I'm from Paraguay, and people say Uruguay.

No, I said Paraguay.

South America.

And you've brough some delicious breakfast goods.

Ye ...that are Paraguayan.

Tell us what we have here.

Well we have cocido which is a warm or hot drink and it's made out of yerba mate.

It's like a tea.

And then you add milk and sugar.

Okay.

And you have mbeju, which is a Guarani name.

You know, the not the two languages.

The Guarani language.

And the Spanish one.

Spanish.

So the mbeju is like, kind of like a bread and is made out of, tapioca starch, cornmeal, butter and fresh cheese and salt.

And you just put on the palm and, you know, like the tortilla, and then yo have your breakfast or a snack and you said this, you grew u making this dish the mbeju?

Yes.

Tell us about it.

You made it with your mom, with your siblings.

Tell us about those.

Well I remember first with my grandma because my grandparent live across the street so often.

We will go and cook with them.

So I have a lot of memories making cake or meals with my grandma.

So I first was doing with my grandm and then of course with my mom, and then I had to do for my siblings too, because I was the oldest.

So I had to cook for, you know, take care of my younger siblings.

Well, in the winter, this is like a winter time kind of food because it's warm.

I mean, we have during summer, but it's, it's more popular during winter.

So when you take a bus and yo travel from one city to another, there are ladies with baskets that they have, like the cocido, the cocido, and they offer that with a mbeju or chipa, which is another, type of bread made out of corn, the same ingredients, but just a different shape.

We learned at school, like and when I was in fourth grade, they taught us how to make mbeju there in the school.

So because we had, you know, we had to learn to cook, how to cook, how to sew everything in school.

And then we hav the popular, festivities where it's a must.

There is.

You cannot call that is popula if they don't have the cocido con mbeju as part of the traditional meals.

Interesting.

So this is very muc part of the fabric of it is in.

Yeah.

Community it is.

I was in charge of cooking for my sibling because my parents would work.

So I learned, ten, 11, 12 to cook most of the meals and, and mix, you know, Persian food.

Paraguay.

And for both of them, my father is from Iran, so he probably had all kinds of delicious meals.

Yeah.

We do yeah, it's very fun.

I really like Persian food.

I go towards more towards like Persian food when it comes to, you know, like making dinner, like salty food.

Right?

Big meals.

More like Persian dishe than Paraguayan dishes, right?

So I'll share with you one of my favorite foods in all the world.

Tell me if I'm saying this right.

Tahdig.

Can I tell you something about the Tahdig?

Please do.

Okay, so the tahdig is is is very hard to make it right.

Because you have to be attentive when you're cooking the rice and the Tahdig is, you know, there could be potato.

Oh you can put potato or just the rice.

Right.

But but the, when is the potato people like the most.

Oh really?

Okay.

So, my son, he went to Israel to volunteer for a year and a half, in the Baha'i World Center.

And then one day he said, mom, I just try the Persian food here, and it's so good.

It's not burned at your time because always came black.

Are there other foods or cooking techniques that you think are really a the heart of Paraguayan cooking?

Well, the thing is that every country has a very even when we use the same ingredients to cook, it's a very particular flavor and a very particular mix.

So we have, for example, lots of soups that are similar.

I would say, let's say pozole for a Mexican soup and we call pozole we call locro.

Okay.

And it's but it's a very, very humble meal.

And wherea the Mexican used for in parties.

So I was very surprised, you know, that difference between how people celebrate and use the meals in different occasions, you know.

Yes.

So for us that soup is like Mondays is the day for soups at home.

You know, it's like kind of my, my kids used to, joke because Monday soup Tuesda pasta, Wednesday, you know, meal And they knew the, like the whole, sequence of of food according to the day, which is traditional in the whole country.

So what are other of these humble dishes that are just really common in Paraguay?

Well, we have we use a lot of cassava, which is mandioca, or yucca root What is another name?

Yeah I think those three is the one that people are connected and is a root.

So the cassava or the mandioca is in every table with every dish you have soup, you have cassava on the, on the table because it's like you replace bread.

Right.

