European Flashback...The Colombian Edition

Okay, okay. I know this series is supposed to be called European Flashback, but I wanted to pay a small tribute to my mother's hometown of Cartagena, Colombia. I justify reflecting on my trip to Colombia seeing as how it was a crucial port for the Spanish way back when.

For those who don't know, Colombia is in South America. And for those who don't know, Colombia is spelled with two O's, not a U. Columbia is a university. Colombia is a country. (Don't feel bad if you've made that mistake; I've seen The New York Times get it wrong. Professional journalists screw up, too.)

So, in the fond memory of what it was like to celebrate Christmas with my 3 uncles, 2 aunts and 21 cousins (no joke), I'd like to take you on a journey to one of Colombia's prettiest cities.

The proper name of the city is actually Cartagena de Indias, and it is identified by the surrounding walls called murallas. That which is within the city walls is colorful!

This is the Reloj Publico (the Public Clock), which is essentially the main entrance to Cartagena de Indias.




This is la India Catalina. She is said to have saved the city at some point.




The Public Clock, as seen from the outside with the murallas and Christmas decorations.

This is Pedro de Heredia. He founded Cartagena on June 1st, 1533. You will respect him.

You will also respect his colorful buddies that hang out with him.

This is the Portal of Sweets!

The Portal of Sweets is essentially a part in which you can buy sweets and various items, such as magazines.

This was the house of Saint Pedro Claver. It also served as a sanctuary for runaway slaves.

And this is what it looks like inside!

That which I love the most of Cartagena are the bougainvillea that cascade from the wooden balconies!

This is Simon Bolivar. You will respect him.

As any Colombian will tell you, that which makes Cartagena so popular are its beaches!

The beach in Boca Grande (literally, Big Mouth)

This is Juan Valdez Café. It pretty much blows Starbucks out of the water (and this is coming from a Starbucks fan).

And this was the tree on Christmas morning 2006!

Joyeux Noël! Feliz Navidad!

Barb the French Bean

A Conversation Not Like Any Other

This Monday morning started off like any other. I got up, got dressed, calmly ate my breakfast and made a note to walk just a little faster to the train station.

As part of my New Year's resolutions, doing more exercise in the form of walking has become another priority in my life, and a trip to the train station from my house would easily be 50 minutes of extra activity.

Still, I would rely on the bus to take me to my job. My high school is on the other side of Dijon and there is no way I would get there on foot and still have the energy to teach my little angels students.

I packed my lunch containing lots of fruits and veggies (another resolution). I headed out the door.

Walking to the train station was a great idea! Had I taken the bus, I wouldn't have enjoyed strolling in the rare sunshine and blue skies that were present this winter morning. I wouldn't have made my traditional pilgrimage to Dijon's stone Chouette to caress it with my left hand and make a wish of finding love. I wouldn't have bustled my way through the crowd of people rushing past me. I would have just been another passenger crammed inside a stuffy bus of full of people who, judging by the miserable frowns plastered unto their pale faces, were just as ecstatic as I was that it was yet another Monday morning.

However, I got to the train station with enough time to see that I had just missed my ride by 3 minutes. When would the next bus be? An irritating 20 minutes.

Annoyance furrowed my brow. "Oh, putain," I angrily muttered under my breath. I didn't want anyone to know that I could now react instictively and use French profanities.

I looked around to see who else would become my temporary bus stop companions. One girl stuck out among them, particularly because her cellphone was playing Shakira's Loca in Spanish. She likes Shakira as well, I thought.

A wispy puff of exhaled breath escaped my flared nostrils as I plopped my behind onto the bench. I just couldn't fathom how I had just missed my damn bus.



"Ça va?" the small voice inquired with a worried tone. "Are you all right?"

I glanced to my left. Her pudgy fingers clutched the cellphone that had just finished playing the peppy song. I made eye contact with her and saw genuine concern look back upon me from her almond-shaped eyes. She must have noticed how I was a bit peeved off.

"Oui, ça va, merci," I replied with a light smile.

Then there was silence.

Until it was broken by the small voice.

"Do you have a cellphone?" Such a childlike question. Yes, of course, what adult doesn't have cellphone these days? Yet the question fit well with her stocky frame and innocence. She did not merit a response laden with sarcasm.

"Yes," I replied.

"Do you have music?"

"Yes, but not on my cellphone."

Then, as if I were totally oblivious to the fact, she proudly waved her own treasure, pointed to it with one stubby finger and, absolutely beaming, proclaimed "Ah! My cellphone has music!"

"Yes, I heard it playing a song by Shakira a couple of minutes ago. I love her music. In fact, I'm half-Colombian."

Silence again. I did not know what to say. How does one make conversation with someone like her? What does she care that I am half-Colombian, for that matter?

