Gluten-free Caldo de Pescado

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks

Mariscos: Good Gluten-free Cooking

Michael Sedano 

“Make sandwiches, we’re going to hike to the wash.” My brother had the plan that sounded good, a walk across the big street, then pass through orange groves to reach the bluff overlooking the Santa Ana River wash. I am not yet five years old and haven’t walked all the way to the wash, and I haven’t made a sandwich, either. 

This is the very first time I’d been asked to cook real food. Up to that point, my cooking, i.e., making food, consisted in shaking corn flakes out of the box into my breakfast bowl. “Make sandwiches” exhausts my knowledge. When my brother unwraps the wax paper he finds two slices of white bread stuck together with yellow mustard.

I make a pretty good sandwich nowadays, but being gluten-free means I don’t eat bread nor tortillas de harina. 

Celiacs, and other food-sensitive gente, understand the difficulties ordering in a restaurant, so cooking your own food makes good health sense and good money-saving sense.

As with any soup, caldo de pescado takes little effort to get onto the stove.  Patience means time. Simmer soups over low heat to allow flavors to blossom and provide a memorable meal.

Carb Counts in a Recipe for Caldo - <100 grams carbs or 25 g per bowl
6 oz fillet Cod 0 gm
Black peppercorns (ground is just fine) - 1g per tsp
Carrots - 8g per cup, boiled
Celery - 4g per cup raw
Cilantro - .7 per sprig
Garlic - 1g per clove
Elote - 17.12g
Onion - 10g large bulb
Rice - 45g cup cooked (potato instead is good, too)
Salt - 0g
Tomato - 4g each
Bay leaf-.45g
Jalapeño chile-.83g
Serrano chile-.41g
Water to make 4 bowls or canned chicken broth
Butter-.01g

Making Caldo: a process with variations
Soup not only is easily prepared, once you've learned the process, you can make any soup your heart desires. With the right ingredients you can do anything. Once you've made your first or second soup your skills will grow and your repertoire with those prep skills and experience.

You can use as many different vegetables as you wish. String beans, potatoes, chayote, squash, cabbage, aguacate. The more often you get into the kitchen the deeper your interest grows in finding different ways to fix a wondrous meal. And you will.

Work at medium heat with a sharp knife.

Chop, slice, and dice to your personal preference. Chop or slice everything to similar size pieces. Imagine a spoonful will have a bit of everything.

Slice the chiles and use only a few slices unless you like it hot. 

Quarter the tomato or chop it. 

Chop the celery and carrots into uniform pieces. Smaller is better for flavoring caldo. 

Cut the kernels off the cob. 

Pour good olive oil into the bottom of the soup pot. 

Wilt the garlic and onion. 

Place the frozen fish atop. 

Add the remainder of ingredients. 

Add broth or water. 

Cover, simmer on low for an hour. Or, use a higher flame and keep an eye on the fish; when it’s all defrosted and the flesh solid, the soup’s done.

Provecho!

Anfitrion's Best Secret: Make-Ahead Feast

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks and Entertains
Anfitrión At the Ready

Michael Sedano, The Gluten-free Chicano

This is that time of year when people behold autumn leaves hanging loosely from bare ruined choirs, when winter and holiday time approach. Celebration time.

The Gluten-free Chicano enjoys entertaining gente and especially serving delicious gluten-free food without complicating the preparation. Inevitably, los guests will bring breads and birongas for themselves and I make sure when I lay out the tables to keep ingredients and serving spoons well separated. Cross-contamination is danger number one of party foods.

One holiday party, the only safe food for me was a bowl of candied pecans. A friendly guest inquired how I liked her nuts—she’d made them—and I enthused without a risqué remark, noting the nuts being stuck in hard clumps. The woman picks up a pretzel stick and smashes it into the candied pecans to separate them and walks away triumphantly. I stare glumly at bits of wheat pretzel embedded in the only gluten-free food at the holiday party.

When you host a pachanga, safe eating at a party is assured. One secret to enjoying a holiday party is planning easy-to-fix-ahead good food, lots of it, and a suitable choice of main comida, like carne asada and pollo; call it a barbeque! 

