Rachel and Lina

Creating your own cultural experience is easy. For example, every couple of months or so, Lina, one of my best friends from high school, and I experiment by cooking a new ethnic dish at my parents’ house. As a tradition, my mom buys most of the ingredients from a local grocery store, provides the wine to alleviate the stress, looks at the recipe and sits back while Lina and I cook for her. My sister, Rebecca, always arrives late, but we put her to work immediately. We usually cook a dish and play music from an area traveled to by one of us.  This past year, we cooked meals from New Mexico, Morocco, India and Puerto Rico.