Cuban Night

 Once in a while I get such a deep longing for my Cuban soul food . . .

. . . including Black Beans, White Rice, Ropa Vieja (Shredded Beef cooked in Sofrito and Tomato Sauce), and Tostones (Fried Green Plantains), that, well, I'm powerless to resist.  I spent a whole day in the kitchen cooking up a storm.

Naturally, we had to have leftovers the day after.  This time, to mix it up, instead of tostones, I made Mariquitas — homemade banana chips.  It was all so delicious.  This will hold me for a while.

Of Frogs, Princes and Fathers

One upon a time, in a land far away (well, 90 miles south of Key West, actually), 

there lived a little girl who loved to read – a habit nurtured by her father, a serious book lover and avid reader. 

While she was growing up in the sixties, the Evil Communist Regime was strengthening its yoke on her beautiful country.  Books were becoming scarce, but her father was part of an informal network of neighbors and friends that would lend out books, just like a library.  While the little girl continued to read, there was no opportunity to re-read, one of the true pleasures of reading aficionados, because the books had to be returned right away.

One summer afternoon, however, the father was actually able to buy and present his daughter with a brand new book for her very own collection: “El príncipe rana” – The Frog Prince - which she promptly devoured and reread many times over the coming months until it was in tatters.  

The little girl fell in love with the story, in part because she could relate so much to the princess in the book:  She was a bit lonely, a bit spoiled, definitely daddy’s girl, and had a powerful aversion to frogs.

Then, that very summer, on another sunny afternoon, a frog happened to jump through an open window and got inside the house.  The little girl began screaming, while her mischievous brother tried to catch the frog.

Finally, the father came running, rescued the poor frog, and set it free in the garden.  The little girl never forgot that summer, and her love for her father-champion and for books continued to deepen as the years went by.

That lucky little girl learned more than a few important life lessons that summer.  Among them, the sanctity of all life, including that of an ugly frog, and, because in her young mind, the king in the book got mixed up with her father, both honorable men, she also learned the importance of keeping her word.  Lastly, she learned that under no circumstances whatsoever would she ever eat frog legs.

It was not until much later in life that she finally understood one more lesson from the events of that summer:  Handsome princes come in all shapes and sizes.

In honor of all the wonderful lessons that little girl learned from her father, I’ve prepared a breakfast tray fit for a prince - my Prince, that is.

Featuring FROG Jam!  Have you ever tried it?  It's made from a combination of fruits - Fig, Raspberry, Orange - and Ginger.  Delicious!  It seems the time was just right to crack open that precious jar I'd been saving for a while . . .

I first spotted this lovely tray at More Fun Less Laundry, a blog that has become my primer for beautiful living.  

I looked for it everywhere, because, naturally, it was no longer available, until I finally found it in an obscure website.  

The tray box was a mess, and the tray itself was covered in dust, but I didn't care, I now had my own lily pad tray with frogs, butterflies and flowers!  Perseverance pays.  Oh, I'm going to have such fun with this tray!

A blue and green plaid napkin seemed perfect for both frogs and princes. 

 The leafy napkin ring did, too.

And the tray was brought upstairs to the bedroom, so my children's father could have a grand start to his Father's Day celebration . . .

like the True Prince that he really is.

Happy Father's Day, darling!

Joining Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for Tablescape Thursday.

The return of the beans!

Eight months ago, I received some unwelcome news about my health:  I have been diagnosed as a diabetic.  This means, for the first time in my life, medication.  It also means lifestyle changes.  Ugh!  There was no choice but to attempt to rise to the challenge, meaning dietary changes and . . . exercise!  I have been making progress and have seen positive results, but emotionally, I'm just beginning to wrap my head around the whole thing.

My faith has been renewed through this challenge, however.  It's so true that the Lord carries you when you are not sure you can handle it on your own.  The results, so far, are pretty wonderful.  My sugar is completely under control and I've lost about 70 lbs.  I have also joined a gym and have been working with a trainer since January.  I wouldn't describe me as fit by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm making progress.  I definitely feel more flexible, have less pain on my knees and I'm sleeping a lot better!  Of course, the trainer goes on and on about how I'm building muscle and strengthening my core . . . yeah, yeah, yeah . . .  I don't see the muscles yet but I'm going to keep at it.

