Just to give all of you an idea of what our island in the kitchen looks like. A little something like this :) My mom is convinced the food she prepares tastes so much better because it comes from her origins. I mean, come on she IS making it in the island of Cuba, right?

You know your family is too Cuban when....

A few months ago, my parents had gone out to dinner and my brother was home with my grandfather. My brother, Robert, decided that he wanted to make dinner and did just that. Everything was fine until he went upstairs and forgot to turn off the stove. In just minutes, our kitchen was in FLAMES. I received a very angry phone call from my dad when I was hanging out with my friends. It was something along the lines of "get your ass home right now." I knew something had happened. I get home and our entire kitchen was burned down. My brother was crying, my mother was also crying and my grandpa basically had a heart attack. Very frustrated, my mother cried out, "this fucking bullshit would happen on our anniversary!" Everyone was yelling at each other in spanish. "Que mierda." "Como no sabias que no apagastes la estufa?" I felt my world coming down on me. SO much anger and sadness in one place. All around me, I felt discomfort. Plus, I couldn't get the smell of burnt wood out of my nostrils. Contractors came over the next week. Obviously my mom took this as an opportunity to unite the family and plan out an entire new kitchen. It was a fun experience planning everything out together. Our plan was to have an island in the middle of the kitchen with stools. Well, this was not going to be an ordinary island, we were shaping the island in the middle of the kitchen to look like our favorite little island: Cuba. Although we had to pay a lot of extra money for this because it's pretty awkwardly shaped, it was so worth it! It looks beautiful! We hung professional pictures taken in Cuba of different landmarks, posters of beautiful beaches and scenery in Cuba, and our island is now in the shape of Cuba. I must say it is pretty freaking awesome!

One hell of an experience

Sometimes, we think we know everything. From the time we are little, we are taught that gossiping is bad and we should never judge a book by its cover. Within our own cultures, we know what boundaries we can cross and which ones we cannot. Apparently, I thought we all knew this, but I was proven wrong. See, the funny thing about being a lighter skinned Cuban is that most people think you are caucasian or at least mixed with something else. This was also the case a couple of days ago. I was at the supermarket and someone was talking badly about my friends and I. Clearly, they were not aware that I too, spoke Spanish. These people were totally bashing on my friends making fun of them and how we appeared to be "a group of wreck less kids." Not sure how they came to that conclusion just from being in the supermarket with us but okay, whatever. I let them talk and talk, while my friends had absolutely no idea what was going on. We were being totally judged and gossiped about. The two things we are taught not to do, especially about people we don't even know personally! Finally, I was fed up with this and decided to say something. I unleashed the Cuban inside of me! After I gave them a piece of my mind, they were in complete shock and apologized. Every body was in shock! Even the cashier. Oh well, that should teach them a lesson, and a lesson to all people! Never judge someone based on how they look because you never know what secrets they are hiding! :)

Family First

Hey guys! Yesterday my mom made one of my favorite dishes for dinner. I know we are all going through finals and my mom can sense exactly how stressed I am. She asked me to come home and I didn't want anything more than that. When I arrived, my mom had dinner already served. Everybody knew how much of a break I needed and were there to support me and talk me through this week. When I looked on the table, mom had made white rice, black beans, fried ribs, avocado salad with vinegar, and fried plantains. These plantains were a bit different. Instead of being flat and fried, they were deep fried and made to hold something in the middle. These plantains were round with a dip in the middle. The dip was full of shrimp and lobster cocktail with this delicious sauce. What an amazing dinner. I was so stuffed but that did not stop us from having dessert. My mom served guava and cheese pieces with syrup. I was so happy to go home. I can't wait to get back and have some more home cooked meals because I am so tired of food that is not home cooked! Here is a picture of dinner- although my mom was still cooking the plantains so those are not included in this photo. Enjoy!

One of the many gingerbread house creations!

Hey guys! This is one of our gingerbread houses my family made. As you can see, it has many different components to it! I hope you enjoy looking at it!

Gingerbread houses in a Cuban household

One of my favorite family/holiday traditions is making gingerbread houses together. Our family has done this for many years. We buy the kits from the store, bring them home and make an entire day and night out of it. Our family likes to do many things together and this happens to be one of them. See, here's the thing. We don't build ordinary gingerbread houses. We add our own Cuban touch to them. Food coloring is added to the frosting in order to make it red, white, and blue (the colors of the cuban flag). We have a collection of toothpicks with the Cuban flag on them to put on food or in this case, our own gingerbread creations. Sometimes, we like to make a village out of gingerbread houses if we have enough time and enough people. When my mom decides to get very creative, she makes little people out of clay and we bake them. They too, of course are wearing traditional Cuban outfits such as top hats, traditional cuban tops such as "guayaberas", and dresses. These houses were full of standing palm trees, and snow (even though I'm not exactly sure how that can be realistic, but we made it work). This is always such a fun family event! This year, we made four houses. Two were big, and the other two were smaller. To decorate, we used gum drops, candy canes, clay figures, sprinkles, frosting, peppermints, and all kinds of popcorn. Even though I think my house won, they beg to differ :)

Dinner and dessert menus for Thanksgiving

Hey guys! As I continue this post from the last one, here were the menus for the night! Dinner was incredible! We had so much good food! My aunt and mom came out of the kitchen and gathered everybody. Dinner was served. We walked into the kitchen and the table was beautifully put together. Many dishes of food and desserts were lined up along the table. Our menu included three turkeys, a honey baked ham, white rice, black beans, fried plantains, avocado and tomato salad, break rolls, green beans, parmesan crisps, and "yuca con mojo." Yuca is a type of plant that is boiled and eaten with garlic sauce and pork. As you can see, we had QUITE the selection. Everything tasted great! What an authentic Cuban Thanksgiving! After stuffing ourselves, we ate dessert which included pumpkin flan, regular flan, bread pudding, and cake. I was in a food coma after we ate. The night was also full of many kinds of drinks including grandpa Pipo's famous mojitos! I must have had about five of those! He made pitcher after pitcher. What a wonderful celebration it was! The men left the table after dinner to go outside and smoke Cuban cigars while the women stayed inside and gossiped about EVERYTHING....again. Jokes were told, Cuban espresso coffee was made, and a game or two of dominos was played. We left my aunt and uncles house around one in the morning. I already can't wait for next year! I truly cannot stress how blessed I am- the people I love make my life worth living for.