Don't Think, Don't Breathe, Don't Stop: Eating Our Body Weight in Mexico

Those of you who know Imran probably think it's impossible for him to ever gain weight. It's highly likely you believe he'll live to a ripe old age having never known what it's like to be subject to the trials and tribulations of expanding waist lines and increasing clothes sizes as the rest of us normal folk. Despite his ample appetite, our very own Benjy Button has a metabolism that just seems to improve with age. Well, let me tell you, none of you thought to send him to Mexico. Spend a few months here and even 'Slimran' may eventually become Fatman.

I, on the other hand, am already showing signs that I may soon be unable to see my feet. Not being much of a breakfast person usually, I've been following the "when in Rome" rule and dining like a king every morning just like the locals. Specifically, Henry VIII! Of course, the saying goes that you should then lunch like a prince and supper like a pauper but in Mexico the food is simply too good to deny yourself royal status at every meal.

Three quarters of our meals have been street food as worries about dodgy stomachs sure as hell ain't gonna stop us from eating the tastiest food available! So far it's been pretty good going. Imran's had to get the Immodium out once or twice but me and my iron stomach have felt fantastic - despite eating a lot of raw food washed in local water - thanks to a potent daily cocktail of probiotics and Spirulina. And that includes in places where the hygiene has been so bad that it looks like the guy who made our food wiped his arse with his bare hands first.

Real Mexican food is very different to the Tex-Mex stuff we get back home. They put tortilla chips in and with everything, plus some more on the side. As well as a hefty portion of soft tortillas just for fun. They're included in some way or another in every dish at every meal. Vegetarianism is a sin; a dirty secret best kept well hidden. In Playa Del Carmen I made the mistake of asking for veggie food for the first and last time: "Can you do me a veg version of the chicken tacos?" I asked. "Of course! It would be the chef's pleasure," the waiter responded enthusiastically. These tacos were originally filled with chicken and rolled up and fried. I took a bite into mine expecting to taste vegetables or beans of some sort. It was totally empty. Just an empty taco. And thats about as much respect as a vegetarian will get in a touristy place like Playa. Good job I'm not a full-time one!

But elsewhere there's still plenty for them to eat. We could live off guacamole and beans and fresh salsa; the latter, however, not being as common as we expected and disappointingly substituted for a bowl of bottled chilli sauce more often than not.

But the street food! Oh my good God, the street food! Tacos: soft corn tortillas cooked in front of you, spread with a layer of earthy beans, commonly topped with chicken in a spicy sauce. Empanadas: a larger tortilla filled with your choice of protein and either a fiery red or refreshing green sauce, accentuated by just a couple of aniseed-flavoured leaves and simply grilled. These leaves varied from region to region - avocado leaves in some areas and 'hoja santa' leaves in places like Oaxaca - but the flavour imparted was the same.

Chilaquilles: beans and sometimes chicken cooked in a red or green sauce, then with tortilla chips added and baked, finished with a topping of fresh crumbly crema. Crema is fresh, homemade cheese and unbelievably easy to make. Milk is warmed and an acid such as lemon juice is mixed in, making the dairy curdle. Drained through a muslin cloth, the curds and whey are now separate and the former are left to firm up. It's similar in texture to ricotta but a more salty flavour (the Mexicans love to pile on the sodium!) We only ate chilaquilles once in Mexico City but we truly believed the dish we had was the best we could hope to have, so we didn't order it again just to ensure our memory was nothing but positive! It was creamy without being overbearingly rich, fragrant from the herbs in the sauce and full of different textures, from the tortillas within the sauce going part-soggy and liquid-drenched to the crispy ones on top.

Ceviches: raw fish 'cooked' in a zesty marinade of lime, orange, tomatoes, onions and chillies. Then there were the sopes (another version of tacos but with a much thicker tortilla); the cheese-stuffed but still light quesadillas and enchiladas; the papadzulles, the panuchos, the fresh fish grilled on an open flame caught just hours before in the coastal areas. In Oaxaca we relished the various types of mole - the Mexican equivalent of curry - with a sauce paste made from dozens of ingredients. The most famous one is the mole negro which contains chocolate. It was a taste explosion. Deep (fancier people would describe it as 'complex'), sweet and spicy, a myriad of flavours hitting your tongue in every direction.