There have been many, many dietary changes, and, truthfully, it hasn't been that bad!  I've been experimenting a lot in the kitchen.  I tried eating according to the recommendations of the ADA, but the program left me ravenously hungry, and my glucose reading fluctuated wildly between morning and night.  Then I toyed with the Paleo diet, eliminating almost all wheat, soy and just about anything that an agricultural society produces.  The Paleo diet recommends eating like our paleolithic ancestors, i.e. fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whatever meat those early hunters were able to kill.

I thought it was going to be soooo difficult.  No bread?  How could I live without bread?  No pasta?  No beans?  NO BEANS!!!  I grew up with beans!  My mother made a different bean soup every single day!  Like most Cubans, she'd make a thick potage to be served over rice, as part of the daily meal.  On Mondays, it was black beans, on Tuesday, it may have been split peas, on Wednesday, red kidney beans, on Thursday, Spanish Olla, a chick pea soup with sausages . . . and so on . . . no beans . . . ?  Well, for the sake of my blood sugar, I stopped eating them as well.  Surprisingly, I didn't miss the bread and pasta as much as I thought I would, but the beans were another story.

Then, recently I read "The Blood Sugar Solution" by Dr. Mark Hyman, and he provided a fresh perspective on my whole new diet.  For one thing, he's validated a lot of the Paleo principles, so that's good, I didn't have to start from scratch, but he recommends beans as part of a healthy, low-sugar diet because of the fiber and nutritional benefits, and, if eaten correctly, perfectly fine for diabetics.  Yay!  Dr. H is my new hero!

So, I've introduced beans back into my diet, and so far, I have seen no adverse results, and my taste buds are so happy!  Imagine my joy when I found this at the grocery store:

Say, what???  16 BEANS!!!  All together???  At once???  This, I gotta try!  I learned to make beans from my mother, the sorceress.  She never followed a recipe, which was extremely frustrating to me when I was younger, but eventually gave me the ability to improvise in the kitchen.

So, Maria, was in the kitchen this past weekend, concocting a magic potion from these dry pebbles.  It was truly a little bit of this, and a little bit of that . . . and then another visit to the pantry to see what else I could throw in there.  And this was the result . . .

I should call this soup “20-Ingredient Bean Soup” since that's how many different ingredients went into the pot:  1) Beans, 2) Onion, 3) Green Pepper, 4) Garlic, 5) Bacon, 6) Spanish Chorizo, 7) Zucchini, 8) Butternut Squash, 9) Carrots, 10) Spinach, 11) Diced tomatoes, 12) Tomato sauce, 13) Chicken stock, 14) Olive Oil, 15) Oregano, 16) Thyme, 17) Bay leave, 18) Dry white wine, 19) Salt, and 20) Pepper!

Lots of chopping!  Thankfully, my husband is the most wonderful chopper in the entire universe. 

He chopped, I conjured . . .

Here's a closeup . . .

That night, I had also roasted a chicken, but let me tell you, we didn't even touch it.  Both, my husband and I had a bowl of this deliciousness and were quite satisfied.  Then we settled down to watch Game of Thrones and The Borgias, with a very contented tummy.

I'm joining the Foodie Friday link party.

Three Kings Day - A Special Day

I was four years old, I think, when this picture was taken on the morning of Three Kings Day . . . El día de los Reyes Magos . . . That's when children in Cuba, and most of Latin America, receive their presents . . .  What a magical day!

I have tried to keep the tradition alive for my own children here in the United States.  As children, Santa Claus delivered most of their gifts on Christmas morning . . . but somehow, Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar managed to find their way to the American Midwest to deliver one or two small presents on the day of Epiphany . . .

This year, for our Three Kings Day Open House, I decided to place the Nativity Scene, right smack in the middle of the Dining Room table, with the savory treats placed in the perimeter . . . I used a length of burlap on top of the tablecloth, to highlight the humble surroundings at Jesus' birth . . .

