PRESSURE COOKER FRIEND OR FOE ... and casabe

    PRESSURE COOKER FRIEND OR FOE ... and casabe!       From Memoir, A Dot In Time

                                                                           
                                           September 1970    Gainesville, Florida  
 
                          I heard it speed like a horse determined to win the race, swish, swish ... faster, faster. My heart racing with the sound. Could I leave, the cleaning of our bathroom, dowsing my toilet with Pinesol, and make it to the little kitchen fast enough?
                       
                         Too late. It exploded, spitting madly its gray-black substance over ceiling and walls, vicious pressure cooker. What was I to do?  My focused mission to cook and serve my first meal to in-laws and family sabotaged. And there I stood, stunned. No car to go get more black beans. Grocery stores too far from our Gainesville apartment to make it on my bike.

                         It was then, once again, that my Abuela's voice sprang to my mind, like the little voice of Jimminy Cricket to the rescue. "Mayi, cuando no hay pan se come casabe." "Marggie when there's no bread we eat casabe." I had asked her, as a child, what that Cuban expression meant. She told me the story.
                        
                         The Indians in Cuba ate casabe. It was a staple food. Nothing fancy but a must to survive. The saying meant, "when you don't have something make the best of what you have."

                          I looked at the mess, feeling unglued but not broken yet, struggling to hold back tears.  From somewhere  inside the words of my grandmother were playing ... growing in tone ... sweet crescendo,

                          "Cuando no hay pan, se come casabe. Cuando no hay pan se come casabe."

                          I knew those words helped me before, clothed me in comfort in those times when, as a girl and teenager, I lacked what my friends had. Things my family couldn't afford.

                          I made my own little tune with the words and sensed the brewing of  inner spunk. I stared at the lonely beans, still in the bottom of the pan, and the remains of the ones on the counter. Did I dare to use those? Why not? Casabe.
  
                          When there's no bread, we eat casabe. When there's no bread, we eat casabe.

                         Two hours to count down before the family would arrive. Hands worked fast, making another batch of sofrito, water was added, seasoning was sprinkled in like pixie dust, more casabe magic was needed to accomplish this feat.
 
                         I left the mixture cooking again while I climbed on the few chairs we had to wipe the ceiling and walls of  all evidence.
 
                         And then, the casabe did its magic. The bean mixture stretched to feed the multiude and when the smiling parents came in the door ...

                         "It smells like ... good cooking."

                         "Yes," I whispered, "when there's no bread ... casabe."

                          They never knew!

                                                                             
                                                           Black Bean Soup

              casabe   a crisp flat bread prepared from the cassava (yuca) flour, it was at the center
                           of the Taino Indian diet. Tainos - Indians from the Caribbean