Rosca de Reyes
It seems like the last part of 2010 went by in a whirlwind of events! I finally got my Turbo Kick certification and started teaching, I’m taking my fitness instructor exam this week and I’ve been running around like a mad woman trying to “study” for my exam and practicing for both my Turbo and Zumba classes. Combine that with overtime at work and all the holiday fun, I hardly had time to think!
Now that it’s January, a new year, I’ve had a chance to cook and bake a couple of times. Seeing as today is the Epiphany, January 6th, I made a traditional “Rosca de Reyes”, which translates as “Spiral of Kings”. When I lived in Mexico as a child I remember very well going to the neighborhood party on January 6th, Dia de Reyes, (Day of the Kings) and having a piece of bread. The tradition is that everyone gets a slice of bread, and whoever gets the little plastic figurine of the baby Jesus (yup, there’s a little figurine baked in each bread) has the honour of having a party and making the tamales for February 2nd which is Dia de la Candelaria. Every kid wanted to get it, I know my parents were not very keen on the idea of making tamales for the whole neighbourhood, and, now that I think about it, in the whole 5 years that we lived in Mexico we never had the honour of getting the little figurine.
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Empanada by any other name…
I’ve always loved empanadas as a mid-afternoon snack, as I got older, it was a delicious accompaniment to the afternoon coffee or tea. Of course, I’ve only ever had them in El Salvador and had no idea that many, many other countries had their own “empanadas”. The ones that I have been lucky enough to try have all been delicious but seems like I haven’t even begun to skim the top of the empanda world… In Chile, empanadas are stuffed with a mix of beef and vegetables called pino (similar to the mincemeat filling), chicken or cheese; In Portugal, their empanadas are usually stuffed with tuna, sardines or chorizo; in Costa Rica , they are fried and filled with seasoned meats or cheese, beans or cubed potato stew; in the Philippines, their empanadas are fried as well and are filled with ground beef or chicken, potato, onion and raisins… I can almost guarantee that if you search for an empanada recipe on-line, you will get hundreds of different variations from dozens of different countries! But, for now, let’s talk about the Salvadorean kind… Read more
My Tea Escape
It’s no secret, I love tea! I would be a bonafide TEA NUT if my place (an my funds) weren’t so small. But whenever I get a chance to I like to look up new tea reviews and articles and try new, or old favourite, types of teas. Most of my loose tea comes from on-line or catalogue orders but I do venture out once in a while to one of the only 3 places in this city that have loose tea in bulk. When I lived in Vancouver I had my favourite teas from different stores so now I sometimes have my sisters send me some or I pick some up when I visit. I can never have too much tea! So when I found out about a company that has tea parties (think Tupperware parties) I jumped at the oportunity. I quickly had my own tea party to start and am now waiting for my starter kit, I became a consultant for Steeped Loose Tea and Accesories. I’m very excited to start on this venture and to share my love of tea with others in my area (and around the world of course!), I will try to write about any interesting tea parties that I attend, especially if these parties include global tea traditions or tea treat recipes. 
I have found that tea lovers all have their favourite tea cup, tea pot and other tea accesories that they use and are quick to give their opinions on so I also have a small collection of tea accesories that have moved around with me for years. I’m always interested in how different cultures drink their tea, or what types of tea they drink. Read more
A New Year, A New Decade
It’s now 2010! This past year felt like a short moment to me, and New Year’s Eve was like a blur. I usually get nostalgic on New Year’s, right after midnight hits. I think of times gone by and times yet to come and about all of the things I miss most. I was surprised that this year I didn’t feel like that at all, even though I didn’t have any family around me and I went out to a *gasp* bar to celebrate with friends. Maybe the reason why those nostalgic feelings didn’t come to me this year was because it didn’t really feel like New Year’s, or maybe it’s because I was too busy trying not to get pummeled to the ground by the drunk chick partying it up at the table next to us, but the point is that I felt “normal”. It’s a new year, and a start of a new decade people! And I feel optimistic. I don’t make resolutions anymore but I make life choices… I want to cook more and write more, I want to dance it up as much as I can and learn new dances, I want to meet new people, hopefully meet that special someone as well, I want to study yoga, maybe even teach it someday. In a nutshell… I want to LIVE! I don’t want to be stuck in the what ifs and the what-could-have-beens. I want to be alive, and that’s what I inted to do. Read more
Some Favourite Cookies
I thought I would take a short hiatus in following my international recipe dictionary and instead of going on to Nepal, next on my list of recipes to try, I want to add an entry about cookies. After all, this is the one season of the whole year when the most amount of cookies are consumed, in my opinion anyway. My favourite treat from El Salvador are peperechas, a type of thin sandwich cookie filled with pineapple jam and panela sugar so I searched for the recipe and finally found it! I wanted to make them as gifts for my sisters who love them and some friends who’ve never tried them but have always heard me talk about them… Read more
Salsera soy yo!… I hope!
It’s really not surprising that I love latin music. HELLO?! I’m latina of the world! It kind of goes without saying! However Latin music wasn’t always a favourite for me. When my parents moved us from Canada to El Salvador I was adamant to not let the latin influence get to me… Yes, I was a silly teenager in the middle of my rebellion… it didn’t matter that I was in my home country with my kin and, finally, going to school with kids that looked just like me. I wanted to be the “cool” Canadian dressing in the “cool” Canadian style, wearing make-up when our school prohibited it and listening to all English language music and speaking only in English to my sister (who, at that time, was the only person I knew who was fluent in the language in ES). The extent of my dance moves was narrowed down to bouncing up and down to the beat of the techno and electronica rhythm or trying (and failing miserably by the way) to do the rap moves that I saw on TV: the running man, roger rabbit and a repertoire of other moves that I could never master but I thought I could pull them off if I did it with attitude. Looking back I wish I could be able to slap myself across the face and tell myself that I looked like an idiot! But hey, a teenager has to learn her own way, there’s no way anyone can really talk any sense to one. Have you tried?! It’s like talking to a pet rock! Read more
El Salvador… part deux
I have always wanted to try to make Atol de Elote but thought the process would be very time consuming. I looked and searched for a good recipe on-line and in the books I’ve collected and found a few contradictions. So I took a few pieces from a couple of recipes and came up with this: Read more
El Salvador… but of course!
El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America at 21,040 km sq. (about the size of New Jersey), and the most densely populated one. It borders the Pacific Ocean between Honduras and Guatemala. It’s situated on the Gulf of Fonseca and has a population of approximately 5.7 million people. Read more
