Let’s fly away!

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It’s incredible what can be discovered just by looking around!

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Mexican food is well known around the world for its tasty food. And, although its many times spicy – hot flavor, sometimes hard for delicate stomachs, dishes such as ‘Mole’ (chicken with chocolate sauce), ‘chilaquiles & enchiladas’ (fried tortillas with tomato or green tomato hot sauce) and its huge variety of ‘quesadillas’ (stuffed tortillas with cheese) and ‘tacos’ (stuffed tortillas with all sort of dishes) appear very often in the international menus of all sort of restaurants around the world.

So, it’s often easy to find Mexican restaurants in different countries, some of them as far away from Mexico as Madagascar or the Czech Republic. Even more, in 2010 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) include the Mexican food in the List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, considering that “Traditional Mexican cuisine is central to the cultural identity of the communities that practice and transmit it from generation to generation.”

What’s curious to know it that many of this food that it’s so common to find everywhere nowadays, is that it had its origins in the Colonial Convents that became very famous in their time (mainly 18th and 19th Centuries) for their well elaborated food, made with all sort of ingredients which complete preparation could even take hours and hours.

To remember those times, the book Delicias de Antaño. Historia y Recetas de los Conventos Mexicanos (Delights of yesteryear. History and Recipes of the Mexican Convents), not only collects a long list of recipes, but also, shares many stories of the practices, customs and anecdotes that occurred on those majestic convents (many of them, originally built in the 16th century).

So, this book, by Teresa Castillo Yturbe and Maria Josefa Martinez del Rio de Redo, give the reader the opportunity to learn how traditional Mexican deserts such as ‘arroz con leche’ (rice with milk), ‘buñuelos’ (sweet fritter) and ‘dulces de leche’ were made during those years by the nouns.

It also shares the recipes of the ‘Chiles en nogada’ (stuffed Poblano chiles with walnut sauce) are to be made following the conventual method, as well as other dishes such as ‘Mole Ranchero’ and ‘Chilaquiles’.

All in all, going through this book is a complete delight, even if one is willing to take the challenge of preparing any of these recipes, or if one is only interested in history or wants to spend a relaxing time.

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Look down

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I always say that it’s a very lucky day when you see a movie that really manages to move your heart, specially when you’ve hear nothing about it and you only got it because the summary on the dvd case made it sound appealing.

It just happened to me. Although Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was launched in the UK in 2011, I’ve just had the chance to watch it and I found it not only interesting, but also really sweet in the way a young reach man who could have anything in the world, decided to go for his biggest dream, to bring live salmon into the Yemen and create over there, in the middle of the dessert, an “oasis” of lively waters filled with this particular upstream fish.

The movie, starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt, was based on a book under the same title, written by the British author Paul Torday, who found in this novel a way to express, and explore, his love for fishing and his interest for the Middle East.

The book, written with a more satiric style, attempts not only to talk about the dream of the young rich man who happens to be a prince, but alto to make some sort of fun of the ways of his own country.

The movie of course takes some of that, but it’s more focused on the romantic side of the story, an impossible dream that has to face uncountable challenges to become real, and even then, it need to find its own strength to remain alive; and the own challenges of the team who would have to believe in themselves and in the dream first, before realizing that it actually might be possible to be feasible.

The film of course, also goes for the romance among McGregor and Blunt, who, at the time they meet, are facing the challenge to make important decisions about their own love lives.

At the end, the story leaves a very comforting feeling that, every now and then, dreams actually can come true.

As for the author of this fantastic story, his way to writing becomes also an inspiration as he published this, his first novel, when he was 60, after a long life working as a businessman.

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“When the Saints go Marching in”

“Ain’t no city like New Orleans”.

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A view from the top.

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It will never cease to amaze me the outstanding imagination of the French writer Jules Verne.

Loving traveling as I do, the first book that caught my attention by this writer was Around the World in 80 Days. This book took me to travel along Phileas Fogg around all those exotic places that this English character visited in order for him to win a exotic bet place back in London.

After I read this book, many year ago, I’ve watched several film and TV adaptations of the novel, from cartoons for children, to a miniseries starring Pierce Brosnan. But in all cases, the deepest and clearer images of Fogg’s adventures remain in my mind from the lines I read in my childhood.

I took, however, some time for me to come back to the Jules Verne path, and I haven’t left it ever since. It was so that recently I read From the Earth to the Moon and its sequel Round the Moon.

What I liked the most of the first one was Verne’s solution to set a man in the Moon, and I was amazed with all the calculations and theories the characters develop before they were able to calculate the exact length of the devise that will “fire” the spaceship, and particularly how Verne came up with the place where this spaceship would be launch.

However, I have to say that I was absolutely taken by the second story, Round the Moon, due to the clarity and strength that the French writer imprinted in his characters once they realized that they might never come back to the Earth, or even touch the Moon.

While reading these books, I even could picture Verne himself, standing by the Seine river, leaning on one of its bridges, staring the sky, with his eyes fixed on the starts, and the ideas wandering wild in his head, allowing himself to dream, but challenging himself at the same time, to solve the amazing puzzle he had just created.

Lucy for us, the immense imagination of Jules Verne, give us not only a couple of magnificent stories about the space, but a nice set of adventures set on the most unimaginable places.

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One of the most wonderful gifts from Nature is to find the changing colors of the leaves all around the city.

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Photo by Anna Langova

Most of the time I restrain myself, but, from time to time I just surrender to the wonders of this unique pieces of happiness and enjoyment.

Of course I enjoy making cookies, but most of the joy comes just from browsing the books, reading the recipes, imagining how the ingredients combine and leaving in my mouth the sweet idea of how any given cookie should taste as soon as it’s out of the oven.

Among my favorite cookie books, these take priority on my bookcase: Holiday Cookies and Treats; Perfect Cookies: Delicious, easy and fun to make; 500 Cookies: The only cookie compendium; The Great Big Cookie Book, and Swiss cookies: Biscuits for Christmas and all year round.

From these, 500 Cookies gave me an immense source of happiness as I got the calendar version, so I was able to go through each one of the recipes day by day, making my mornings both enjoyable and delicious. Although, it’s worth saying that they aren’t in fact 500 different recipes, but three different versions of each cookie. Anyways, it’s something I really like.

The Great Big Cookie Book and Perfect cookies are amazing books to go through and it’s hard no to feel hungry after turning several pages of them.

Of course, baking cookies is always a big challenge, there are so many variations to take into consideration that some times it’s an interesting task to prepare the perfect cookie, but it sure is fun to try! And to try with a good deal of success, Holiday Cookies and Treats is a friendly book that presents in an easy way all sort of Christmas cookies, from shortbread to brownies.

The Swiss Cookies book is my most recent acquisition, and I like that it really puts me in the right mood to feel as if I were walking around one of those busy streets of Zurich, enjoying myself with the sight of the cookies and the treats shown in the window displays, waiting for me to seat down and rest for a moment, while enjoying the traditional recipes of this country.

And now, it’s cookie time! Enjoy

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