I guess that is why I cringe as I notice the erosion of liberty going on in our society. Many well meaning entities wanting to tell us even something so basic as what we should eat and drink. Let us learn, even educate one another and then make our own choices!

But getting the information we need is not always easy, for example some of us might not want to eat genetically modified food. Fifty other countries label it as such, but not yet the US. California is trying to remedy that with Proposition 37, the  California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act 
which will require that genetically engineered food be labeled, so that we have the freedom to choose wether we want to buy it or not. I think the companies fighting this are afraid of what the consumers will choose. If it passes in California, it will benefit the rest of the country. You can learn more about it  HERE






This recipe will have you making some choices, since it is not very exact...but it is delicious! I will give you the recipe for a normal size cucumber (I used a giant one this last time), but it's all very much to taste. This is the way my mother always cooked, and I do take after her in that respect.

Two types of tomatoes and a very large cucumber my niece Michelle gave me

A great many of the delicious foods that came out of Mamina’s kitchen began with a sofrito. It is the seasoning base for many Cuban dishes. Sofrito is sauted onions, peppers, garlic and sometimes tomatoes.

I love to eat sofrito on crackers, sprinkled with a little salt. I remember as a child, I would be busy playing and in the back of my mind, I would be paying attention to when the smell of the sofrito reached its crescendo. I became quite adept at getting to the kitchen at that crucial moment when the flavors peaked. Too often, though, I would be unwilling to interrupt my games and by the time I got to the kitchen, I had missed it by just a few seconds, such disappointment. The sofrito was gone into the soup! What a waste, I thought at the time.

After my parents came to live with us, my mother loved to make her delicious food for my children. This got her started using a small food processor for making sofrito. She chopped things quite finely because at least one of my sons would not eat anything that had onions in it, if he could recognize them, and it is not Cuban food without onions. I like the texture of onions so I don’t chop so finely, and since I’m not his grandmother I don’t have to cater to that finicky son.

Sometimes in her later years Mamina would separate a little bit of sofrito on a plate for me. By the time I got to it the sofrito would be cold and not quite as yummy as when you get it out of the frying pan during that brief moment of extraordinary flavor. However, I knew she had thought of me, and I felt loved.

To make a basic sofrito, sautée onions, garlic and green peppers in olive oil. The gentle heat persuades them to release their amazing flavors, and when you mix the sofrito into the soup, rice, chicken, etc. the result is a flavor you can’t accomplish with dry spices. Some ingredients increase, decrease or disappear altogether, depending on what the sofrito is meant to flavor, (I will note this when necessary) but this is the basic recipe:

Olive oil to generously coat frying pan
1 onion
1/2 to 1 green bell pepper
3-5 garlic cloves
1 8 oz can of tomato sauce
(You can use fresh tomatoes, but she rarely did.)

Chop the onion, pepper and garlic large or fine, depending on your family’s preference. Sauté vegetables gently in the olive oil over medium heat. When the onions are translucent, add tomato sauce and cook the ingredients on low for a couple of more minutes to blend the flavors. At this point, you can add other things to the sofrito. For example, if you are making sofrito to use in Fricasé, you would add the chicken and potatoes to the sofrito. Otherwise, you can add the sofrito to something else, like beans that have been cooked until soft.

I also love sofrito because it is such a nice simple recipe that can be repeated or modified to bring great results. Just a few steps, a simple thing really, and it makes everything better.

I was trying to think of an acronym to help my children remember what goes into a sofrito. My daughter in law Tara came up with GO GO (garlic, olive oil, green peppers, onions). I guess that could work, since we came to the US in the late 60’s, when there was “go go dancing”, “go go boots” etc, but here is another idea. Just think of OPTIMISM and GRATITUDE, doubled. Two things that always make things better are OPTIMISM and GRATITUDE, especially if you add a little tomato sauce!