Enjoy!

Venezuelan tamales wrapped in banana leaves. They're stuffed with a meat stew and raisins and I don't know what all. My church and the church we share a building with sponsored a Venezuelan family. The family made and sold these hallacas, earning some money and sharing a Christmas tradition. We haven't tried them yet, but it sounds like a win-win to me.

Here, all we get is a choice between chicken, beef, and pork. I love the idea of adding raisins (and maybe green olives) into the meat, but I guess that would make them closer to Cuban than Venezuelan. Lack of choice, and lack of any being offered other than what you can get at the grocery store, is prevalent here. They used to be a Christmas tradition for our family when we lived in San Antonio. Since moving North, much of our food preferences have had to change...

Those sound fantastic. I love tamales but now I want to try hallacas. I don’t think I’ll head to Venezuela to try them, however! (wink)

As we were driving down our street in Panama, a fellow was selling lobsters out of his car’s trunk. We picked out two for dinner.

These are warm water crustaceans that don’t have claws so the only real treats are the tails and roe (if female). I plan to steam them.

My wife will roast some potatoes in olive oil, garlic, salt & pepper and Rosemary. She’s also making creamed spinach.

Food is very reasonable here and the lobsters— about 1-1/4 lbs. each— were only $6.00 apiece.

Chunky Monkey ice cream for dessert.

With sauce undetermined as yet. Mashed potatoes, and probably some of the yellow squash I canned, with peppers.

Salad later tonight with poppy seed dressing.

If I get energetic and get the popcorn popper out, maybe popcorn too.

Good Evening

Steam-fried in evoo and veggie broth: chopped onion, red bell pepper, cut green beans, sliced mushrooms and minced garlic. When almost done I added red pepper flakes and air-fried tofu cubes. Finally I tossed in some pea protein infused penne. TJ’s vegan Parmesan to top the dish after plating. Cheers!🥂

It totally hit the spot.

Last edited Tue Dec 23, 2025, 05:35 PM - Edit history (1)

We ordered some dishes from my favorite Chinese restaurant last week. Among their new items was lamb headcheese: they do a number of cold meat appetizers, and all the ones I've tried were good, and I've liked the European-style headcheeses I've had, so we got one serving (they also had goulash as their winter special., but we passed on that one). It was good, but overly garlicky, and a large serving so there were a lot of leftovers. So I'm making the leftovers into a hash, with potatoes and onions. It may be good, it may not be, but I don't like wasting meat dishes

Update: came out pretty good