a Cubanin Hawaii
Hola, Hello and Aloha!
As some of you know, I am a Cuban who ended up in Hawaii....from one beautiful island in the Atlantic to another beautiful island in the Pacific after several years of living in the American South.
Since 1980, I have been involved in the kitchen shop, cooking school and gourmet business, in one form or another, first in South Carolina and later in Miami.
After moving to Hawaii I ran a Bed & Breakfast and cooking school with my son for several years; I've also written a cookbook and became a freelance food writer for several media newspapers, journals and magazines. In partnership with my son I also wrote restaurant reviews for the east side of our island. I became a Food Correspondent for Gather Network Essentials: Food, in Jauary 2007 until February 2009 , where my 'Tropical Taste' columns were published on-line twice monthly.
You can keep up with my adventures and ongoing love affair with tropical food by joining my
GATHER NETWORK, or visiting my food & garden Blog at Sonia Tastes Hawaii. I live in a beautiful rural rainforest area on the Big Island of Hawaii where I love growing herbs, collect Cuban and Hawaiian cookbooks, work closely with several farmers, writing about them and introducing their products, developing and testing recipes with their products, doing food demonstrations around the island, read voraciously and work on crossword puzzles.
I have just started a group in Facebook called Cubans in Hawaii. if you were born in Cuba or are the child of a Cuban and are living on any of the Hawaiian Islands, we would love to have you join us.
I am also co-owner and moderator of the Yahoo The Cocina Cubana Group and the Cooking With Aloha! Akaka Falls Inn - Hawaii Group
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Comments: 14
You have lived an interesting and fun life. I hope I get to visit both Cuba and Hawaii.
I hope you get to visit at least Hawaii and we can meet.....it would be muche asier than going to Cuba - for the time being anyway
I think that after his papers were all settled he moved to an urban area to practice. His name was Alvarez.
I have only a vague memory of him, when at age five, my I saw him for treatment of a particularly bad case of poison ivy. This means though that he had left Cuba before the fall of Batista, so was an early refugee from there.
My mother, from Canada, finally got to visit Hawaii when she was about 65, so I expect to go someday, there just always seems to be something else going on, when vacation time rolls around. During the last ten or so years, I am visiting some of the places I have always wanted to see.
Cubans who left Cuba before Castro are called Émigré, those after Castro are called exiled or refugees....;-) I am an exiled Cuban, not a refuge.
If you are an exiled, would it be harder for your to visit? do you still have family in Cuba?
Our family is scattered all over the globe. Hit almost any place on the world map and I probably have a relative there...;-)
I probably can't go back as long as the present government is in place as we were acused of kidnapping my son - there is a story early on my Gather stint about it....but even if I could or if the C brothers leave, I don't thing I would go back. Things are too different from what I remember and I'd rather keep my memories.
Sad that your family had to scatter to the winds.
I want to go, it was one of the very early places that had Western European colonists, Spain for Cuba, I also want to visit Haiti. Colonized by the French. Rich turbulent histories.
My home town was settled about 191 years ago by French immigrants from Louisiana and Bordeaux. Many of the original street names were French - later changed to numbers when the C brothers took over the government...Many of the original buildings are well maintained and kept painted to this day....in Havana, many of the old colonial buildings are crumbling for lack of care and attention... There is a little gem of a colonial town called Trinidad up in the Escambray Mountains not too far from my home town well worth the time and effort to visit.... where you could almost swear time stood still in the late 1800's...
It is a beautiful country, that's for sure!
Oh heck... my husband won, we ended up in Cancun instead of Hawaii this time around! I will get my way yet, Sonia, we will meet someday! He was not that happy in Cancun... the accommodations were awful for one thing. Our hotel was a 1,000 ft. walk up a hill on an 8 degree incline. The view was great but murder getting there.
One of these days, Duckie!!!!
I am panicking....