Am I not here?

Once I tell you about her, you’ll start to see her everywhere.

She is the Virgen of Guadalupe, and protects all Mexicans. She belongs, of course, to the catholic religion, but Mexicans who aren’t catholic adore her too.

I guarantee you will see her beautiful image wherever you see someone from Mexico. In the corner restaurant (behind the cash register), a cab (hanging from the rearview mirror), the gas station, a picture over the doorframe, a small gold medal hanging around someone’s neck. You’ll see her in a small shrine at the side of the road, on a screensaver, even on someone’s bicep, in a full color tattoo.

The Virgen of Guadalupe is the mother of all Mexicans. She is often called a Queen. You will, in fact, occasionally see her depicted with a crown, but I don’t think she likes that, as she’s the Virgin of the people. Her favorite flowers are roses.

The first time she appeared, in a miracle officially recognized by the Vatican in 1745, she did so in a cloak that you can see today, protected between two panes of bullet-proof glass, in a church built especially for her. This basilica was erected in Tepeyac, originally a site of an Aztec temple dedicated to Tonatzin (Earth goddess, mother of the gods and protector of humanity). Today, this Basilica is the most visited Catholic Church in the world, next to the Vatican.

The Virgen of Guadalupe is one of the factors that made possible the assimilation of the Aztec and the Spanish cultures, quite possibly the reason why I’m in the world today.

Today, December 12, is her birthday. Millions of faithful gather for processions, prayers, songs, dances, and fireworks to honor "La Madre de México". If you want, you can buy red or pink roses and put them at the foot of anywhere you see her image. Or, even where you don’t. She’ll know they are for her.

Chile, frijol y tortilla

I can't believe I haven't written about this before.

Here it goes: There is nothing Mexican about Taco Bell.

Mexican food you eat in California is not Mexican food. Burritos are not Mexican food. Nachos are not Mexican food. The yellow cheese you see on Nachos is not cheese. (But, I digress.)

Mexican food has soul. It’s restoring. (Chicken soup? Add dry chile ancho to the broth. Now you’re talking.) It will breathe life into you. It cures hangovers, but is also known to aid in the mending of a broken heart. Mexican food is not to be confused with Tex-Mex. This is not judgment on Tex Mex - I'm not saying it's bad (or good.) It's just not Mexican.

Mexican food is vital and the triumphant result of an assimilation of very different cultures. It’s old world (corn, zucchini, beans, avocado, cacao, potatoes) and new. We do not glob sour cream on everything. We do not use shiny liquid processed yellow gook. We do not encase whole meals in a fluorescent green flour wrap.

Mexican food is 2,500 different types of chile (you've heard about jalapeno, habanero and chipotle, but there is also poblano, guajillo, chile de arbol, and another 1,494). It’s cilantro, corn, tamarindo, epazote, frijoles, huachinango, papaya and corn tortillas instead of bread. Huevos rancheros, sopes with potato, chalupas with beans, chicken tamales, tacos al pastor; but also carnitas, nogada, tinga, chicharron and even chapulines. Pipian, adobo, sopa de tortilla, caldo de pollo, quesadillas, carne asada, barbacoa, pozole. Bud negro, albondigas, guacamole, nopales. Jicama, tuna, ensalada de naranja, mango with chile piquin, lemon on everything. Arroz a la mexicana, pescado a la Veracruzana, mole poblano, cochinita Yucateca, camarones al ajillo. For dessert not just flan, but platanos al horno, cocada, rompope, pina dorada, nieve de sandia, and capirotada. And there is so much more. To really know Mexican food, do yourself a favor and travel across Mexico.

Will I think less of you if you eat at Taco Bell? No. Just don't judge Mexican food by tasting something that isn't.

Liquid wisdom

I had read that tea is really good for you, because of the high content of flavinoids (antioxidants that come from plants). Catechins, found in green tea, pack a more powerful punch than vitamins C and E; and studies find that tea reduces the risk of several cancers, including skin, breast, lung, colon, esophagus and bladder.

Tea also reduces heart disease, as it helps block the oxidation of bad cholesterol and increase good cholesterol, improving artery function. It also reduces the risk of hypertension. (Source: Harvard Women's Health Watch).

For these reasons, I tried to drink it for years. I just couldn’t pick up the habit. I’d fill a cup and leave it, untouched, on the table. Then, recently, coffee started getting on my nerves (literally). I vowed to give it up and turned to tea to take the edge off. I noticed tea was offered everywhere – and most frequently with a choice of flavors, from mint (more of a tisane – more about that later) to earl grey. I even found that if I followed a meal with a cup of tea it curbed my sweet tooth. I was suddenly the proud owner of a three-cups-of-tea a day habit (a welcome replacement to my former two-coffee-several-chocolates-a-day habit.)

