I looked out the window today and saw that it was raining—a good sign as grey skies, umbrellas and brightly-colored slickers mean one thing: it’s March. It’s not my favorite month—the weather is erratic, leaning mainly towards wet. But it does mean spring is almost here, and the warmer, longer days make me feel as if I’ve awoken from a deep sleep.The one and only time I’ve been to Mexico was in the spring, and so my first-hand impressions of that country are based around what was in season—namely strawberries. We couldn’t drive a mile without seeing a roadside stand selling overflowing baskets of the fresh berries nestled under large signs boasting, “Fresas frescas.” I was too scared to eat the strawberries not knowing if they’d been washed in contaminated water or not—but as we were in the state of Guanajuato, each stand also had fresh jars of cajeta—which is the specialty of that state.
You could say that cajeta (pronounced kah-Heh-tah) is Mexican Spanish for what other Latin American countries call dulce de leche. The word means “little box,” which is what the confection was stored in back in the 1500s. I’ve heard that cajeta is vulgar slang in some other Latin American countries, which is perhaps why it’s known as dulce de leche elsewhere. But beyond the names, there is another difference between the two.Read more »
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