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Acknowledgments
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xv Acknowledgments While researching and writing this book, I sampled many of the dishes mentioned in it, taking care to follow exactly each step called for in the old recipes. My use of traditional ingredients and methods, however, does not mean that this is a recipe book or even a historical study of food with old recipes as its foundation. More than anything, it represents an attempt—in terms of theme, method, and theory—to put into perspective how and why in Puerto Rico we came to eat what by and large we do eat; to understand why and how for the majority of Puerto Ricans what they eat remains so familiar to them in the midst of all the changes and adaptations occurring, often with great rapidity, in our contemporary food habits and practices. In writing this book, I have had assistance from many people, in particular : Professors Astrid Cubano Iguina, Juan Giusti, Antonio Mansilla, Carlos Pabón, and Fernando Picó, who read the initial version of the manuscript and offered useful comments and suggestions. Professor Sidney Mintz, who kindly entered into a rich and fruitful critical dialogue during the translation of the book. Ángel Quintero Rivera who, in the best tradition of the master teacher, made a series of worthy suggestions based on more than a dozen critical readings of the text; Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, who urged that I observe the mestizo “interplay” of Caribbean dishes. The faculty of the Humanities Department of the University of Puerto Rico in Humacao—the philosophers Carlos Rojas Osorio, Joaquín Jimenez, Edward Rosa, and Rubén Soto; the historians José M. García Leduc, Pablo García Colón, Luis López Rojas, Luis Sánchez Longo, and Jerry Piñero; the art critics and curators Nelson Rivera Rosario, Rubén Moreira, and José Rojas; the artists Daniel Lind and Vilma Maldonado; the foreign language specialists Lourdes Suárez and José Eugenio Hernández; the writer Zoe xvi Acknowledgments Jimenez Corretjer; the theater person and dancer Gradisa Fernández; the musicians Rubén López and José Hernández; the filmmaker and documentalist Reynaldo Álvarez—all of whom listened to my litanies about the relevance of studies on food and eating habits both as a field of interdisciplinary scholarship and as a way of understanding the patterns of food consumption in contemporary Puerto Rican society. I am grateful as well to Pilar and Glorimar—secretaries in the Department of Humanities—for maintaining order in my correspondence during my absences; and to Jennifer Cintrón, my research assistant, for her frankness in alerting me to some passages that needed livening up and her adeptness in helping me avoid several blind alleys of research. My thanks, too, to my siblings—Humberto, Carlos, Gerardo, Vanessa, and María Carolina—for their steady encouragement and unsuspected interest in the history of food and Caribbean cooking and cuisine. I could not have written a line were it not for the mediating effect of their gastronomic sensibilities on my thinking. Specialrecognitiongoestomywife,Anita.EverythingthatIhavebrought to fruition in my work on this topic during the past several years I owe to the sacrifices she has made. The encouragement she gave me in difficult moments enabled me to carry on to the end. Daily, she persevered in listening to some dry anecdote about the cooking ways of old and was intrepid in trying hoary dishes that, from the moment they went on the stove, looked unpromising and indeed turned out to be indigestible. On such occasions, Anita always consoled me with her pronouncement, “it’s all really tasty,” a gesture that often allowed me to overcome my frustrations and quickly recover my air of the historic chef. To all, Thank you University of Puerto Rico, Humacao campus [54.226.226.30] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:56 GMT) Eating PuertoRico This page intentionally left blank ...