Is that taste better than the potato?

So cassava is somethin that you eat with soup with it.

Dried dish or with asado?

With a barbecue.

It's always there with sausage, you know, the thing is, those meals are very, not expensive are very accessible to people.

And you can even have in your in your garden.

And, so when we say it's like the, the, the food of the poor is not very much like is like from the rural area.

It doesn't mean that you are poor, but it's more accessible also because the ingredients are not expensive.

And tell me about how you pass these traditions along to your children.

Well, they are very good cook.

So good they don't want to buy food anymore.

I mean like like they, they really, they, they love to cook and they develop their own style, you know, and, and that is nice to see.

So they all, they all kno how to cook, to make Paraguayan dishes or some Persian dishes or any other that they, like.

Are there any other things you think we might need that would be interesting to the audience about Paraguayan traditions and cooking and your heritage that are passed dow from generations in your family?

Well, one thing that I would I can say is the food is one of the things that unite people.

And, there is a saying by an American friend, he said once, when you go to Paraguay, you cry because everything is absent.

I mean, you have to relearn how to break the rule and stuff like that, you know?

But then when you leave Paraguay, you cry because you made such a good friends.

You don't want to leave the country.

And, Paraguay is a country where we really take, invest a lot of time in friendships and families and everything is around food.

Tell us a little bit about your homeland of Serbia.

Sure.

So I lived in Serbia until I was nine years old.

My family and I were, lived in Serbia during, the Yugoslavia war that took place early 90s.

I was just a newborn, about about a year, a year old, when things kind of started getting bad.

So I was born in, Vukovar, Croatia.

And my family lived in Tovarnik Croatia, which is a very small, small, small town, smaller than Amarillo, smaller than some of the surrounding towns we have here.

And, we lived there a while.

I was a kid, had to leave our home in Tovarnik when things started getting ba in the area and go into Serbia, which the border to Serbia wa right there, where the city was.

And so we got help fro the Serbian police, got us into connection with the Red cross, or my family was able to get some items, some funds and, one of the little familie took us in for a few days, and then my dad had to, after things settle down, go back into, Croatia Tovarnik.

And so at that point in time we lived kind of where we could we didn't have a permanent place to stay because the, the apartment that we lived and my dad owned was destroyed by a bomb while we were away.

So that displaced our family.

We kind of, lived here and there with people or somebody that would let us live in their home with them and didn't have a permanent place.

But, during the years, you know, the war was still going on through the 90s my brother and sister were born.

They came along, and then about 97, we moved into Serbia, to try to get help from the United States immigration.

And so we, were thankfully, a family brought us into thei little back home that they had to let us stay there.

They saw my mom and dad and us three little kids, and they offered up, us of this little home.

That was kind of it's kind of the only the place we could call our own that was with living with somebody else or in in a room of somebody's house.

And, so, you know, all of us were in this and this, you know, mom, dad, brother and sister and I all in this, room.

And so and we still keep in touch with that family, and we're so gracious for them.

And they become like family to us.

My mom has always cooked, the, the lady of the of the of the house that, you know, that took us in.

She loved to cook, so mo would join her in their kitchen.

And now the little house we lived in maybe didn' really have a place to cook, or it was basically a place to sleep.

I mean, it just it had beds and just a few other things that we could fit in there that would, you know, have a warm place to stay.

So we spent a lot of time with that family that, let us in, like, like I said, they became like family.

And so, I remember hanging ou with them during that time, and, mom and Branca, is is the lady's name.

She they cook together.

They, they make meals together and we would all eat together, have coffee in the morning together, you know, like, as those kids, we didn't really have coffee that would make us cups of coffee.

But it wasn't really coffee because they wanted to be like the adults.

So there was, good that came out of all of that.

You know, we celebrate and celebrations, birthdays and, Christmases and things like that.

It just kind of brought, even though there was this whole, whole war happening around you, you kind of felt at some points like that it wasn't just because of that community.

Yeah.

Tell us about what you've brought here today.

Yeah, sure.

So this, is a Serbian dessert that, my family and I grew up eating.

But it is a no bake wafer.