Soon after this took root, Luca went to China and brought me back a tea set, which included seven beautiful boxes of loose tea that you spoon into a tall cup with a built in filter. Every morning, we enjoy a speedy, mini tea ceremony. I look at the leaves (some are tight little balls that unfurl in the hot water and turn into flowers), smell the fragrant steam, and glance through the newspaper as it seeps. Then I sip it. It’s outlook transforming.

This morning, as we drank, Luca asked me what tea was, and if there was a “tea plant” (one of his favorite musicians, Ivano Fossati, has an album titled “the tea plant”.) It turns out that there is. (And I’m embarrassed I didn’t already know this.)

“Similar to the way the thousands of different kinds of wines all come from grapes, the thousands of kinds of teas all come from the same plant, Camillia Sinensis. The differences in taste, color, shape and smell are a result of different soils, climates, harvesting and cultivation processes. The types of tea are basically broken down into White, Green, Oolong, Red, Scented and Pu'er, the biggest difference between them being the degree of 'oxidation' in the process, (oxidation is often incorrectly known as "fermentation"). Oxidation happens when the membranes in tea cells are broken down (by rolling, tumbling or tossing), mixing the cells' polyphenols and the enzyme polyphenolase, which acts as a catalyst in oxidizing the polyphenols by oxygen. The leaf is bruised and darkens (like a banana), and starts to acquire unique flavors. The trick is to halt the oxidation process the perfect moment when the best flavors have been acquired. Green tea is not oxidized at all, whereas Oolongs are partially oxidized (look at a brewed leaf and you'll see a green center with red tinged edges from the oxidization) and Red tea is 100% oxidized. Lastly, the category Red tea is often called Black outside of China, leading to much color confusion.”

(Source: www.1001plateaus.com )

Any infusion that does not come from Camillia Sinesis (such as chamomile) is not a tea but a tisane.

Brewing tea is an art. To do it properly, different infusions require a different temperature and different seeping times.

According to the Japanese “If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.”

You can’t help but feel particularly bad for poor Lewis Carroll’s Alice, in that famous tea party she attended, uninvited:

“Take some more tea”, the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet”, Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter. “It’s very easy to take more than nothing.”

To Go

Certain members of my family, who shall remain nameless, opine getting a doggy bag – asking your server to put leftover food in a bag you can then take home – is unthinkable.

Certain other members of my family think not doing so is a waste, and waste is a capital sin. I belong in this latter waste phobic category. I believe having the ability to request a box to take home what you left on your plate is one of the many things that make this country great.

If your plate is heaped with food and you’re taught, as I was, to finish what’s on it, you eat every scrap in a frantic attempt to banish the thought of them (God forbid) throwing it out. If you know you can take it home, you relax and enjoy the meal at leisure. Twice.

And this is what happened after our memorable Thanksgiving lunch. Not only did we have a celebration worthy of an annotation in our personal history book, but also we got to be grateful again, and enjoy it again at dinner the next day. (Minus the dessert. For one thing, there was nothing left to bring home, and for another, I’m valiantly back on the no sugar wagon.)

Long live leftovers!

The Grinch that (almost) stole Thanksgiving

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Ambrose Bierce

I was set on abstaining from Thanksgiving celebrations this year. Normally, it’s one of my most favorite holidays. But this time around I wanted to stay home, go on hikes and watch movies. I mean, you’re expected to eat too much – what’s the fun in that?

In addition, I’m not a fan of a lot of typical Thanksgiving fare. Stuffing. Pumpkin. Butternut squash. Turkey. So, we declined a few invitations and chose to hunker down and enjoy four glorious days of doing nothing.

Or so I thought.

Luca surprised me with reservations at Cetrella, a restaurant on Main Street we go to when we have something to celebrate.

When this was first announced, I was bewildered. Had I not been saying that I was looking forward to just hanging out at home? Had I not recently confessed to not being a fan of yams? I looked longingly at my reading nook and resentfully jumped in the shower.

I’m so glad Luca yanked me out of my pre-holiday funk. We had a HUGE lunch, to celebrate this fantastic holiday with the dignity and reverence it deserves. We started with roasted pumpkin and pear soup. Then, a mixed green salad with persimmons and blue cheese. After that, we were served slow roasted turkey (moist! yummy!) with cranberry and orange compote (the combination of cranberry and turkey is just brilliant. Brilliant.) and (“And”. Not “or”.) rosemary honey glazed smoked ham.

As side dishes, we had wood roasted Brussels sprouts with lemon and smoked bacon, roasted yams with goat cheese and toasted pecans (I finished them – yams with goat cheese and pecans rule) and brioche sage stuffing with wild rice, roasted vegetables and toasted chestnuts. (As you can see, there was a lot of roasting going on at Cetrella.)

Also, ceremoniously breaking my nearly two month abstinence from sugar in honor of Thanksgiving, we had pumpkin pie – possibly the best pumpkin pie I’ve ever tasted, with spiced cream on top - and chocolate pot de crème for dessert.

