Life, Death and Bocconcini con Crema

Image by Protoflux on Flickr

I have taken a break from writing over the holiday season, not necessarily consciously, however my personal life has been so busy that I just haven’t found the time to gather my thoughts. I have been training for the ING half marathon, competing in Lululemon’s 12 days of fitness, buying/wrapping gifts, traveling to visit family members and working a 40-hour job. Yesterday was a wake-up call, though. My great-grandmother passed away, after a full life of 95 years, in a hospice room with the air thick with unease. 

You see, there are times when families can be the hardest on each other, imposing impossible demands in the most difficult of situations. While I thankfully have been able to keep my distance from the madness, this has also provided an outsider’s view on the situation. Life and death are not simple. Nothing is ever black and white, there comes a time in everyone’s life where a decision made will haunt them forever. But it shouldn’t be that way – we shouldn’t beat ourselves up (or our family members, those we are supposed to love and support) for decisions that NO ONE would have been able to make. When it comes to a 95 year old woman on her last leg of life, is it better to force her to eat, willingly prolonging the inevitable? Or is it better to listen to a doctor’s seemingly cold, unemotional response to allow your great-grandmother…grandmother…mother starve to death?

Whilst these thoughts soar through my brain and out into cyberspace, I do feel better. I’d love to provide a proper farewell for my great-grandmother, but the truth of the matter is that I really didn’t know her that well. My memories of her are fading, as most are from when I was very little. I remember eating at her house many weekends, near the beach and quite a distance from my grandmother’s house. She would prepare homemade pasta, tomato sauce, and cream puffs. My cousin and I would play around her house, decorated as if she never left the seventies. She would wear flowery dresses and dress suits, I remember one dress in particular: dark blue background, flowing to the floor, tiny white flowers dotting the entire length of the dress. And I remember the large palm tree near her front door, she let someone take the heart of it one day and my grandmother got angry, fearing it would be killed. I’m not sure if it died or not.

Sadly, these are the most memories that I can conjure up of her. I remember that she always had a preference for my cousin, never really paying much attention to me. I had more than enough attention from my own grandmother, so I never felt that I was missing much of anything. I don’t blame her for anything that happened, the family is full of strong women and they overpowered her. My aunts always took center stage, the youngest of the siblings and the fact that they are twins.

And so, I believe the best way to show my appreciation, my memory of her, is through her food: the one thing that I will never forget about her. While this is not her exact recipe, this is my own rendition of our family’s cream puffs. I hope you enjoy it – cherish these times with your family, and don’t let decisions, whether big or small, come between you. In the end, the only thing you’ll remember is how much, or little, you cared for one another.

___________________________________________________________

Grandma Amato, Matilda Amato, I love you and I wish the best for you. I know you have gone to a better place and that you can rest now, everything is alright. You are in the hands of someone much more powerful, more peaceful, more loving and caring, and he will take care of you now.

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Bocconcini con Crema (Italian Cream Puffs)

For the pastry dough:   

• 4 large eggs
• ½ cup butter
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 cup all purpose flour (unbleached)
• 1 cup water
• Confectioner’s sugar for dusting

For the filling:                  

• 6 large egg yolks
• ½ cup sugar, divided
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 cups milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ½ cup flour

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix sugar, flour and salt for the dough in a medium bowl. Over medium heat, melt butter and water until boiling. Turn off heat and slowly add the sugar mixture, stirring constantly. Continue stirring until the dough forms a tight ball in the pan. Transfer dough into your mixing bowl and beat (either by hand or on low) for one minute to cool the dough. Lightly beat the four large eggs and, once the dough has cooled some, slowly beat in the eggs to the dough. Once it is in a thick paste, with your hands or a spoon, make small balls and transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Each ball should be roughly the size of a walnut. Bake 20-25 minutes on 400 degrees until golden. You should hear a hollow sound when tapping the puff. Allow them to cool on a wire rack.

