Read All About It!

When I travel I like to pick up the local paper to hold in my hands the daily goings on. At home where all the print is available online, I still cherish the pleasure of messing my fingers with newsprint, connecting to a 250 year tradition of formalizing gossip and word-of-mouth on a properly printed page. My face isn't online- its in the broadsheet!

As small towns go Key West has lots of papers to choose among for information. I've assembled a modest selection which I like to read each week, and though there are others, the only publication dedicated to gay goings on has gone out of business (in a flurry of predictable accusations of non payment etc among the principals. Small town scandal on the front pages).

The Key West Citizen has focused on local news and does a decent job of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, as the saying goes. Page Two features the Citizen's Voice, a column of anonymous call-ins from usually upset neighbors. Page Three includes my all time small town favorite feature the "Citizen of the Day," fully dressed of course. The Citizen is the only daily published locally, which is delivered in the early hours to my driveway for $102 per year. It is the paper of record and Cooke Communications, an independent publishing family, has assembled a modest empire in the Keys. They also have an interest in 104.1 US One radio in Big Pine which has a modest local news operation including interviews with local bigwigs (Very Important People Only!) at 8am with the local voice Bill Becker, an interviewer who wouldn't know a hard question if it forced itself down his throat.

The Citizen isn't a bad paper with its steady diet of local news from around the Keys. From time to time it'll avoid offending VIPs on particularly touchy issues, so sometimes its more a matter of observing what they've left out rather than included, to get an idea whats going on. The Citizen's Voice is the source of irritation among Important People, and the anonymous comments are the first place we all go after we open the paper. Each Thursday the Citizen also puts out a harmless Arts supplement called Paradise! which I find rather bland and generally goes the way I send the daily sports section- into the recycling bin. But that's just my taste.

The other outlets from Cooke Communications include a Marathon- based free weekly, the Free-Press, which comes to Lower Keys subscribers each Wednesday. Its a way to fight back against the inroads of the Miami Herald which sells and delivers all around the Keys. The Citizen does a much better job of covering local news, not least with the Friday free offering of Solares Hill.

This paper started out as an alternative weekly aimed at irritating the powers that be and sounding an irreverent voice against the all powerful Citizen. It was a paper that barely made economic sense in a town where people fished or drank as expressions of intellectual activity. When Cooke bought Solares Hill its imminent demise was widely predicted, but that never came to pass. Now under Nancy Klingener's leadership Solares Hill has flourished as a source of in depth prickly commentary and real arts news. It is the highlight of my newspaper perusal, arriving every Friday, carefully wrapped inside my Citizen delivery.

What to say about the Blue Paper? More properly known as Key West The Newspaper, the free weekly that describes itself as the home of "Journalism as a Contact Sport"? This is the critic that anybody who is somebody in Key West wants silenced, even more than the Citizens' Voice column in the daily paper.

Dennis Reeves Cooper is seen around town wearing a ragged beard, as every rebel should, accompanied by a black Labrador who rides alongside him in his silver convertible. Cooper is an old school style of yellow journalist, always criticized, though never do critics succeed in proving that he gets his facts wrong though his idle speculation often falls wide of the mark. For instance when he wrote that a past police chief had had a previous sexual liaison with a juvenile boy he was never shown to be wrong. When he publicizes the embarrassing sources of funding in election campaigns everyone involved screams blue murder but they can't show he's wrong. He exposed to all and sundry a tawdry sexual affair the mayor got invovled in, and no one could contradict him because it was true, apparently. He's not someone I'd have round to dinner, he's rather too abrasive, but his paper is a must read in Key West, and one prays never to find oneself the object of his scorn. These days the current Key West Police Chief is his target, and Cooper's attentions make life for the rest of us inside the police station a fair resemblance to hell on earth.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the good news paper, a sickly publication called Conch Color, published by one of Key West's more bizarre public characters. Tom Oosterhoudt, a plump, fussy momma's boy, who never appears in public without a thick layer of foundation on his cheeks, once managed to get elected to the City Commission in a moment of collective public amnesia. Now after electoral defeat, he wants to spread good news which generally means kow-towing to the rich and powerful and filling the broadsheet pages with lots of color pictures in the style of a social diary. Its pretty saccharine stuff, harmless were it not responsible for yet more mulched trees, and easily ignored.

