Advent Calendar: arroz con dulce

Advent Calendar:

Dec 17
ARROZ CON DULCE

At first blush it might be called rice pudding but that would be like equating Provo Utah with New Orleans, Louisiana. Yes, our rice pudding looks like your rice pudding. It has rice. But I think a fairer comparison would be to that sticky desert that you find in Thai restaurants. I have never cared for the rice pudding that we get here. I think the difference, like the Thai delicacy, is that - like most things Puerto Rican - ours is sticky sweet and has the extra ingredient of coconut and cloves. Yours comes off as some sort of gruel made to assuage a desperate hunger. No, at Christmastime our houses have been steaming all day with myriad smells and arroz con dulce is a main contributor: coconut (that, yes, your mom made grate, maybe even let you poke the coconut eyes out and drain his milk); burned coconut hair (after you’ve smashed the coconut you must still separate the meat from the shell. You burn the hair off the coconut on the stove and it becomes separated); cloves, raisins, cinnamon, and sugar. You’ve watched the cook, got shanghaied into helping, poured the concoction onto the plates, covered them with Saran wrap, put them in the fridge and waited for the evening meal, and, at last, dessert.

Advent Calendar: Anisette

Advent Calendar:

Dec 16
ANISETTE

For a family that is no stranger to drinking and drunks, the Tias were, almost universally, teetotalers. It's one of life's great ironies for me that my mom, who died of cirrhosis, probably had cumulatively consumed in her entire life no more alcohol than what is contained in a single case of cheap beer. But once a year she, Tia Vina, Tia Blanca, Tia Chela and others would join their vivacious sister Celina in having a shot of anisette. Anisette is a liqueur made from anise. It's the basis for other liquors like sambuca, ouzo and pastis. They'd make a big production about it, giggle at their naughtiness. And, we'd stop what we were doing and check it out. Mostly, because it was part of the familial ritual but also because after all there is prim and proper Tia Vina doing a shot. (A "shot" is an exaggeration. This ain't no Alabama 1.5 shot. These were little demitasse liqueur classes made to look like miniature wine glasses.) They'd have a merry time of it, acting like they were doing a line on the bar at some Bourbon Street dive.

Advent Calendar: morcilla

Advent Calendar:

Dec 14
MORCILLA

As kids we would get chicks for Easter and every year they would meet premature ends. Either Baby Eddie would squeeze them too hard or they would fail to survive his six-story flight indoctrinations. (We would take turns going downstairs to recover the lucky ones or report on their demise.) But one year, one of them was a survivor. His name was Gillo. (He was named for someone's ex boyfriend, Lydia's I think, maybe Mom's.) How Puerto Rican we were, we had a rooster in our apartment.
But, lo. Came the time that Gillo had to be relocated and he was moved to Tia Celina's house where we visited him on our weekly jaunts. He grew proud and tall and we loved him. We loved him so much we ate him. But we only found out about it when the Old Man told us about it at the dinner table. We all started crying and there was a big hullabaloo: everyone screaming at us, us crying, Mom pissed at the Old Man for being such a goober. I swore off chicken for many years.
My other childhood food crisis happened at Christmas. I was probably 10 years old and eating morcilla . Uncle Al asked me if I knew what it was, which, of course, I didn't. To me, they were these crunchy little sausages that went so well with rice and pasteles. "They're blood", he said. "Uh, Uh" I shot back, incredulous that he could propose such a stupid thing about one of my favorite Christmas delicacies. Tio was a notorious kidder and rascal and I just knew he was pulling my leg. I looked for some assurance from my Mom and she gave it to me. She assured me that "They are blood. Pig blood." I swore off morcilla that year. But it didn't last long. PR morcilla isn't like that wimpy Spanish morcilla or wussy-assed Boudain or, for that matter, like anything else that advertises itself as blood sausage. None of them compare to morcilla , This shit is real. It's part of the old country tradition of butchering the pig and saving the blood to make the sausage. And, like the pasteles, the morcilla has to be right and it's best if it comes from PR. Back when travel wasn't quite so restrictive, that would be one of the items someone returning from PR would bring you. Now, if I'm going to Tampa, I make it a point to have a cooler with me. (Janet jokes that I must have a trillion coolers at home since I end up buying one every time I visit.) It's like dope when I get back. If I'm lucky, I've scored some alcapurrias and pasteles , but If I'm really lucky I have me some morcilla and I don't have to share when I tell folks what it is, a sausage membrane clot of pig blood and rice.

Advent Calendar: pasteles

Advent Calendar:

Dec 13
PASTELES

Kathryn Miller: I couldn't get to the recipe...stop babbling, pendejo, and re-post the recipe!! I need to make some for this weekend!!

Domingo Soto: click on link, maricona!

Kathryn Miller: I don't need your damned link. I called Consuelo. She said to put raisins in it.

