Breakfast/Desayuno | Dos Gildas

A Recipe Signed, Sealed, Delivered

May 1, 2012 By Gilda Valdez Carbonaro Leave a Comment

It's been about two weeks since my niece sent me an email asking for some of my old recipes. She's a college student here in town, but she's doing a semester abroad in Uruguay. When she's in town, here at the university, we have a standing date on Tuesday nights when she comes over for dinner, sometimes bringing a friend. We catch up over dinner talking about her life as a university student, her classes, her quirky professors, her political activism. I sigh to myself...how time has passed. I allow myself to imagine our son at the table with us too. At the end of the evening, we load Natalie down with her uncle's homemade bread and enough leftover meals to last several days. When she asked me for a certain recipe recently, or even any of the things she's eaten here, there wasn't an obvious answer. I needed to know what was available or seasonal. Cooking is about looking around … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Breakfast/Desayuno, Entrées/Platos Fuertes, Gilda V. Carbonaro Tagged With: baby zucchini, calabacitas, egg dish

Camotes con Leche

December 11, 2011 By Gilda Valdez Carbonaro 2 Comments

Being a teacher at a boys' school where we sit at the table with our students for lunch, I have an unusual opportunity to observe the appetites of these hungry boys. There are those boys who are willing to eat the meals prepared by the school staff, which on most days are healthy, tasty, and presented appetizingly. Then there are the boys who perplex me with their fixation on eating the same cold sandwich of processed meat, rubbery cheese or a limp peanut butter and jelly, day after day. To me the question is whether this is nature or nurture. Does early exposure to different foods, their natural colors, textures, and smells make a difference for a child's developing appetite? Is it like a second language where if you get it early enough, you internalize it? I am not a nutritionist, a pediatrician, nor a child psychologist, so I'm left to ponder this. I do know that as a child of my … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Breakfast/Desayuno, Gilda V. Carbonaro Tagged With: breakfast, camotes con leche, healthy meals, sweet potatoes

Chila-Migas

August 11, 2011 By Gilda (Dini) Karasik 4 Comments

There is quite a bit of debate about the differences between chilaquiles and migas. They are both considered Mexican comfort foods and are made with some combination of corn tortillas, salsa, cheese and eggs, depending on whom you ask. Some argue that it has to do with the way the tortillas are fried and when the salsa is added. Others contend that chilaquiles are made with eggs and baked while migas are simply fried tortillas with onions, cheese and salsa. Is this a regional dispute? A case for a panel of Food Network judges? The stuff that family feuds are made of? Even Gilda "La Madrina" and I can't seem to agree. During a recent discussion about this, Gilda remembered that she had written down my mother's recipe for chilaquiles while my mother dictated it to her over the phone--when they were teenagers! Gilda dug around and found the recipe. Written in pencil and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Breakfast/Desayuno, Gilda (Dini) Karasik Tagged With: breakfast, chilaquiles, comfort food, eggs, migas, queso fresco

Eye-of-the-Storm Enfrijoladas

May 14, 2011 By Gilda (Dini) Karasik 4 Comments

Beans. They’ve been on my mind. Specifically, pintos that, in a refried state, rank high on my list of comfort foods. This is probably because my grandmother always had a pot on the stove. Always. She served them with everything: with fried eggs for breakfast, mounded next to enchiladas at lunch, slathered across a tostada for a snack and dolloped on a milanesa-dominated plate for dinner. But my favorite variation? My grandmother’s enfrijoladas, corn tortillas warmed on a comal, then dredged through mashed, refried beans and topped with a crumbling of queso fresco. As I’ve mentioned before, I spent my summers and different periods of my life living in Laredo with my grandmother. I wish I’d paid closer attention to the world then. I didn't know until years after I'd left Laredo, for example, that my grandmother's house was located in the "El Cuatro" section of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Breakfast/Desayuno, Gilda (Dini) Karasik, Musings Tagged With: buffalo soldiers, enfrijoladas, family, frijoles, history of laredo

Remembering a Mesquite Tree and a Recipe

January 26, 2011 By Gilda Valdez Carbonaro 2 Comments

A venerable, old mesquite tree grew in front of our yard, almost obstructing the so-called street. This unpaved street would remain that way until 30 years later when I was long gone and far away from my hometown. The ubiquitous mesquites that grew near the Rio Grande were usually shrub height, but this one was old, its branches reaching probably 15 feet up into the blue skies. There was nothing better on a hot, dry day than biting into the red-striped mesquite pods that dangled from its branches to get to the sugary juice. The wood from it's fallen branches was perfect for our wood fires, and some of my father's carpenters sometimes made boxes for us out of this hardwood. In recent months, I've had the faintest of memories about that mesquite appear, like little pieces of the puzzle of long ago events. A white dishtowel blows softly from a branch, hung there by my mother in … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Breakfast/Desayuno, Gilda V. Carbonaro, Musings Tagged With: huevos a la mexicana, recipe, tortillas