I think this was my favorite thing at the market, we turned the corner into a large hall filled with bread and baked goods, this gaudy tray of wonder greeted us, I asked my guide what it was: Clown Bread, he tells me, kids love it! No kidding!
From here on in everything was contained in these large market halls, each hall had a theme – so the first one was bread, then meat, the meat was split up into Beef, Pork, Goat with some chicken thrown in for good measure, oddly enough the Turkey’s were all sold live and were in the outside part of the market.
The links are Chorizo. 
Mmmmmmmm Pork skin! And Sheep tail?
BBQ Anyone? By far the most popular spot in the market…the slow cooking method of the meat of a I believe a broth is an ancient technique but I was actually fairly turned off by the use of plastic on hot steaming meat to keep it warm and most…seems to me that cheap plastic wrap must leech all sorts of toxins after a day of hot wet heat? Or am I just being paranoid? Wouldn’t a lid of some sort work?
OK so there are a lot of Turkey pictures, there was something about this line up of farmers with there Turkeys that fascinated me…also one of the best meals if not the best meal I had in Oaxaca was Turkey…in part I think to the way it was cooked (slow cooked su vid a method I don’t like but in this instance resulted in an amazing product) and the kind of Turkey’s being used.
And for dessert…frutas cristalizada
…or chocolate, in the middle of the market was this chocolate store where they were processing cocoa beans. It was unclear to me what they were actually selling, but my hunch is they use the pulp and either make there own chocolate or it goes into Mole.
You know this is only a small fraction of the pictures I took, but this at least, I think, gives you a feel of the experience. If you are ever in Oaxaca you must take the 30 minute trip out of town and experience Tlacolula for yourself. It is truly amazing.
Thanks for the tour of the market, it’s very beautiful and interesting. The turkeys made me think of when Kensington Market in Toronto sold live chickens (and bunnies and pigeons) until the early eighties, before the city changed the bylaws to prevent the practice. It reminds us that our food was once a living thing that needed to be killed and cleaned before it made it to our plate.
Glad you liked it! Yeah I vaguely remember live poultry – there used to be a place on Queen West and the sign out front said something like: Fresh Killed Live Poultry. In NYC mostly in the Bronx and Queens they still have, mostly or exclusively Halal butchers with living livestock you can point at and …get freshly killed. Indeed I think it is a much healthier way of going about getting meat, more reality based….
Did your hotel offer a basket of market breads & pastries at breakfast? The red drips on the buns is a strawberry syrup. The omnipresent fresa.
My hotel had an entire a la carte breakfast menu – of which you could order anything or everything – it was so over the top amazing….they served bread (really a cake loaf) with nuts and fruits, a bread basket was also available…I tried to be a good boy so the loaf was just placed on the table so I never did get the bread basket. My guide told me the red stuff was just sugar so it’s good to know that it is strawberry flavored. We have to go together next time! Think of the money I could save on guides 😉
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