Adventures into Mexican Markets, Part 10: Acapulco's Central Market, Revisted!

The new people in town for Anarchapulco give John and I an excuse to take time out of this busy time for a visit to the central market, one of my favorite places in the whole city.  We took a new friend who's staying with us and an older friend from last year and headed deep into Acapulco, more than an hour drive away from the conference center where the central market sits and has sat for many years.  We evidently surprised our new friend with the experience, as he wasn't expecting the crazy, chaotic but beautiful mess that is the central market. Today's post is to highlight the items currently available for the prices I was able to aquire them at as a gringa in a Mexican open air market.

My first purchase was cheese, from the same vender I always acquire cheese from.  He has the best tasting Oaxaca cheese for the cheapest price, only 80 pesos a kilo.  This is something that is generally 120 pesos or more for much lower quality product, as a point of reference.  I also got a bunch a cilantro for 5 pesos, as it grows like grass in Mexico.

My culinary adventures have been calling for cinnamon sticks recently but I haven't made it to the central market until yesterday to acquire some.  I got an eigth of a kilo for 50 pesos, which will honestly last me awhile. Stay tuned Steemit, from Horchata to Arroz con Leche Empanadas, lots of cinnamon stick recipes to come!

Onions are generally between 13-25 pesos a kilogram depending on season and variety in the grocery store, I was able to pick up smaller abnormal but still perfectly edible red onions for like 7 pesos a kilogram.

When we go to the market, we get to feeling adventurous with our tastes. When we see something we haven't tried, we generally will spend the pesos just to give it a shot.  If we don't like it the dogs will, and if they don't like it to the compost it goes. I'm not sure what these stone fruit are, but we purchased 5 pesos worth to try them out.

A kilogram of peanuts currently runs 15 pesos and we decided to pick one up this round.  I've got a love for peanut butter so this is honestly the beginning of adventures to make a cheaper locally sourced version of my favorite spread.  Imported peanut butter is pretty expensive even by American standards. 

It must be pineapple harvest season, because there were a lot available for cheap prices.  I paid 35 pesos for this giant pineapple, one more than twice the size of my head.  The plan is to chop it, freeze it and blend it into smoothies. 

It's strawberry season, just like it was last year when I got here.  You can get two kilos for 200 pesos, or 10 dollars for perspective.  I got a half kilo for 15 pesos, less than a dollar.  Also planning on chopping and freezing this stuff.

My favorite molasses alternative, piloncillo was 5 pesos a cone this time, so I got four.  Grated, this is a great substitute for brown sugar, I've found. It's much more natural, too.

Sweet potatoes aren't super common, but we found a few stands with them yesterday that had both orange and purple sweet potatoes.  I purchased three of these purple ones for the purposes of growing, as I like the plants and am interested in having more of these peculiar potatoes. 

Chayote is a squash like vegetable grown in a tree commonly eaten here both medicinally and just as food.  I found it leaves a residue like super glue on the hands when you cut it, as this was my first time purchasing it. 

You know your honey is local when it's sold in a cleaned Taxco mineral water container, a liter for 100 pesos which is a great price.  I haven't tried it yet, but I'm already pleased with the purchase.

I purchased these honey infused suckers from the same vender, hoping for something delicious.  Turns out they had eucalyptus or something equally minty as well which made it really unpleasant, to my tastes anyway.  

I had a blast at my most recent market adventure, as it's always fun to see someone's reaction to the chaotic beauty of a Mexican market.  It's a place were you can find just about anything if you're willing to take the time to look for it and ask around.  It's a very natural and functional capitalistic system that I absolutely love, it's one of my favorite places in the city.  The only thing that keeps me from visiting more often is the distance and my lack of time, but hopefully things are changing in that regard.

For anyone coming to Anarchapulco, looking for high quality meat, cheese, fruit and vegetables, consider the central market.  Something to consider is that pesticides are expensive, so much of the produce you buy from the market is inherently organic in nature, as many farmers just cannot afford the fancy chemicals.  It's an amazing ethnic experience and for my whole day I only spent 350 pesos, less than 20 USD for all of the things featured in this post.  Not bad, for high quality locally sourced food!

Thanks for reading!