My mom, Luz, as most of you already know, is 96 years old. She reads a lot and is still very sharp for her advanced age. She has seen quite a few amazing things in her lifetime and still tells stories of listening to music on the first radio her family owned [...]

It's an unprecedented time in Cuban/U.S. history.
Cubans are mobilizing all over the U.S. like never before to bring to light the abuses of the castros and their gulags.
You all saw the turnout in Miami on Thursday for the march in solidarity with the Cuban Ladies in White and all the Cuban prisoners of conscience. The [...]

My daughter, Kikita, just returned from a trip to Cuba. She visited the places of my childhood and was finally able to connect the stories to the places that live only in fading memory for me.
What she saw and experienced during that amazing week has impacted her deeply.
I'll let her take it from here....
My whole [...]

A big, fat thank you to Babalú and to Cuban bloggers here in the U.S. for helping me reconnect with my Cuban cousin, blogger Regina Coyula, of La Mala Letra.

Read the rest of the story over at My big, fat, Cuban family.

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It’s been raining like crazy here in So Cal.
And when weather happens to us we really don’t know how to act: “Should we wear shoes? Does anyone have a jacket? I know I have an umbrella in here somewhere from the last time...”
Seriously, we just don’t “do” weather.
And so last week we found ourselves stocking [...]

My family has always been mindful of the fact that Thanksgiving is a peculiarly American holiday. Maybe it's because we are Cuban-Americans. We gather around the table with tremendous gratitude for the twin gifts of family and freedom.
There's a great piece today over at The Americano in which Pedro Blas González celebrates a Cuban-American Thanksgiving. [...]

So, I’m still on my quixotic quest of declaring November as National Guava Month. To that end, I am happy to share my recipe for Guava Cheesecake in time for you to make it for “El Sanguibin.”
Of course, the main ingredient in cheesecake is cream cheese, which is inexorably tied to Philadelphia (thank you, Kraft [...]

Hi all!
It's a special Monday, Pre-Thanksgiving Edition of Marta's Cuban American Kitchen.
I have been trying, without much success, to declare November "National Guava Month." Sadly, no one seems to take me seriously about this, but that's not important right now.
So, I'm going to try again today.
I, Marta, hereby declare November to be "National Guava Month."
In [...]

My husband, Eric and I, had a wonderful opportunity recently to visit a little ranch just north of the city of Santa Barbara, California.
To get there, we had to drive up a winding, bumpy, one-lane road. I kept thinking that surely our guide had made some mistake. We were way too high and in a [...]

The holidays are approaching and with them the ensuing "comelatas." As much as I love tradition and our traditional Cuban food, I'm always looking for quick and easy. (I know. Shut up.) Better yet, quick and easy while still tasting traditional.
Because as far as I'm concerned, and I'm sure you'll agree, super tasty and easy [...]

My son, Adam is a handsome guy. (Okay, I know I’m his mom and all that, but I am being truly objective here. Shut up.) And even though he’s not fluent in Spanish, he can defend himself pretty well for the most part.

So he was visiting my mom (his grandmother) the other day. She speaks [...]

My mom has been in Miami for the summer. Last week she was telling me about an avocado that she had purchased from the local viandero. Here in California we get the Haas avocados that are small with bumpy dark skin. The ones in Miami are considerably larger.
She says this to make the point:
“Es el [...]

On September 11, 2001 our country lost 2,996 people as a result of the coordinated terrorist attacks in New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania. Their names will be read on this day every year as part of a long list of those who lost their lives on that sad and desperately horrible day.
As I wept [...]

Every now and then I get a craving for something that appears unusual to my kids but was just part of a regularly scheduled menu item in my Cuban American household when I was growing up.
And I realize just a beat too late that they haven’t had the same upbringing that I have, and that [...]

Note: I apologize for my extended absence from Babalú. I’ve been fighting a personal health battle that I won’t bore you with. Thank you all for your gracious patience with me. I’m ba-a-a-ack! =D
Sometimes when my family is around the dinner table, we play games where we ask hypothetical questions. The discussions always take an [...]

I had a wonderful master plan.
I swear did.
I know I’ve been AWOL for a while now. I’ve been taking some much needed time off from cooking and blogging. Rest assured, I am still cooking and I am still blogging. I just haven’t done them concurrently for the past couple of months, but that’s not important [...]

Eric and I just recently returned from taking our teenage kids, Lucy and Jonathan on a trip to Washington D.C. We saw and learned so much that we were at times overwhelmed with the amount of information coming our way.
We’re still working on writing about and documenting our trip, but the events of one particular [...]

Every now and then I receive a panicky sounding email or phone call with a recipe question:
Q: “I have 30 Cubans coming over for my son’s first birthday party. What should I serve?”
A: “Arroz Imperial or some Quick and Tasty Lechón.”
Q: “Can I make your crockpot recipes in a pressure cooker?” (Okay, so I don’t [...]

I made way too much picadillo the other night.  It wasn’t my original intention, but three out of the six of us had other things going on and so I was left with an abundance of picadillo, which is not a bad thing, per se.
As I usually do with leftover picadillo, I was intending to [...]

She still dyes her hair and wears makeup every day.
She only wears her glasses for reading because she's a little vain about her looks.
She remembers everyone's birthday.
If you're sick, she'll call you every day until you report that you are well.
She saves every card she's ever received from every birthday, Mother's Day and Christmas and [...]