La Mona Finds Her Eggs

 I continue to believe that one of the most magical things since I've moved here, and even further, since I immersed in the culture and became part of a Catalan family, is when your culture blends in with the festivities of your host country's cultures and you literally bring it to the table to share. Holidays, therefore, continue to bring in a newness that surprises me and those around me. Isn't it wonderful how by meshing two cultures you get one big one full of details and stories??

That is precisely what happened this Easter as we prepared La Mona, a traditional cake that the godparents give to their godchildren the day after Easter Sunday (Monday is a bank holiday here). You can either make a very long line Monday morning with all the other anxious parents and chocolate feigning children or you can decide to make it yourself, as long as it contains the typical characteristics of La Mona. Oriol has never doubted  to always make the Mona for Biel and Laia and I can assure you that not only does it beat the others (we don't have to stand in line) but it is absolutely better in taste than any industrial made cake.

Just so you get an idea, the cake is piled with chocolate, lots of chocolate, feathers, figurines, a smaller version of M&M's called Lacasitos, frosting, little chicks in baskets and nuts. Think of a big birthday cake gone wild! The main part for the kids is the surprise figurines that they collect year after year with their favorite characters and for the adults, the chocolate eggs and Cava (Catalan Sparkling Wine) to accompany.

You are allowed to improvise when you make your own Mona and that's when my little American Culture light came on and I exclaimed excitedly to Oriol, "We could paint Easter Eggs too and add them on the cake!!" He looked at me tentatively for a second and decided to let me participate, although he didn't have it very clear whether he should allow his Mona to be weighed down by my hard-boiled eggs. But I went out and found egg dye and explained to the kids they'd have to help dip, dye and draw and just their shrill screams were enough to make me giddy inside too.

Quite honestly, I can still "smell" Easter when I think of dying eggs. My mom would set up the table with newspaper, boil water and drop a spoonful of vinegar and prepare the dyes, a world of colors with strange looking wire spoons to dip the eggs in and create an array of freaky colored eggs. The smell of the sweet vinegar with the bowl of chocolate we could snack on next to us as we decorated, still lives inside me. Not to mention the over the top sweetness of the candies she would throw in our hay smelling baskets and the surprises we would find the next morning. The hunt for the hidden painted eggs, the overdose on sweets and the instinctive feeling that Spring was officially on its way. This last Easter brought back all those memories to me. Stickers, eggs and all. Our cake full of fertility and life was literally pumping with Spring.

After a very long lunch, lots of Cava and sun, and the biting into Oriol's Mona, we sat around and he played a few tunes he's perfected on his guitar. Little Laia sang along and played air guitar as well and I relished in that sweet moment in which two cultures become one and after years and years, you still smell home, your childhood and welcome those holidays that make you feel like a child again.

May the festivities roll on and I hope that you also make an effort to celebrate those days of childhood that sometimes we forget to do as adults. Paint an Easter egg, carve a pumpkin, light a Hanukkah candle, whatever takes you back to those days when all that mattered was if there was a surprise somewhere to make you giddy inside!