Archive for 2011

Weekend Roundup!

It’s Friday! And tomorrow I’m getting up early to go to my mom’s house and make tamales. Yum! I don’t know about the early part, though. Anyway, here’s some links for you to check out this weekend:

Poet leads protest against drug violence in Mexico :: via NYT – Corruption is so ingrained in the fabric of Mexico that it is actually an institution. Taking it out is difficult because it threatens the political system as a whole. Military response to the drug problem, in my opinion, cannot be successful without addressing corruption. According to this article, the population also needs to come to a consensus on the matter. Javier Sicilia is leading a movement against the drug violence in Mexico.

100 Stars You Never Knew Were Latino :: via Latina – I love these articles, probably because I’m a light-skinned Latina!

Nobel Prize for literature goes to Swedish poet :: via NPR – This guy has a pretty cool last name. It makes me think of Transformers.

Have a great weekend!!!

Three Cookbooks

Yesterday, I saw Aaron Sanchez on the Today Show, making garlic-chipotle love sauce. Ok, anything named love sauce has got to taste damn good. So it got me thinking about cookbooks. Do you think of cookbooks when you think of writing? I do. To me, cooking is really important. I like to nourish my family and pass on my heritage through real food. Here’s three Latino cookbooks you might want to check out.

Sanchez’s cookbook is Simple Food, Big Flavor: Unforgettable Mexican-Inspired Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours (the book is written with JJ Goode). The term “Mexican-inspired” gives me pause because it makes me think of yucky Mexican restaurant food that caters to American tastes. I’m picky like that – nothing my family has ever served featured a giant helping of sliced black olives, okay? But Sanchez’ skills were passed on to him by his mother, also a chef, so I’m going to look this one over as soon as I get my hands on it. I’ll definitely be trying the love sauce.

Sanchez is a Food Network star and owns several restaurants in New York. His other cookbook is La Comida del Barrio.

I flipped through Eva Longoria’s book, Eva’s Kitchen, when I saw it on the store display a few weeks ago. I have to tell you, I was pretty skeptical. So I skipped over to the recipe for arroz rojo. (The ultimate test.) I don’t measure when I cook mine, but the recipe seemed right on. You also see a personal side of Longoria when she includes her disabled sister’s favorite recipe.

So then I looked at the recipe for red enchiladas. The recipe called for making the sauce from scratch. Who am I kidding? My sauce comes courtesy Las Palmas or El Pato. But if that recipe came out tasting like abuela’s I’d be over the moon. This one is going on my Christmas wish list.

Image: ericx! http://bit.ly/qhfTwM

The next cookbook hasn’t come out yet. But you can go to the blog the book came out of, Muy Bueno Cookbook! I saved the best for last because this blog rocks. This blog is a family affair and features authentic recipes and beautiful photos. My mouth waters every time I click over.

One day I decided that my mom needed one of her favorite comfort foods, so I set out to find a recipe for capirotada, which I’ve never made. I’m googling this over and over to try to find something authentic, and I found this website. I adapted their recipe for capirotada (it’s not easy to find piloncillo in Alabama, so I used brown sugar), and it was delicious.  If you don’t know what capirotada is, it’s a bread pudding that uses day-old bread, cheese, raisins, brown sugar/piloncillo, and other ingredients depending on your personal variation. It turns out sweet and salty and you have to try it even though it sounds weird.

Okay! I’m hungry now. Go forth and cook something good today!

Book review: Becoming Americana

The last weekend roundup was really short. Don’t worry, I wasn’t being curt. I was getting ready to represent the Hispanic community with the group I volunteer with in a local parade! I wore a traditional dress and even dressed my daughter in her little Puerto Rican dress. (If you’re wondering why a Tejana puts her daughter in that dress, it’s because my daughter is Mexi-Rican, LOL).

Becoming Americana, by Lara Rios, is a 2006 book I rescued from the clearance bin at Books-A-Million. While researching the author, who is argentina, I found that she is now writing under the nom de plume Julia Amante. As Lara Rios, she wrote Becoming Americana and Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps, as a well as a blog that appears not to be updated anymore. As Amante she has scribed two more novels, Evenings at the Argentine Club and Say You’ll be Mine, and a blog.