In fact, that’s what we did when The Gluten-free Chicano recently hosted a housewarming party. The weather held, so we did the entire thing outside next to the grill, Califas style. (The Gluten-free Chicano has friends who barbequed outdoors on a Minnesota winter holiday, Californians to the core!)

Keep It Simple Menu for a Mostly Made-Ahead Celebratory Pachanga

Cheese and salami plate
Pickles
Caprese salad
Charcoal grilled marinated beef and chicken strips
Champagne and Jamaica

Two sharp cheddars and a spicy salami

Cheese and salami plate is finger food but provide napkins and small plates. The larger the guest list the more variety you want; hard and soft cheeses, add fresh fruit, cajeta de membrillo, additional sausages, slivers of carne seca. 

For the Gluten-free Chicano’s recent housewarming Pachanga, we went minimalist with White and Yellow well-aged Cheddars, and a hot salami sausage.

One jar of pickled vegetables for a small gathering is more than enough

Hot garden mix pickled vegetables offer tasty crunchiness that accents the sharp cheese and salami.

Caprese salad with lots of ssliced garlic and yerba buena instead of basil 

Caprese Salad offers elegance and beauty to the table. You can make it four hours ahead and set aside, hasta at room temperature. You need plates and forks for this wonderful salad. An effective serving utensil is essential, wide and flat not spoon.

Fresh mozzarella balls, drain 
best tomatoes possible, slice thick
fresh mint or fresh basil leaves, lots
fresh garlic thinly sliced, 3 or 4 cloves
lime or lemon juice
balsamic vinegar
good olive oil
coarse salt / kosher / sea salt
Romaine lettuce leaves

This salad is easy and fast. Lay lettuce leaves across a flat serving plate. Slice everything, arrange on plate. Sprinkle all over with juice of half a lime or lemon, a scant capful of balsamic vinegar, a TBS of your best olive oil. Sprinkle with coarse salt crystals. Cover and set aside.

BBQ and Beverages

If you don’t have a favorite carne asada or chicken marinade, leave a comment to add urgency to future cooking column plans. La Bloga-Tuesday’s current cooking focus is cold weather caldos and guisados. Soups are winter victuals, perfect for familia and small gatherings. Today’s preparations fed under a dozen and could easily upscale to feed dozens of more.

Jamaica is wondrously easy. Put a handful of dried flowers in a quart of water. Cover and set in sunshine for two hours. Drain, sweeten to taste, chill.

Cooking question? Gluten-free food story? La Bloga welcomes Comments and Guest Columnists. Click the mug fotos at the top of the page to email the editor. Click "Post a Comment" at the bottom of this page.

Gluten-free Provecho, gente!

Wondrous Weekend of Arte, Poetry, Zuppa, Honoring A Poet, A Book Review

 Michael Sedano

Mid-September brings a rich cornucopia of arts events, a surprise award, and oncoming cold weather demands hearty, gluten-free soups. La Bloga-Tuesday is happy to share the week's joys.

Pintor de Poemas: Unseen Works by Alfredo Ramos Martínez Exhibition at Scripps College

Among the best other-than-classroom elements of institutions of higher learning are the diverse contributions to community arts and culture. In Claremont, California, Scripps College exemplifies the best of these with an involving exhibition of a foundational Mexican muralist, Alfredo Ramos Martínez.

Detail: Pareja India. Alfredo Ramos Martínez, 1932

The exhibition features unseen studies in life-size scale of Ramos Martínez' notable paintings and outdoor works. Assembled from private collections and a Los Angeles gallery, the compact gallery thronged with visitors from across the region during the opening reception 

Claremont, California's Scripps College has the final mural Alfredo Ramos Martínez painted, Las Vendedoras de Flores. In connection with the exhibition, Ramos Martínez'  hundred-foot long treasure will be honored with an altar created by Ofelia and Rosanna Esparza, on October 23. 

Scripps College has put together an impressive program to celebrate the exhibition, including a deluxe catalog, and lectures on the muralist's paint compounds, as well as a lecture on Ramos Martínez' distinctive style paying homage to laborers and indigenous gente. For details on the events, here's a link.

The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College 

251 E. 11th St. Claremont, California 91711

September 13–December 14, 2025

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks Comida Italiana

Zuppa Con Polpette, Lee's Green Soup

.

