Kathy's Cooking and Eating Adventures

We moved in October and it is surprising how quickly six months have come and gone. I’ve been meaning to add another entry on my blog but there has always seemed to be a good excuse not to do it. The number one problem has been tennis. Any time Teo is not with me, I am on the tennis courts and I have taken my addiction another notch deeper and have started watching lots of tennis matches on television or even highlights on you tube. I recently discovered a former player named Mary Pierce and I love watching how she hits. Another favorite is Alexandr Dolgopolov Jr. who is very inconsistent, but when he plays well, no one can hit his balls!

The one upside with all this tennis is that I entered my first tournament and won in the ladies’ doubles category. It definitely helped having Laverne Stowe as my partner, since she is one of the Tennis pros at Tucker’s Point but I must say that I got the ball over the net plenty of times since the other team specifically was aiming for me instead of Laverne throughout the match. Now the boys have slowly but surely been infected with the tennis bug. Teo hits with these little orange and yellow balls that bounce slower and are softer and we can play “indoor tennis” upstairs in our living room. He makes up all sorts of cute names like “double slice” and “super ace” and it is really cute. Eco has made tremendous progress this year in tennis and I think he will be much better than me in about two or three more years. He loves to do trick shots, like slices and drop shots, but I keep on telling him to work on his ground strokes. It’s funny how kids never listen to their parents but they will really listen to others. I guess that is why I’ve ended up sending them to piano and tennis lessons as I found out the hard way how frustrating it was to teach them myself.

What else has been new these past six months? Humberto travelled a lot. He went to London twice in the winter. Then he did a ski trip to Telluride and another one to Whistler. He also went to Verbier, Switzerland for eight days. He got to stay in this amazing place called The Lodge, which is owned by Virgin Atlantic’s CEO Richard Branson. I think that everyone that gets to stay there is assigned a private servant that takes care of their every need. No wonder he is always in such a bad mood when he gets back to the reality of our Bermuda life where he has to participate in daily chores of bringing up three young boys!

We spent ten days before Christmas in San Diego this year. We came back on Christmas Eve so that the boys could be with their Dad.

For the pictures in the gallery, they are a big mix of Bermuda, San Diego and Miami and are in chronological order.

The first group are taken in San Diego with my sister’s kids Reese and Lana.  Lana had her first birthday party while we were there.  Back in Bermuda,  there are a few pictures of the new house which is just a one minute drive away from our old house. It is a tri-level new construction with a very small yard but a very big driveway. The boys spend most of their free outdoor time on their razors and on their bikes in the driveway. We have also spent a considerable amount of time playing tennis and losing lots of balls that travel down Spanish View Lane and disappear down Knapton Hill.

The pictures with a lot of food are from our short trip to Miami in early February.  We celebrated Humberto’s Grandma’s belated 92nd birthday.  She has made amazing progress and has recovered a lot from her stroke last Spring.  We took the boys to see Star Wars Episode 1 in 3D, took them bowling and had lots of good Cuban food.  Humberto and I discovered this one very traditional diner and we ended up going there for breakfast one morning and lunch the next day.

Even though I’m not supposed to add more information, I just have to write a little bit more about Cuban food in Miami.  It is absolutely wonderful!  Humberto’s parents moved to Orlando from Miami shortly after we met and they would always be complaining about the lack of good Cuban food and bread and pork and pastries in Orlando.  It is really strange that just four hours North, you really can’t find anything that tastes authentic and good.  Never the less, when we are in Miami, we almost always go to a Nicaraguan place called El Rancho.  Humberto took me there when I was pregnant with Eco back in 2002 and I still remember the endless amount of morros (rice and beans) the waiter kept piling on my plate. We always eat steak with chimichurri sauce (tasty green sauce made of parsley and oregano). Dessert is always tres leches.  I found it sickening sweet ten years ago.  It is still sweet but I can handle a few bites.  The boys and Humberto think it is heaven on a spoon!  The photo of Teo eating cherries was taken at El Rancho.  A Cuban restaurant that is a family favorite is called La Carreta.

I absolutely love the Cuban way of serving coffee.  I’m a big fan of using more hot milk than coffee when I drink my coffee and this has always been a huge problem in France.  The French waiters at the coffee shop find it incomprehensible that I would ruin their coffee by adding so much milk so I often have to order a steamed milk and a coffee on the side.  Not so in Miami!

Last but not least, I need to add a few comments on pastellita de guyaba. The first time I saw them, I ordered  four of them to bring home to Humberto’s Grandma.  When I arrived at the house, I found out that they had given me pastries filled with cheese instead of guava paste.  I was so irritated but Humberto said that it was because I pronounced it so poorly.  But please!  There is a big difference between guyaba and queso.  Anyway, these are my absolute favorite and if you are ever in Miami, you must try one.  I even brought some back to Bermuda but unfortunately for me, Teo claimed them and wouldn’t even let me have another bite.

So for anyone that ever wants to go to an amazing diner, the one we loved was called Latin America and it is near 57th and Bird road. I went and looked it up and the name is Luis Galindo’s Latin America and the address is 898 SW 57th Ave Miami, FL 33144.  One morning, we went there for breakfast and I was so impressed with the sandwich maker.  I’ve never seen anyone slice iceberg lettuce so precisely. Each sandwich that he was making was a work of art and I was amazed that he could keep up that level of concentration all day long.

Humberto is sending me to Miami next weekend to see the Sony Ericsson tennis tournament and I think I’ll be renting a car just so that I can go to Latin America, see his family, and go to the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens.  I’ve been wanting to see this place for years but somehow, we never seem to make it when I’m there.  I haven’t been anywhere by myself since May 2010 when I ended up in Manhattan for three days so it’ll be a nice change of pace but hopefully Humberto and I can attend a tennis tournament together in the future.