Still Dec. 25, 2011
Coni and I get back to Carmen’s at 11:00. This is a feast of grand proportions. It is even named after one of the dishes: pozole. Hominy corn, chicken, pork in a soup broth with onions. It’s turns out to be the only thing I don’t absolutely love of the evening. (White meat of chicken and I do not like one another.) HowEVER, the peccadillo is scrumptious: hamburger with finely chopped carrots and onions, with puffed up raisins. Major yum. The fruit salad is so different from ours. It includes beets and jicama, (which I had always counted as vegetables) oranges with their skins on, and apples and guavas (guayavas en espanol). The whole ensalata is bright red. There’s mountains of fresh lettuce finely cut by hand a la Subway or McDs to go on the tortillas, but these corn tortillas are store-bought ones and are muy crunchily delectable. The ponche (pawn-chay, punch) has been boiling over a wood fire all day – guavas, apples and one other yet–unremembered-because-it’s-never-been-seen-before fruit with a difficult name. They have thoughtfully set apart a good quantity for me before they added the sugar cane.
There are large and small beers appearing a few at a time. There’s a large bottle of whiskey – until I find out it’s tequila. I thought all tequila was transparent, but no, there are tons of varieties, I am informed.
Celeste, (the six year old daughter of one of Carmen and Coni’s brothers) and I start to dance. She is an amazing dancer: she has rhythm coming out of every little muscle, and she knows where her hips are when she wants to, and her feet are ever so much fun to imitate. Over the next hour and a half, this goes from plain dancing to adding a bit of 1950’s cool moves and another bit of Israeli folk dance, plus more and more athletic jumping to the beat.
Celeste whispers to me toward the beginning of the dancing,” Let’s jump (brincar) every time the song says ‘Ho ho ho; ho ho ho!’” So we do. How many times of jumping 6 jumps in a row, 4 times during the song, as the song repeats at least 14 times, does it take to equal a ton of tequila?
Videos to follow…
