No Passport Required

I left the country breifly yesterday afternoon. Not really, but it felt like it. I went to La Michoacana to buy pork shoulder roast and dried guajillo chilis for a special Mexican recipe I am going to attempt today. La Michoacana is one of several Mexican grocery stores within a few blocks of our house. Some refer to the section of Spring Valley Road near our home as "Little Mexico" and for good reason. There is a huge hispanic population. La Michoacana is also known for having some of the best tasting meat (and at great prices) in the entire Dallas area. The area around the meat counter was packed. There were at least 15-20 people standing around waiting for their number to be called. I took a number...41. The display above showed that they were currently helping number 25. I waited over 30 minutes for my turn. Each person bought so much meat which made each turn last a long time. There was a slight problem, though. Everything in the entire store was written in spanish. And, none of the workers spoke English. I did ask for help from another customer. She helped me figure out what I needed to order. But, I still had trouble when it was my turn because the pork shoulder roast was not displayed in the case. I knew the word puerca (pork) and I touched my shoulder to request that specific part. But, I didn't know if they understood I wanted a boneless roast. I am still not totally sure I got the right thing, but it looks like it may be correct. I felt uncomfortable and conspicuous as I tried to find the ingredients I needed. I was probably the only non-hispanic person in the store most of the time (I did see a young white guy in there for a few minutes). There was Mexican music blaring, and conversations in spanish going on all around me. I was really wishing I could speak that language. I may be making more trips there since Cody bought me a Rick Bayless cookbook for Christmas. He has a Mexican food cooking show on PBS called Mexico, One Plate at a Time. This cookbook has supposedly "simple" everyday Mexican cooking recipes. Some of them look pretty tricky to me. I guess we'll see how my Guajillo Roasted Pork and Potato taco filling dish turns out tonight.