The Strouds were an Air Force family who’d moved next door. My Mom shared Mexican/Chicano cooking with Lee, who’d been all over the world, acquiring a repertoire of foods wherever Colonel Stroud was stationed. As a special treat, Mrs. Stroud promised us real Italian pizza.

The year was 1956 or 1957. Pizza had yet to enter the food chain in my part of Califas. The only pizza I’d tasted was a delicious, and expensive, tomato sauce-covered treat at the drive-in theatre. Now, I was going to eat, for free, the genuine article.

Lee made a rectangular pizza pie that fills the air with wondrous aroma. But before serving us pizza, a first course.

The first course arrives in a bowl—a green soup with tiny meatballs exuding its own rich aroma of parmesan cheese, garlic, and the je ne sais quoi of great cooking. The soup is so tasty I ask for seconds, which Lee gladly ladles into my empty bowl. 

I’ve eaten so much soup I have room for only a single square of that wondrous pizza. Lee laughs and explains, that’s the idea:

Pizza takes a lot of work, and time. Yeast dough has to rise, get beaten down, and rise again. Tomatoes get cooked down and pulverized with herbs and spices to make the sauce. Cheese needs grating; then the baking. Feed people soup and you have to make only one pizza!

We Celiacs and other gluten-intolerant gente know the rarity of a good gluten-free pizza. I know of only two restaurants in California making edible gluten-free pizza, Giuseppe’s in Palm Springs, and Settebello in Pasadena. Pero, ni modo, I’d rather eat this soup. 

Zuppa Con Polpette - Lee’s Green Soup.

Ingredients to serve four with second helpings, or good left-overs (carb counts are approximate for your own soup, as quantities reduce or increase the gram content. Some of us diabetics count carbs, so remember to divide the total carb count by the number of servings. )

Polpette/Albondigas/Meatballs:

½ lb ground beef (0g)

½ lb ground pork (0g)

1 lg egg (.4g)

Parmesan cheese (1.15g per oz or 5 TBS)

4 cloves or more garlic (1g /clove)

1 brown or white onion (11g)

salt (0g)

black pepper (.06g / dash)

Zuppa/Caldo/Soup:

frozen chopped spinach 11g)

3 or 4 carrots (6g/carrot)

4 stalks celery including tops (1g/stalk)

½ bell pepper (7g/cup)

flat rice noodles (120g/cup)

olive oil (0g)

chicken stock (1g/cup)

red chile flakes (1g/tsp)

½ lemon to squeeze (1g)

Meatballs:

Wash hands and under nails.

Squish ingredients in hands making a homogenous mass

Use three fingers to pinch meat mixture

Roll in palm of hands to form spoon-size bolitas

Soup:

In a generous soup pot over medium flame/level 4 on electric range 

Wilt the onion and garlic in olive oil

Add carrots and bell pepper

Add the meatballs

Add canned or homemade chicken broth and equal volume water

Add the celery

Cover, lower heat, simmer 20 minutes (meatballs will float to surface)

Add frozen chopped spinach

Add a bit more parmesan cheese

Add a pinch of red chile flakes

Squeeze lemon juice into pot

Stir

Cover, simmer ten minutes

Ladle into bowls, distribute four or five polpette per bowl. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice. Dust with parmesan cheese.

On the table, serve a bowl of dried parmesan and another of chile flakes for garnish.

Make your own broth, boxed gluten-free broth is a good shortcut.

Use the celery root and all the carrot. Lots of extra flavor in those.
Use good olive oil to wilt the first batch of vegetables.

Layering ingredients builds flavors.

Wilted veggies under meatballs and liquid, ready for the next layer.

25 minutes cooks everything just right. Spinach finishes it off for color and taste.

A second helping in that empty bowl!

Some cooks make soup the day before to take advantage of the fact that soup flavors blossom overnight, left-overs prove the point.

La Bloga-Tuesday will feature diverse gluten-free soup recipes in coming weeks. Cold weather approaches, and that's hot, hearty soup weather.

