recipes

Many years ago, my sister and I were sent to cooking school to learn a trait that every lady of the house needs to know. Our home was also El Salvador’s Embassy in Lima, Peru, and in a household like that, to have a cook, who is not adequately supervised, it is not appropriate. My father was a widower, remarried, although his second wife had left home a few years after their marriage. When she left the responsibilities of running our home came to rest on to my older sister and me. We had to supervise the Embassy service personnel and make sure it adheres to the diplomatic protocol.

Every once in a while, my older sister agreed to it, but it was not her thing. She was a bit of a rebel and considered herself an unrecognized-artist and decided that she had to live up to that. On the other hand, I had a sense of responsibility substantially more extensive than my years, and most of the time, I ended doing what I needed to do to have a well-run Embassy.
My father groomed us in the art of entertaining correctly, as quite often, he received diplomats and government representatives of all levels. They need to attend with the appropriate protocol they deserved, from seniority’s seating at the diner table to the flower’s displays and menus, china, glassware, and flatware, and training and supervising of the butlers serving the highly respected participants.

As I already mentioned, my sister and I assisted to cooking classes with a well-known cook in Lima. She started before me, then I joined, and we both thought it was fun. As we learned and practiced the recipes, we brought them home and taught it to the cook; she would chop, mixed the ingredients, and started cooking the dishes, and my sister or I would visit the kitchen to check on the taste, the spices, the cooking time, and voilá! The fancy meals served in elegant sterling silver trays would be for us the immediate family and friends, as we were eight to fifteen people sitting daily at the table, or for formal dinners, that served up to 24 sitting people. So, in our minds, we thought we were terrific cooks and hostess. Although, parties more significant than that were taken care of by catering services.

This lifestyle stopped soon after we returned to our country, and my father was not a part of the active diplomatic corp. Two years later, I met my husband, and my life changed forever in a more down to earth way.

Immediately after I got married, my husband and I moved to Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, Spain. We had a terrific maid to do the cleaning and maintaining the house; sometimes, she would help me with the cooking, but the chopping, the peeling, the mixing, the ingredients needed, and cooking time it had to be done by me. A remarkable difference from what I knew until then! Very quickly, and with my husband’s suggestions, I started to learn to simplify the menu, the size of the meals, as well as the time I wished to dedicate to that endeavor. So my cooking became more homely.
A few years later, when we moved to the States, I experienced another significant change. Our family was growing, and I had to get used to have no help at home, to cook daily, and to make dishes that were fast, simple, and nutritious. Again, at my husband’s suggestion, with my mother in law help, I started simplifying my cooking and she gave me recipes that help me dearly. She was an uncomplicated but terrific cook.
After my husband died and my children were growing up, I had to adjust once again. I became very conscious of nutrition. And soon after I got treated for cancer, I realized that food was fundamental in the healing process. Accepting that forced me to focus more on organic meals, eliminate all possible carcinogenic ingredients, and start focusing on organic-oriented eating. I eliminate all red meats, lowered the amounts of salt and sugar in our diet, and used strictly non-GMO ingredients.
Later on, as I had to go to work for a living, my cooking has to simplify even more. I was still looking into balanced meals with an emphasis on nutrition, using strictly organic ingredients, so my cooking got more creative and uncomplicated by the day!
A few years later, my older son was diagnosed with Celiac Sprue (gluten allergy), and to simplify my cooking, I had to find ways to cook for my two sons and myself with gluten-free ingredients. In the 1990s, gluten-free products were not very sophisticated. We live in southern New Hampshire, and the area supermarket offered near to nothing in the gluten-free area; I tried to find them online, but it was too early the internet food sales at the time, as well as it was almost a non-existing market at the time.

One of my sisters and her family lived in Ottawa, Canada, and I visited them regularly. On one of those visits, I discovered a place near her home, well supplied with gluten-free products. That was fabulous to me, so every time I visited her, I made sure I filled the trunk of my car with gluten-free goods to the limits allowed to pass through customers, stacking our pantry for months. The ironic side to this was that few months after this, I discovered that it was a hangar-size natural food market not far from our home, with everything I could need for my new gluten-free cooking. So crossing the border with Canada was simpler!

Experimenting with our new diet, I tried different approaches with my old recipes using only gluten-free products, not without difficulty; my gluten-free cooking was more trial and error. But practice makes perfect, and after some dishes ended up in the garbage can, my new cooking diet started to improve.

Although I must recognize that gluten-free (GF) products had have improved tremendously through the years since the gluten-free diet started to become a trend. They are a few recipes that I can not substitute with GF ingredients because it would change the dish’s integrity. Usually, it is an easy transition.
I must add that baking is another story, in baking there are fewer recipes that substitutions would work out. Although I am not a baker, and that cooking area is not my forte, I must admit that no ingredients could be substituted by gluten-free products easily in baking; if you want to bake, I would advise using gluten-free recipes.

Note:
I will start introducing my recipes for you to try them.
The ones strictly gluten-free will be marked (GF) for everyone to distinguish it.