food – Fake Flamenco

How Do You Say Waffle in Spanish?

Hmm, it didn’t sound right to say, el wafle, as several books and translation sites suggested. When dictionaries came up empty on this breakfast essential, we invented a name. Once the term stuck, I learned that Spaniards use the word el gofre. En nuestra casa es pan cuadrado – In our home it’s bread of […]

food, Mexico, Spanish Culture and Language

Pipián Sauce, a la Gringa

This sauce is based on pumpkin seed mole, called mole verde, or pipián. The Nahuatl word, molli, is the origin for mole, the Mexican word for this traditional Mixteca sauce. You may have tried mole made of chocolate, almond and chile over chicken in a restaurant. This pipián mole also has rich flavors. Although traditionally […]

food, Gardening

Gardening Staycation

Our garden is growing in leaps and bounds. Every spring in Madison we begin with bare ground and by June every surface is green. Time to step away from the computer and play in the dirt. We weeded the vegetable garden yesterday afternoon and harvested greens: spinach, chard, and amaranth. We picked purslane and dill […]

food, Spanish Culture and Language

Are Nachos Really Mexican Food?

We ate nachos this week for our Tuesday Spanish conversation dinner. The language during the meal was to be the main focus of this post. Then, I began to wonder if it was a double Spanish dinner. Do nachos originate in Texas or Mexico? I wanted to tell readers with culinary confidence. For many years […]

food, Spanish Culture and Language

Could a Chef Win the Nobel Peace Prize?

José Andrés, Spanish chef extraordinaire, has received a 2019 Nobel Peace Prize nomination for his humanitarian work feeding people in crisis. His work in Puerto Rico alone is enough to impress and to raise the spirits of a jaded cynic. In tandem with 26 restaurants and 20,000 volunteers, his organization made 3.7 million meals for […]

food, Spanish Culture and Language, The Americas

How the Maya and Inca Fed the World

Imagine life without avocados, pumpkins or chocolate. I simply cannot. The Native peoples of lands now called Mexico and Peru began a great transformation of ordinary flowering plants into food staples long before Columbus’ visit. Mesoamerican and Andean botanists bred wild Solanum family plants into tasty varieties: tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers, and chile peppers. The […]