I'd rather read Key West, another all color publication that comes out monthly, features excellent photographs and a decent attempt at literary journalism even though it describes itself as a lifestyle publication. Its the sort of magazine I thumb through in doctor's offices and the like, as it has lots of pictures of hip people being hip, in hip island homes. From time to time it features people I can claim a passing aquaintance with, which I find shocking.

The Miami Herald has a bureau or two in the Keys and attempts a few column inches of local news. those efforts are supplemented by the twice weekly Keynoter a paper that bulges with classifieds but is of limited interest to a Citizen subscriber, who gets updates daily, The Keynoter comes out afternoons and can sometimes publish events the same day they happen, thus scooping the Citizen. I like the Keynoter on our streets mostly because it shows that the two paper concept is struggling to stay alive in the Keys where most American cities can't claim that anymore. Its not an even struggle and as long as the Citizen stays hard on the heels of local news it remains an indispensable read to keep a finger on the pulse of local affairs- literally and figuratively.

And they are all presented on the Internet, because the modern Keys live and die online. And for some strange reason people everywhere want to know whats going on in the island chain.

I love my news when it comes in print, so many words to fuss over.

Comida Criolla

This is not a Puerto Rican barbecue pit, its a car dumped and incinerated and cluttering the amazing verdant beauty because the government, along with its lack of interest in sorting out the stray dog problem, has no interest in dealing with the heaps of cars four million islanders drive literally into the ground every year.

Cuisine, including barbecue, was on my mind after our recent hop south for the weekend where we encountered a US variant on Caribbean food, so I was moved to contrast and compare Cuban food as cooked in Key West with creole food. Creoles in the colonial era were upper class people, possibly of mixed race who were descended from white settlers. The term is in use today in New Orleans, and in Puerto Rico where restaurants advertise comida criolla as an attraction for tourists.Like so many popular foods in daily use comida criolla started out as poor people's food. Nowadays mofongo is offered as haute cuisine in haute restaurants, though we found the national dish roadside, under a tarp on the outskirts of San Juan, the island's teeming capital.Mofongo is mashed fried plantains rendered into a starchy pudding, served with meat or fish. I think it works best with some sort of ajo sauce, citrus and garlic, to render the mound less dry. We ate some with chunks of fried beef which was also dry, and an ajo chicken dish which was excellent. Mofongo streetside is not a delicate dish and if you manage to down a plate piled high with those mashed plantains you will be good to work in the fields all day.

Puerto Rico is littered with modest cafes, all of which merit a stop. We found people everywhere who could mumble some small amount of English, indeed they were happy to ignore our reasonably fluent Spanish and help us find our ingredients in stumbling English. In an industrial village south of Fajardo we found a cafe offering creole food simmering in hot plates. We pulled down the Caribbean staples of rice and Puerto Rican red beans with barbequed chops American style and Caribbean pork.

Expecting macaroni and cheese such as might be offered in English speaking Caribbean islands, my wife opted for "macaroni" and got American style pasta salad. It was good, perhaps because we are flexible travelers! Our plates also included hard fried plantains known universally as tostones. All this for $5.25, about two thirds the price in the Lower Keys.

Gas stations across the island offer snack food, much of it a replica of processed foods found in the US but shelves were also loaded with items that rated exotic, Italian chocolates imported to the Caribbean, sweet crackers and sodas based on tropical fruits like tamarind, a sweet/sour drink that is pretty harsh to a palate raised on the delights of colas. My young colleague did her shopping at four am:

Crackers and OJ to fight off breakfastless nausea from speeding, twisting roads. The further we were from fast food offerings the better off we were as usual, but some forms of processed foods one cannot avoid. I, for instance, can rarely resist Latin pastries, a delight to the eye but rather less to American taste buds. Coffee generally was fairly insipid too, lacking the Starbucks verve we mainlanders have come to expect from a cup of java.