"Do you know of Ingrid Betancourt? She's the Colombian lady who was in the jungle."

I was stunned by her knowledge. Yes, I know of Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian ex-presidential candidate who had lived half of her life in France and who had been kidnapped by the terrorist group the FARC for six years.

"Yes, I know of her. She was liberated from her kidnappers a couple of years ago. Everyone in Colombia rejoiced about it."

"So, are you Colombian? I noticed that when you speak you have a bit of...euh..." She searched for the means to express herself. She had to really focus on what word she needed. I had seen my French students struggle with this similar task during their classes when they made the effort to speak in English.

"An accent?" I suggested helpfully.


"Eh, ben, oui!" Of course.


She often let this phrase fall from her lips with just the most wonderful smile, as if she had just gotten an inside joke.

I continued to explain my background.

"Well, yes, I do have an accent because I'm also half-Cuban. But I'm an American."

Even after many months of living in France, I still wonder how new French people will react to this little fact about myself. Will they like it? Will they be impressed by it? Will they judge me harshly? Will they immediately think about the rooted stereotypes about how my countrymen are all obese and wolf down McDonald's for breakfast, lunch and dinner without remorse?

My statement didn't even faze her.

"Do you eat in France?" Another infantile question. If I'm in France, then of course I'd have to eat in France...yet something told me that she wanted to ask something else.

"What do you mean," I asked implying that she needed to elaborate her question.

"I mean that when you are in France, you mostly eat Colombian or Cuban food? For example, the Belgians eat French fries."

"Ahhh. Well, in France, it is hard to find Colombian or Cuban food because you can't always find the ingredients. So I mostly eat French food. If I want to eat Colombian or Cuban food, then I would have to make it for myself."

"Eh, ben, oui!"

The 20 minutes passed by quickly.

"Ah, my bus is here," I told her after I had spotted my transportation turn around the corner. It turned out that she was taking the same bus.

We sat next to each other and continued our question and answer scenario.

"Do you eat breakfast?"

"Yes. Just this morning, I had some brioche with home-made apricot and strawberry jam. I also drink a strong cup of café au lait using Cuban espresso. What do you eat in the mornings?"

"I like to eat cookies and cakes with a glass of milk. Are you a student in France?"

"No, I work here. I teach English at a high school and I love my job. My students are very nice to me."

"Ah. I work in a dry cleaner. I went to school so I could learn it."

"Was it difficult for you to learn?"

"Eh, ben, oui!" She reinforced her answer with a vigorous nod.

The mention of schooling brought up another point.

"I went to a special school for, you know, people like me. People who are handicappé. People with trisomie."

I could not help but feel a bit sad in hearing that word. Trisomie. Down's Syndrome. Just by looking at her, I knew that she had this.

"Do you know what that is?" she asked.

"Yes, I do."

But really I don't.

I know that Down's Syndrome is a genetic condition in which there is an extra copy of a chromosome.

I always thought that people with this condition were incapable of actually functioning well in society. I thought that they could not speak to others, let alone hold a proper conversation. I thought they were people who could not relate to others and needed to sport helmets on their heads.


I never thought that they could work in dry cleaners, that they could own cellphones, know who Ingrid Betancourt is or even be a Shakira fan like me.

How very wrong I was.




Barb the French Bean

How I Nearly Killed Myself Cooking

For the famous and my very first attempt at making a Thanksgiving Day Meal, I had planned to tackle:

Turkey with mojo criollo

Black Beans and Rice

Candied Yams

Flan/Crème Caramel

There is something about preparing food that brings out the Dainty Domestic Diva in me. This Diva sports a '50s-style pearl necklace with an immaculate crisp, lacy white apron. It becomes pleasurable to know that with my own two hands and culinary expertise, I am capable of articulately feeding the people I love.

But don't worry: I certainly am not barefoot and pregnant while doing so! Besides, when I cook, I dress comfortably and bring out the overall slob that I truly am. My reality is quite different from my imagination...

Anyway, on Turkey Day, I woke up around 9 a.m., skipped breakfast and set off my cooking strategy. The game plan featured trouncing first the black beans in a pressure cooker while simultaneously baking mini-flans in the oven. Once the flans were finished, I would let them cool for hours and immediately progress to a smackdown of turkey roasting and annihilate those candied yams! I would leave boiling the rice and apéritif preparation for last.

Black Beans and Crème Caramel (take one)

The night before, I left the black beans soaking in water in a pressure cooker to soften them and quicken the cooking speed for the following day.

But I didn't use any ordinary pressure cooker. I used SEB.

This is my buddy, SEB. She is a pressure cooker and current BFF.

