Seven Years. (MBFCF Giveaway WEEK!)

You know that I'm all about celebrating.

Big events. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Summer. Dinner. I believe in celebrating. Often. And well.

Today marks my 7th anniversary here in this space. SEVEN.

My big, fat, Cuban family is 7 years old today. And so I'm celebrating. *fires off the confetti canon*

But first you have to sit through the usual recap of my 7 years in the Blogosphere. 7 years, people! I totally deserve a party. Or at least a recap. But before the 7 year recap, how about a celebratory video?

Yes, I think a video would be perfect. Enjoy!

Did you know I also have a YouTube Channel? I know. The over-sharing never ends.

Also, if you're following me on Instagram, you'd recognize that most of my life takes place at #CasaDeLaLoma. I'm Smrtqbn, by the way. (See what I did there?)

Year One. October 1st, 2007. I was delighted to have found my voice and an audience.

Year Two. October 1st, 2008. I was taking care of my family and sharing the stuff I had cooked. And people liked it. Who knew?  I also wrote a cookbook that year, which gave me something to give away. And so the giving away commenced in earnest.

Year Three. October 1st, 2009. Three years? I was amazed that I had been able to keep at it for so long. And I fell in love with you, my readers. Always kind and ever gracious. I felt like I had won the lotto.

Year Four. October 1st, 2010. I could have graduated from an institution of higher learning with a degree. Bachelor's in Bloggology?

Year Five. October 1st, 2011. It was a rough year, filled with some physical challenges, but then I became the "little Cuban that could" and just kept right on writing. (<--That last bit took tremendous grammatical focus, as do most of my blog posts, but that's not important right now.)

Year Six. October 1st, 2012. Six years. Add lots of great experiences and some amazing blog-friends later, I was still standing. Seriously so much to celebrate.

Which brings us to today.

Year Seven. I am so very grateful that I get to write and you are still there, reading and sharing your lives with me. You get my sense of humor and you seem to enjoy my writing style.

I have met so many of you in person and I'm always amazed and humbled by your enthusiastic response to whatever silly things I'm up to. I enjoy hearing from you on Facebook and Twitter and (even if I don't respond right away) I love receiving your emails.

And yes, of course I'm going to get to the giveaway, but first I want to say thank you. I would not be doing this at all if it wasn't for my awesome online and (for some of you) now real life friends.

Thank you. From the bottom of my big, fat, Cuban heart. Seriously. Thank you.

You may have noticed that I've changed up the banner up on top there and added color. It makes me happy and I hope you'll enjoy the things I've got coming up this year.

I have so much to celebrate!

In fact, I'm going to be celebrating ALL WEEK. From today, October 1st, 2013 through October 7th, 2013.

Seven glorious days and seven fun-filled nights of celebrating that I've survived and possibly even thrived right here on the internet. For this next week I've lined up some wonderful Cuban friends that I've met because of my blog who have graciously agreed to sponsor some very cool giveaways every single day for the ENTIRE WEEK to celebrate each of my SEVEN bloggy years.

I can officially call this MBFCF Giveaway Week! (7 days and all that...) Yay!

To kick things off - here's MBFCF Blogiversary Giveaway #1

My Big, Fat, Cuban Family Cookbook

An autographed copy of My Big, Fat, Cuban Family Cookbook. I know. Shut up.

Leave a comment on this post for a chance to win my cookbook and please answer the following question:

• When and how did you find My big, fat, Cuban family?

I'll choose a winner at the end of MBFCF Blogiversary Giveaway Week on Wednesday, October 9th, 2013 at 11 am, so you have lots of time to enter.

Thank you again and let the celebrating begin!

We grew coffee in our backyard. And we liked it.

Happy National Coffee Day!

A few years ago, our dear friends, Gene and Pam sent Eric two little 3 inch coffee plants for his birthday. They thought it would be fun for us to grow our own backyard coffee.

So we added the little plants to our kind-of-chaotic-we-just-like-how-they-look backyard garden. We watered them along with everyone else who lives out there and the little coffee plants grew.

And thrived.

And we began to notice.

"Have you seen the coffee plants lately? They're getting so big!"

We repotted them and kept them close together so they wouldn't be lonely.

And last year, they produced little white flowers. WUT? "We've got COFFEE BLOSSOMS, people!"

Look at us! Growing coffee!

And then....

The little red cherries appeared. WHAT DO WE DO NOW? (<--Can you read the panic in that question?)

We sent photos to our friends. "Remember those coffee plants you gave us a few years ago? Look at what's happening to them!"

Apparently it was time to harvest. Who knew?

So, Eric set about the task of choosing the ripest red coffee cherries.

We had planned a weekend trip with our friends (the ones who originally gave us the plants) and decided it would be fun to bring some of the magic beans. Gene happens to be quite the coffee snob aficionado and has his own roasting device.