Review: Ron Arias. Gardens of Plenty

When I laid grateful eyes on Ramos Martínez' La Pareja India, at the Scripps reception, my thoughts immediately went to Ron Arias' new novel, Gardens of Plenty (link) given the novel's principal setting is Mexico, spanning over twenty years and ending in fifteen eighty-eight.

This first-person novel traces the career of an English boy who goes to sea on a slaver ship, goes overboard to be captured and enslaved by indios. He escapes with another slave, a teenage girl. They find shelter and marry. He flees the inquisition only to be enslaved again by a red-bearded nemesis from the ship. Escaping again, he sails to Spain, makes his way to Portugal, returns to Mexico. The New World is ravaged by a lethal disease, perhaps syphillis, and the man finds empty villages and black clouds of vultures feasting on human carrion. Finally he's reunited with his wife and children bringing the swashbuckling tale to a satisfying conclusion. It's a far cry from Errol Flynn or Horatio Hornblower but equally imaginative, heroic, and thrilling.

Arias spins an excellent and exciting tale, crafting admirable characters, giving the hardships a feeling of authenticity with a caveat: readers need a generously willing suspension of disbelief. The boy learns a few words of Spanish from a chained slave and in short order holds elaborate conversations with the slave and gente in Mexico, including his indio captors via the teenage slave he eventually marries. He adapts quickly to indio values and becomes a skilled archer.

The historical context adds to the novel's interest. Gritty shipboard details, people burned at the stake for being Protestants, crypto Jews hiding in plain sight as merchants, sailors, soldiers--the boy learns he himself is a hidden Jew. A variety of indigenous gente populate the plot. Food consists in insects, snakes, lice, mules, and birds shot out of the air with arrows, as well as tamales and barbacoa. Gardens of plenty, indeed!

I'm happy to recommend Gardens of Plenty to readers of all ages, YA to jaded adults. Moreover, I recommend ordering copies from the only Chicano bookstore in Orange County, Libromobile in Santa Ana (link). Libromobile's service is fast and the community-based store needs support.

Thelma T. Reyna Lifetime Achievement Award 

The announcement arrives the day after the Altadena Poets Laureates reading marking the release of the 2025 Online edition of the Altadena Poetry Review, Dr. Thelma T. Reyna is Recipient of the 2025 Armando F. Sanchez Production Lifetime Achievement Award.

Reyna's books have collectively earned 22 national and international literary awards. She is an Altadena Poet Laureate Emerita, having served as the sole Laureate from 2014-2016. As Altadena Poet Laureate, Reyna expanded the program's community outreach and launched the publication of the Review. Such productivity demonstrated the need for two Laureates and the program now appoints Co-Poets Laureates.

Reyna's Golden Foothills Press (link) publishes the Altadena Poetry Review. Her collections include short fiction, and poetry such as When The Virus Came Calling, and her memoir in poems, a eulogy for her late husband, Dearest Papa. La Bloga-Tuesday reviewed the latter two, linked above.

Marking the award, producer Armando F. Sanchez invites poets and Reyna's former students to share their best wishes and thoughts on Reyna's generosity and artistry. Only a select number appear on the video; many more offered to record messages. Click this link to view the extended tribute video on YouTube.

La Bloga is pleased to announce the award and congratulate Dr. Thelma T. Reyna and recognize her 30-year career contributions to numerous journals and online resources. Congratulations, Thelma. Ajua! and ¡Órale!

2025 Altadena Poetry Review Online and Free for All

One of the nation's most active community poet laureate programs lives in the down but not out Southern California community of Altadena. Hundreds of homes were leveled by the Eaton Fire, but the conflagration spared the Altadena Library, host of the Laurate program.

Laureates, appointed for two-year terms, distinguish themselves with an active program of readings and workshops, and for the second consecutive year, Co-Poets Laureate Sehba Sarwar and Lester Graves Lennon are recognized by the Academy of American Poets with the organization's Poet Laureate Fellowships.

Click here to read the online edition--a virtual book--of Altadena Poetry Review Anthology 2025, edited by Lester Graves Lennon, Associate Editor Sehba Sarwar.  This is a beautiful work of book art, opening with Before the Fire, in memory of Peter J. Harris, and a second half, From the Ashes, dedicated to the victims and survivors of the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire.

