Día De Reyes
I am a little late posting this; but as they say better late than never.
January 6th is Día de Reyes (3 Kings Day), the 12th day after Christmas or Epiphany. Here it is common to eat a special bread on that day called, Rosca de Reyes. It is a sweet bread and is in the shape of a wreath. It has sweet/candied fruit on it and in it and is very good. The "catch" to eating this bread, other than the calories, is what is also inside of it. In every bread there is a "baby", it is to symbolise the baby Jesus. Whoever gets the baby is supposed to host a party on February 2nd, Día de la Candelaria or Candlemas.
I happened to be down at Ciro and Irenes and Irene offered me some of this bread. I, laughingly said, "no, I don't want that in case I get the baby". We all had a laugh and Irene assured me that she had already gotten the baby in this particular bread. She gave me a big piece for Roy and I and I went home. Naturally, I couldn't just let it sit on the counter so cut a piece. The knife seemed to tear the bread at a certain point and when I looked closer, sure enough there was "the baby". I had a good laugh and then went downstairs and knocked on Ciros door. When they answered the door, I just held up the baby. We all had a good laugh and then Irene went and got her baby to show me. I said that I guessed we would be having a good party on the 2nd with 2 babies in the same bread. It was funny. If you are ever here around 3 Kings Day, I suggest that you try the bread, as it is tasty.
The "baby".
Since G./F. arrived on Friday it seems that we have been doing nothing but eating. Yesterday Irene wanted us all to have lunch with their family. She was going to do an all seafood meal. She knows I am interested in cooking and asked me if I would like to come and watch some of the preparations. Naturally, I said yes.
I went down and they were already busy in the kitchen. Nancy was making bacon wrapped, cheese stuffed shrimp. I have already made these; but I stuffed them with grated Chihuahua cheese. She was using little strips of cream cheese and it was much easier to stuff the shrimp. I had trouble keeping the cheese inside while wrapping it with the bacon, so using the cream cheese overcomes this problem.
Irene was busy making a crab dish. She had cleaned the crab shells, and then washed them with soap and bleach and then rinsed them off. The bleach step is very important she told me, to prevent illness. She then mixed the cooked crab meat with mayonnaise, it looked and tasted at this point like a crab salad sandwich filling. She then stuffed the shells with this mixture. After stuffing them she lightly beat an egg and then put the egg over the crab stuffing in the shell, then she coated the egg with breadcrumbs. To cook this she put the shells in a frying pan and spooned hot oil over the mixture in the shell. Basically what she was cooking was the egg/crumb mixture. They came out of the pan with the crumbs golden brown, the crab itself was warm; but not hot. Very attractive presentation and very tasty. While we were busy cooking, well Irene was and I was watching, Irene and I had a very interesting chat about the differences between pensions in Mexico and Canada and other things, very enlightening.
The menu included: fish soup, coco shrimp, breaded shrimp, cheese stuffed/bacon wrapped shrimp,the crab, seafood ceviche, followed by seafood cocktail. The seafood cocktail was served after the main course and by that time I was too full to have one; but Irene had graciously allowed me to taste all the ingredients before they went into the cocktail, it was a combination of many things of which I cannot remember all the names.
G./F. had wanted to take us out for dinner last night before they caught their bus back to Yuma. We were all too full to go out for another big seafood meal which I think had been the plan, so we all decided to just go to the torta place instead. When we got downstairs, we convinced part of Ciro/Irenes family to go with us. Then Irene told us that she had prepared everything to have gorditas. We felt bad that she had gone to all that work so back inside their home to eat again. I have to confess that I only had a glass of coke, instead of eating. We are used to eating a large meal at lunchtime and only eating very little in the evening so neither Roy or I were hungry. Ciros family does the same; but most of them managed to eat something anyway. G./F. seemed to enjoy the gorditas.
After the meal was done it was time for G./F. to head for the bus depot to catch their bus north. We drove them there, with not too much time to spare; but they already had purchased their tickets so only needed to sit and wait for the bus to arrive. We said our goodbyes and came home to relax. A busy few days. I hope that their bus trip went smoothly and didn't seem too long and that they enjoyed their stay here. We hope their flight home to Canada on Saturday goes well.
