On this, our first outing with Beauty Come Forth, I am honored to introduce myself as your Food and Travel Editor. I look forward to spending time with you and I invite you to return time and time again. I am very excited to say that each month we’ll be exploring our culinary palettes together, as I share delicious and memorable food experiences with you.
Having been blessed with the ability to travel to many foreign destinations, each month you will receive relative information, including recipes, regarding gorgeous food and gorgeous places!
I fondly title this piece “Altura y Angeles” (Altitude and Angels). Some would ask why? For me, altitude carries with it, a “double entendre” as the French would say, or rather a “double meaning”. While altitude depicts getting to higher place, we can actually do this without ever leaving the ground! I see gaining altitude as a state of mind! Delicious food can cause us to ascend to higher places and oftentimes we want to stay there! As cliché as it might sound, in the midst of a sumptuous meal, we are all catapulted to extraordinary altitudes.
I also believe in angels. Angels are beings who can only operate in the positive realm—regarding absolutely everything. Thoughts of their ethereal, dreamy, breathtaking presence captures my attention and I equate this to placing a spoonful of freshly made butter cream icing into my mouth. Your eyes close and you feel as though an angel has kissed you on the cheek! It is a taste of heaven that sends you soaring. As a matter of fact, an angel is also someone who will make you a pot of chicken soup when you feel under the weather! I know chefs and home cooks alike who are gifted angels, transforming every dish into a masterful, gastronomic creation. Sitting at their table, I am often poised for a lofty adventure!
Allow me to share my personal view of cooking. First of all, to me good food is like unrequited love. I want it and I am inconsolable when I can’t have it. I compare cooking to a gardener working with her hands in the tierra (soil), enveloped in the sweet catharsis; feeling the cool, rich soil underfoot as she plants. Cooking can liberate you from worldly troubles like a hot bubble bath at the end of a long day. As you may have guessed, I love to cook. When I am not cooking, I am thinking about what to cook. There are times when I lay in bed, imagining what two things put together will taste like and look like. It could be as simple as toasting a slice of French bread, then layering it with a wedge of Brie cheese and a slice of the sweetest stone fruit or it could be a Thanksgiving dinner for thirty guests, inspired by dishes from countries all over the world. I can’t think of a better way to create a Divine connection, as well. Cooking quiets my spirit and clears the way for me to hear my inner voice, so that answers to things I am questioning begin to flow. It also inspires me to be healthy and cook healthy for those I love. To sum it up, I am in my sweet spot when I cook!
Through traveling for the past twenty-five years, I have been fortunate to set down on numerous exotic and indigenous places. Just this year, I’ve made over twenty trips to Brazil. The country is known as a dreamy exotic, beautifully landscaped place in both the plateau and coastal regions. When we think of Brazil we often think of its beaches, samba, thong-clad women, handsome men, delicious food, popular Caipirina drinks (pronounced “kie peh reena”), Acai berry, surfers, soccer and gorgeous children. Ninety percent of the country is situated between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer. This accounts for its temperate and tropical climate. The average temperature in Plateau cities such as Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte Brazil and Brasilia, its capital city is sixty-six degrees, while the average temperature in the Coastal region, like Rio de Janeiro is eighty degrees. Temperatures in the Amazonian region average about seventy degrees. The summer months are considered December through March, opposite of the United States and the temperatures can rise.