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The Mercado de la Cruz consists of a few warehouse-like indoor plazas ringed by makeshift stands, and on Sundays, the whole parking lot is also taken over by a flea market. You can get amazingly fresh produce here at guilt-inducingly low prices. There's a huge variety of stuff available--cheeses, meats, breads, household items--but really, the produce is so amazing. The market winds down before 5 p.m., so go early. Go at lunchtime, and eat at one of the little stalls inside...or get some delicious street food. My favorites: elotes (roasted ears of corn...usually with chile) or fruit cups (usually with chile and lime). Coconut is especially good, and so is watermelon, and so is pineapple.

Shop for avocados (aguacates) and mangos. There are a few different kinds of avocados, and lots of types of mangoes. Some of the avocados can even be eaten with the skin on, which makes an amazingly decadent snack. That is, if you are still hungry after you say yes for the 50th time to "¿Quieres probarlo?" Yes, I'd like to try it! Thank you! You can pay between 12 and 20 pesos per kilo (2.2 pounds) of avocados. Here is the important thing to remember. You have purchased your tomatoes (jitomates) and your tomatillos (tomates) and your avocados, onions (cebollas), garlic (ajo), chiles, limes (limones or limas), prickly pear fruits (tunas), and NOT your nopalitos. You have purchased either regular yellow corn tortillas, or if you find the lady in traditional dress who sits by the candy guy, you have purchased blue corn tortillas, which mold within three days, so you must eat them fast. Also you have some salsa. NOW: Get home and leave everything in the bags it came in. Set aside the garlic and tortillas and salsa, so you don't get way too enthusiastic. Did you remember to get cheese? Oaxaca? Panela? Ranchero? They're all good. Now, pull out favored ingredient number one: vegetable wash! Squirt some in each bag (do these one or two bags at a time). Fill the bag with water. Hold bag closed. Agitate well. Leave water in bag for a few minutes. Rinse veggies and use. In the case of tunas, peel them--dig your finger in until you get to bright, deep fuchsia pulp and the skin will peel right off. These are cactus fruits, and if you try to make agua fresca with them, they WILL make a disgustingly viscous drink. If you eat them on their own, though, they taste like a cross between a kiwi and a watermelon (sandia), and they stain your fingers with a beautiful bright pink. Yum!

Take a handful of change. You aren't going to pay too much per kilo of veggies...but be realistic. Are you going to use 2.2 pounds of limes? Uh, no. (I made a valiant effort, though!) The deal is, you are supposed to bargain. I am still in the nouveau-American phase, though, where it feels cheap and dirty to try to bargain down from $1.20 to $.70 for a couple pounds of avocados, especially when we pay like $4.50 for a 12 oz. tub of guacamole back home. So you can do this pretty cheaply, but if you are bargaining fiercely with the blue tortilla woman--whose tortillas each bear a ring of thumbprints from where she made them that morning--then shame on you.

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