We started collecting this Nativity set by Fontanini when my oldest son was born.  It has worked out splendidly.  I wanted a set that my children could touch and play with as they were growing up, so that the Nativity story would become familiar to them . . . My creative children would rearrange the figurines, and would even have Baby Jesus riding on the camels before putting him down for a nap . . .  Even after all these years, the pieces are in excellent shape.  The muted palette is lovely, I think, and each piece came with a charming little story describing its individual role . . .

 

And here are the three wise men, Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar, who brought gold, myrrh and frankincense to the Baby Jesus . . .

 

The desserts were displayed in the kitchen table, with the Willow Tree by Demdaco figurines acting as a centerpiece.  I placed them on a cake stand and scattered some “snow” around their feet . .

 

A 2005 Swarovski snowflake dangled from the chandelier and made a credible “star” for the Magi . . .

 

There was lots of food . . . We had ham and cheese sandwiches and cucumber sandwiches with herbed cream cheese (I never pass up a chance to make cucumber sandwiches) . . . We had an exquisite cheese tray brought by my sister-in-law, Mary Ann . . . We had potato salad and egg salad . . . This chicken salad was my mother's specialty and is now my favorite  . . . Every bite is chock full of sweet fruit, including grapes, apples, cranberries and golden raisins . . . I love the sweet-tart combination of fruit and freshly-squeezed lemon juice . . .

A bowl of berries . . . a simple but delicious indulgence . . . Who doesn't like a bowl of berries . . . ?

We had mini-scones . . . 

 

My favorite date nut bread . . . Click here if you want the recipe . . . 

My son, John, made almond bark . . .

And he baked all these chocolate chip cookies . . .  Is it any wonder I miss this kid so much when he goes back to college . . . ?

 

Turrones are candied nougats made in Spain, and these were the traditional sweets we ate at Christmas.  They'd show up in the stores in mid-December and would disappear after New Year's.  In this platter I have Fruit Nougat, Marzipan and Egg Yolk Nougat . . .

Here's the King of the Turrones . . . Turrón Jijona, a sweet bar made with ground almonds and honey . . . It is sublime . . . It comes wrapped in several layers of plastic to hold in all the natural oils from the almonds . . .  All you need is a little morsel because it's very sweet, but, oh, so satisfying . . .

Here's our version of King Cake - a spice cake that turned out as delicious as it looked sad. 

NOTE TO SELF:  DO NOT cover spice cake with plastic wrap after glazing so the cake doesn't end up looking like this . . .

 

A little plastic baby was hidden inside the spice cake . . . as tiny as an almond . . . whoever ended up with the baby in their piece of cake is declared King (or Queen) of the Day and receives a special prize (this year, it was a bottle of champagne) . . .

Each guest went home with an Epiphany kit . . .

 

A lottery ticket . . . some candy . . . and a piece of white chalk rolled up in a little scroll . . .

The scroll contains a house blessing for the new year, a tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages . . .

We lined up all the little bags on top of the bookcases . . .

 And here I am, with my sweet husband, as we got ready to open our home to friends and family . . .

 

May the love of the Wise Men guide our steps so that the light of Jesus is revealed to us . . .  May we always be inspired to follow the star that is the love of God . . .

Joining Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for Tablescape Thursday.

Christmas Tree Stories

This photo of me, standing in front of our family's Christmas tree, was taken in Havana, on December 22, 1960, on my brother, Al's, 2nd birthday (I was 3).  I don't know what kind of pine this is, it certainly looks like it had very, very long needles, much longer than those of the white pine that we bought this year.  I can just imagine how hard it must have been for my mother to hang ornaments from it.

The photo is a true treasure because, displayed on the tree, are my mother's beloved glass ornaments, given to her by my father on the first Christmas they were married.  She took care of those ornaments like they were her babies, and cried pitifully when my brother broke one of them.

Growing up, my mother did almost all the Christmas decorating.  My father was a firm believer in hiring help.  Leaky faucet?  Hire a plumber.  Crying baby?  Hire a nanny.  Christmas tree decorating?  Well . . . he grew up surrounded by a bevy of sisters . . . whoever did the decorating at home, it wasn't him . . . My father was a loving man and had many wonderful qualities, but we learned early on that he would never be a do-it-yourselfer.  Never was there a man more ill-equipped for the changing political climate . . .

