Oh yeah, today at a cheery little cafeteria in Cancun: big oval quesadillas of thick, chewy corn tortillas filled with 1) sauteed squash blossoms and 2) huitlacoche, aka white-trash truffles, that corn fungus that’s all black and tastes like bacon. Or maybe it tastes like bacon because they cook it with pork. Either way, it’s mighty good. And because it’s black, you feel like you’re cheating death. All washed down with pure-white, creamy horchata–almond and rice milk, which because it’s in Mexico and not being served by some lame-ass vegan who can’t digest real milk, I love.

And it’s the season for chiles en nogada! That’s the poblano chiles stuffed with sweet-savory meat and covered in a green walnut sauce–then sprinkled with pomegranate seeds, so you get the red-green-white of the Mexican flag (all just in time for Independence Day on September 16). As I left the quesadilla place, they were prepping the chiles (I was too early for serious lunch), and popping out the pomegranate seeds. The pomegranates were still green on the outside, but red inside–a gorgeous, somehow more tropical-looking contrast. If I come home without having eaten chiles en nogada, I’m counting it as a major failure.