Domingo Soto: LOL

Camille Dauchez: Titi Connie told me to put in capers.
And prunes.

This Facebook exchange on yesterday's Coquito post encapsulates a lot of things about our family, not the least of which is that when you're in this family, it's hard to bail out. The style that we are is contagious, or maybe, as her language would indicate, we just attract kindred spirits. Both Donna and Kathryn are highly loved and continue to be counted as family members. Kathryn has been confronting some major issues on her own but has been a family stalwart, sharing with us all of our crap, good and bad. Our little sister Camille came into the family via Paris, where Carlos spent a summer as part of Kathryn's homespun exchange program. Connie, another ex-pat PPR (Pensacola Puerto Rican), I met through ISA many moons ago and we've been fighting (and loving each other) like brother and sister ever since. The references to raisins, capers, and prunes is about Pasteles. A pastel, as the name indicates, probably comes from the Spanish word for cake (and, probably, due to the coloring of the icing, but I'm just tripping here, don't really know, back to topic). We PRs don't call cakes Pastels. We call Pastels Pastels and cake bizcocho. (And tortas are something else completely, please!) Pastel-colored they are not. They are brown fecal-looking (oh, yum! maybe that's why a lot of kids hate them) tamales. They are made out of a plaintain, yuca, and green banana paste. They have a meat center and are wrapped in paper, banana leaves if you have them available. They are a laborious thing to make and they are usually prepared for the Christmas meal. Now, they have Cuisinarts but when we were little we conscripted into peeling, cutting, and scraping the plaintains, our knuckles bleeding from the rallador into the masa. The ordeal would last for hours. We'd whine and belly ache but it was always one of those meals we all shared with a sense of accomplishment. There's not a PR that doesn't see the pastel as an integral part of the Christmas meal. Pastel recipes are like Gumbo recipes and every family's pasteles are "the best". One year, we PPRs made pasteles and they came out great, except that Connie, Paulie and I would argue about the correct ingredients. Every year since the topic comes up and we revisit it. Connie's heathen family puts raisins (or prunes, can't remember which travesty they commit) in theirs. Some put garbanzos, My mom did them correctly, leaving all of those ingredients out.

Advent Calendar: coquito

Advent Calendar:

Dec 12
COQUITO

This is devolving into a daily snippet about some PR treat. Makes sense. Most Advent Calendars have little chocolates or other sweets in them and most of my memories are of my Mom and Tias baking their asses off to make sure we had really super holidays. Every year I make coquito for my folks at the bar where I hang out. (PS, this Thursday). Every year someone turns their nose up at it when they hear that it's "Puerto Rican Egg Nog" (I'm thinking because they don't like regular egg nog and take no personal or nationalistic affront at it). Someone will convince them that it "is good" (nod your head if you understand) and, invariably they love it.As my cousin Perry said: "That Puerto Rican Egg Nog goes good with my Mothers coconut candy. lol Once you ingested any of our family recipes its absorbed into your blood for ever. The craving never goes away. I dont know what they put in it. All I know it has to be 151 proof." Well, Perry (and Donna) here's how to bring a bit of PR warmth into your local clime:
1 can coco lopez
1 can condensed milk (optional)
2 cans evaporated milk
2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2-3/4 litre white rum (don't use the good stuff)
6 egg yolks
1/2 -1 cup sugar
(clove also optional)

Advent Calendar: families

Advent Calendar:

Dec 11
My cousin Lizette's response to my post about orange peels was that "Mom says your full of it." The Mendez clan went to New York together and never separated. Lizette's mom, the youngest daughter of the oldest of the Mendez sisters and my mother, the youngest sibling of the 13 Mendez children were compatriots. She probably knows as much about my mother as anyone else and if she disagrees with something will, like they all will, call "bullshit!". (Mierda) . Male or female, there are few "B Personality" types in our family. I'm not sure if it's class or culture but we all have the same bawdy and raucous way of talking and, surprisingly, we get it from the women. The women are all so much alike. They are all strong, brook no nonsense, talk plainly and brusquely, are acerbic, and honest. So, I read the comment and chuckled, because it probably doesn't do justice to what and how she said it. What Puca probably said was something like "Que sabe ese pendejo?" (What's that jerk off know?)

Advent Calendar: fixins

Advent Calendar:

Dec 9
Those little crackers with the sugar flowers on them for Christmas. (Florecitas?) Those large tins of Sultanas (knock-off brand of Saltines) that we would manage to consume briskly. (Soaking them in coffee for breakfast) I have a memory of two of those tins out in the PR countryside. Some elderly family lady (probably a Soto), gaunt, in one of those little cotton dresses using those tins, one to wash clothes and the other to cook pig swill.

