Chocolate Puffs or Chupacabra Tripe

Chocolate puffs Halloween treats are
yummy and Don Goyito approves!

In honor of  Halloween, when little children in the USA binge on candy and parents cringe at the thought of the dentist bill, Don Goyito and La Güare developed a special "spooky desert" recipe. We've named them "Chupacabra Tripe" because they do look like pieces of intestine.  These fried dough delights are actually a variation of So-Easy Golden Puffs recipe taken from our own New York kitchen bible; the 1963 edition of the Good Housekeeping Cookbook.  We added in cocoa powder and cinnamon and they may look like something you'd find floating in a toilet bowl, but they are scrumptious pieces of fried glory that make you feel particularly ghoulish when you eat them.

Give them a try and let us now if you enjoyed eating these odd looking pieces of chocolate fun. Enjoy!

Chocolate "Chupacabra Tripe" Puffs

• 2 cups sifted all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar (we used Mexican brown sugar, that is somewhere between brown sugar and white sugar, it is "tan" sugar)
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg

"Chupacabra tripe" looks rather, um, well, gross, but we
promise, they are yum-yum GOOD!

Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl.With a fork, stir until thoroughly mixed. Fry spoonfuls in hot oil (about 375°F). We let long strands fry up in the hot oil, creating the "tripe" effect. Let them cool and then top with powdered sugar or a cinnamon sugar mix (as seen in picture).

Women in the Media, South of the US border

Lately, I've been looking into how women are portrayed in the media after I came across the Miss Representation videos on Youtube. Now, being from the "most powerfull country in the world" (the USA) and living in a country that is often described as "developing" or "Third World" I often see women portrayed in a manner that would get a lot of backlash in the mainstream media in the US, or so I thought. Turns out that women in the US are just as acosted and marginalized in the media as they are in Mexico. Even the most powerful women in US politics can't seem to get the respect their male counterparts get from the media. How can this be? I thought the US was "developed" and "democratic". I don't see a lot of democratic representation of women in the US or Mexican governments.

Who is to blame? Could it be Mexico's nieghbor to the North? Should we point the finger at the US like President Felipe Calderon did in 2010 when speaking about violence in Mexico? 

 "The origin of our violence problem begins with the fact that Mexico is located next to the country that has the highest levels of drug consumption in the world. It is as if our neighbor were the biggest drug addict in the world." The Atlantic Wire

Personally, I don't think it is really so much an influence of US mainstream culture or media. Women being treated as objects has a lot to do with a well known element of Latin American culture, "machismo". As it turns out, women in Mexico are getting stereotyped in the media by their own government. *insert record scratch sound HERE* Yes! According to this video titled Diplomado en Género y Lenguaje Incluyente en los Medios de Comunicación SLP/México 2012,

On average, on any given day in any given (Mexican) printed media shows us to 3 sexist expresions that exclude, objectify, ridicule and discriminate women.  75% of public service anouncement campaigns funded by the Federal Public Administration include content that make women invisible, or assign them gender stereotypes like mother, housewife, shopper or adjectives such as weak and passive.

These are tough issues to deal with because they are so present in our daily lives that we don't seem to even notice them. We've become accostumed to them. We have become desensitized, or perhaps, for some reason(s), we haven't even realized that we are making half of the population into objects that can not control or have any say in how they are portrayed in the media. The equal rights movement still has a lot of work left to do if you ask me, not just in the US or in Mexico, but all over the world.