As the communist regime became more established in Cuba, Christmas trees ceased being available for purchase around the holidays, but my ever-resourceful godmother, Mama Lala, found a guy, who knew a guy, who had a farm . . . a lot of Mama Lala stories start off like that . . . anyway, she bought us a "Christmas tree" - some sort of bush, without leaves, but with firm branches, was cut down, shaped like a traditional tree, afixed to a wood base and spray-painted white.  That was the Christmas tree that my mother put up for us every year until we came to the United States.  I remember hovering nearby while the tree was decorated, and later, when I was older, helping my mother hang ornaments from its branches.  I wish I had a picture of the white tree but, unfortunately, those pictures never made it across the Gulf of Mexico.

On the year in which my brother broke one of my mother's Christmas ornaments, after she finished mourning for the loss, she took the glass chards of the broken ornament and crushed them and made her own glitter, and then scattered the glitter on the white cotton that covered the base of the tree.  I was enchanted by the way the lights hit the little bits of glass.  I think, it was at that very moment, when my love affair with glass ornaments began.

We came to the United States in 1969.  My mother's ornaments, along with so many other things, were left behind in Cuba, never to be recovered.  It saddens me to have lost such a meaningful, albeit small part of my mother's heritage. 

In the U.S. my family switched back and forth between real and artificial trees; each has its good points.  But once I got married, I stuck to the real thing - it helped that my husband also preferred fresh trees.  In 28 years of marriage, we've always had a fresh tree in the house at Christmas. 

We used to go to a tree farm and cut down our own tree.  It was an attempt to give our citified children a dose of nature and to show them where Christmas trees came from.  We cut down trees in all weathers, we got stuck in mud a couple of times.  We trampled through farms on the coldest day of December (it was always the coldest day in December), until one year, when my son John said to me:  “Mommy, you and Daddy can go cut the tree, I'll wait in the car.”  Since then, we've gone back to buying our trees from local vendors.

In the last couple of years, though, smaller artificial trees have made their way into the house as well, to be displayed in other rooms.  Those are O.K., I enjoy them, too . . . but I somehow seem to make my way to where the fresh tree is - this year, the Living Room/Library.

Here's this year's tree . . .

It used to take me days to decorate the Christmas tree.  The ornaments had to be spaced just so, and the colors next to each other had to harmonize.  It was me at my OCD worst.  But I'd like to think I'm evolving.  In the last few years, I've been enjoying a more chaotic tree, just laden with lots of ornaments - mostly glass.  While I won't turn up my nose at any ornament, if you want to put a smile on my face, show me a glass ornament.

A little glitter bird that was too heavy to hang on the tree is sitting on the window sill . . . He just seems to belong right there . . .

A Fabergé egg (if only, ha!) . . .

This ornament puts me in mind of The Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker Suite . . . or perhaps an Italian princess from the Renaissance . . .

As for lights, I like white lights.  But when the boys were young, they insisted on colored lights, and we always let them have their way.  Now my oldest son, John, seems to prefer white lights, too, and easy-going David . . . well, David just goes along with whatever . . .

I wouldn't want to commit to any aspect of decorating the Christmas tree.  One of its magical qualities is its ability to change itself year after year, allowing us to fulfill so many little fantasies.  

I wish all my friends in blogland a very Merry Christmas!  God bless you all!

Honoring My Godmother . . .

She was there when I was born . . .

And when I was baptized . . .

And on my first birthday . . .

And on the second . . .

And on the third . . . And on every other birthday until I was eleven years old and left Cuba with my parents . . .

She was there at my wedding, standing in for my mother, who was too ill to attend . . .

She was there when my first born was baptized . . .

And my second born as well . . .

The cheek-to-cheek photos are so her!  She has always loved children, although she was never able to have any of her own, so, instead, she devoted her life to the other children in the family; they became her life's work.  She now lives in Florida with a cousin whom she raised, yet again helping that cousin raise her son . . .

This is the last photo I have of her taken in 2007, with my son, John.  She won't let anyone take her picture anymore.  She says she is too old and ugly for photographs . . .

I think she is the most beautiful woman that ever lived.  When I look at her, I only see love.  Happy Mother's Day, Mama Lala!