SEB was going to help me make the black beans I so craved around this time of year. Without SEB, boiling black beans would only be an impossible task that would take precious hours of my time and still result in beans with a rather crunchy texture; I know this from experience. That is why I am infinitely thankful that SEB gave me a much needed hand.

I have seen my mother use a pressure cooker countless times back in Miami and now it was my turn to experience handling black beans on my own! Prior to using SEB, I remembered my mother's sage wisdom in which I needed to fill the device halfway with water, heat it up and then wait for the little dial on top to start twirling rapidly and emit a FWHEEEEEEEEEE sound. I also needed to let SEB make the high-pitched noise for maybe 15 to 20 minutes.

I did as I was told. I filled SEB with water and organized the ingredients for the dish. It was then that I noticed that I was missing something crucial to the recipe: LAUREL LEAVES.

I thought I had some stored somewhere in my cabinet. I shifted the contents of canned peas and carrots and searched at the very back of the furniture. Nothing. I perhaps had discarded the bag of laurel leaves and hadn't recalled doing so...

Not wanting to jeopardize the recipe by excluding a key ingredient, I rushed to the phone and called Isabelle, my landlord's wife, to see if I could bum some leaves from her sure-to-be-better-stocked-than-mine kitchen. Well, not only did Isabelle have laurel leaves but also some fresh oregano from her garden! I also remembered that I was in need of some vanilla extract and sugar.

I evenutally tossed in the other ingredients with the black beans and then covered SEB with her metal top and screwed the topmost dial to firmly lock it in place. SEB sat patiently on the heated burner and I waited for the dial to go FWHEEEEEEEEEEE.

After 20 minutes, I noticed that SEB still hadn't made any noise.

In the meantime, I then searched for the little glass pots I normally use to make individual crème caramel. I couldn't find them. I found it very odd that they were suddenly gone because I could have sworn that I had stored them in the kitchen.

Something inside me said that I should once again ask Isabelle to see if, by any chance, she had had them. Then another part of me, the lazy, idiotic prideful side, said "nah, just use a different glass container."

I chose a receptacle that had sides that were at least half an inch thick. I filled it with four tablespoonfuls of sugar and added four teaspoons of water to create the caramel layer. I then needed to heat the sugar on top of the stove, so I placed the container on the burner.

Ha, ha, ha. That was a mistake.

A very BIG mistake. Little did I know that I had created a shrapnel ticking time bomb that would teach me a lesson on the thermodynamics of what happens to glass when it comes into direct contact with heat.

I tore open the windows to liberate the accrid haze and had the instinct of shutting off the burner. I stared at my disaster, helplessly gazing at the sugary syrup as it bubbled and boiled lugubriously in plain sight.

This is the aftermath:

My combustive glass container fiasco shattered how I viewed my cooking abilities. The Dainty Domestic Diva? More like Clumsy Two Legged Fire Hazard.

My perception of my surroundings also altered. My SEB was no longer a jolly, trusty kitchen aide if not a threatening murderer with a penchant for blood-thirsty vengeance.

I needed to check the beans. I gingerly unscrewed the black knob on SEB's top and...

...discovered that they had the consistency of plastic pellets.

What do I when I'm in trouble? I call for help.

Black Beans and Crème Caramel (take 2)

Help came in the form of Isabelle. As it turns out, she did have the little glass pots for the crème caramel. I wanted to kick myself in the head when I discovered that because I could have saved myself an extra moment of exploding shards and eventually scraping off burnt sugar. I also pointed out to her that, after perhaps 30 minutes, SEB still had not made any noise.

Her verdict? "You probably didn't screw it on completely."

Isabelle worked her magic and SEB suddenly got the message to sing:

She also suggested that in order to remove the crystallized bits of burnt sugar, I should apply a towel soaked with hot water. I did that.

Amazingly enough, the rest of my cooking quite went smoothly. Once SEB got on a roll with the beans, she engulfed my kitchen with aromas that struck me of my mother's.

I broke the nostalgia and proceeded to make the mini-flans.

Turkey and Candied Yams

I cooked that bird for nearly 3 hours. It was a bit dry but it was nonetheless quite tasty. And the candied yams (using sweet potatoes) were not too bad.

Overall, I was quite satisfied with my work, particularly the black beans.

Lesson learned: I will be better prepared for the next time I engage with concocting a complex recipe.

And as a finishing touch to my Thanksgiving meal, it began to snow outside. It snowed. On Thanksgiving day! It was clear that France wished me well for this fine evening.

(As an added touch of irony, I wrote this post while sitting at my kitchen table. It has considerably snowed in Dijon since last night, and the kitchen just so happens to be the warmest room in the apartment!)