Advent Calendar: parenting

Advent Calendar:

Dec 7
I never realized it until I became one that a lot of parental teaching moments are done clandestinely and sometimes even without our even meaning to do them. You'll ask your kids what something means or ask them to look something up even though you know the answer, maybe let them make a mistake so that they can figure something out or whatever. If you had asked me who I was most like when I was a kid it would have been my real dad. That's because anyone who saw me would say I was his spitting image. I was dark like he was and my mom had the fair Mendez look. But it's only recently that I've come to see how much I look like my mom, especially around the eyes and how much of her and my step-father's ways I've subsumed. All those years of watching my mom toil away at constructing dresses and making things translated into my love of the arts. From the old man, I got his love of gadgets and his meticulous ways. From both of them a sense of moral indignation if I am right or something stands to me corrected. And, I guess that is our greatest legacy - the things we give to our kids and that our parents left with us - that we are set out on our paths and with a little guidance, sometimes from beyond, they guide our way.

Advent Calendar: family get-togethers

Advent Calendar:

Dec 8
The Alvarez family moved to Irvington when it was the boon docks. It was sylvan and suburban and was the family's first sojourn into real Middle Class life. This trickled down for the rest of of since we were all so tightly knit. We'd have raucous parties and spent just about every weekend "in the country". The house had a basement that was a party room and Tio would always have the latest toy, like a full-sized pin ball machine or a pool table, etc. One year we recreated the Christmas Nativity. Because I was the youngest - and over my strenuous protest - I played Melchoir, the black Magi. Al has the video of it somewhere. It shows Mary (Lydia) dragging the baby Jesus down the stair by his heels.

Advent Calendar: religion

Advent Calendar:

Dec 6
Because you think of Puerto Rico as a Latin country, it surprises a lot of my friends to find out that my mother and her siblings (as well as my step-father and real father) were protestants. Mami wasn't "spiritual". Even if it was just her way of playing along with her cultural background, she professed a belief in all sorts of spiritista nonsense. Her core belief was an abundant confidence in some sort of ethereal goodness and her sence of righteouness. And it was always grounded in the practical. I remember her telling the nuns, "You educate them and their souls are yours." That's how we became Catholics. Our mother sold our souls to the Sisters of Charity. When Sundays rolled around, conflicting with some family junket, she'd meet my protests that I had to go to mass or suffer damnation with the solution: go to confession on Friday. "But what if I die before then?" "Do you think God is really going to punish you for that?", she'd say. "Besides, tell him I made you. Now get in the car." It worked for me.

Advent Calendar: Santeria

Advent Calendar:

Dec 5
Dec 5: When I was a little boy I found coins all over the apartment where we were visiting. "Go put them back," Mami told me almost hush-toned. She was being gentle with me and uncharacteristically reverential. My mother was an amalgam of old and new worlds, especially where religion was concerned and she didn't brook much metaphysical nonsense but she was always, somehow, all about the supernatural. "Those are for good luck," she told me. It seems this was some sort of spiritista stuff and she knew all about it.

Advent Calendar: babies

Advent Calendar:

Dec 4
In the same vein, a pregnancy was always big and exciting news. The Tias were all harpees, in both a good and bad sense, and they were all about a new baby. New babies and weddings, those were the major celebratory events around which our family revolved and each Tia had a special calling. My mother's was sewing and party logistics. For weddings she made everything from the dresses down to the little organza bags of white almonds that they stuck in the plastic swans. But a baby was their own little secret girl doings. They would have had by now their wedding shower. Bawdy little events. By the time of the baby's impending arrival the Mendez coven would be in full conspiratorial swing. One of the things leading up to it would be finding out the sex of the child. The PR version of the ultrasound usually happened as a parlor game at a baby shower but also happened spontaneously, usually a Tia instigating it. The baby's mami would come into the room and pick a seat. Every cushion had a fork or a knife hidden in it. Depending on where she sat, that was the baby's sex.

Advent Calendar: culture

Advent Calendar:

Dec 3
When my mom was a little girl in PR they would peel an orange, trying to keep it one continuous strand, throwing it over their shoulder and seeing what the initial of their future husband was going to be.

Advent Calendar: mom

Advent Calendar:

Dec 2
As a kid I could always get a rise out of my mom. I would make a weird or contorted face and she'd almost automatically make one of those "Your Mom May Really Be Jewish" comments. She'd get all flustered and excited, maybe even slap me. "Stop. Your face will freeze and you'll look like that the rest of your life."

Advent Calendar: matriarchy

Advent Calendar:

Dec 1
A few years ago Lydia and I put together a family page. Some of the things that we said were, well, "unvarnished". In true Mendez fashion Tia Celina was outraged that we had said our grandfather was, well, "not a saint". She was on the warpath and took it out on Lydia, who implored me to change it. In typical Mendez fashion I responded that I was not and that she could kiss my ass. However, after a few days, (also very typically Mendez male-like) and because it was my beloved Tia, I caved in. I changed it.