Chiles en Nogada always remind me of Laura Esquivel's novel, Como Agua Para Chocolate. When I taught students at a private all-girls school in Bethesda, May was the much-awaited month in our Spanish Conversation and Composition class where we would begin to read from the novel and watch the movie. I had watched the movie for all the years I had taught at that girls' school, sitting on the edge of my chair, commiserating with Tita, the heroine.   Each year felt as if it were the first time I watched her transform the cold wind that blew through her heart into a magical ritual surrounding the daily preparation of the family's meals. The thing that struck me in different ways as I watched the movie each year was what the ceremony of shared and lovingly prepared meals means as a spiritual 'glue' in a family. I chuckle to myself now whenever I remember the impact of the ending on the … [Read more...]