"La Dieta Cubana" is a wonderful thing.
It begins with: BREAKFAST
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and we begin it with the drink of generations. Nothing will put your metabolism in gear quicker than caffeine and calcium. For Cubans, this is breakfast: Cafe con leche. Café con leche is to the Cuban child what a triple-shot, double-vanilla non-fat mocha latte dark is to a member of Corporate America. Cafe con leche is parental love trapped in the lactating walls of an espresso existence. Café con leche is simply what it is: coffee and hot milk sweetened with sugar and stirred with motherly love. There is nothing that compares to the feeling of drinking hot cafe con leche in the morning before school and there is nothing in my adult life that has ever come as close to giving me the same amount of joy.
TORTILLA
Cubans will take beaten eggs, add anything and everything available in the refrigerator, fry it up in a pan and call it a tortilla.Then they will take this egg concoction and put it between two seven inch slices of Cuban bread and call it a Pan Con Tortilla (carbohydrates, Protein, Fat, Starch and Cholesterol all rolled into one small piece of taste bud heaven).
And it is a proven fact that when you combine carbohydrates, protein, fat, starch and cholesterol into one meal they all counteract each other and have absolutely no effect on the human body. Of course, that human body has to be Cuban... " Porque en Cuba, nadie padecia de colesterol, ni la gente engordaba por comer arroz".
RICE
For dinner every meal has to have rice. Poor, Dr. Atkins. He would not have been a great hit in Cuba. El arroz es para la comida lo que el cafe con leche es para el desayuno. Los americanos te comen brocolli, baked potato y carrots en vez de arroz .Nosotros lo acompanamos todo con arroz. El arroz es el guarda espaldas de la carne. Te sirve como barrera contra los platanitos maduros. Como guardia contra la lechuga y el tomate que te visitan en el plato. Eso de comer la ensalada en otro plato es cosa de los americanos, tambien para complicarle la vida a la pobre lechuga que desea visitar su amigo el arroz con su primo el tomate. El arroz es la montaña que te lleva a los valles de frijoles negros y colorados. El arroz es puro, blanco, con una cobertura brillosa de aceite espanol. El arroz es divino y proviene del cielo. Claro que eso me lleva al tocinillo del cielo.
POSTRES
And that has nothing to do with bacon or tocino or chorizo. It's more like a natilla, which is more like a creme brulee, which reminds me of a custard, which reminds me of a flan. Flan is yellow heaven. Cheese Flan is yellow heaven con queso crema. Queso crema reminds me of queso blanco. Queso blanco reminds me of its blushing sister la guayaba. Together they don't make a family, they make a timba. But timbas can be too sweet so I prefer a flan. Egg yolks whipped with sugar, evaporated milk, vanilla and the magical ingredient consumed by Cubans old and new, from here and there and everywhere...
LECHE CONDENSADA, AH!
La Leche condensada: a beautiful Elmer's glue concoction sweetened by the Gods and created by Carnation to remind me everyday of my infinite Cubanness and my bloodline's love of caña and guarapo. Leche condensada: created by man to be mixed with the other heavenly creation known as Malta. Malta and Leche Condensada: the Cuban nutrition solution for skinny children who don't want to eat or can't seem to keep any skin on their bones. Malta and Leche Condensada is Papa's version of Laverne's Milk and Pepsi only better because it's sweeter, more rustic, less commerical and better simply because it's Cuban in nature....