While the puffs are baking and cooling, boil two cups milk and ¼ cup sugar in a saucepan. In a separate bowl, mix the six egg yolks with the remaining ¼ cup sugar. Slowly add in the flour while stirring constantly. Whisk a third of the boiling mixture very slowly into the bowl with the egg mixture. After mixing thoroughly, start gently pouring the egg/milk mixture into the boiling saucepan. Stir constantly over medium heat. After it begins to thicken, stir for one more minute and then remove from the heat. Stir in the vanilla and cinnamon and transfer to a cool bowl. Put in the refrigerator for at least two hours to cool.

Once the puffs and cream is cooled, carefully cut the tops off of the puffs lengthwise and spoon out any dough from the center. Using a pastry bag or a spoon, add the cream to the center of each puff and replace the tops. Sprinkle all with confectioner’s sugar and serve. They will keep for up to one day in the refrigerator, however they are best served immediately.

The World’s Largest Cruise Ship

I had the honor of being invited on Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas for its pre-inaugural sailing on November 26th. The ship itself is absolutely stunning, even better than the Oasis, which was a very hard ship to top.

Thought was put into every tiny detail of the ship’s construction, from the major architecture to the smallest art pieces strewn throughout. The picture above is of the “hidden” art pieces, which the Oasis of the Seas also features.

I was invited to be a guest blogger for CheapOAir (offering airline tickets), where I have published a full article about the Allure’s art. Please check it out here:

http://cheapoair.typepad.com/guest-travel-blog/2010/12/allure-of-the-seas.html

It’s all Chinese to me…

Photo by Mike Behnken

Before going forward, I’d like to share a little about myself and my passions. Language is something that fascinates me, therefore I’ve written this piece to share a little about my background with language. I hope you enjoy it and feel free to leave comments.

History is intoxicating. It stirs something in my soul to walk the same footsteps that mankind has for hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, of years.  My love affair with history is what prompted me to start studying Chinese culture. I’ve held a certain fascination for foreign cultures, especially languages, my entire life. A frequent traveler, my grandmother would bring me newspapers and advertisements in Arabic, Greek, French, and many other foreign languages as she jetted around the world. I remember being in my pre-teen years, when I was mostly a bookworm and less of a teenager, locked up in my room trying to decipher the characters in an Egyptian newspaper. While I was competent in Romance and Germanic languages, I never possessed the right materials or was dedicated enough to learn any of the more difficult Sinitic or Semitic languages. At least that was true until this year.

 I began my journey into the Chinese culture by scouring the local business listings for Chinese grocery stores and restaurants – but not the “Americanized” versions; I wanted to immerse myself into the real culture of China. Unfortunately, Miami seems to be one of the large cities that does not have a standout “Chinatown”, as New York, San Francisco, and several other big US cities have. I delved further into the listings and was able to find a few options in the South Florida area. However eating Dim Sum, cooking Chinese delicacies at home, and learning to use chopsticks properly just weren’t enough: I needed to know more, I needed to learn the language.

 Budget restrictions have forced me to find free resources for learning the language. Thankfully, due to the immense amount of free information on the internet and in local libraries, I was able to start learning right away. Livemocha.com is now one of my favorite websites. I attribute most of my current Chinese knowledge to Livemocha, which has been a tremendous learning tool that I am constantly recommending. But, as many language-learners can relate to, there is a difference between learning a language through textbooks and learning by example. I have been fortunate enough to start a language exchange, through my membership in the International Language Service Corps, with a woman in China. While I have only spoken a few times with her, it has been an extremely rewarding experience.

I will be a life-long student; I enjoy learning as much as I enjoy using the knowledge acquired. Whether or not you believe in the story of Babylon, if all the languages of the world were made to keep us from understanding one another, this hurdle has been rendered irrelevant in our new age of instant information. The next time you travel to a foreign country, make sure to learn a little about the culture and their language. You will be surprised at how much more you can understand than just the meanings of a few words.