After that, we rolled into the car and drove along the coast, to take in the perfect, cloudless, crisp fall day. We went on a couple of short hikes on the cliffs to see the Pacific Ocean (photo above.) Then we came back home and I happily partook in another honorable Thanksgiving tradition. I took a two-hour nap.

Not this time

I know. The Holidays are upon you, and you’re feeling you have more things to do than time to do them. Right? And you tell yourself that this is the opposite of the point. The point is to be on a holiday, to have time to think, take stock, carefully pick a New Year resolution.

So I told myself: not this year.

In a frenzy that began about two months ago, I made a list of Little Things That Don’t Get Done Until You Put Them Down In Writing; and then went methodically through it. We changed the outdoor sconces, replaced a couple of light bulbs, re-touched the paint in the house. We re-landscaped our overgrown, jungle-like front yard. We had the windows cleaned. We went through our closets, weeding out things we didn’t use throughout the year.

I then reviewed what I had in my pantry and bought the missing ingredients that would turn these random items into actual meals; cooked several dishes and froze them. Then, I restocked the pantry and the fridge with new things. (Yes. I do worry that all my labels face in the same direction, like the demented bad guy in “Sleeping with the Enemy.”)

I went out, bought all our holiday gifts and wrapped them. We ordered our cards, and then requested my friends send me their updated addresses and created labels, which I printed.

Last week, I suggested to Luca that we fast in Thanksgiving, in a gesture of gratefulness and self sacrifice that seems more congruous to me than giving thanks while eating too much. Luca, who until now was putting up with my maniacal obsessive behavior, drew the line. He wants turkey and chocolate coffee pecan pie, thank you very much.

So I shuffled over to my desk to scrutinize my calendar and my “to do” notebook, to figure out what else I could possibly do to get ahead of the elusive curve.

That’s when it hit me.

I’m getting ready for tragedy to strike. It did on January 15, 2006, when Luca had a heart attack, and I was caught completely unprepared. I never want to be that naïve again. It was like being shot in the back.

Is it at all possible to have a plan for whatever life has in store for us? Can we ever truly be ready? Can seven hundred lists make one hoot of a difference?

No.

Well, at least if something unexpected happens, maybe our Holiday cards will be delivered by then. And if you drop in for a surprise visit, there is fantastic Minestrone in the freezer.

At peace, with you

The word "homesick" does not exist in Spanish. You can say "I miss my home" or that you are feeling "nostalgia", even "melancholy", but it's not a handy, right on the mark, single word like it is in English. Which is odd, since Mexicans are world known to miss their beloved Mexico when they're away. (And is, furthermore, proof that you can indeed feel what you don't have a word for.)

What exactly is "home"? When you leave your country of origin to go to another, when does the place you go to become home, if ever? Are immigrants destined to feel forever incomplete, harboring a vague sense of loss, of not belonging, a disorientation that lingers for years? Do these people dream of one day returning only to realize that ten, twenty years have gone by, that their lives have been accidentally built elsewhere, that what they knew as "home" no longer exists?

Many years ago, when I was living in Paris, I called my father on the eve of September 16th (Mexican Independence day) wailing for my family, Mariachis and Mexican food. Aside from that single sleep deprived dramatic exception, my personal experience is that I tend to make home wherever I am. I don't mean that I have no roots, but rather that I grow them quickly. Personal space is important to me, so I swiftly create and inhabit it. I seldom suffer from homesickness (unless I'm traveling on business, in which case all I want is to return and walk around the house touching my things, doing laundry and making soup.)

In a recent family reunion in Mexico, the subject of "homesickness" came up, as Kathia, my brother's wife, seems to be afflicted by it. In the middle of the conversation, my father turned to me and said with finality "you are never coming back to Mexico". It was an unmistakable statement, but I wondered if he hid a question in the folds of its certainty. I shook my head. "While I don't think it's impossible" I responded "I think it's unlikely. Home is California". This is incredible to me, as I grew up feeling for my country almost the same way I felt about my parents. It has happened, though: I'm homesick for California when I am in Mexico. (I tell myself that California used to be Mexican territory. Can I be blamed for circumstancial political geography? Am I not, strictly speaking, on Mexican soil?)

I must make a reference to two songs here - an Italian one, where Jovanotti raps "Voglio andare a casa - e la casa dov'e’? La casa e’ dove posso stare in pace con te" (I want to go home! And where is home? Home is where I can be at peace with you.")

And a Mariachi song that I can't help but cry to:

Mexico Lindo y Querido (Sweet Mexico Dear)
Si muero lejos de ti (If I should die far from you)
Que digan que estoy dormido (Have them say that I am only sleeping)
Y que me traigan a ti (And have them bring me back to you)

When I die, I'd like my ashes strewn across Montara Mountain, which I know in my heart to be Mexican territory, with its dry brown earth and grassy patches that overlook the Pacific Ocean. In the meantime it's home - casa, dove posso stare in pace con te.