They are very cheap here. Want to see what $100 pesos of food looks like? (At today’s rate, that’s $7.35 USD.)
After the jump…
OK, so going clockwise and starting with the onions: 7 onions, 1 cantaloupe, 10 small plum tomatoes, a bag of green beans, 3 poblanos, bunch of radishes, 5 avocados, one cucumber and 10 jumbo shrimp.
Near as I can figure, in St. Louis, EVEN IF we went to the Soulard Market, we’d be looking at about, oh, I dunno, $20 USD at least. Maybe more. Shrimp is expensive in St. Louis.
Crazy, huh?
Oh, and on top of that, if we wanted to, we could’ve bought some magenta or violet colored beans.
Those are NOT photoshopped. I kid you not. Those beans are hot pink and purple. I have no idea how and why.
Sometimes, when I’m walking around, I just see something so incomprehensibly crazy, like these hot pink beans, and I just want to fall to my knees, raise my hands, and scream at the top of my lungs, ¡¿Por qué?! OH MY GAWD ¡¿POR QUÉ?!
I’m sure their response would be a nonchalant shrug and “Eh. ¿Por qué no?”
Hit pink beans? Why not? Minor details making an ordinary day extraordinary!
yeah, but what are the pink beans for?
The hot pink beans look like seed beans that have been treated to prevent crop failure. I’ve seen peas that color with a warning not to eat them. Maybe the purple are treated too but I’ve never seen that color on seeds.
I can only think of using them in art projects. You know, the sorts of things kids glue to paper in art class. I’m tempted to get just a cup of the beans to see if, after all the color leaches out of them when they cook, they revert back to the boring ‘ole kidney beans they actually are.