I don’t know about you, but when it’s hot outside, and still summer, I don’t feel like having heavy desserts, like anything chocolate, or cakes, and the like. Don’t get me wrong, I love those almost at any time of year and any time of day! But my body asks for something fresh, cold even, fruit, or fruity desserts, or ice cream. However, (more…)
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I associate potatoes more with fall and winter than with summer. When I think of potatoes, I imagine some deliciously roasted chunks, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with rosemary, baked to perfection, with a soft, moist inside and a somewhat crusty outside. And yet, potatoes appear in salads all through the summer, from (more…)
Beach, rice, and seafood, go hand in hand in my mind. It is the feeling of summer, the taste of it, what I remember and what I live and experience every summer in Spain.
Another summer constant is that my mom is the main cook. It’s her house, the one we grew up in, the place where (more…)
I remember vividly my brother-in-law Jorge’s comments on his first visit to our house in Indiana a number of years ago. It was with the occasion of a very American ritual: the barbecue. Jorge, a veterinarian turned the purchasing director at the meat department of a large Spanish supermarket chain, and who, since the last couple of years (more…)
I’m writing this as I’ve just sat down, trying to catch my breath after the hike to la ermita de Santa Lucía, Saint Lucia chapel in Alcocebre, Spain. The breathlessness is real, as the hike is a steep one, trying to navigate rocks, some of them part of a glacier plateau, and bushes of wild rosemary and the many other varieties of wild herbs and low Mediterranean pine trees (more…)
If there’s a dessert that prominently features in our menu during our summers in Spain, it is my sister Susana’s lemon ice cream. She makes an amazing one, everyone’s favorite, and for the most part, with lemons from the property. I’ve talked about El Taroncheral before (click here), the place that probably holds (more…)
This post is for my older sons. In honor of them, yes, of course. But more than that, to quiet their disappointment. You see, I have been posting on Mama Ía blog for months, the food of Spain, but also the dishes I’ve been cooking in America for years, the Spanish way. Yet for my sons, cooking Spanish is cooking the traditional (more…)
It is said that the sense of smell is the most evocative of all senses, and this chocolate almond tart with blackberries made me think of it, not only because of the current aroma in my kitchen (I wish food blogs could be not only visual but carry the fragance of the dishes to their readers!), but because of what it (more…)
I am in a salad kind of mood these days. It must be the spring, which is still fighting to deserve its name, having just lived through a weekend of cold temperatures, wind and rain. I know it’s there, around the corner, and the anticipation of the opening of the outdoor farmers market on Barr Street in Fort Wayne keeps me hopeful. (more…)
When I moved to North America years ago, I had to get used to things that were done differently than in Spain or any other place I had lived in. One of them was schedules, or rather, the times when regular daily activities like meals were done. Lunch in Spain rarely happens before 2 PM, and dinner not before 9 PM, at the earliest. I’m not saying (more…)
