Recipes & Reflections on Latino Food & Culture
Fall is at its peak here in the mid-Atlantic. Autumn leaves are falling, each shimmering leaf a memory of the last year, bringing on a melancholy I wear like comfortable pajamas on lazy fall mornings. I look out the window with my hands wrapped around my coffee cup and think, We are the product of all the autumns we've lived. We are hopefully wiser and stronger, more capable of understanding the mysteries of life, more able to withstand the coming winter. … [Read more...]
My earliest childhood memories in the kitchen are of adults having heated conversations about rice. The way it should look, how it should taste, and what texture it should have. Above all, they would ultimately concur, never stir it after you've poured the liquids, otherwise you'll get arroz meneado. Nothing could be worse than ending up with an atole, a porridge-like rice sticky and gooey from being stirred. These conversations swirled around the kitchen where opinionated cooks (friends and relatives) jealously guarded the integrity of the rice. … [Read more...]
I spent some time last week in Laredo, Texas. My 90-year-old grandmother still lives there. When I arrived at her door and sat with her a while, she reminded me that I don’t visit often enough. Not by chiding me or layering our conversation with honey-dipped guilt. No. She simply did not recognize me. This was a first. I am her eldest grandchild and we’ve always been close, even into my adulthood when the geographical distance between us grew to a span of almost 2,000 miles. The more time I spent with her last week, the easier it was for her to recall who I was. Though, betrayed by her short term memory, she was repeatedly surprised to see the grown-up version of the child she so fondly remembers. Dementia has robbed my grandmother of the ability to remember whether she ate breakfast on a given day or that she spent the afternoon playing bingo with new … [Read more...]
Connect with us!