The day in which we labor, or eat

As most of you know today was labor day. If you didn't know then I hope you will take the last 3.5 hours available and grab yourself a burger, because it is never too late to celebrate a holiday 75% of the citizens of the United States could not tell you the meaning of. I can honestly say that this holiday doesn't mean terribly much to me. I don't mean to anger members of labor organizations, but I just kind of like to use the day as a chance to hang out with my family and eat good food.

Thankfully good food and my family just come with the territory. As you can see we had quite a feast and that's just dessert and appetizers. Titi Stella made babaganoush and humus. I am personally a bigger fan of the baba, but I would gladly finish a whole plate of eat of them with some pita. I am not a fan of grape leaves, but Titi said that for the amount of work saved buying the can of the grape leaves made the shortcut really worth it, considering that amount of grape leaves would have taken close to a day of work for her.

The caprese salad was my mom's idea. Our beautiful freshly grown tomatoes and our basil made most of the dish. If you remember our pesto day, we actually clipped the basil down to almost nothing; it is now just as big if not bigger only about a month later. My mom bought the little mozzarella balls; she chose the kind that were already marinated in seasoning and stuff, which were a slightly more flavorful addition to the dish. We put a thing of balsamic near the dish, but the freshness of all the ingredients made the need for the balsamic pretty much nonexistent.

When I entered the dessert scene my Titi Carmen pretty much stopped making her famous(if you tasted it you'd know why I feel it's famous; no not many people know about it, but it is famous in our family and our family is fairly large) cheesecake. I don't care how much I learn at school nothing compares to eating Titi Carmen's cheesecake. She added a little bit of sugar to the raspberries and let them sit for a while till she put them on top of the cheesecake. This took away the sometimes sour bitter taste that raspberries sometimes have. Of course the cheesecake would have been completely perfect on its own. I am a sort of cheesecake purist. I prefer plain cheesecake; raspberry flavoring will never taste as good as adding some fresh raspberries to the top of the cheesecake. In my eyes there is also nothing more appealing that fresh fruit and plain cheesecake.

For dinner we had sausage sandwiches, hamburgers, red rice and beans, enchiladas and potato salad. Red rice and beans can change your life; no let me say it differently. Red rice and beans will change your life. It is quite possibly the most amazing dish known to man; yes I am slightly prejudiced being Puerto Rican, but professionals(don't ask me for names because I have no idea)have said that Puerto Rican rice and beans is the best form of rice and beans in the history of rice and beans. The enchiladas were also incredible and my dad's sausage and hamburgers were out of this world(of course they were, he is my daddy).

I hope you all enjoyed some yummy food today and if you didn't I really hope you take my advice and run out for a quick nighttime picnic as your local McDonalds. The people are making double time for working a holiday; you might as well make it worth it.

Happy Eating!!!

Emily