Lennon and Sarwar will issue the Call for Submissions for the 2026 Altadena Poetry Review anthology in December. 

In coming weeks, Sarwar in her role as Poet Laureate for Community Events, will host workshops and readings. Saturday, September 20, Xitlalic Guijosa leads Poetry and Garden - Poetry and Zine Workshop. October 11, Teresa Mei Chuc conducts Fire and ICE: A Haibun Poetry Workshop. Both run from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the library's community room. On Tuesday, October 14, Sarwar and Lennon host a reading, Fire and ICE, with open mic, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30. November 8, 2-4 p.m., Queer Poets Resist and open mic. November 15, in the commuity room, Writing About the Difficult: Borrowing A Form to Break into Your Story, with Carla Rachel Sameth, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, December 10, A Wall is Just a Wall and open mic comes to Loma Alta Park Gymnasium from 6 p.m. to 7:30. 

Poetry readings are livestreamed at the library's YouTube channel.

Celebrating the release of the virtual book, the Altadena Library hosted an afternoon reading featuring an open mic and spotlighting eight voices from the anthology, each of whom you can view on the library's YouTube channel (link). 

Here are portraits of the spotlighted readers. You can read their work in the online anthology, and view each at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WTFSrW7VvM :

Anna Mixtlan

Lynne Thompson

Sehba Sarwar

Lester Graves Lennon

Pam Ward

Alene Terzian-Zeitounian

Ron Koertge

Don Kingfisher Campbell

Thelma T. Reyna

Final Words: Invitations

La Bloga welcomes guest columnists on subjects dear to the writer's heart. La Bloga is the oldest Chicana Chicano Latina Latino literary y más blog in the universe. 

In November we celebrate our 21st year sharing poetry, short fiction, critical essays, gluten-free comida, foto essays, community events, new books for children, YA, and general readers. Y más.

Click the mug shots at the top of the page to email your ideas.

La Bloga especially welcomes community dialogue on issues raised by one of our seven regular writers. There's a link at the bottom to join in with your commentary. Be sure to check the Notify Me box to follow yours and others' comments.

Muralist on Monte Vista. Margaret Garcia At the Muck. y más

Introduction: Nothing Says 'Resist!' Like Love and Arte

Michael Sedano

With political subversion coming from treacherous national elected officials, nothing says  'Resist!' like  expressions that reaffirm love and community solidarity. Arte makes precisely those expressions. Today, La Bloga-Tuesday celebrates Love, Alma, and Arte with a spotlight on noted colorist painter, Margaret Garcia's current exhibition at Fullerton, California's Muckenthaler Cultural Center. 

Gluten-free and wheat-eating visitors headed to Fullerton will find a welcoming host and staff, and fabulously delicious and freshly-prepared Egyptian food, at Tasa2Go.

La Bloga-Tuesday adds a closing note of appreciation for the multicultural pleasures of the Taiko Drum festival closing this year's Nisei Week Festival in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo.

Please share your views on murals, taggers, arte, good food, and other values inherent in diversity, equality, and inclusion, by clicking the Comments link at the foot of this page. Remember to click Notify Me to follow up on your comments.

Madeline the Muralist on Monte Vista and Avenue 50

Few sights signal a community’s decline than heavily tagged murals. For years, vandals with spray paint layered their crud atop Daniel Cervantes’ 2004 mural celebrating United Statesian indigenous people. Then, in 2019, the venerable Avenue 50 Studios awarded a contract to famed artist Pola Lopez to restore the cultural treasure at the foot of the long neglected, now-defunct, Autry Museum of the American Indian.

La Bloga follows Lopez' progress, noting the hopeful beginning, the funding skirmish that stuck Lopez, and Assistant Angel Guerrero, with a hot sun, boundless spirit, and dwindling support from political leaders and locals. 

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2024/01/chicanarte-comes-more-alive-than-ever.html

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2020/01/open-letter-to-cultural-leader-gil.html

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2019/08/community-treasure-needs-more-treasure.html

The work completed and exposed to vandals, Lopez exacted a promise from an elder of the Avenues clicka. He promised members would respect the mural and prevent peewees from tagging it. As of August 2025, the mural remains untagged.

