Task 3: Many of us live in, or have lived in, cultures different from our own. What food or drink did you find most exotic when you lived away from home? If your significant other is from another culture, how do you incorporate both your favourites into your traditions? Alternatively, do you have any cultures whose holiday food traditions particularly intrigue you, that you have incorporated into your own celebration?
I generally try to spend Christmas at home; it’s probably the one time of the year that still, even now, most connects me with the place where I grew up. However, of all the memories of times when I did spend Christmas abroad, two stand out in particular: one of a trip to Sicily, where we rang in New Year’s Eve with a few bottles of Marsala on the beach, near the temple ruins of Selinunte (to be followed, later that night, by a lavish Italian holiday dinner with all the trimmings and much Mediterranean exuberance); and the other one a five-week long trip to Mexico and Guatemala, beginning on Christmas Day in Mexico City, with a sumptuous daily Mexican breakfast buffet at our hotel (including huevos rancheros, chili, salsa, tortillas and every other type of Mexican food that you can even arguably have for breakfast), and where another one of that trip’s many highlights was a Mexican style New Year’s Eve gala dinner — uvas a medianoche (grapes at midnight: the Hispanic good-luck custom) and grapes in the form of red wine included, of course — at a place called Hacienda Cocoyoc, which to this day has remained one of my all-time favorite hotels in the entire world. (I’ve always wanted to return there ever since; alas, the opportunity never arose.) And although I’m not sure I’d want to do this all the time, for once I even enjoyed starting the New Year’s Eve celebrations with a poolside Piña Colada.
