Fondue party to end the holiday season

Fondue party, a quintessential winter food, is a fun way to end a holiday season. It can feed a crowd or a couple and you don't have to slave in the kitchen all day to whip it up.

For a small crowd - and for the Three Kings Day I like to have three basic types of fondues going:

a beef fondue, called Fondue Bourguignonne, a cheese fondue and a chocolate fondue for dessert. (For a bigger crowd I might add a seafood fondue cooked in an aromatic broth and wine.)

For a beef fondue I heat olive oil with red wine and the guests cook small cubes of beef fillet in it at the table. Then dip the meat in a variety of sauces, mostly cold, like a garlic dip (sour cream with minced garlic nad herbs), curry dip ( Greek yogurt, mango chutney, curry powder and cayenne) tomato-chipotle dip (sour cream or Greek yogurt, a touch of mayo, tomato paste, chipotle sauce and a touch of ketchup). I add to it some mango pickles, avocado and melon balls.

For a small party, where there is no side cheese fondue (Swiss version: ementhaler and gruyere cheese, white wine a little kirsch liqueur) going on at the side to dip vegetables (bell peppers in all color varieties, celery, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower of all colors, broccoli, champignones, etc.) and pieces of bread in, I serve also one hot sauce, bernaise, for dipping veggies.

Finally, a dessert: cut up fruits (pineapple, mango, papaya, pears) and strawberries dipped in chocolate fondue (melted chocolate with orange, coffee and chocolate liqueurs).

Happy ( and Tasty) Three Kings' Day!

HO! HO! HO!

This Christmas was fun!

First I ran around Atlanta, freezing (since I had no time to go to storage and retrieve my winter clothes), shopping for ethnic food - both Swedish and Polish... and for American Christmas Day turkey dinner, too.... since my daughter wanted to have all these traditions observed during the holidays.


Both in Poland and Sweden the biggest, most important, traditional feast is a Christmas Eve dinner:

in Poland a "fasting" (here fasting just meaning: no meat) feast of seven ... no, not seven fishes, as is the tradistion in Italy, but seven...or nine... or even twelve different dishes (most of them fish, though), which you begin to consume when a first star is spotted in the sky .

Don't worry about what to do, when the sky is overcats: someone will eventually get hungry enough and insist he spotted a star... and everybody will accept that gratefully.

In Sweden a traditional Christmas eve dinner is a Julbord, a Christmas smorgoasbord.... with all sorts of herrings, lax, but also ham, meatballs, sausages, cheeses.

Thus in both Poland and Sweden an overabundance of food, just rather different types of food.Swedish food was far easier to get, thanks to IKEA, which had all sorts of Swedish fare: herrings, crispbreads, cheeses, caviar, Swedish ham, lingonberries, Princess cake...


Polish food was nearly impossible to find in Atlanta, so I finally gave up on most traditional Polish Christmas Eve dishes, except for my daughter's favorite:

cabbage ( half fresh cabbage, half sauerkraut) sateueed with porcini mushrooms,

...which , however, she'll get first tomorrow, accompanying a pork roast with plums,
not a pan fried fat fish, as Polish Christmas tradition would demand, since that particular kind of fish was not available even in the World Farmers' Market :-(((

I also had to give up on a traditional Polish dessert, which I love:

a poppy seed sufflet with tropical fruit and whipped cream: trying to buy a pound of poppy seeds in Atlanta could get me suspected of attempting to make opium.... not a particularly appealing prospect.

When I lived in central Texas I could always drop to any of the ethnic Czech bakeries,

order a poppy seed strudel...

and ask to buy a pound of poppy seeds for my sufflet from them. Besides, in Texas, Minnesota and Colorado there were Polish ethnic shops, but there is none in Atlanta. Had I been planning this better I could have ordered everything from Chicago by mail, but I did not.

Next I was preparing all the dishes I could, just as my daughter wished to have them, being in a traditional mood this year, but then I tried really hard not to eat them myself, as nearly all are too fat, too heavy, in short: completely unsuitable for a diabetic.

And a Christmas miracle happened: I lost seven pounds during the Christmas week, surrounded with all that food. If that's no miracle, I don't know what is ;-)!

Help, the Christmas season continues here...

... and, according to speaking boricua, will do so for the next 12 days!

Please, remind me anyone to stay far away from Puerto Rico the next Christmas season if I don't want to become deaf!

