Merry Christmas,happy Holy Days

Well here we are, made it to another Christmas thank God!  Everybody here is looking for some kind of joy after all we've been through. Those of us that have all the utilities are so glad and relieved, but in our hearts and thoughts are those that don't have any of those commodities yet! So our happiness is not complete. It's tough living with noisy, smelly generators, (those that have them) and buying bottled water or carrying heavy buckets of water to bathe. Especially for those with family members that are sick and/or disabled. I have a friend, actually one of my sons ex girlfriends,  that lives on the side of a  'cerro' (small mountain), and she as well as many, many others are still without, sadly her husband now has a chronic illness and is bed bound most of the time, you can imagine.
My grandchildren live an a mountain in an area called Atalaya, they power their house with a generator, have a cistern which they have to refill somewhere. They do the laundry here every week, and my granddaughter flat irons her hair here also.

So, here is the pernil, I think it's also known as Boston butt, and/or picnic shoulder. Yesterday I defrosted it and took off the skin. All of our knives are dull! so I had a rough time. I roast the skin apart as I have found that this is the only way (for me anyway) to get the skin nice and crispy and crunchy without being hard. This way it's very 'biteable'. I poked holes in it and seasoned with a mixture of crushed and ground (with wooden mortar and pestle) garlic cloves, dried oregano, 2 Sazon seasoning packets, salt and pepper. It marinated in the fridge overnight, and went into the oven at around 8:30 AM, but it's still not done, I just turned it.

My daughter is making the traditional  'arroz con gandules',  potato salad (which I just tasted and its delicious!), green salad and I made chocolate cupcakes yesterday. Traditionally one also has 'Turron' which is made of almonds and comes in a variety of textures, also nuts of all kinds, and 'coquito' which is a punch made with rum, coconut cream, evaporated milk and spices such as anise, cinnamon, nutmeg.

The grand kids will be here later to get their gifts, so life is good thank God and baby Jesus whose birth we are celebrating tonight.

Latah y'all :)