Last night, the 5th of May, millions of people commemorated the Mexican victory at the Battle of Puebla (1862) with volleys of shots — of tequila — bravura barrages of beer, and murderous margaritas. Unsurprisingly, this morning finds heads held hostage and stomachs seared from nacho napalm. Today’s Spanish vocabulary lesson: crudo means ” hangover.”
If you celebrated Cinco de Mayo with cerveza, celebrate Seis de Mayo this morning with el desayuno de los campeones, the Breakfast of Champions. The traditional Mexican hangover cure is menudo – tripe soup or stew.
Emergency hangover instructions issued by the Department of Homeland Security suggest a stockpile of canned menudo — Juanita’s, Pico Pica, La Preferida, La Costeña, — but if you prefer fresh relief, have an ambulance deliver a few pounds of white honeycomb beef tripe (culin or pancita), posole (white hominy), dried or fresh chili peppers (ancho, poblano), onion, garlic, maybe a nice calf’s foot (veal knuckle) … sure beats corn flakes.
Recipes from:
San Marcos Texas Menudo Cook-Off
Short link: http://bit.ly/l0lMGz
Image by Mike Licht, after Picasso. Download a copy here Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length. Yes, we know Picasso was Spanish and not Mexican, but we like the picture.
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Tags: alcohol, Cinco de Mayo, drinking, food, holidays, Mexico
NotionsCapital 
May 6, 2011 at 9:03 am
Nice Picasso touch with the eye arrangement in the face there.
Poor soul in the picture looks more in need of the Mayo clinic.
Chicken chili with black beans was as daring as I went in celebrating Cinco de Mayo
May 6, 2011 at 10:45 am
Just a GRE-style FYI on the dried chile thing: “poblano” is to “ancho” as “not-quite-ripe muscat grape” is to “muscat raisin”. That is, “ancho” refers to the dried ripe (deep reddish brown) form of the chile, while “poblano” typically (always?) refers to that same chile in its fresh under-ripe (dark green) state.
May 6, 2011 at 11:48 am
Chile Nerd:
Thanks for the clarification. If that is so then perhaps, in North America, we might expect more anchos from southern farms and more dark-green poblanos from nothern ones with shorter growing seasons.
May 6, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Well, I suppose that anywhere the growing conditions allow poblanos to full ripen could support production of anchos–in warmer climates this can be done mostly or completely outdoors, in colder climates, one could pull it off in greenhouses.
My hunch is that the poblanos and anchos that consumers buy in the stores come from the same growing areas, but from different harvest times.
May 6, 2011 at 11:27 pm
I made stew on cinco de mayo because every avocado I saw was hard as a rock. I would’ve done fajitas and already have some fresh tomato concasse for a pico de gallo.
May 7, 2011 at 8:56 am
Related:
“Pink Taco in Century City Celebrates Cinco de Mayo By Painting a Donkey Pink and Chaining it to the Restaurant,” Michelle Woo, OC Weekly