Moscow on the Hudson: Vladimir looks at the coffee choices in the supermarket and starts repeating "coffee, coffee, coffee, coffe, coffee" and then passes out. Let me send fidel a hearty me cago en tu madre as well.

Val that was priceless ! Thank you for the smile you brought to my face, if I didn't know better I would think we have done the same thing together. Also thank you for reminding me of why we call it Thanksgiving. We also must remember those who aren't as lucky as we are this time of year and always. Best Thanksgiving ever to you and your lovely family from mine.

Freedom, the essential flavor of life. I can smell and taste that soup. Thanks for the great reminder of how blessed we really are on this Thanksgiving.

Fed-ex me una fiambrerita, please!

Somehow this reminded me of the things people do to improvise when their choices are VERY limited, such as in Cuba. A few years ago, I was taking a disability application from a compatriot who had arrived via the Mariel boatlift. He had been working, but unfortunately had suffered an accident.

We had to go over his work history. He told me he had worked unloading trucks. "OK," I asked, "what was it you unloaded?" He paused, then answered: "You know, I unloaded those...you know, what do they call them? Those big pigeons people here like to eat for the holidays." I managed to keep a straight face, gently correcting him - "I'm pretty sure you mean turkeys, you know, pavos..." "Yeah, that's it!," he answered with a smile.

To this day I have visions of a 50-pound pigeon desperately trying to take off as it is pursued by a bug-eyed ax-wielding type intent on having his BIG PIGEON for the holidays!

And now I hear the latest addition to the People's Cuisine is "Conejo del Techo." As in "roof rabbit." Rats!

Great post Val! I need to pick up some bread and milk today so while I look at my choices I will make sure to remember to cagarme en la madre de fidel castro while at Publix! Capitalismo, gotta love it!!!

Fabulous, Val. Just fabulous.

Sounds wonderful.

"Fidel Castro Doesn't Control My Fucking Chicken."

Sounds like a T-shirt idea to me!

no... better yet:

castro doesn't choke my chicken- ja! ja! (sorry- somebody had to say it)

Or "Fidel Castro Chokes the Chicken."

True synergy in action there...

Potty mouth.

And dead-on accurate. Well-said, Val.

Val, how about posting the recipe? I have nothing but fond memories of the chicken soup my grandmother (and later in life my grand-mother in law) would make the second they found out I had the sniffles. They would make it from scratch and with a lot of noodles. Sadly, they both took their recipies to the grave.

Lately, I have to settle for the stuff from Latin American Grill . . . not the same though....

I want the recipe for the soup and the hurricane arroz con pollo, por favor.

Another idea for whoever wants to do the themed T-shirts:

"KagaSStro is fxxx-ing chicken!" With an image of el coma-andante cavorting with poultry, pants down...

On second thought - yechhhh!

I play it by nose but here it is:

Fucking chicken soup recipe:

Ingredients:

- 1 family sized pack of fucking skinless chicken thighs
- 1 green pepper - chopped into 1/2 cubes
- 1 or 2 yellow onions - diced
- couple cloves of garlic - mashed and chopped
- 4 or 5 carrot sticks - cubed into 1/2 to 1 inch
- 4 or 5 celery sticks - cubed into 1/2 to 1 inch
- 2 or 3 mid sized potatoes - cubed into 1 inch or a bit larger
- 1 or 2 malangas - cubed into 1 inch or a bit larger
- a nice chunck of calabaza cubed into 2" or so chuncks
- 1 teaspoon Oregano
- 1 pinch of cumin
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 chicken broth cube (I know this is a cheat, but skinless chicken needs some flavor help)
- angel hair fideos
- a pinch of Bijol
- two tablespoon mojo

Boil enough water to cover the fucking chicken and then some. Add the garlic, onions, green peppers, pepper, salt, mojo, oregano and broth cube. Boil until fucking chicken floats to top.

Set range to medium and remove fucking chicken, set aside until it cools. Chop carrots and celery and add to pot. Peel potatoes and malanga and calabaza.

Fucking chicken should be relatively cool by now so remove fucking chicken meat from bones and add to pot.