A single panel of 120' of mural near 4725 Marmion Way, a short walk from the Metro train stop.

On a recent drive-by to verify the community support for the Cervantes-Lopez creation, I happily noted the arte remains sullied only by the elements. And, on the drive up Monte Vista to Avenue 50, a happy note, a new mural at the corner!

This is New Mexico artist Madeleine, working in the morning shade to lay down her colorful design for all who pass this place. 

Monte Vista turns West, down to Marmion Way and the indigenous gente mural. Looking along Avenue 50 toward Figueroa street, the eponymous gallery’s signage is all that remains of the priced-out former flagship of northeast Los Angeles arte and culture. Ave50 may have departed estas partes, but arte remains.

Madeline and her color palette: May This Mural Remain Untagged

At the Muck: Margaret Garcia

the Muck website: https://themuck.org/

"the Muck" the CEO and its devoted supporters term the place, in north Orange County's City of Fullerton, California's Muckenthaler Cultural Center. Muck hosts vibrant arrays of arte and summery entertainments, for example, last September, Shattered Hearts Illuminated Minds: Visions of Clarity, a glass show that attracted excited viewers from across Southern California and out-of-state visitors.

The Muckenthaler's current exhibition, Margaret Garcia Rostros, lugares, y momentos runs through September 16, 2025, allowing ample time for multiple visits and, for collectors, opportunity to acquire some magnificent works of portraiture, landscapes, and Garcia's spectacular fire paintings.

CEO Farrell Hirsch led the Muck through Trump's plague years into new vitality and regional leadership

Garcia enjoys numerous friendships with artists and collectors, a fact well evidenced by the people gathered at the midweek opening. The location in northern Orange County brings people unfamiliar with the artist and her work. CEO Farrell Hirsch happily announced one of the centro's board of directors traveled from a southern beach town to purchase a Garcia painting. In fact, eight pieces sold, at last report.

Margaret Garcia greets guests.

 

Rhett Beavers chats with writer, "the other" Margaret Garcia

That eight canvases found new collectors is testament to the impact on first sight of Garcia's paintings. Waterscapes, portraits, burning palms and structures, urban streetscapes all feature Garcia's powerful brush strokes and impasto technique, none of which people see when struck by the artist's compelling use of color and composition.

In foto: waterscapes, a fire painting, a calavera moment

La Bloga-Tuesday attended the opening reception on August 14, with an ulterior motive. Michael Sedano's blue portrait hangs in the show.

Michael Sedano left and right

In February of this year. (link) La Bloga-Tuesday shared the story of my sitting for a studio portrait before Garcia and a group of her workshop painters. Looking into myself in those bluest of eyes evokes these thoughts:

I am already so numb that the fire has not affected me very much more than the sun rising or the moon setting, nor any other daily occurrence, everything’s the same as everything else. I sit here in the studio, staring into space unfocused and empty as the air in front of my eyes.  I’ve lost everything I ever owned,  everything Barbara and I owned together. The life we shared, together, I still own--treasured memories; all the rest was stuff. Everything I ever owned, into ashes, all gone into ashes. And it doesn’t matter.

El Gluten-free Chicas Patas On the Road

Gourmet Food, Modest Settings, Barata y Buenissima

Dining on the road for Celiacs and other gluten-averse gente poses notably difficult challenges. Menus don't often mark their menus with "gf" or similar notations that assure a diner of safe choices. Staff often lack training and knowledge to reassure a skeptical celiac. "It shouldn't have wheat," is never a good answer. "I'll ask the chef" is perfect. 

The good choices are ethnic food. There are pitfalls, though. Mexican kitchens tend to start their red sauces with harina de trigo, "but only a little." Middle eastern places often use falafel mixes containing wheat. So know your ingredients and always ask and verify.

Tasa2Go, Egyptian food, catches my eye on a Google search. I call ahead to make sure; I haven't eaten Egyptian food before. The fellow on the phone isn't sure about falafel but the  cardamom-flavored rice and bbq meats have no wheat nor barley. After the Garcia show at the Muck, I head downhill only a few miles and search for a sign among several restaurants sharing a parking lot and address.