Coffee talk.

He took the beans home and after a few days sent us this:

Success!

We did some of our own harvesting, shucking, drying and roasting (If by roasting, you mean stirring the beans around in a small skillet until they're brown) when we got home.

I personally hated the idea of pulling off those beautiful, bright RED (!) coffee beans from our plants, but that's not important right now.

So we somehow managed to scrape together two small (freakishly small!) cups of our own Backyard Brew.

Also, those 2 cute little plants are so much taller than me now. I know. Shut up!

There were two things we decided after this experience with the Backyard Coffee:

1. As much as we enjoyed the process, we will, from now on, leave the coffee making to The Pros.
2. We have added a descriptive name to our Backyard Coffee. We're calling it, Mission Viejo Brown.

Cuban-Chinese Arroz Frito con Lechón Recipe

Here's a pop quiz...

What do you do with the leftovers the day after the Lechón Asado? (even if it's just out of a crockpot.)

Caja China

Okay. That was too easy.

So what do you do after you've had as much Pan con Lechón as you can stuff yourself with?

What happens when you have exhausted your basic lechón leftover options?

What do you do if you’re suddenly craving Chinese food?

Or Cuban food?

Or Cuban-Chinese food?

And you don’t live anywhere on the planet where Cuban-Chinese restaurants actually exist?

But you still have a whole bunch of leftover lechón?

And there also happens to be leftover rice?

That's right.

Leftover lechón AND leftover rice?

I'll be grading this one on the curve.

Arroz frito

Arroz Frito con Lechón Recipe

• 3 eggs
• soy sauce
• chicken broth
• vegetable oil
• ¼ chopped onion
• ¼ chopped green bell pepper
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 cups cooked white rice
• 1 cup leftover lechón asado (roast pork)
• ¼ cup chopped green onions
• ¼ cup green peas (fresh, frozen or canned)

1) Scramble the eggs well, adding a little bit of soy sauce and a little bit of chicken broth. (should look a little “dirty”)

2) In a large frying pan, heat up enough oil to just barely coat the bottom & sides of the pan.

3) Wait until the oil is pretty hot and pour in the egg mixture until it coats the bottom of the pan. It’s not reallypretty at all, but the soy sauce/chicken broth eggs are pretty tasty on their own.

Let them cook through and then flip them over once. Don’t worry if they don’t flip over evenly. Once the eggs are cooked, remove from pan and set aside.

Arroz frito 1

4) Add a little more oil to the pan and sauté the onion and bell pepper over medium heat until the onion is translucent.

5) Turn down the heat and add the garlic. Continue cooking, but don’t let the garlic get toasty.

6) Add a bit more oil if necessary, then, add the rice. Fry the rice gently, stirring frequently, adding a bit of chicken broth for flavor.

7) Quickly slice up the scrambled eggs and add to the rice.

Arroz frito 2

8) Add a bit more soy sauce and the diced lechón.

9) Gently fold in the green onions and peas until heated through.

10) Remove from heat, cover, and let it stand for about 5 minutes. Serve hot.

This recipe is easily multiplied – depending on how much you’ve got left over and how many people you plan on feeding. I apologize for the vagueness, but because it's so simple, I never measure the ingredients in this recipe.

I cook it “de oído.” (By ear...)

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Arroz con Salchichas Recipe

From the MBFCF Archives. Back by popular demand...

Smells Like Cuban Food

You know you’re in a Cuban home if, when you walk in, you can smell The Smell. You know what I’m talking about - that unmistakable, mouth-watering, oh-so-inviting, my-mom-is-amazing, God-I-love-Cuban-food smell.

It all begins with a simple onion, a luscious green bell pepper and some garlic cloves – The Trifecta of Cuban Cooking Perfection.

Grab your olive oil and sauté those three until the peppers are soft and the onions are transparent, add a can of tomato sauce and you’ve got yourself a perfect “sofrito.” The sofrito is the basis of all that is good and holy in a Cuban kitchen.

The Unmistakable Smell travels upstairs and through the entire house, exactly like in those old cartoons where the smell of a fresh baked pie becomes a long, smoky arm attached to a beckoning hand, and when it reaches the unsuspecting noses of my fortunate family it leads them helplessly down to my kitchen.
“Cuban food!” they exclaim and hover around long enough for me to start giving the “set the table” orders.