Our journey across the back of Puerto Rico on the narrow, steep Ruta Panoramica, through the mountains brought us to the high altar of island cuisine. Where we came face to face with the national culinary obsession: lechon.Lechon is roast suckling pig, pork on a spit. The center of this cult is located in a village called Cayey. But that, as they say is another story, a story unto itself and a memory I want to savor in more leisurely style.

Going hungry in Puerto Rico's hinterlands isn't easy because the golden arches litter the landscape as much as creole cuisine does, so for those that can't stand being far from home, home on America's true caribbean island (not Key West!) is always close to hand, and they even enjoy servicarro service for tourists who miss drive thru windows. Personally I miss the lechon.

El Yunque

Its a mountain peak on the northeast corner of the island of Puerto Rico that dominates the surrounding countryside. It's peak pops in and out of the cloud cover that streams overhead dropping frequent rains that give it the title of the only tropical rain forest in the US Forest Service system. Its not a National Park, so there's no fee to enter and there's no guard hut at the entrance,there's just a sign though there is also a visitor center near the entrance on the only road in. That would be Highway 191 which is barely marked at the turn off on the major Highway 3 which runs from Fajardo to San Juan through the snowbird condos of Luquillo. The southern entrance to the Forest has apparently been closed for years by landslides so you can only get in from the north, and I am guessing that in winter the place is a raging zoo. In November, even on Veterans weekend it wasn't crowded at all. This is a place of abundant flora, eg: bamboo, extra large of course, on the road in. We discovered a place that was fantastic beyond our wildest dreams. It had a magical quality that wasn't the least bit expected. The roadway is a series of undulating curves winding around the hillside, with ample pullouts to allow riders to stop and check out the waterfalls, still wet even as dry season takes over: And overgrown fantasy creeks, with my youthful colleague leaping from rock to rock for the perfect picture: and views across the mountain to the ocean

with Cayo Icacos nestled just offshore from Fajardo:

The vegetation is astonishing, fairy-tale like. Such is the abundance and size of the trees, palms and ferns, one feels transported to another planet. This is the Caribbean as it must have been 600 years ago before European development of agriculture and plantations, or the arrival of crisp white rental Toyotas, I daresay. It was, as my wife, a native Californian reluctantly put it, "more awe inspiring than the redwoods." How true.

There are some oddities about El Yunque (pronounced: Ell Jew-nk-ay, by locals), that include stray dogs abandoned roadside by people I would like to strangle were I to meet them. I'd rather not dwell on that aspect as the dogs wouldn't be lured to the car for transport to Save-A-Sato, Puerto Rico's humane society in San Juan...Another issue is locals who run knick knack shops in the forrest who oppose the organization of the Forest into a more eco-friendly and less car oriented attraction:

"Say NO to the trolleys of El Yunque" Conch trains are a bone of contention in Key West so I have some sympathy with the locals on this one. I'd have more if the store owners in the forest treated the dogs better... (gotta let it go!). And then there is the Puerto Rican penchant for just stopping wherever the urge takes you. If you see a fern you want to photograph, stop the car immediately, let the family pour out and start clicking. I got into the spirit of this craziness and we learned to do as the locals do and stop the Corolla anywhere the fancy took us. Our white rental car wasn't the fanciest vehicle in the park by a long chalk.

Naturally we barely had time to drive up and back, feed the stray (gotta let it go!), and get out of the park before dark. Next time I'd like to spend real time in El Yunque and explore the myriad trails that disappear into the jungle. Now that I know what an enchanted forest this is, complete with its own fairy tale castle drifting in and out of the clouds at the top of the hill

I would put The Caribbean National Forest of my list of places to see before I die, had I not see it already. And I will advise visitors to bring along some dog food and water for the Satos crouching, waiting hopelessly for their owners to return to collect them...Strays. I just can't let them go.

