I’ve written here about the sacred 4 pm. merienda (afternoon snack) in Colombia before, the beloved fourth meal of the day between lunch and dinner. Merienda (also called “el algo”, “the something”) is often something sweet, along the lines of a pastry, or maybe one of the numerous cheese-based breads that Colombian bakeries excel at.

The first time I went to Colombia, in 2008, I stayed with my friend Carolina and her family. It was December, and people were already gearing up to celebrate. In daily conversations with friends, the word "rumba" kept coming up over and over again in the context of going out at night, but I could never pin down what it actually meant. “Hay rumba?” “Vamos a rumbear?” Is there a rumba? Are we going to rumba? I tried asking Carolina: -Rumba is like fiesta? -Sort of....-It's going out dancing? -Well, kind of...

As is probably pretty obvious by now around here, much of my time in Colombia has been spent in people's kitchens, principally my boyfriend's mother's. Though the fact that most ovens in Colombia lack any form of temperature control drives me crazy, Colombian kitchens come standard with a fair amount of ingenious gadgets that aren't seen in the states but that I think would be equally as useful for many households.

Like maple syrup in Quebec, cane sugar plays a huge part in the culture of the region that surrounds Cali, the Valle del Cauca. It generates an enormous amount of revenue for the region, and, other than its use as a sweetener and in traditional desserts, is turned into many products including rum and ethanol. All school children in Cali have been taken on fieldtrips to the Cane Sugar Museum, and anyone who has traveled through the countryside has chewed on raw cane, sucking out the sweet juices, cut for them by a farmer with the machete that all farmers from the region carry on their belts. Each year a girl is crowned the national “Reina de la Caña de Azúcar y la Panela”, beauty queen of the sugar cane.