Puerto Rican – Page 2 – Island Girl Cooks

#IslandFlavor: Sweet Plantain Ice Cream

Undoubtedly when I tell someone that I’m Puerto Rican the first thing out of their mouth is “You don’t look Puerto Rican.” I always act surprised and say “Oh? And what does a Puerto Rican look like?” (OK maybe not always. Sometimes I just grit my teeth and use my inside voice.) In case you didn't know, Puerto Ricans are the “Everything Bagel” of race. We're descended from our island’s native Taino Indians, the Europeans that came over in search of gold and the African slaves they brought with them. We come in every color, shape and size. I have cousins with lovely cinnamon skin while I am jincha (slang [...]

#IslandFlavor: My Abuela’s Café Colao

One of my very first memories is of sitting in my Abuela Alicia’s tiny apartment in San Juan. I was five years old and the roar of the highway just outside her window was a sort of soundtrack to her morning routine. The cars honked angrily as she prepared her café colao the same way she had ten thousand times before. I would watch, mesmerized, as she held the well-worn mesh strainer over her coffee cup and let the coffee slowly drip out. Abuela would take these moments to talk to me about some of the challenges that I would face in life. The biggest of which would be surviving [...]