Streets of Key West

A 65 degree winter afternoon on the corner of Olivia and Windsor, with a Bonneville taking a break from fighting traffic. Its that time of year again when we have to try to figure out how the hell we're going to get in and out of old town Key West. It seems early but the snowbirds are back already. Lots of out of state tags, Ohio is well represented already, as is Pennsylvania and some of the smaller New England states. Also, at work we're starting to get more parking violation calls, sleepers on sidewalks, and all those "quality of life" complaints that out-of-towners like to complain about Key West.

What this means for someone like me is that scooter parking spaces are tending to fill up. Streets are clogged with SUV's which barely fit in the narrow streets and even a man on a Bonneville needs to plan his approaches to his favorite haunt. The Tropic cinema is on the wrong side of Duval Street, a block west on Eaton Street and that is a location that requires a well thought out approach. My trouble is that I like hanging out at home till the last possible minute and I end up leaving late and having to make up the time on the way.

Soooo, avoid North Roosevelt ("the Boulevard"), Palm Avenue and Truman. Flagler can be a drag and South Roosevelt, though four lanes, connects to Atlantic Avenue which feeds into the Higgs Beach area which is a clogging point. Problematic eh? as there are only three roads into town once you get past the Triangle at the Cow Key Bridge from Stock Island.

Hmmm. By the time Burger King on Stock Island heaves into view the fun part of the ride is pretty much over on the open road. This is where I slow down and slip into the traffic flow. Once over the Cow Key Bridge I get in the middle lane and turn left onto South Roosevelt. So far so good, the dozy car drivers haven't had a chance to get too clogged, so we turn right at the second street available, just before the lights at Flagler where cars get backed up. The second street is Eagle Avenue, wide smooth and tree lined, the best of New Town.

It's plagued with a few too many stop signs, so one has to accept that alternative routes may not be as fast as the main streets- that's why the drones line up on the Boulevard and wait in line for their turn. We, instead keep moving and enjoying the scenery.

For a quick and scenic ride into old town I like Catherine Street which runs from George Street (an easy escape from the Boulevard at Miami Subs if you get muddled and stuck in traffic at Garrison Bight). These cars are coming from Miami Subs heading towards the trolley depot on Flagler. If they need to get out of town they'll drive straight across Flagler to Atlantic and turn left following the south coast back to the Triangle.

George is one way from the Boulevard to Flagler and on to Atlantic so you can't get to Catherine from Flagler. But once you line up on Catherine you get a straight shot to Thomas, and very scenic it is too, in my opinion.This is a two way street which leaves one pondering why people insist on driving huge vehicles on this small island. Never mind, some of us get to have fun on two wheels.

Simonton and Duval tend to be a mess, with Whitehead Street not far behind. Thus we follow Catherine all the way to the Community pool where it dead ends and we sweep smoothly to the right and find ourselves on Thomas Street, in the heart of Bahama Village.

This is where Key West comes alive on the streets, where the city's black citizens try to hold on to island life. Kids play on the streets, older folks sit out on porches and sidewalks and some tourists find it picturesque, others wonder if its "safe." There's no neighborhood that isn't safe in Key West, but who am I to break down prejudice when it leaves me a cross town street less traffic'ed?

After the movie the problem is how to get out of town. I generally take Duval or Simonton south and then take a left on Olivia, a one way street that flies directly out to Eisenhower, crossing Frances and White on the way.Olivia is a narrow one way and gets clogged if too many scooters or bicycles get in the way, their riders peering at the cemetery alongside. Olivia is one of my favorite streets, typifying Old Town, narrow, picturesque with a variety of tumbledown, heavily vegetated and restored conch homes. Anyway, follow Olivia to Eisenhower, take a right at the dead end and get on Truman briefly, past the Police Station ( wave to me as you go) and take a right at Miami Subs on George all the way to South Roosevelt.

And that's the tour that I'll be taking all winter long to avoid jams and crowds and the limitations make the four mile long island even smaller than it is in the fall when crowds shrivel away and we get a few quiet weeks before Fantasy Fest starts the year all over again. There must be something about Key West, why else would everyone keeping drifting down for a visit?