Drive into the lot, behind the garish signs, and there's the modest logo featuring Remon, the owner's,  caricature. Remon, almost Ramon, que no?, assures customers their food comes after a lengthy delay--all their bbq is cooked from scratch, and slowwwly to allow the smoke flavor to infuse all the way to the bone. 

The half chicken comes atop a bed of parsley, with cardamom-flavored rice. The two sides I select, pickles and garlic sauce, make savory accompaniments. Hot Egyptian tea makes an ideal complement.

Nisei Week In J-Town LA

Crowds attending the 83d iteration of Los Angeles' Nisei Week affirm this year's theme, “kansha” (感謝), or gratitude. After the two-year Trump Plague hiatus, the festival returned to the community in 2022 and this year hits its full stride.

As a drum- and percussion instrument maker, and long-time Taiko enthusiast, I made it a point to get to Little Tokyo early to enjoy the full lineup of Southern California Taiko groups. Taiko is an event not to be missed and I am grateful to have enjoyed the work of talented drummers from UCLA, and the local Buddhist temple, and my current residence, Pasadena, whose Taiko club numbers over 100 drummers.

Taiko is drumming, fancy stick work, acrobatics, and dancing. Energy abounds at every Taiko performance, drummers infect the audience with smiles and infectious rhythms. This year there is a surfer stomp-type taiko song!

Wait 'til next year isn't something only Dodger fans usually say. It's something Taiko fans always say, with hope of sustained joy over the hours of performance. 

The Gluten-free Chicano's No-Asco Meals

Variations on A Theme: Gluten-free Platos Principales

Michael Sedano, el Gluten-free Chicano

People who avoid gluten in their food avoid obvious dangers like bread and pasta, and hidden gluten like soy sauce, malt, french fries cooked in the same vat as breaded foods, and any number of unsuspected foods, like canned soup or restaurant sauces like red enchiladas and chile colorado. There's a lot of delicious restaurant cuisine a Celiac will not dare eat. 

Gente with celiac disease--The Gluten-free Chicano is one of them--religiously conform to a gluten-free diet, standing in grocery aisles reading every label, quizzing restaurant staff, eating in the same restaurants ordering the same food repeatedly because it's known or proven, this time, safe. 

Dining at home remains the gluten-free person's safest way to ensure a happy digestive system with the added benefit of home cooking's epicurean pleasures. Today, La Bloga-Tuesday shares meal ideas for gluten-free Chicano food dining, and one Honorary Chicano Food dish. These are company food, and generally easy and fast from knife to table.

There's one catch when dining with wheat-eaters, the asco factor. Offer some diners a "gluten-free" dish and their noses wrinkle and faces speak volumes about distasteful experiences in the past with gluten-free analogs of real food. 

All the meals presented here should be gluten free but check your own ingredients before getting out in that kitchen and rattling those pots and pans.

Note, también, diabetics like el Gluten-free Chicas Patas count carbs and eat smaller portions. Soups and the platos presented here, come with low carb counts.Not only are these meals gluten-free, here is low-carb food diabetics will totally scarf down and ask please may I have some more? Do people still say "scarf down"?

Walk a lot. Eat lots of soup. Stay away from wondrous foods like pizza, spaghetti, flour tortillas, warm bread smeared with before an unquestioned dinner of chile colorady, and you might lose weight and exert control over your body mass. Eat right. Eat delicious gluten-free food y vamos a ver.

Breakfast: Two Variations on Weenies con Blanquillos

"Weenies con huevos" has that alliterative ring. When little Gluten-free Chicanito was under his grandmother's care, she explained the natural world as it existed in her backyard. She kept chickens and I would collect the eggs which, the first time I referred to them as "huevos" I got gently corrected. Huevos are what a boy or man has between the legs. The gallinas give us blanquillos, that's what we eat.

My gramma grew up in Michoacan on the shores of a lake where the boats caught fish with butterfly nets. I never learned the name of her rancho or pueblo or what her Purépecha homeland was like. I have only that dim recollection of her story in one of the two languages I was growing up into. I order "blanquillos" in local eateries and get blank stares, an occasional smile of recognition.