Barb the French Bean

The Language Barrier in the Same Language

As I revealed in an earlier post, I come from a mixed background. My mother is Colombian and my father is Cuban. Though both of their respective homelands speak Spanish, their accents, vocabulary and colloquialisms are not the same. If you have a hard time getting my point, think about how different British and American English are from each other.

Growing up in Cuban-populated Miami, I didn't have too much trouble hearing differences between their patterns of speech. Mom had already become accustomed to my father's way of speech and thus spoke to me using Cuban Spanish.

Yet sometimes there were slip-ups with vocabulary that led to misunderstandings. One particular word comes to mind.

Papaya

In any normal South and Central American country, the word for said fruit is papaya. In Venezuela, they say papaya. In El Salvador, they say papaya. In Peru, they say papaya. And, inevitably, in Colombia, one says papaya.

That is not the case with Cubans.

This is because "papaya" in Cuban Spanish is an extremely vulgar word that references a lady's parts (cut one of these fruits in half and you will see what I'm talking about). Ergo, Cubans use a completely different word for said fruit. "Frutabomba," which literally translates to "fruit bomb."

So, imagine if you will, the shock my dear old Cuban Dad had when, in the mid-80s, his Colombian bride went to do the grocery shopping and suddenly announced something around these lines:

I'm sure he got the point when Mom returned with a fruit bomb instead.

Barb the French Bean

Aniseed Arepas

My mother and my grandmother are two old-school Colombian ladies. By "old-school," I certainly do not mean that they were involved with the cocaine drug trade nor were they members of the FARC. Instead, they are people who hold on to their traditions by cooking some of the recipes from their homelands. The dish that I that ate most frequently was the Arepa.

The arepa [pronounced AH-REH-PAH] is a typical staple in the Colombian diet because it is yummy, filling and cheap. It is made using white corn flour. These can be cooked in a pan, fried or not.

My mother prepares them a special way. Whenever I smell parmesan cheese mixed with water and this flour, I get chills down my spine. It becomes a Proustian link to my childhood memories of Saturday mornings. Mom would wake early to make 2 arepas per person. She would mould them into thick round dumplings and fry them until they were an appetising golden brown. Then, she would slice them through the middle, place a slice of gouda and join the two halves again to make a delicious warm sandwich.








Gosh. I want one...


Of course, those were the arepas I ate in my youth on Saturday mornings. Arepas are still made in my house, except they are now manufactured on Sundays. My grandmother makes them non-fried (I would say "baked in a pan") and mixes some sugar with aniseeds. THOSE arepas are in a category all of their own. I greatly dislike those! There's just something so weird about them. Perhaps it's the sweet taste when I expect something savory.


At least I am not tempted to feast on them.

If it weren't so detrimental to my health, I would happily spend the rest of my life subsisting on nothing but arepas (and perhaps Stacy's Pita Chips). However, due to being on my wonderful diet, I abstain from munching these little bits of heaven frequently. Fried white corn flour and cheese won't exactly aid me in my quest to lose 40 kilos (88 pounds). Sometimes, traditional foods need to be consumed with moderation.
Oh, and here's an update: as of this morning, I've already lost 5.6 kilos (12.52 pounds). I'm on a roll and I don't want to stop!

Arepas don't necessarily have to be fried so I suppose that I could eat one or two, but I find that their awesomeness decreases significantly in my taste bud ranking scale.





As you have noticed, the aniseed arepas achieve an "oh hell NO" response. These particular arepas, rather than having a golden tan like its more delectable cousin, are in fact the office workers who, due to lack of sunshine, are blanche-white (with brown specks). I think that jealousy of the fried arepa are what makes them so evil to my palate.

They are so evil that they even turn other foods against me. I find aniseeds alone to be pleasantly fragrant, but once they are mixed with flour and sugar...the change is far from pleasant. I hate the stench of these things. Sometimes, when my grandmother wants to warm them a little, she unwittingly places them in the microwave for a few seconds. The odor lingers within the rectangular contraption until I heat a small glass of water for 20 seconds to remove it. If I don't do that, the pungent smell automatically sticks to the following food that I warm in there. Aniseed arepa milk really doesn't call my attention.

Pure. Evil.

And for those of you wondering: my father was an old-school non-communist, anti-Fidel Castro Cuban. Let me be the first to say that a Cuban marrying a Colombian is like a Frenchman marrying a German; they are two completely different cultures.

I'm not talkin' tacos and burritos...those foods pertain to the Mexican identity.

Below is a chart that summarizes some Cuban and Colombian stereotypes.






Each guy is saying the equivalent of "what's up, dude?"

...I still want an arepa, dammit. But not the aniseed ones!

And if you are further curious about another aspect of Cuban culture, I recommend reading about Cuban-Time; that least that will explain why your Cuban pals are continuously late!


Barb the French Bean