Oh Lucky Man!

It looks like Paradise Lost: I could have lived among these rolling hills these past 25 years, but I chose America instead. I never wanted to confront the outcome of my choice until this past summer when I went home to Italy for the first time.
They write novels about what happens when prodigal sons go back to the place of their birth a generation or two later. These books are popular in North American literature, land of migrants and displaced people par excellence. Americans want to recreate their roots and imagine a better, more comfortable life in a world left behind. Those that know me are polite but incredulous when they discover I come from Umbria the land of hill towns, castles and a panoply of saints. There were no saints in my family, but there is a castle.

I left Italy for the last time in the Spring of 1982, I rode away one night on my motorcycle never to return, and arrived in California in the Fall of that same year after ditching the Yamaha for an airline ticket. I returned to Umbria in the summer of 2007 and found myself in a world that looked very similar even after the passage of 25 years, but was subtly different in more ways than I expected, not least because of massive alterations in my perspective. The first thing I had to get used to was seeing many faces I remembered as living people, now posted as photos in the cemetery next to my mother's own grave. My sister is an old woman now and her husband of 40 years is almost as old as his father was when I lived here. I am no longer the impetuous stranger my sister says she remembers. I am the American.

On the surface my sister and her husband were delighted to see me back in the village whence I had fled a quarter century ago. I rode out of town because life had become too painful, I was into adulthood just seven years and my future looked bleak and featureless, an unravelling of the decades in the same place doing the same thing, over and over again. We lived on the land and the cycles are unchanging, ploughing, sowing , reaping as the seasons turn. They made a movie about this syndrome called Groundhog Day, wherein the main character relives the same day over and over again without explanation. My sisters, twins and ten years older than me, relished the prospect and they grasped the rural life with a hunger that was frightening to watch. They stomped any obstacles to their desires and I was clearly not acceptable because I was miserable as the anointed figurehead, the only male in a family wedded to the land whose demands on me I loathed. Farming was not my mistress- little wonder I took to living on sailboats in California!

Such an unpromising start gave my life an urgency that can be off putting to those around me who fondly pretend that life is an endless circus.

Its not, and watching my mother make a painful transition out of this world when she was just 49, and not ready to go, has always been at the back of my mind when someone blithely says: "Oh, there's plenty of time."

In those same novels I mentioned earlier the young migrant lands on the shores of the New World filled with hope and a determination to succeed, and thus far my life agreed with the script. Where it all went very different than the script was in my definition of success. For me that came not in money accumulated in the bank, but in memories accumulated in my mind, the place that was always mine, not susceptible to moth nor rust, and eminently portable. I needed to create memories, to live more than one life within the span of however few years I had. And to be able to keep those memories wherever I ended up. A true Nomad.

On my own terms I was successful, however a Buddhist watching my progress would have had a serious case of the head shakes. This constant need to plan change, to prepare for something different, to quit and move on was the very opposite of the notion of mindfulness. My requirement was to live in the future, failing completely to appreciate the moment. I have suffered most of my life from a total incapacity to appreciate the moment, and this has forced me always to plan and project the future on the screen of my mind.

As an exercise in Buddhist serenity my life has been a failure but I have found that my frenzied formula has worked for me, inasmuch as I am learning, late in life, to settle down, to be mindful, to cherish the moment. I liken my situation to that of the fictional immigrant of literature who has accumulated a fortune and now wants to spend it buying the life he passed by on his way to racking up his financial security. I have stored up all the different phases of my life in America and this past summer was the time when i had to go to the bank and start withdrawing them to pay them down against the memories of my youth in the countryside on the banks of the Tiber River, that same river mentioned in the histories of Rome, upon whose banks Western Civilization built many of its foundations. To me, as a child, it was a muddy place to splash away the oppressive heat of summer.

