Grasshoppers, Tula and cows legs

The Machados, Jose and Irma invited us to go grasshopper hunting in the cornfields today.  We left the house at 6:30 and drove to their friends fields.  We have to go early when the grasshoppers are still sleeping.  It helps that they are cold and don't have the energy to  move much.  

I was glad that Irma brought gloves for us to wear,  I started without them and then she gave me one.  But I acturally picked the grasshoppers off the corn stalks and put them in the bag.  The jump if you are not fast.  

Dennis did manage to get more that I did.

 Jody and Bruce Packard the mental health workers from Flagstaff , Arizona are holding one of the bags of grasshoppers. 

We had two bags full...well that full.

It was the field of Margarato.  It is a childhood friend of Irma.  He was a pro at getting grasshoppers and had the appropriate bad so you could just shake the cornstalk  into the bag and get 10 at a time.  

Margarito is transferring his catch into the second bag to take home.  

His field was black corn used for tortillas.  They just let it dry and pick it as needed.  Dennis is holding his bag of hoppers in his other hand.  

 Irma had prepared breakfast for us including fried grasshoppers that she and her husband had made the trip to collect and then take them home to clean and cook for us. She wanted us to have the full experience so we had them for breakfast.  We ate the hoppers between fresh corn tortillas that we had stopped and bought on the way in the same little town.

 She said, I will prepare it for you...and so she did with lime juice she is squeezing on the hoppers along with fresh salsa she had made the day before.  Those are also chicken tortillas that she made the day before.  She is an amazing hostess.  The green salsa is there and the bowl of grasshoppers also.

 I ate the whole tortilla...what else could I do?  You just don't think about it.  The salsa was good and so was the fresh corn tortilla.  It was still warm.  She and her husband had spent two hours the week before picking grasshoppers in the cornfield, but she said it was almost like a plague because there were so many more this week.

She had brought bread for Margarito and his family and had some for us for breakfast.  This kinds is only made during the month October and Early November.  It is called bread for the Day of the Dead.  Those are supposed to be bones on the top.  Pan de Muertos.

Hemi is a grandson to Margarito.  He is 10 and was very excited to go with us.  He was a good grasshopper collector.  He is eating pan and a hopper was on his jacket.  

After we were at the cornfield we went to the home of Margarito and his family.  They had a beautiful mountain view out their front yard.  

 They had a fruit tree in their front yard with ripe fruit.  I don't know what it was but it was good.

They also had a lime tree and another citrus tree that looked like a lemon but was sweeter like a orange/grapefruit.  Also two peach trees that didn't look like our peach trees, but they said they were and an avocado tree.  

Dennis is pointing to the tuna fruit from the cactus trees.  That is what it is called.  We saw them all over the fields and by the sides of the roads.  

After the hoppers experience we stopped by the pyramids and ancient city of Tula.  We had already been there but it was still interesting and the Packard's had not been before.  

 We stopped at at restaurant in Tula to eat and then on the way home when we were in Mexico City this pick-up truck full of cows legs was in front of us.  I wonder where it was going...and what the legs were going to be used for?