They comply quickly and without complaint. Cuban food is its own reward.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

Arroz con Salchichas

• 2 cups uncooked parboiled rice (Uncle Ben’s is best, but NOT the instant kind)
• 1 cup cold water
• 1 cup chicken broth
• Olive oil
• 2 drained cans Vienna sausage cut into 1 inch slices
• 1 med yellow onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 med. green bell pepper, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves minced
• 1 (8 oz.) tomato sauce
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1 Bay leaf
• 1 small jar diced red pimientos w/ liquid
• Bijol -just a pinch to color the rice
• 1 small can peas, drained

(NOTE: You don’t have to add salt, unless you want to. The broth and sausages usually add enough saltiness.)

1) Heat the olive oil in a large pan over medium high heat.

2) Add the onion, garlic, and green pepper and sauté about 5 minutes or until onion is translucent.

3) Add tomato sauce, white wine, pimientos with their liquid and bay leaf and simmer together over low heat for about 10 minutes.

4) In a large stockpot, bring water and chicken broth to a rolling boil.

5) While the liquid is boiling, wash rice and drain well.

6) Color the wet rice with the Bijol powder. (you just add a pinch to quickly color the rice.)

7) Add the rice to the boiling water, stir well, and reduce heat to medium low.

8) Add the sliced sausage to the tomato mixture and stir well.

9) Add tomato mixture to the rice.

10) Continue cooking over low heat for about 20 minutes or until liquid is absorbed.

11) After the rice is done, quickly add the can of peas, stirring them into the cooked rice - let it sit for a minute or two, just until the peas get hot.

Serve with maduros, galletas and ice-cold Materva. Nope, it really doesn't get any better than this.

This recipe was originally published on Babalú blog. January 17, 2008.

Chocolatón - Chocolate Mousse Recipe

I’m celebrating a notable anniversary today.

February 14th was my family’s very first full day in the United States so many years ago. We had arrived the day before, on my dad's 50th birthday and it seemed to take forever to get through customs and get acclimated and move into our new (very cramped) apartment in South West Miami. That was okay, though.It was only supposed to be temporary.

That first day of freedom, my sisters and I were given heart shaped boxes full of chocolate and so a tradition was born. Every year on Valentine’s Day we would receive some kind of chocolate and every year we would remember that it was the anniversary of our first real day on U.S. soil.
Welcome to America! Happy Valentine’s Day!

We counted each year of exile as we celebrated the holiday of the heart – always with chocolate:
February 14, 1962 – One whole year. I miss my home in Havana, I miss my cousins, my abuelita, my school. My dad brings home a one pound box of American chocolates called See’s.

February 14, 1966 – It has been five years already. That pesky revolution thing is NOT blowing over. My dad gets us all little Whitman Samplers (which was awesome because the lid had a guide to the kind of chocolate contained in the box, but that's not important right now). =D

February 14,1971 – Ten years have gone by. I’m a teenager. We receive news from Cuba that my grandmother has died. “N-E-S-T-L-E-S, Nestle’s makes the very best. Cho – co – late.”

February 14,1976 – The U.S. Bicentennial. Is it possible that we’ve been here for fifteen years? I’m a brand new and very proud American citizen. I love America. I love American history. I love my bag of Hershey’s Kisses wrapped with a red, white and blue ribbon.

February 14, 1986 - It has been twenty-five years since we left Cuba. I have children of my own. Little Cuban-Americans who love M & M's (plain and peanut).

February 14,1991 – Thirty years is a lifetime. We learned a new and hopeful word – “perestroika.” The chocolates come in beautiful golden boxes from Godiva.

February 14, 2001 – My mom calls me to wish me a Happy Valentine’s Day and to remind me that it has been forty years. The tradition, like the chocolate, is bittersweet. My father has passed away. I hope to keep my promise to him to scatter his ashes one day in a free Cuba. I continue the chocolate tradition with my own children. I bake and decorate a beautiful chocolate layer cake.

February 14, 2008 – Today. My mom calls me to wish me a Happy Valentine’s Day and to remind me that it has been forty-seven years since we left our homeland.

Call me crazy, but I will forever equate the taste of chocolate with the taste of freedom.

I am unapologetically a lover of both.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Chocolatón (Chocolate Mousse) Recipe

• 6 eggs (separate whites and yolks)
• 1 12 oz. Pkg. Nestlé’s semi-sweet chocolate chips (reserve a few for topping)
• 2 sticks butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. Vanilla

1) Melt the butter and chocolate chips together. This can be done on top of the stove in a double boiler, or in a microwave oven for about 1 1/2 minutes.

2) Stir the melted chocolate and melted butter together until smooth.

3) Whip the egg whites into a fluffy meringue.

4) When the meringue starts to peak, add the sugar, bit by bit.

5) Fold in the egg yolks.

6) Add the (warm) chocolate mixture and the vanilla to the meringue.

7) Gently blend together until it is completely mixed.

8) Pour into a serving bowl or individual cups.

9) Chill for at least an hour before serving.

10) Decorate with chocolate chips.

Buen Provecho!