2012年3月5日星期一

The Mexican Roasted Meat (la carne asada)


If you ask me in Mexico what is the most popular thing, I will tell you that it is Carne Asada (Roasted Meat).

In this beautiful country you can ignore the president´s name, nobody will ask you why you don´t know who is the president, but if you don´t know what is Carne Asada, the people will think that you are a foreign, or maybe you are an alien for them!

In Mexico, the Carne Asada doesn´t only mean the food like roasted meat, instead of a PARTY, the people prefers to use Carne Asada. Because the Carne Asada has already become into an unchangeable activity. You can imagine, in a party you pick from the grill a roasted meat, eating the meat, drinking a Corona beer, talking with friends about soccer. Oh, the life should be like this!

What should we prepare for a typical Mexican Carne Asada? Normally the people use beef, onion, lemon, chili, tomato, Mexican tortilla, and avocado, etc. It´s like the BBQ process to make the roasted meat, I won´t repeat it, but it is necessary to specify some unique Mexican Carne Asada details as following:

1.       Before turning on the charcoal, you have to wrap some onions using silver paper, and put them in a corner of the roast.  The burned charcoal will cooks the onions like a special roasted vegetable.
2.       Wipe the grill with a half onion. Some Mexican friends told me that the meat will taste good in this way.
3.       Burn the charcoal, and we need to wait till there isn´t naked flame in the roast.
4.       Now put beef on the grill, beside the meat you also can put some green chili, tomatoes.

Now you can open a beer and begin to talk with the friends in the language of you guys. Don´t forget to turn over the meat.  What will we have to do on the next?
1.       Check the chili and tomatoes are ok or not yet. If yes, put them into a blender; add some salt and only 10 seconds you will get a typical Mexican sauce.  
2.       Take out the cooked onions under the grill, chop them and add lemon and salt. It smells very delouse! Be careful, it is very hot, and a little bit difficult to take out from the roast.   
3.       Put some tortillas on the grill to heat them, and prepare the avocados.
4.      Now the meat is ok to eat! Pick a tortilla, put a meat in it, and add salt, lemon, cooked onion and the Mexican sauce. Wrap them and eat it!  Yummy!

Corona or tequila? You can drink!  Football o baseball? You can talk! Is here a Mariachi band? Yes, you can dance!

2012年1月2日星期一

The beginning of my Home LINC Study

As it says in the topic, this is my first article about studying English in the Home LINC Program.

I think one day when being able to speak very good English, I will come back here to see what I have written.

How to learn English? and What I will do to learn English? These 2 questions are the same ¨old¨ topic that I have to face up again. Why I mention the word ¨again¨? Because more than ten years ago, I said to myself YOU MUST LEARN ENGLISH, but I went back on my promise.

Today I will translate a Chinese poem to me using my broken English (I hope one day I can translate it as a English native speaker):

明日歌  (Tomorrow Song)

(清)钱鹤滩  (Dynasty Qing) Qian Hetan

明日复明日,明日何其多?
(Tomorrows and tomorrows,how many tomorrows there will be?)
我生待明日,万事成蹉跎。
(If I always leave things to tomorrow, all the things will never be done.)
世人苦被明日累,春去秋来老将至。
(The Tomorrows will be a HEAVY topic for the people, the springs have gone and the autumns will arrive, the people are becoming elder and elder )
朝看水东流,暮看日西坠。
(from the morning to the night the time is like the  rivers that are running very fast towards east; from ancient times to today the days have gone by the sunset in the west.)
百年明日能几何?请君听我明日歌 。
(How many tomorrows there will be during one hundred years? please listen this Tomorrow Song.)


January 2nd, 2012.