Marta here: I'm celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month: Cuban-Style with a series of stories about Cuban American families: Cuando Sali de Cuba, stories of courage and hope. Today's story comes from MS. She owns and operates the online store, A Taste of Cuba. *Tissue warning!* I was born in ...
The Circle of Life – Lion King 3D and Eternal Disney Uber-geeks
Back in 1994, I took Amy and Adam to the premiere of the Disney film, The Lion King at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. This was obviously before Lucy and Jonathan were born. We all loved the film so much that we couldn't wait to own it when it was released on VHS. (Yes, this is waaay back in the day.) A few years later, when we added ...
Fricase de Pollo Recipe – a lo Cubano
As you know, I've recently been participating in Mizkan's™ Cooking Challenges. See here and here. To kick off Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 through October 15), we were asked to share a recipe from our country, or "Receta de Mi Pais." For this challenge, I chose to enter one of my ...
Cuando salí de Cuba – Christina’s story
Marta here: I'm celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month: Cuban-Style with a series of stories about Cuban American families: Cuando Sali de Cuba, stories of courage and hope. This one is from my friend and fellow blogger, Christina Gomez-Pina. Inspired by the book/film Julie & Julia, she has embarked on her own Project: to celebrate ...
La Mala Letra – my cousin, the dissident Cuban blogger
As many of you know, I still have family in Cuba. Aunts, uncles, cousins and their offspring. We used to be thick as thieves back in the day, but time and distance and a repressive dictatorship has managed to destroy what close relations we had. I have a cousin in Cuba, who is my age. (One of the few photos of us together from ...
A lesson in Male vs. Female problem solving
We have had some seriously schizophrenic weather here in the O.C. in the past week. First there was a string of really ridiculously surface-of-the-sun type hot days in the 100+ range. Then, poof! The hot weather disappeared and there was a thunder-lightning-downpour with a nice cool breeze. All that to say that when the weather changes in ...
It takes a village. (iVillage to be exact.)
According to Wikipedia:Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15–October 15) in the United States is the period when people recognize the contributions of Hispanic Americans to the United States and to celebrate Hispanic Cultural heritage and Hispanic culture. Hispanic Heritage Week was approved by President Lyndon Johnson and was ...
Ten years later. I will never forget.
Ten years ago at the end of September of 2011, my daughter and Amy went to New York City. We were there exactly two weeks after Muslim jihadists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center buildings and left a gaping hole in the New York skyline and in our collective American consciousness. The wreckage was still smoldering and burning and the ...
Why I * heart* Amazon
My family and I are all voracious bibliophiles. Voracious. Personally, I don't care either way if the book is the old-school paper kind or a good e-book. I love to read. Full stop. I have been loving the free Kindle for iPad app because I can store dozens of books on my iPad and make notes and add highlights and do all the things I ...
Da life.
We just returned from an amazing cruise vacation in the Caribbean. And while our bodies are physically back home, our brains are still here:Me & Eric in Barbados. (I think he looks like a mad scientist in his swim goggles, but that's not important right now.) I swear, I haven't got one original thought in my head right now. ...









