basically it means, "when you're hungry, there's no such thing as stale bread" its a cuban saying and it gained more relevance with the castro regime and the imposition of food ration cards. i was born in cuba, and my family and i lived through that for many years before we were able to come to the united states, and one of my memories of that day we arrived in miami was all of us at the hotel we were staying at with our family and my mom needing some milk and all we had to do was go into the hotel corridor and there was a vending machine with milk in it. we were not so used to being able to get food so easily and readily. i remember the first BK Whopper i ever had; it seemed so huge to me at the time. because i was born before the revolution, i remember how it used to be and what it became. i also know what it was like for my family. because of all these things i probably became the food obsessive-compulsive that i am today. nothing in my home ever goes to waste.
today i made a batch of vegetable stock. i like to make my own stocks (vegetable as well as chicken or seafood) because i like the freshness and the fact that i can control what i cook with. with the vegetable stock i make use of the parts of all those vegetables that ordinarily would get thrown away. i just keep a freezer bag where i put the broccoli stalks, the ends of onions, carrots, celery, and any other raw veggies that i happen to have cooked with as i go along and would ordinarily wind up in the trash, and then make my own stock when the bag is full.
i often wonder what my life would have been like if my family had not left cuba. i think of what people are going through there now, and food is just one part of their problems. i "feel" my heritage when i cook, i associate my family with the foods and gathering in the kitchen. i'm reminded of where i came from, and what we've done to get to where we are.
VIVA CUBA LIBRE!
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