does that word truly exist in my dictionary?

barely =)

my husband likes

multi-color lights at Christmastime — in the house, outside, on the tree. Absolutely not me.* So after I moved in, we were in a festive impasse (ehem!). And I decided we should take turns: one year white lights, the next year multi-colored lights. He always, I mean like, every year, asks: this is the color lights year, right?

i am pretty certain he knows exactly

when it isn’t, but I am savvy enough to photograph the Christmas tree every year if only for this specific purpose. Mamma raised no fool.

what we do agree on,

with no need to compromise, is the food. And we wonder, as we do about the Thanksgiving meal, and Easter too, why we don’t have some of the holiday dishes throughout the year.

i mean, why not have coquito in, say, may?

Coquito is eggnog made with coconut milk, condensed milk, Puerto Rican rum (Don Q rum if i have a say), and other yumminess. Yes, I make it from scratch. We all do — in my family.

then there are pasteles:

minced, shredded, or diced meat cooked with whatever you want in it (sort of picadillo style), inside a root vegetable dough — TRUST ME, they are delicious — wrapped in banana leaves, then steamed or boiled. Only my thinks-he’s-Rican husband and I do this.

it is a lot of work but well worth it

I will endeavor to make more after Christmas for special nights when we don’t feel like cooking. We have a few meals in the freezer already — we make a large number of our favorites and tv-dinner them =). Digressed. Another Christmas tradition is rice with pigeon peas

(just the sound of that legume in english

grosses me out, it’s better in Spanish: gandules), which we don’t cook much because I haven’t been crazy about it (could it be because of the word?), but have a sudden hankering to give it a try. Even though I am not, and have never been, a friend of peas.

last, but by no means least,

there’s pernil: pork shoulder marinated with garlic, sofrito, and other yumminess), which is roasted until the meat “falls off the fork” and the skin is so crispy one can eat it like a cracker. And we fight for it — that’s a slight exaggeration.

D isclaimer (for sure): if the Christmas tree was to be on a beach, the color of the lights would not matter at all.

C H E E R S