Set range to medium high, chop malangas and potatoes and calabaza. When soup has begun to boil a little, add them along with fideos and stir.

When the malangas are soft the soup is ready.

enjoy your fucking chicken soup.

Oh and the Bijol is basically just for a little coloring. Add that when deboning chicken.

nice recipe, although we did it all together at once. Question, does anyone know the name of the Calabaza in English? Up North, where I live, no Latino markets close by, and I haven't seen a single calabaza, closest I come to is an Acorn Squash.

Val, great post, great story, and me cago en Fidel. He IS a chicken....

Adriana, calabaza is simply pumpkin squash. You can also use butternut squash too.

Awesome, Val! How I love your writing!

Adriana, as Mike said, pumpkin squash is it. I've found that small dark-orange pumpkins have the same taste as the Caribbean calabazas.

Folks,
What a joyful happenstance! Just yesterday, Nov. 21, I spent a good portion of the day making and canning 14 pint jars of Cuban calabaza soup.
And I still have close to 60 pounds of fresh calabaza left!
Where the hell did I get all that calabaza?
Simple. I grew it myself.
You see, last year, we purchased a piece of Cuban calabaza at a local market here in Maryland and of course I had to take the "pulpa" and the seeds off before I could cook the vegetable.
And as I always do with organic stuff, I flung the "waste" out of my kitchen window, onto a 10 foot x 30 foot piece of land adjacent to our house, a spot that gets about 6-7 hours of sunlight a day.
So this spring, when a few vines started growing out of that soil in April, I simply started to train them to run one way towards one end of the "garden", then back to the other end, and so on. My main objective, really, was to avoid having to avoid mowing the grass there, because I have close to an acre of land to mow.
Growing the vines was fairly simple, and in virtually no time, I had about 300 square feet of the "mystery vines", which rose almost three feet in height.
To tell you the truth, I thought they were watermelons. I *hoped* they were watermelons, which I love.
To make a long story short, the vines grew six huge "fruits" that looked dark green like watermelons, with the same elongated shape.
I thought that, come the end of summer, I would be in Watermelon Heaven.
Imagine my surprise when I cut one of the "fruits" off the vine, brought it into the house and, after weighing it (it came in at exactly 20 pounds), I cut it open.
It was a calabaza. A Cuban calabaza.
So I peeled it, cored it and boiled about five pounds of it, cut up in chunks. I added some other ingredients from a Cuban cookbook I own and made about 30 "frituras" (fritters). Still have about a third of them in my freezer. They are yummy, even after they have been thawed.
Yesterday, I added a selection of spices to a huge pot of cut up calabaza and slowly simmered the entire mess for about three hours, finally ending up with 14 one pint jars of fairly thick soup.
Once canned, the jars don't require refrigeration, so now they go on shelves in my basement. The soup will serve as a base, because I can obviously add different ingredients to each pint as I open and heat it.
And with some homemade labels, those pint jars will make great personalized gifts for some of my friends and business associates.
Calabaza soup, anyone?
Julio

Val, you rock.

Now, eat your fucking soup before it gets cold.

Julio-Do you ship to LA?

Late commenting, but I had heard the same thing from a Russian emigre back in the '80's. He and his wife went to the "AmEReeCan" grocery store and nearly died. He wanted to discuss this with me at length: How do you know what to choose? They were in the store for hours trying to figure out which this or which that to buy. They had never had the opportunity to make their own choices and, basically, didn't know how to make simple decisions. I told him about price vs quality and price vs supply and how it was the basis of our economic system. He said he had heard about supply and demand, but he'd never seen it in action. He thought it was only a macro-theory; I explained the macro theory was driven by the individual (micro) purchases. His eyes lit up, "Oh, now I see!" I saw him again about a year ago; he's now a raving capitalist. YEAAAAH! (I'm sure he would have gotten there on his own, by the way.)
PS love your blog!

Julio can you ship to RI? Your story, aside from making me very hungry, gives me hope! I will go to a Latino market buy a calabaza and plant the seeds!! Frituras de calabaza!!! What a delicia!