Cake is what it's usually called.

We call it a cookie back home.

But it is, tort wafer sheets.

And you make a filling which has chocolate, walnuts, ground tea biscuits.

So you and butter, of course, milk and butter.

And so you prepare all of this, you make the filling, and then you basically fill those tort sheets with the filling.

You let that sit over with something heavy on top, and then you're able to kind of like, cut them into these cookies here.

One thing that I can think of that's very traditional is a, it's called Sarma, which is, stuffed cabbage leaves.

It's basically like when you make sauerkraut but you make the entire cabbage as a, you know, sour, and, you feel you get those leaves and you fill them with a mixture of, like a ground beef rice seasoning mixture, and you roll them up into cabbage rolls.

And then you cook those, they take 3 or 4 hours to cook on the stove top, and they're the best thing in the world.

Help us.

Kind of envision the flavors are there.

What are the spices or the the herbs, the aromatic type ingredients that might give you th traditional flavors of Serbia?

Sure.

There's not a whole lot of, like, spicy, it's, lots of the seasoning we use are very, vegetable based.

There's one seasoning tha we use in particular that we, we get from the international store in Wolf Lin here.

And my mom uses that in everything.

And it's it's just a I mean, I don't know how to explain the seasoning, but it's it's, you don't have to use salt with it because it's kind of already have that salty finish to it, but it's, it's vegetable based, so it's made out of all kinds of different vegetables into the seasoning.

Not a whole lot of, like, we just don't use a whole lot of, like, seasoning as far as, like, other areas goes.

But, like, there's also one that's tomato based.

And it's, it's tomato and, like, red bell pepper and it's kind of, it's more of, it's not a dry seasoning, but more of a with the spoon you can almost eat it on bread.

Kind of like a condiment.

Yes, yes.

And so she uses that a lot in her stews and, and the cabbage rolls as well.

Okay.

Because when we first came here, there wasn't an international store.

There was not a place to get stuff.

So at that point in time, it was, you know, do what you have and use salt instead of the seasoning we used to use or, things like that, or, you know, there was other families that came here before us that would maybe had the opportunity to buy online that we could get from them and just pay them for, for the items.

But, the currently, we're able to find most of the stuff.

Now it's easier because you can order stuf from like Chicago or somewhere that has a big Serbian population, and they have bigger stores, or it's all Serbian product or Bosnian product.

But we do find what we need a the little international store that we have here, and they really have a good selection of stuf from back home, even the coffee.

And I will say this.

Like from the Serbian side, it's like and anyone's always welcome in a Serbian household.

So if you just like for Christmas, for instance, it's like that way it's like whoever, if you don't have to be invited to come over, you're going to be treated, to a meal and to, you know, good time with our family.

And, enjoy dessert.

And, it's a day of reall just bringing people together.

And so that's kind of what I love about that as well.

It's like, no, no one should ever feel like they should be invited over if they know we're having it.

They just need to show up.

My name is Gloria Neal Robert and I do live here in Amarillo.

Allison Roberts and I also live in Amarillo.

Gloria, I've heard you talk about how you've learned to cook through, your mother and then with your mother in law as well.

Talk to me about the two of you in the kitchen and the traditions that you've passed on, and what you've learned from your mom and and your grandparents and your generations that came before there were four girls in my family.

And so, of course, we took our turns in the kitchen with my mother, and we really just kind of worked alongside her and watched her quite a bit.

And she did different things, you know, and she was noted for her biscuits and our family and, and, peach cobbler and so forth.

And it wasn't so much that we learned recipes, we learned techniques, and we learned, you know, little skills.

You know, she always said, okay, you need to start out with a clean kitchen, and you need to learn to get all of your, ingredient and your utensils and so forth together, you know so you don't have to run around.

And then as we, you know, she would give us a task as a little girl, you know?

Okay I need you to do this over here.

And she's doing something else over there.

And so that gave us a chance to talk.

And, we talked about the cooking and, the food we were working on, but we talked about other things, and I think we learned a lot of skills, and picked up, you know, just little tidbits from her, as we had those conversations.

