5 posts tagged “uruguay”
I turned 31 on Monday. As part of the celebration, I did what I look forward to doing every Labor Day weekend: I attended the local Depression glass show and sale. What made this year's show extra special is that my mom was in town, so I got to browse leisurely with an interested party (rather than dragging a bored Mr. Guycita from booth to booth).
Over the course of the two-day show, Mom and I did some serious damage. She spotted several pieces that she'd been longing for in the Miss America pattern, and I actually doubled my fledgling jadite collection.
On the first day of the show, I bought a sweet sugar and creamer set. The second day, I couldn't leave without a few jadite egg cups, which I knew would be the perfect way to display my ñandú (Uruguayan ostrich) eggshells. Look at how large a ñandú egg is compared to a chicken egg!
Happily, my jadite birthday weekend continued into Monday, when I received a fantastic price guide from Mr. Guycita's grandma. The book is chock-full of gorgeous pictures sure to give me many hours of jadite eye candy. It should also help me to make sure that I'm not overpaying for any future purchases (although, fortunately, it seems that I've done fine on my own so far).
Now I just need to convince Mr. Guycita that all this jadite is essential to my happiness. He was fine with my initial $8 yard sale bargain, but he's less than thrilled with the glass show prices I paid over the weekend ...
My manager brings in a special treat whenever someone on the team has a birthday. Since today was her birthday, I asked what she wanted me to bring in for her. She told me to surprise her, so I decided to work-debut a dessert that my mom used to make for us (she got it out of a Uruguayan cookbook):
This treat is super-rich and super-sweet, which is just how I like 'em! POSTRE AGUSTIN Ingredients: 100 grams semisweet chocolate Directions: * Unfortunately, I couldn't find real dulce de leche in time. I tried making it out of sweetened condensed milk (a technique that had been touted online), but that was a miserable failure. However, I had some Hersheys "dulce de leche" flavor (aka caramel) syrup on hand, and it made an acceptable substitute. ** I had a terrible time finding meringues this time, and finally had to go to the Miss Meringue site to see where they're sold. Wild Oats saved the day, folks.
Small amount of milk
1 egg yolk
50 grams butter
Vanilla, to taste
Cinnamon (optional)
300 grams whipping cream
250 grams dulce de leche *
400 grams meringue cookies **
Everyone has a favorite childhood toy or two, and one of mine was the Bata Bata. This humble contraption consisted of a small hoop connected to a thin rubber tube with a small ball at the end of it. To play with it, you would put the hoop on one ankle and then use that foot to swing the rest of the Bata Bata around in circles, close to the ground, while your other foot skipped over the rubber tube. Because the ball at the end of the tube was weighted with beads, the Bata Bata made a fantastic rattle when in motion.
My best friend and I each had a Bata Bata, and we would compete against each other to see who could do the most skips without tripping on the tube or running out of breath. Of course, keeping count while skipping requires a concentration that we hadn't yet developed, so we'd often lose count and have to start over. Our big dream was to invent a Bata Bata that could keep count of our skips for us (little did we know that this "invention" of ours would soon be a reality in the States!). We would do the Bata Bata until our legs gave out.
Since leaving Uruguay and becoming an adult, I've often waxed nostalgic about the great times my best friend and I had with our Bata Batas—and I've secretly longed to own one again. So when I finally happened to spy a Bata Bata in Meijer today, there was no way I was leaving the store without buying it!
My new toy doesn't have a counter, but it's still way fancier than any real Bata Bata I ever owned. I tried it out as soon as I got home, running into a small snag when I quickly discovered that you cannot do the Bata Bata with jeans on. (I guess I always did the Bata Bata in the summertime before!) After rolling up my jeans, though, it was like I'd never stopped doing the Bata Bata. I only counted up to 100 before deciding that was enough for my first time back on the Bata Bata, but I broke a sweat well before then. I do believe that I've discovered a great way to burn some calories while watching TV!
Now if I could just get my childhood best friend to fly out from California for a good, old-fashioned Bata Bata contest ...
Every year, I ask Mr. Guycita what type of birthday cake he wants me to make for him, and then I scour my cookbooks and the Internet to find the best from-scratch recipe possible.
This year, he told me that he really didn't know what he wanted. In the mood to try something new, I suggested a tres leches cake. My mom occasionally serves it when we visit Texas, and Mr. Guycita always loves it.
Of course, I didn't want to make just any tres leches cake. So after considerable research, I decided to try my hand at a cuatro leches cake. This variation, in addition to being soaked in the traditional mixture of sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream, is topped with dulce de leche (a caramel-type spread that I grew up eating all the time in Uruguay). To put my own twist on the recipe, I decided that, rather than diluting the dulce de leche with milk to pour over the top of the finished cake, I would fill the cake with Conaprole brand dulce de leche straight out of the jar.
Another thing that I thought made this recipe special is that it calls for Swiss meringue icing, rather than the traditional whipped cream. The meringue was super-easy to make, but I had never iced a cake with it before. I quickly learned that, being inexperienced with this medium, I was going to have to be happy with a freeform type of icing job:
I wanted to give the icing a lot of texture, and I thought it turned out pretty good for a first try! Now the recipe directed me to caramelize the icing (to give the cake a hint of roasted marshmallow flavor—yum!). Unfortunately, my little blowtorch refused to cooperate. Out of sheer desperation, I tried putting the cake under the broiler. This method meant that, while the top of the cake would become nice and golden, the sides of the cake would remain unbrowned:
Although the end result was nowhere near what I had envisioned at the start of the process, the cake tasted great. The crumb of the mantecada cake was delicate while still being sturdy enough to hold 3 cups of the leches mixture (the leftover milk can—and should!—be poured over the plated cake wedges). And filling the cake with dulce de leche made this component much more prominent than it would have been if drizzled over the top as directed. I served the cake with coffee and strawberries, both of which were just right to cut the sweetness of the cake. As you can see, we dug in:
Mr. Guycita was happy, and that made me happy. But before I make this cake again, I'll make sure that my little blowtorch is in working order!
My father is Peruvian, and my mother is a native Hoosier. I am at once both and neither.
A friend recently referred to me as "mixed." This term does not offend me in the least, but I prefer to think of myself as "mitad mitad" (which is Spanish for "half and half"). That's because the concept of "mitad mitad" is about more than race or ethnicity: In my mind, it evokes the experience of having each foot in a different culture, in a different world.
The people who study these things would call me a "TCK" (third culture kid). The idea is that kids who grow up with the daily influence of two cultures create a third, hybrid culture of their own. I reject the label "TCK" for myself, however, because I grew up as a missionary kid in Uruguay, meaning that I had the daily influence of three cultures. The culture of my own making would then, logically, be my fourth culture. But I think being known as an "FCK" would sound (and definitely look) borderline vulgar.
So I'll just stick with "mitad mitad."