Phew! Now that we’ve got that straightened out, let’s get back to the book. The book is about Lupe, a very feisty young woman that survived the hard streets of East L.A. and her even meaner cholo brother. But Lupe manages to turn her life around, attending college and finding a professional job, and crushing on her mentor, Nash. Who isn’t reciprocating. Oops! But no worries – now Will steps in as boyfriend (and a tug-of-war start in her heart). But Lupe, who at first wants to volunteer at the local center for at-risk teens and attend college, becomes distracted by the men in her life (including her pendejo brother) and the taste of a real job and real money. The overall theme of the book is the pull in both directions between Mexican heritage and American lifestyle – something I think all Chicanos know very well.

Some details of Lupe’s hardscrabble life are just gut-wrenching and hard to read. Nevertheless, there are still the elements of chica-lit which make this a light beach read. I could relate to the novel because I know how easy it is to become distracted from your education by life’s necessities, family, and love relationships. I think Rios’s ultimate message to women is that they should choose what’s best for themselves. In chapter 22, Rios writes, “Becoming Americana involves breaking the unwritten family code of ‘family first.’ The new mantra becomes ‘me first.'” As a Latina, that is something heartbreaking to realize. Read the book, and if you don’t relate already, you’ll understand the meaning.

Weekend roundup!

Image: Amazon.com

Gloria Estefan Wepa! :: This song is great! Even my 9-month-old loves to dance to it!

Interview with Hector Tobar on new novel :: via KCRW – This is an interview on Tobar’s new novel, The Barbarian Nurseries.

Amazon Kindle Fire :: via Engadget – I haven’t been able to let go of physical books yet, but I’m tempted to with the Kindle Fire (although I wonder if the tablet would be just another device to feed my Facebook addiction?)

We the Animals review :: via the New York Times – NYT review on Justin Torres’s first novel. The plot seems very interesting.

Have a FABULOUS weekend!

Parts of Alabama Immigration law in effect

Image: Fibonacci Blue http://www.flickr.com/photos/fibonacciblue/4556659182/

I live in Alabama, a state that passed the harshest anti-immigration law recently. It was challenged by the U.S. Department of Justice, various church leaders and civil rights groups. Today, a judge finally made a decision on the challenges and shockingly ordered that most of the law should go into effect after previously enjoining the law (temporarily stopping it so it won’t go into effect). Here’s a summary of my understanding of the ruling, as the local coverage is slightly confusing.

This is what is changing:

*Contracts knowingly entered into with undocumented workers will be nullified

*It is a felony for an undocumented worker to apply for a license plate, driver’s license, or business license

*Law enforcement must determine immigration status during traffic stops

*Drivers must produce their license; if they don’t and the officer can’t verify they have a valid license, they will be arrested. Law enforcement then has 48 hours to determine citizenship through federal agencies; if the person is undocumented “the person shall be considered a flight risk and shall be detained until prosecution or until handed over to federal immigration authorities.”

These parts didn’t go into effect:

*The state cannot stop workers without authorization from seeking employment.

*The state cannot prosecute those who help undocumented workers.

*The state cannot stop businesses from deducting the wages they pay to unauthorized workers.

*The state cannot create a new class of protected workers (the law sought to punish employers who either don’t hire or fire citizens or authorized workers while also employing an undocumented worker).

*The state cannot bar undocumented workers from enrolling in public universities.

A press release from the driver’s license division forwarded to me indicates that a system called AlVerify will be used in verifying whether a person is here legally in processing license tag renewals.

It is my understanding, though local coverage didn’t mention anything, that businesses will now be required to use E-verify for new employees.I actually went to a meeting with a representative of the DOJ (I do volunteer work here for the Hispanic community) and he clarified that E-verify should only be used for new workers – if it is used on existing workers, they should notify the DOJ of discrimination.

Local businesses and farmers are already complaining of not having enough workers to plant spring crops, and probably won’t have the manpower to harvest them in the springtime, either.

I’m a little too shocked and angry about this to editorialize right now, so I’m just giving you the facts. Que barbara!

Sources:

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/09/federal_judge_throws_out_xxxx.html

http://www.whnt.com/news/whnt-what-the-judge-struck-down-alabamas-immigration-law-20110928,0,832227.story

http://www.whnt.com/news/whnt-what-the-judge-upheld-alabamas-immigration-law-20110928,0,6889304.story