What else? Tamales, meat stuffed into a cornmeal (masa harina) paste and grilled in a banana leaf; chilled rellenos (stuffed chillies), ancient Aztec tortilla soups, and my personal favourite, nopales, a tangy salad made from cactus.. the list is endless and you can see why we stuffed ourselves silly, gorged our guts, munched through meal mountains.

The Mexicans know what real chocolate is. Forget the milk-filled rubbish: the good stuff is in Latin America. Dark, crumbly blocks of raw cacao are used in the savoury mole, sold just as they are, or broken up into pieces in the bottom of a mug with hot milk poured over to create a the creamiest and most delicious hot chocolate in the world. Even a man might be convinced to describe it as better than sex. Cacao, just to hit you with a Fun Fact (pronounced 'cuh-cow'), is the proper name for the chocolate bean but the Europeans who came to this part of the world couldn't pronounce the word for this ancient Aztec beauty, and so 'cocoa' was born. And we've all been calling it that ever since.

Being the juice addicts that we are, we obviously hoped to find some freshly squeezed orange juice at the very least. We did in Merida. In Mexico City and Oaxaca City we got even luckier and found 'juguerias' where we drank green vegetable juices, pints of our all-time favourite carrot, apple and beetroot juice, and litres of smoothies made with the freshest and sweetest papayas, guavas, pineapples and oranges. The man who ran the juice stall in Oaxaca's market came to know us as the English couple who got strangely excited by juice and learned to look out for us several times a day!

Although very difficult to rate, our top three meals were in Cafe Tacuba in Mexico City, a beach shack in Puerto Escondido and a breakfast in Oaxaca City. Cafe Tacuba simply because the setting was as Mexican as it gets and the food was delicious and simple. The breakfast in Oaxaca, although not as tasty a meal as a lot of the street food we ate, was memorable because we ate with a group of wonderful people we met earlier that morning, and sharing food with friends amidst laughter and chatter is one of life's greatest pleasures. And it was also our first introduction to Mexican hot chocolate! The beach shack was an entertaining meal. We were the only people in the place and the warning signs of dirty glasses and cutlery were there but we ignored them. The toilets were a "walk in and walk the hell back out immediately" kinda thing, obviously having not been flushed for about a month judging by the contents and the swarm of flies. The sink didn't work and instead there was a communal bucket of used water to wash our hands. And for some strange reason that we still don't comprehend, we stayed. Was it because we had already ordered and our British sensibilities didn't want to offend or be awkward by walking out? Whatever the reason, we just sat there annoyed and in a bad mood about what a disgusting place we'd come to, both of us seething at my poor choice of raw food, refusing to touch our drinks because the waiter had left muddy brown droplets from his dirty wet hands when he put the straws in.

And then the food arrived.

Tentatively we both took a bite from our grilled fish and ceviche. And nearly passed out... from happiness. The food was incredible. The most delicious ceviche I'd eaten and the nicest fish Imran had eaten so far. My dish was tart from limes but just as I was about to purse my lips from the sourness, a hit of sweetness came to surprise me before I finished with a kick in the mouth from some warming chilli. Imran's fish was charred on the outside and white and flaky on the inside. Spot on. We wolfed it all down, not giving a monkeys about the hygiene or the chances of getting ill or anything other than the fact that this was damn good grub! Even the dead ant in my dish didn't deter me - it's all flavour, right?

We learned something about ourselves that day: tasty food is of utmost importance on this trip and we don't care if the cleanliness is questionable in getting it to us - just as long as we don't see it! Ignorance really is bliss. We're the Lakhas and we're disgusting.

Remember that pact we had about saying yes to everything? Well, we failed. Whilst eating in the market an old lady tried to sell us a handful of fried insects sprinkled with chilli. The voice in my head was screaming "Try it! Try it!" but in the end, we couldn't say yes. Actually, Imran's exact words were: "F*ck that! You get that sh*t away from me, little lady!"

At the end of the two weeks, we couldn't take any more. Our bodies shut down. We held a forkful of food up to our mouths at our final Mexican dinner and couldn't bring ourselves to put it in. The non-stop shovelling had taken its toll and now our bodies were screaming "No more, please - I'm full! I'm short and small framed; obesity ain't a natural or sexy look on me." And fortunately we listened, contentedly sated from the amazing food we'd eaten in this brilliant country but thankful it was now ending and we could drag our heavy arses to a country with a less gluttonous food culture.