There has been method to my madness because at a time when many men are going off the rails in a "mid life crisis" so called, my mid life crisis is the impelling desire to settle down in my job, not flee from it. I ride a motorcycle not because I want to appear younger or sexier or more attractive but because in a world where personal travel is a constant requirement, moving on two wheels keeps the mindfulness at maximum pitch, which is a pleasure as opposed to the dreariness of droning along in a line in a car.

Lots of motorcycle riders hold safety as the prime concern when they ride; for me mindfulness is what counts. Enjoying the moment is critical and part of the enjoyment comes from paying attention to my fellow travelers as they pass by, using their time in their cars to read phone eat talk doze or dream. Anything but focusing on the moment. Mindfulness keeps me aware that tomorrow a wreck may end or cripple the life I never take for granted. I felt that most clearly recently when I was stuck in a commercial airliner! I was riding into Fort Lauderdale airport and the plane suddenly opened up its engines and clawed back into the sky for a second attempt at the runway. Death seemed real close right then and, paradoxically, a long way from my motorcycle!

The home I grew up in, a home that was in reality a twelfth century castle, was a place I couldn't wait to escape from. Romantic for sure, but uncomfortable and unnecessarily huge, which in a world of suburban conformity makes me sound churlish and narrow. I among millions of dreamers have actually lived in a castle and have made the trade to a 700 square foot stilt house on a canal in the Keys. Palazzo Paparini in all its faded glory, no longer mine to worry about:50 rooms, seven bedrooms in my apartment alone, and only three of those spaces centrally heated. Water flooding the basement, an electrical system as medieval as the 12th century walls all covered by a leaky roof the size of three tennis courts. Not to mention a basement area huge enough to store grain for a ten year siege and wine barrels large enough to live in:That this beneficence was not enough for me caused massive ructions in and around my family, and my desire to live a fresh life made me feel ashamed. The arguments, the insults and the scorn are ignored in polite conversation now in the village, but they burned a scar on my soul. I am old enough to keep the scar covered in polite society now, and that made my return possible.

To be a prodigal from Umbria is to be cast out from one of the newly hip places on the planet, to be a refugee from Eden, to be a Displaced Person, with a cardboard suitcase and a name tag tied to one's collar. That DP is a displaced person to be pitied by fellow travelers who get to see Umbria through the rose tinted lenses of a wide eyed tourist. The story is that Adam and Eve suffered torment after their expulsion, my story is one of expulsion that led to great good fortune that could never have been replicated living alongside my sisters. Even if that life were lived in a castle.

There is a widely held belief that la dolce vita exists on the sidewalks of Italian cities, a languid lifestyle of slow food, friendship and endless witty conversations helped along by manic hand gestures. Not so. I remember vividly when my childhood buddy who grew up alongside me came to California and witnessed all the folks reading and swallowing pastries in a local coffee shop mid morning on a weekday, and he groaned in envy. " I wish I had time to live like this," he said. He doesn't even see it as a possibility for him when he retires as the Italian state pension system is running out of money and retirement age keeps getting pushed back... not very dolce at all. My sisters on the other hand, live day to day with no definition, no goals, and no sense of time, and they have learned to vegetate successfully, noblesse oblige, I suppose. My life would have driven them mad years ago, as theirs did me, and so one cannot say that life is better or worse one way or the other. But I do know this: I should have withered years ago had I remained down on the farm, and my dread-filled visit home after a quarter century absence confirmed in me the validity of my choice. I have no doubt they would not have wanted their life any other way. It was Morruzze all the way.And that is true fortune, to have confirmed by Time, the aptitude of one's youthful vision. Filmmaker Federico Fellini died wishing more people shared his vision, he wanted his weird and complex dreams to be as popular in his words as Steven Spielberg's simplistic, cheerful fairy tales. I know that is impossible because I have lived a portion of both visions and I know which one is more completely livable. I escaped from Amarcord and cracked a whip like Indiana Jones, and have had tremendous fun exploring the souks of my mind along the way.

I am a Lucky Man.

