Posts from — June 2009

I am constantly surrounded by people of different backgrounds and cultures, and one thing I have noticed is that when different cultures come together, food is often a popular topic of conversation.

Listening to others rave about their own countries’ traditional dishes, and even prepare some of them for me, has motivated me to learn how to make more of my own traditional dishes to share with my friends. Because even though I must have been Asian or Italian in a past life, I have come to the conclusion that the food I enjoy the most is the one I have when I go home to Venezuela.

So in my quest to perfect my Venezuelan traditional recipes, I have started to work on my skills and have been practicing my arepas, empanadas, patacones, perico, etc, and I hope to be expanding my list very soon to incorporate more important things like desert

None of these aforementioned goodies are very healthy, so this process will be a very long one if I want to keep a decent summer figure. And thankfully, since my new cooking resolution, I have also coincidentally signed up for the gym which should help counter any negative side-effects!

I leave you with the recipe for one of my favorites: tostones (also known as patacones). These consist of choosing the perfect greenish-yellow plantain, cutting into thick chunks, frying them until they are golden, removing them from the oil, squashing them one by one to form a small flat cake and re-frying them until golden brown!

These little guilty pleasures are one of my favorite and they are the best with shredded salty white cheese. But there’s no limit to what you can do with these, you can top them with anything you like.

On a recent trip to Argentina this past May, we visited a beautiful ranch about three hours away from Buenos Aires near the town of Rojas, located in the north-east of the Buenos Aires Province. The countryside in Argentina, in this case La Pampa, is characterized by vast, uninterrupted fertile plains, where trees are rare.

I spent hours inspecting the great variety of trees everywhere, their fruit, foliage and the wildlife that inhabits them. There were pine trees and willows and orange and lemon trees, and almost any other tree you can imagine. Some of them were filled with green parakeets that spent the entire afternoons chirping, while others were filled with a red cherry-like fruit.

Because it was the end of the fall and beginning of the winter season, there were trees in every color! They ranged from yellow to red to different shades green, and many were losing their leaves, while others were in full bloom. It was amazing to see how some trees could be in full bloom, colorful and bearing fruit, while others were completely bare.

I felt like on a movie set. Everywhere I looked there was something new and interesting to look at and photograph, including white roses in full bloom! And seeing as how I love to take pictures, I was in heaven! I spent two days taking pictures of all the different species of trees that I could find (As you can imagine, I had a very difficult time choosing which ones to include here!)

This was the first time in a very long time – probably since my childhood – that I paid so much attention to vegetation. I honestly think that I had never spent more than a few minutes admiring a tree, unless it was particularly huge or had some other characteristic that had made it stand out.

In addition to my hundreds of beautiful pictures of trees, I also came home with a new found interest in nature. We all know that trees are necessary for the environment and our world, and we are all actively trying to make our lives a little greener, but how many of you have stopped to admire a tree lately? If you do, you will find most of them are unique and really beautiful. Ever since the trip, I catch myself noticing trees here in Miami that are all along my usual routes but that I had incredibly never noticed before. I also realized that among my favorite trees are any yellow ones (like the Araguaney, which happens to be the Venezuelan national tree), the cherry blossom, and the weeping willow.

There’s something about New York City that fascinates everyone. Everyone wants to live there, and those of us who haven’t had the opportunity to do so, daydream about it, secretly plan it, or vicariously live through others who do. For those of us who don’t live there, we will often try to escape there for a weekend, or even rejoice over business trips that take us there for the day, because as one of my best friends so perfectly puts it: everything is in New York.

I discovered my love for the city while living in Boston. New York being so close allowed for many exciting and fun-filled weekend trips. The city was only a few hours away, it was the perfect weekend getaway. Back then it was as easy as going down to Chinatown and buying a $15 round-trip bus ticket to be dropped off on Bowery street. Sometimes just for the day: leave on the first bus out around 7am, spend the day walking around Soho or central park (while spending more money than you intended), and then hop on the last bus back around 8pm, and still make it home around midnight. I have many great memories from these trips, and each of them always left me thirsty for more.

Since I moved to Miami in 2005, my visits to the big apple have been few and far between, but I have still managed to make my way up there at least once a year. It’s always dawned on me why we are all so passionate about this city…what gives New York City its magnetic force? So I asked a few friends, and this seems to be (at least partially) why, in a nutshell:

- To experience one of the biggest eclectic melting pots in the world

- To fall in love

- Because anything you want is already there

- Because it’s the only city in the whole world where everyone is different, and that makes me feel like I belong

- Because you go there and anything could happen, it’s super exciting

And I am sure the list can go on and on. Yet, what I crave about the big apple is exactly all of those things – what it makes you feel to be in such a place where so many different people and ideas live together in harmony. Whether it be the art scene, the music scene, the food scene, there is always something going on. One of my favorite things to do in the city is to try different restaurants. The best restaurants I have ever been to are there, and the list keeps growing every time I go. Anything from Italian to Russian to French to Asian to Greek, it’s there and it’s the best. The same applies to concerts, museums, art galleries…you name it.

It’s a fast-paced city full of surprises that feels new with each visit, always having something new to offer,and where the possibilities seem endless. I am not sure if the opportunity to live in Manhattan will ever present itself, but one thing is for sure: no matter how many times I visit the city, it will always continue to be one of my favorite destinations of all times.