Today is Tres Reyes Magos - the present holiday in Puerto Rico (as it is in Spain as well, and perhaps even in other countries with Spanish traditions) - so yesterday shops were packed with crowds making last minute purchases of toys and sweets. It felt like shopping on Christmas Eve elsewhere - sheer madness. And all I needed was some household items. Should have waited till tomorrow.

(the pictures are of Christmas season's decorations in Anasco, a lovely little town south of Rincon)

This morning I was awoken at 7:20 am, no, not by my kitty, but by a travelling parranda - just outside my windows. Poor kitty got so scared she dived under my sheets and crawled all over me, occassionally punching holes in my belly - and other parts of my anatomy - with hert oh, so sharp little claws. Finally, I managed to calm her, and hoped to snooze a little longer, but less than half an hour later the parranda noise terror returned.

When it did for the third time, I got up and went to work - no matter that it's holiday today - taking the poor scared to death kitty with me. I have to work a lot during this season - hiding from the parranda noise terror. 12 more days? TWELVE??? I am already starting to be considered a - boorish, of course - slave driver - by my coworkers, since, when I work, I usually need some stuff to be done by others for me, on time, or I can't continue to do my work ... and - since it is the Holiday Season - everybody involved may get pretty cranky. I, because stuff is not done, they, because they - rightfully, I admit - think I am inconsiderate giving them so much stuff to do during holidays, when they have other priorities. And all of this just because of the darn parrandas - or rather their noise levels (I would have enjoyed the music had it not be so loud).
Ok, I shut up already, before you call me a grouch. ;-)

My secret Christmas wish list

I have been nursing my secret blogger' s Christmas wih list for a few weeks.
I wished that I could paint like Heather, photograph like Carina, write like Jen or Sara, etc. etc.

But when a time came to post it.... the monopoly cable company operating in Aguada, Choice Cable, the most incompetent, uncaring and, perhaps, corrupted cable company in the entire world, gave me - and everybody else here a Christmas present we are likely to remember a long time: 4 days so far- and counting - without internet!

(I finally got connected through a slow like molasses, but working! oh miracle! dial up connection. )

So my top priority wish is a different cable company! What's yours?

Tropical Christmas party dress

Today is a Christmas gift exchange and a Christmas lunch party at the institute, and later a festive gourmet dinner at Natural High Cafe in Rincon for the graduating program participants.

So I spent a moment this morning in front of my closet trying to figure out what to wear: evening wear being too "evening" for the occassion, party cruise wear too "cruise party", resort wear too "resort": the western coast of Puerto Rico has a - difficult - style all of its own: not the San Juan Puerto Rican smart dolled up in the absolutely latest fashion, but either a very sporty casual (wore mostly by surfer guys) or if more festive, than " I pretend I don't care about fashion or elegance... yet I don't want to look dorky" ( wore mostly by gals and local guys).

Finally I noticed a long, Caribbean sea blue silk dress with a deceptively simple cut, which I bought for myself in July, because I loved the color, even though the dress was at that time " a tad" too tight for me - and in a size I wasn't able to wear since 1999.

I tried it again just before Thanksgiving and - despite having lost 16 pounds - the dress was still too tight for me. 'Oh, my', I thought, I would never have guessed that I was that much of an optimist when I bought it.
But this morning the scale showed an 19.6 pounds of a total weight loss during the two months I have been here trying on this Living Food Lifestyle. So I tried the dress again.... and finally it fit me like a glove! Hurra!

I added a strand of discarded corals of the same azure shade of Caribbean sea, which I got for my nameday ot the beginning of this month - and voila, I was ready to "dazzle" and dance salsa, merengue , bomba and whatever else we were going to dance today... and no matter whether I knew how to dance it or not (women my age can get away with a lot, lol)! Who needs food when you feel good!

Merry Christmas partying everybody!

Parranda or noise pollution

One parranda - especially one I participated in (see post: Yet another car, another cat and another dwelling) - was fun. But today a parranda at a beach bar and camping - three properties away from mine - started at noon with such an incredible noise volume, that not even ear plugs are able to help at this distance. So instead of a deserved weekend rest, at the beach, at a hammock, reading, I was forced to hide from that noise pollution in my office. And I wonder: are ALL Puertoricans deaf? They must be, if nobody protests either the construction noise (see post: I am moving... again) or a perpetual parranda in a quiet residential area. I certainly can't stand it without a permanent damage not only to my ears but my brain, as well.

The day would be glorious... if only the natives could celebrate Christmas a lot less noisily!

To listen to some parranda music (at a decent volume) go there: http://www.magiealbumpr.com/parranda.htm