La Bloga: Gluten-free Caldo de Cocono and Cranberry Sauce You Deserve, Underdog Poets

In Memoriam Bonnie Lambert and José Lozano, QEPD

Michael Sedano

Bonnie Lambert, landscape painted in workshop

José Lozano

As November 2024 drew to a close, Chicanarte lost two giants of the culture within a few days of one another's transition, José Lozano and Bonnie Lambert.(two links to artist websites)

Jose Lozano's engaging line drawings augmented with color and infused with humor and insight into social events and human foibles caught the attention of architects who selected Lozano's tribute to musician La Marisol to adorn the side of a building at the perimeter of el pueblo de Los Angeles and leading into and out of the city's administrative center.

Bonnie Lambert's colorist impressionist canvases never fail to gratify viewers and attract collectors. La Bloga-Tuesday happily shared numerous events that included Lambert. A good friend of fellow painter, Margaret Garcia, Lambert helped Garcia lay tiles in a massive craneo now in the garden at Plaza de la Raza (link). Bonnie sat with others in Garcia's studio the afternoon I sat as the subject (link).

Here are fotos from an exhibition and workshop Bonnie Lambert conducted in Fontana, California in 2022.

Bonnie Lambert after the workshop, finished work on wall.

Lambert's Palette

Bonnie Lambert portrait of a woman painted in workshop

What's in a Name? Cocono, Pavo, Guajolote, Turkey

Michael Sedano

My grandmother was the best poultry dresser in the Inland Empire. People drove great distances to reach De Young's Poultry in Redlands, California, for a turkey dressed by "Emily", gramma's English name. My elementary school teachers loved the bags of feathers I regularly brought.

My grandmother was from Michoacan, purépecha gente, and she brought the word from her tierra. Cocono was gramma's name for the bird, which she raised at home, as well as processed at the poultry purveyor in Redlands. If you've ever heard a live turkey sing you have not heard "gobble" but a throaty cluck that sounds like the name, co-OH-cono, CO-coh-cono.

Thankstaking creates more dismay than a celiac ordinarily endures at mealtime. Traditional holiday feasts come to table laden with gluten: bread rolls, bread stuffing, canned soup-based sauces, crispy onions atop the casserole, pie crust.

There’s cross-contamination in the kitchen with utensils stirring and cutting bread and flour concoctions. There’s cross-contamination on the table with serving spoons and scoops.

Ay de mi, what’s a celiac and other gluten-intolerant tipa tipo to do, when she or he sits at an invited table and cannot be fully in control of the meal prep? Not eat.

The Gluten-free Chicano is grateful that turkey cooks don’t dust a turkey with flour when it’s baked. This means there’s going to be a carcass and soup.

El Gluten-free Chicas Patas happily shares a recipe for the tasty after-thankstaking soup of his dreams. Holiday and any meal featuring cocono means a wondrous caldo in the following days, and lots to freeze for non-turkey eating months.

The basic vegetable mix includes leftovers from the meal preparation, i.e., onion, garlic, carrot, celery, bell pepper, tomato, parsley, papa.

Step 1: remove most of the bird meat and store it to make mole, tacos, curry, à la king dishes. If you’re lucky, you’ll have the neck, wings, and drumsticks. Break the breast away from the back to fit into the pot. If you enjoyed a large bird, save half the carcass, wings, etc. in the freezer for a deep winter soup.

Step 2: rough chop the vegetables. The Gluten-free Chicano saves the tops of carrots and root end of celery for soup.

Step 3: half-fill the soup pot with water.

Step 4: place the carcass and veggies into the water and turn the heat to medium. Cook one hour or until the meat falls off the carcass, legs, and wings. Add water to ¾ fill the pot.

Step 5: Remove the root end chunk of celery and other relatively inedible ingredients.

Step 5 ½: Remove the bones from the water, strip off the meat to return to the pot. Add water.

Step 6: chop and slice onion, celery, carrots, bell pepper, tomato. Add to the pot.

Step 7 (options): add gluten-free rice noodles and cook until al dente; add papas and cook to soft; add rice and boil until the grains blossom; add no starch and enjoy a rich (cloudy) consommé.

Step 8:

dinner bell! Serve with limon and a side of homemade cranberry sauce.

Rough chop veggies for a rustic hearty treat

There's a lot of meat on a turkey carcass. Boiling lets the meat fall right off into the broth.

Break bird to fit, cover with water. This turkey was roasted with citrus.

The kitchen, the whole house, grows redolent with delicious aroma
surpassed only by several bowls.

Here’s The Cranberry Sauce You’ve Waited For

Controversy has attached itself to canned whole-berry or jellied purée; opinions vary on either cranberry sauce, often negative. There’s no reason to strike up a dinnertime whine, just make your own from fresh cranberries.

La nieta has been The Gluten-free Chicano’s cranberry sauce kitchen partner since she was five years old. This sauce is perfect for children to lend a hand during the oft-frantic days before the feast.

Ingredients: fresh cranberries. Sugar. Toronja. Orange. Lemon. Lime.

Step 1: put the cranberries into a cooking vessel. Cover with sugar—not too much, wait to taste and add sweetness as needed. Turn the heat on low.

Step 2: zest the citrus, add to the pot.

Step 3: chop some cascara, one or two inches of zested orange and grapefruit peel.

Step 4: chop a few slices of the citrus fruits add to the pot.

Step 5: you’ll hear the cranberries pop in the heat, and notice liquid begins to build up in the pot. Stir and smash the concoction as it cooks. After ten minutes or so, the mélange is a beautiful amalgam of ingredients. Taste. Add sugar to cut the bite of the berries.

Step 6: transfer the finished cranberry sauce to a spectacular crystal serving bowl, or whatever bowl you have. Clear glass is good to allow the diners a visual treat.

Step 7: refrigerate until an hour before dinner. Let the sauce sit at room temperature.

Cover raw berries with sugar and add more later, to taste.
This is three bags of berries.

There's no substitute for a zester to get just the flavor buds out of a citrus.

Lots of zest and a modicum of citrus pulp make a wondrous treat.

When berries start popping, start smashing.

Citrusy Cranberry Sauce ready for the table

Underdog Bookstore, Hidden Gem in Hidden Gem

One of those hidden gems of a city is Monrovia, California. The city's a short detour off the busy freeway heading to Pasadena to the West, the road to the Inland Empire and Las Vegas on the East, and it's worth more than just a momentary look-see.

The city's beautifully restored Victorian structures house businesses and gente. The shopping district--S. Myrtle Street--is a quaint anti-mall of sidewalk storefronts and unique specialty stores. And in the middle of the district, bookbuyers will find a non-profit community-centric bookseller, Underdog Bookstore (link).

La Bloga-Tuesday is happy supporting this independent business, especially with its active programming of poetry readings and book release events like Carla Rachel Sameth's 2024 reading from her Secondary Inspections (link).

Underdog brought an invigorating reading at the end of November featuring Teresa Mei Chuc and Hazel Clayton, along with an Open Mic. It's a pleasure to share fotos of the readers.