trip that was all about family. (Well, a bit of shopping too, but even that was with family!)