And I hope tha that passed down to my daughter, because sometimes I'd give her a task to do.

And, we had a chance to kind o talk, and she'd ask questions, why do you do this?

And and so forth.

I think it definitely passed on to me.

She's a former home ec teacher, and so I definitely learned the basics.

I learned how to follow a recipe and then make it your own.

And, I'm really gratefu for knowing those those basics.

There's a lot of people tha don't learn that in the kitchen.

My mother in law was from Louisiana.

Right.

And, she also did not have recipes.

She could tell you what was in there, but she couldn't give you amounts.

And so you had to trial and error it.

You know, sometimes it didn't turn out too good, you know?

But, you know, over the years, those things have, I've got I've perfected a few of them and, and, and so we get together as a group and, and, and work on them you know, so that no one person has to do all the wor in all the chopping and so forth that is entailed in, and getting them together.

And so we've kind of meshed both of those, those two mothers, you know that didn't have recipes, but, you know, passed down some things to they could tell us what to put in, but not necessarily, specific amounts.

And can you tell us abou a few of the dishes that you say you perfected from your mother in law?

Well, I've gotten really good at making gumbo.

We had, my husband and I had a family across the street from us.

Hispanic family across the street from us.

We had no children at that time, and it got to be Christmas time.

And she would always say, come over.

I'm making so-and-so you know, and I would watch her, make different dishes and, so we would always go there for Christmas Eve because we didn't really have any traditions.

And they moved away and it was like, now what are we going to do?

And so we decided, my my husband said, let's make us some gumbo, you know?

And so we started out and each he swore he knew how to make it.

And, I made it just like he told me, but it wasn't very good.

And so as I talked to my mother in law, I said, she she said, di you put some of this in there?

And I said, no.

Did you put some of this in there?

And you put she named all these things and us.

I didn't put those things in there because he didn't tell m they were ingredients in there.

She said, yes, bu he doesn't know how to make it.

He only knows how to eat it too.

Your mom said that you like to try new things.

So when you're in the kitchen and you're experimenting, do you feel a little like your grandmother's or on your shoulder?

And you see those Louisian traditions creeping in on things that you cook?

Tell us about the kind of things that you like to cook and how how you see reflections of your heritage in those dishes.

I definitely feel them influencing me.

And I think learning the basics has helped me to, be adventurous.

I know kind of wha to do in the framework, and then I kind of creep outside of that and add something different.

So I've tried lots o different things in the kitchen.

The family really loves my lasagna.

And, lately I've been into sour dough, so I've been making sour dough bread.

So yeah, definitely going from watching grann make biscuits to now, you know, in there feeding the starter and making bread is.

That's a great connection.

I actually have granny's pie pie dish.

Oh you do?

Yeah.

An old Pyrex that, you know, then probably wouldn't mean anything to anyone else, but, it's kind of special.

Absolutely.

And you mentioned she made peach cobbler.

Do you, do you make pies that are inspired by what she used to make in that pieplate?

I don't, I've tried a few pies, but, I think the pie makers are mom and my niece, and they make sweet potato pies to talk about the traditions and the.

I don't know, the culture and the the communion that happens in the kitchen.

In our culture, so much of our lives is spent in the kitchen, not just cooking, or eating, but that's where you do your homework.

And, that it' just that's what I remember is we spend a lot of time together in the kitchen.

I love that, you know, again, that yes, it takes me back to my memories growing up also.

And I remember her telling my, my granddaughter, she's, they were in the kitchen and getting ready to cook and tell her about the the the meat.

So she, she is learning to meal prep, and, I told her to season her meat, and she's like, well, what do I put in there?

Well, what how much?

And I again, I didn't learn amounts.

I learned, you know, techniques.

And so I said, well, you'r going to learn the same thing.

I said, you know, grab the onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper.

You're going to put those and then anything else in the spice cabinet that you see.

She said, well, how much?

I said, you put it in unti your ancestors tell you to stop.

And she looked at me and she said, oh, well, all right.

And so the next week I said, you got to season your meat.

Let's go.

She went right to it, and she knew how much to put.