The skeletons that surround me make me smile.  Some hold cigarettes, others pet dogs (in skeletal form, of course), and more daring ones balance baskets of flowers on their hard heads.  It’s the Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, here in Mexico:  a holiday officially celebrated October 31 through November 2 to commemorate the lives of everyone’s loved ones who have passed away.  For these three days gravesides become picnic areas as entire families join to rejoice and remember their loved ones, making sure to offer them their favorite treats, graveside.  But the festivities begin way before that… “Calacas”, or skeletons, adorn every street vendor’s sidewalk offering.   Bright orange cempasuchil (Mexican marigolds) flowers, used by the Aztecs to mourn their dead, are the official floral offering for the dead and are mandatory at every corner florist, and then …Read on

There’s a memory tucked away safely in the crevice of my mind, through twists and turns of the years gone by, unscathed by the notorious forgetfulness that usually defines me, this memory stays, is strong, is protected.
It’s of my mother, of course, and warmth and sweetness – the nourishment of food given to a daughter by her mother.  It can be sunny out or cloudy, these parts of the memory don’t matter, for I know in the bubble of this moment that I am all right.  Because my mother makes it so.  She smells sweet and sends a small smile in my direction.  My eyes are big and blue and slightly teary-eyed.  I’ve had a rough day; the days are rough at age six when your best friend finds a new best friend, when you scrape your knee, when your …Read on

Bread haunts me so. I am not supposed to eat it this week (a Passover thing) and so, it teases. And lures. And promises me I can’t live without it.

The scale reconfirms Jewish law: I can live without it (the scale insists for longer than one measly week). The rolls forming on my gut reconfirm that Jewish law and scale are correct (when did this happen?) But the bread, ah the bread, in all its glorious forms is insurmountable torture to go without. There are warm bagels sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds and spread with generous seas of creamy cream cheese or ciabata bread, with its extra chewy crunch on the outside, torn open to reveal those craters of dough forming planet-like surfaces which beckon wild blueberry jam to get trapped and devoured in. And …Read on

When you are given something called “Friendship Bread,” be wary. It’s not like I was given the actual finished product, I got the dough and a dizzying list of daily instructions with the promise of the finished product. That is when I got extra suspicious. I was told that “Friendship Bread” was an old Amish tradition (this is done as a selling point, I assume) but figured, anything with such a blatantly obvious adjective has got to be bad, right? I mean, for years I walked right by the closest neighborhood sushi (and never went in) because, and only because, it was called Amazing Sushi and everyone knows that anything called Amazing (fill-in-the-blank) has got to be major crap. (I later learned, in a desperately hungry moment of weakness that it is the best sushi in town.) …Read on

Growing up in a tropical country during the winter holiday season had its apparent disadvantages for a young child.
Snow, for one, was a misnomer reserved for the obscure North where Santa and many flush-faced giddy elves allegedly worked under a flurry of coveted snowflakes.
The foliage didn’t help set the mood either:
not a pine tree in sight, in fact, my family’s backyard alone was cluttered with trees adorned with sun-drenched fruits like limes, mangoes, and bananas.

Then you had to fight your way through the hummingbirds, lizards, parrots, guacamayas and, of course, Murtle The Turtle, our tenured pet who inconveniently preferred strategically treacherous spots, such as the walkway, to sunbathe its crusty head.
None of this was shouting ho-ho-ho, if you know what I mean.
Still, the benefits of a December spent 8 degrees north of the equator seemed to far outweigh the …Read on