My teacher for the day, Chef Paco Cardenas, appears. It seems I’ve fallen behind the rest of the class, and he’s worked his way back through the market to retrieve me. He lures me with a sack of fresh chickpeas, marinated with lime and chile, possibly the most seductive snack I’ve ever eaten.

We’re students today at Sazón, a cooking school owned by the Orient Express’ luxurious Hotel Casa de Sierra Nevada (participants are not required to be hotel guests, though the hotel offers cooking packages). Indulging in the first part of a morning cooking class, we visit the market with Cardenas, a local chef, who teaches us how to navigate its stalls and teaches us about its exotic offerings.

We sniff cilantro and epazote, rub our fingers over dried peppers and taste dishes made from scratch. Cardenas shops for what looks fresh today — it all does to us — and buys sacks of pipiano, nopales (cactus pads), herbs, even chunks of pink pork.

SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, Guanajuato — If it weren’t for the fervor created by the rapid movement of Doña Lolita’s dry, brown hands, I might think her a wooden effigy, an extant wooden statue survived from another time. Except for those spurts of energy, she sits still and almost expressionless.

Hunched over on a stool in the crowded, aromatic fruit and vegetable market, just steps from the historic main plaza here, she furrows her brow just a bit. Clad in black, she rubs doughy balls between her palms, then sets each perfectly formed piece on a plate, before pinching more from a bucket and beginning the process again. Only when each ball is finished does her expression soften, yielding to triumph at a job well done.

“¿Que hace Usted? (What are you making?)” I ask, wondering what she makes with such
intensity.

She grins a toothless smile.

“Pipiano,” she says, handing me a spicy smelling clump of dough. Then, she gestures and shows me how to form the ball. While I attempt to do what she makes look easy, she tells me about the ingredients.

“Ground ancho chile and pumpkin seeds. It’s for making mole.”

Payments may be made in person at 1150 Mission Street, San Miguel. An outside payment drop is available. Payments may be mailed (check or money order only) to PO Box 180, San Miguel. It is recommended that customers paying by cash do so during regular business hours. Please note that the San Miguel CSD cannot be responsible for any cash payments placed through the drop box. Payments received after 3:00 pm will be posted the following business day and can be subject to penalty and/or service restoration fees.

Water and wastewater accounts are billed every other month starting in January, so you will receive bills in the months of January, March, May, July, September and November. Bills are mailed by the 15th day of each billing month for the previous two months of usage (i.e. January 15th billing would be for November and December usage.) The minimum bi-monthly billing for water service is $26.10 for the first 1,000 cubic feet of usage with additional charges based upon each 100cf thereafter. The bi-monthly flat rate for wastewater service is $53.76. Commercial wastewater accounts shall be charged additional fees, as adopted by Ordinance of the Board of Directors, depending upon circumstances.

The San Miguel CSD cannot be responsible for late or non-delivery of billing statements by the post office. If you have not received your bill by the 25th of a billing month, please contact our office at (805) 467-3388 to check your account status. Office hours are 8:30 am to 5:00 pm Monday through Friday, except legal holidays. The office is closed between 1:00 – 2:00 pm.

In the high sierras of the Costa Blanca, above and behind Benidorm – such as the Sierra Altea and the Vall d’Alcala, you can still see restored snow wells or ‘neveras’. They were built in places where the snow tended to drift and could easily be trapped. A ‘nevera’ was a massive, solidly built stone-lined place dug deep into the ground, with a door to bring snow in and out and a conical roof to keep the sun out. Inside, the snow could be accessed by stone steps or iron rungs. The snow was trampled by foot until the time of the last snowfall, and then, in the summer, cut into blocks of ice at in the coolness of the night, and then transported by donkey and cart to sell to the villages and towns on the coast below. The work, of course, was very hard and done in
intensely cold conditions. Much of the ice was lost on the journey through melting, and in some years, inevitably, when there was very little snowfall, the traders, and their customers both suffered. But, it was a thriving industry. In the 19th century, snow was even exported to Ibiza and North Africa from Alicante. The trade lasted until the 1930’s. Today, ‘neveras’ can be seen at Alcoy, Jativa, Jijona and at Totana in the Sierra Espuna in Murcia.

Another ancient means of keeping cool in a hot country, before the arrival of the fridge, was the ‘aljibe’ – from an Arab word for a water cistern. Villages always had their communal wells,

In San Miguel there was one at the Plaza del Pozo en Medio, but remote houses in the countryside needed a store for drinking water. An ‘aljibe’ is built of bricks and mortar and lined with lime, sand, iron, red clay and resin mastic to stop leaks. It was either wholly or partially underground, and was used to store precious, life-giving rainwater, keeping it for various uses – delicious cool drinking water and watering plants and animals. The water that came off the roofs during heavy storms was directed to the Aljibes to store. Many Aljibes date back to the 13th century. There are many examples of aljibes in the San Miguel region, some of them restored, but all on private property.

There are two at the Gran Casa Lo Meca (on the Bigastro road), one at the Gran Casa Lo Balaguer, one at the Casa Alta towards Torremendo, one at the Casa de la Torrecilla de Abajo (this side of the AP7 near La Marquesa), one at Los Manchados, another at Las Zahurdas, on the canal road in San Miguel and one at the Casa del Carmen. They are all antiquities protected by the Valencian government.