Comida Cubana

For decent Cuban food, in Key West at least, you need real Cuban bread, which looks and tastes like floppy supermarket "French bread." French bread in France is crisp and hard on the outside and heavily aerated with a rough texture inside. In the US of A, French bread is a long pale loaf with a soft spongy interior. I'm not going to elaborate on what kind of a baking blasphemy produces an "English" muffin.

A three-dollar Cuban breakfast, cafe con leche with pan con queso at Five Brothers Deli on Ramrod Key, a staple Keys breakfast easily replicated at any of a number of Cuban delis in Key West- Seven Days, Kims Kuban, Little Jon's, Five Brothers ( the original store), Jeanas Courthouse, and on and on. A con leche with as many sugars as your teeth can stand along with a slice of Cuban bread filled with American cheese (Swiss if you're a wuss), toasted, and you're good till lunch. A con leche is just an abbreviated cafe con leche and is nothing more complicated than a cafe latte, as sold in Starbucks for three times the price.

A "Cuban mix" is Cuban bread with layers of cheese, roast pork, ham and pickles wedged between mustard and mayo and then squashed in a sandwich press which makes the whole thing flat, smooth and warm. You order thusly:" A Cuban mix, all the way, and a con leche with one." All the way gets you all the ingredients on offer including a smear of mayo and mustard. On the sandwich that is; "with one" gets you the appropriate number of sugars. If you're a Conch you need at least 5, possibly 8 in your con leche.

For dinner expect pork or pork, roast or fried (!) possibly shredded (ropa vieja), ground beef with olives (picadillo), or you could deviate from the favorite Cuban meat and go with flank steak served with a ton of lightly grilled onions on top. There are of course your wussy alternatives: grilled chicken or fish for those that can't digest fried pork chunks washed down with sangria and heavily buttered chunks of Cuban bread. Accompaniment is always rice and beans, separate or mixed (moros y cristianos), and as I'm not overly fond of black beans all the time, I try to see if I can get red beans, garbanzo beans, white (navy) beans or Lima beans depending on where I am eating out. This is not your average nouvelle cuisine large plate- tiny portions fare offered up in suburban American. Eating Cuban is a robust rough and tumble, napkins at the neck and stout cutlery to fight back the waves of food.

A word about plantains. These are NOT bananas even though they look like them, and conchs like to call them bananas to confuse lily white Northerners. They are a (relatively) sugar-free starch and taste foul uncooked. Plantains can come hard fried and served sprinkled with salt (tostones), which, along with some ketchup make an excellent appetizer, or soft fried in oil and they end up looking slimy and brown and are utterly delicious, like sweetened, sticky bananas.

In my opinion a side of these things do away with the need for a dessert but if you figure how much sugar your average Cuban consumes you'll understand why you can always have flan, a cream caramel indistinguishable from the Mexican variety. Better is the natilla, a soft vanilla flavored pudding often sprinkled with a little ground cinnamon. Sometimes, if my wife isn't looking I can order a tres leches, three milk pudding layered and sticky and a heavenly reminder of imprisonment in English boarding school. Then they pour you into a wheelbarrow and roll you home, stuffed like a fois gras goose.

Do not make the mistake of assuming Cuban food (as served in the Keys and Miami- God knows what they eat on the island itself, fresh air sandwiches if the propaganda is to be believed) is anything other than a minor variant on general Caribbean rice-meat-beans, cooking. It is not Mexican, in that its not sauced or spicy. It has tons of variants with adherents to each variation, and other cultures get mixed in like this orange colored ("Spanish" style) rice made with tomato sauce at Coco's Cantina on Cudjoe Key when the daily special was $9 beef stew.

Notice the bowl of black beans, quite delicious actually, stewed with onions and served with a spoon. A Cuban or a Conch would make a hole in the rice and spoon in the beans to make their own "Christians and Moors" mixture of black and white. I just used the spoon supplied in place of the fork. The stew was so tender it didn't need a knife. And in the end you need a decent motorcycle, any motorized two wheeler, not necessarily a Triumph Bonneville, to get there, lacking a wheelbarrow to get you home.