Well, it is just about a week until the wedding.  The flowers are blooming, the tables are built, the tent is up, the dress is ready and so are we.  In a few days our friends and family will arrive from all over the world to descent upon a small farm in the hills of Medellín.  We will enjoy a week of exploration and one night of delicious food, abundant beverages, dancing and revery.  I can't wait!

Fritanga.  Even the name sounds delicious, doesn't it?  Arroz, frijol, chicharrón, chorizo, patacón.  A meal can hardly be any more decadent.  

Now, I would not normally eat dinner a la fried, but there is a time and a place, and Colombia at Christmas certainly sounds like it.  And let me tell you folks, from the moment they start the fire, when the smell of burring wood fills the air, to the late hour after everyone in moaning and groaning from too-full-bellies, it is glorious.  Never would I have thought that I would so enjoy stripping butter-soft pork fat off the bone.  And blood sausage might not sound too tastey, but when the rice and sanguine mixture has been freshly stuffed into its intestinal casing, I guarantee you will ask for seconds.  So, while it might be the month for resolutions and diets, celery and juices, think again and reach for something fried.

I could, very easily, lose myself in the finca.  I could hide amongst the rows of tomatoes, or crawl under a curtain of cilantro.  I could lounge with the lettuces and past the time with the peppers.  Down in the greenhouses and gardens, it is quiet.  The merengue music drifting from the house on the hill is no more than a murmur in the background and the Paisa spanish that steals my concentration, has been silenced. My brain is calm, stimulated by the senses, not by words.  And with only a dog or perhaps a merongo to keep me company, I am happy to wander with my camera.  To hunt in and amongst the leaves for hidden treasures.

There is something comforting about preparing very large quantities of food.  Like bath-tub-sized pots of soup.  Or pumpkin cookies on top of a full Thanksgiving Day dinner (note to self, no one wants cookies after that much starch).  Or, for the love of Pete, why I always overdo rice.  Seriously, one cup is more than enough.  Yet I am forever making two.  

It is strange, that nagging voice in the back of your head that says, do you think it's enough?  And then you hem, and you haw, and you think those tiny hard grains of rice really don't look like much... and then finally, you give in.  You drag out your oversized cookware, you quadruple your recipes, and you add another gosh darn cup of rice.  Because we love to satisfy others.  To not come up short.  To have more than enough and to give it open heartedly.  Because when you see them rub their tummies, and smile at the subtle intoxication of taste, you too are satisfied, you gave it your all.

Sancocho made by my Suegra 

They all tell stories of making them with their grandfather.  Complicated geometric shapes pasted together with glue made from yucca flour.  The fragile tissue paper is folded and sliced into triangles and then worked together again to make an array of colorful three dimensional patterns.  I looked on as the cousins, uncles, and siblings worked to make the forms, I wondered in between folding and pasting and cutting and slicing with delicate papers scattered about, how did they know what to do?  There were no blueprints or connect the dots, no paste by numbers or instruction manuals.  How did they do it I wondered.  So I asked them.  And they said, we just know.  

From Pablo to Pablo, the oldest cousin to the youngest, they knew what to do.  They and their uncles and aunts before them had learned from those even before that.  They remember two-storied diamonds and three dimensional crosses.  Folding papers with Tito and lighting the mecha for the very first time.  

I don't know how other families are, but in this one, globos are what they do.  Some might bake cookies or build snowmen and sandcastles but in this family its paper balloons.  For Christmas and New Years they gather and make them.  And when they are ready they light them to fly.  The hot air rises, lifting it up.  They don't all fly perfect, some burn quickly while others soar high.  But what is important is that they remember, they do it together, and then they watch them fly.

some globos are as big as houses (the neighbors are also fanatics)