Cooking with Charcoal and Not Dying in the Attempt
HAVANA TIMES – I wasn’t born for this, and I’ll make that clear from the start. My thing is writing stories and poems no one buys, taking care of my fish—who lately eat better than I do—painting, crafting, and creating articles when the muse and the electricity allow it, for a digital magazine that helps me make it to the end of the month. But my life, always full of surprises and bouncing me from one comedy to the next, has now thrown me into the task of cooking with charcoal.
I’m a frustrated artist born in the countryside, so the smell of a burning oven isn’t foreign to me. In fact, I feel nostalgic for those nights when we helped our uncles keep watch so no “mouths” would open in the mountain of logs, straw, and earth that was slowly burning.
I saw my grandmother squatting in front of a charcoal stove to cook for her large family, and my mother—who’s now 66—still doing it. So in theory, I’m an expert on the subject, though I had never experienced it firsthand. And here I am, with my ego smoked and my hair smelling like caldosa from the CDR—those stews made every year to celebrate the anniversary of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution—but I’m alive. I’m not afraid of challenges, no matter what form they take.
This story begins like most tragedies in Cuba: a blackout of catastrophic proportions and a now ornamental only cooking gas cylinder. My husband was wracking his brain, calling on the “seven thousand virgins” to see if he could find a way to refill the small gas cylinder. But gas has vanished, and if you do find it, it costs more than 15,000 pesos (US $40). I kept pushing the idea of using charcoal—these days even the most refined Cuban women have black-stained acrylic nails. If “we’re riding the donkey, we’ve got to keep whipping it.”
Eventually, he came back with a sack of charcoal that cost 1300 pesos and a handmade burner for 1500 pesos. Our neighbor gave us a metal cabinet she had used for her potted plants, and we managed to improvise.
Charcoal doesn’t light with poetry. After several poems and a fair share of curses it kept smoking but didn’t produce heat. Watching my performative ritual, my husband took over the task. I thanked him as one does nowadays—with sarcasm, resignation, and a stove top espresso maker ready, hoping the pieces of wood would change color.
Fire has no respect for eyebrows, soot is stickier than chewing gum, but we survived. The flame caught, we drank coffee, the rice began to boil, the sausages fried, and the beans bubbled. The trick is figuring out how to light it, being patient—and then the rest is easy. You just have to feed the flames.
With my dignity half-melted, I sat down to think while everything cooked. I thought about my daughter, who still clings to dreams very similar to those I had at her age. About my mother, who lives alone. About my father, who passed before seeing his daughter—the “artist”—become a smoke expert.
And then I laughed, because that’s what we Cubans do. We mock disaster, so we don’t cry from hunger or helplessness. For better or worse, writing isn’t the only thing I do. I endure however I can—with words, drawings, fish, smoke, and charcoal—but I stay alive.
If you see me out there with black fingernails, know that it’s not performance art—I gave up those dreams long ago. I’m cooking in the real Cuba, the one you won’t find in tourist brochures or official speeches, the one where life is a recipe with few ingredients, but it has to stretch.