This dish is a classic for most raza kitchens, something a child gets in their earliest solid food regimen. For real tasty sausage and gluten freeness, The Gluten-free Chicano uses halal or kosher product, like Hebrew National all-beef weiners.

The Gluten-free Chicano's standard egg and weenies breakfast includes a starch--either papas or frijoles, fresh tomato, aguacate and fresh fruit, and fruit or vegetable juice, as available.

Elegant Lunch or Light Dinner: Balsamic Reduction, Burrata Cheese, Tomato Salad

Balsamic Vinegar Honey Reduction originates far from Aztlán, in Italy, where the Latinos originate. And, you'll find balsamic reduction on fancy restaurant menus, at a premium price. When you taste that twenty-dollar salad, you'll marvel at the exquisite flavor of tomato and balsamic reduction.

You can duplicate that restaurant experience casí a few dollars, and for twenty, you can feed--impress them--two or more happy diners. Sin propina.

Balsamic Reduction: Easy to Make, Eyeball the Measures

Heat a shallow pan over a low flame.

Pour in a quarter cup of good commercial Balsamic vinegar.

Squeeze in an eighth cup of honey.

Splash in some Tapatío or other hot chile sauce.

Add a tiny pinch of salt.

Stir constantly. Bring to a boil for five to ten minutes, or until the volume of black liquid is halved.

Let cool.

*Note: Ensure the balsamic vinegar does not contain barley-derived caramel color.

**NoteNote: Honey make a faster thick sauce. It's not necessary and you can reduce balsamic with no added ingredients.

Drizzle balsamic reduction onto the bowl or plate. Center a ball of burrata cheese in the dish. Lay sliced fresh, or lightly roasted, tomatoes around the cheese. You can use fresh mozzarella slices, too. Garnish with fresh basil leaves, optionally, thinly sliced fresh garlic. Drizzle the whole presentation with reduction.

Ground Beef: Two Variations On Albondigas

The Gluten-free Chicano prefers soup to any other food, at any meal or snack. Albondigas soup is a fast and easy standard in el Gluten-free Chicas Patas' kitchen. The Gluten-free Chicano developed a fierce antojo recently, out of the blue thinking about the porcupine meatballs that were a favorite in his twenty-five cent elementary school cafeteria lunches. 

Restaurant ground beef dishes often include flour or bread to thicken the mix and put them off-limits to gluten-free gente. But albondigas, meatballs, need not contain gluten ingredients. Nor are they fast food. 

Cooks who use food processors or blenders can make meatballs in a whiz. Hand-made albondigas take time but add satisfaction to the cook's day.

The secret to a good meatball is finely minced vegetables. The porcupine meatballs have a lot of bell pepper in them, and more rice than soup meatballs, and don't have the yerba buena that makes albondigas such delicious eating. Otherwise, a meatball is a meatball: good ground meat, rice, onion, garlic, (bell pepper) egg, salt, black pepper, chile powder.

Twenty minutes cooking time, but the longer the better with these two meatball dishes. Flavors build and meld when spices and carne rest after being mixed and formed. Then, once cooked, those flavors continue to blossom until reheated and served at breakfast or lunch, or tomorrow's dinner.

Look for detail recipes for gluten-free Porcupine Meatballs and gluten-free Caldo de Albondigas in upcoming La Bloga-Tuesday columns. Here is a link to a La Bloga-Tuesday column featuring Mexican Chicano Fish Soup, Caldo de Pescado.

Soup: Caldo de Pescado

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2025/02/review-regalos-gluten-free-caldo-de.html

Ingredients with carb counts FYI

Everything- <100 grams carbs or 25 g per bowl

6 oz fillet Cod 0 gm
Black peppercorns (ground is just fine) - 1g per tsp
Carrots - 8g per cup, boiled
Celery - 4g per cup raw
Cilantro - .7 per sprig
Garlic - 1g per clove
Elote - 17.12g
Onion - 10g large bulb
Rice - 45g cup cooked 
Salt - 0g
Tomato - 4g each
Bay leaf-.45g
Jalapeño chile-.83g
Serrano chile-.41g
Water to make 4 bowls
Butter-.01g

This is an incredibly useful carbohydrate counter: (link):https://www.carbohydrate-counter.org/advsearch.php