Smorgasbord #62

Hallmark Movies | Carlos Fuentes | Caldo Tlalpeño

Jan 03, 2025

Hello friends! Happy New Year! I wasn’t planning on taking a two-week break, but I’m glad I did. I’ve been back in Phoenix for a week and am still processing everything that happened while we were in Mexico; more is coming soon. I hope you had a good Christmas octave and that this new year is treating you well so far.

Hallmark Movies

Diana enjoys watching Hallmark movies while she’s doing chores. Last week, I heard her cracking up loudly, so I asked her what was so funny. She was watching a movie titled “Three Wiser Men and a Boy,” which is a sequel to “Three Wise Men and a Baby.” I suggested we watch it together if she was down to watch it again, and she agreed.

If you’re unfamiliar with Hallmark movies, they’re usually light-hearted romances set in small towns with predictable plots. The two movies I mentioned are not the exception.

Spoilers ahead, you’ve been warned.

In the first movie, a woman leaves a baby at the fire station, where Brother 1, a firefighter, finds him. Brother 2, a pet therapist, and Brother 3, a videogame developer, help care for the boy. Brother 1 ends up in a relationship with the woman who left the baby at the firehouse, and Brother 2 also ends up in a relationship.

In the sequel, the baby is now a boy; Brother 1 is now the fire chief and is still in a relationship with the woman who abandoned the baby. Brother 2 is now an author, but his book sales aren’t going well, and he hides this from his girlfriend. Brother 3 is on the brink of eviction and too proud to sell his latest video game to another company. Important detail: the father of these three men passed when they were young, and their mom raised them. Mom makes a shocking announcement: she has a boyfriend who happens to be a pastor. Of course, they don’t take that well and decide to stay at the mom’s home for a week, which seems the natural response to such news.

Brother 3, who has been evicted, came up with that idea, by the way, so there are more lies weaved into the plot—very human characters. The boy is part of the school production of The Grump, which is a knock-off of The Grinch for copyright reasons (I thought this was hilarious). The three brothers show up at school and destroy the scenography and wardrobe by accident, pushing the art teacher far enough that he quits teaching and leaves the school dramatically. The school's principal then assigns the production and direction of the play to the three brothers because, of course, he has that much power.

Brother 2’s girlfriend is really good with theater wardrobes, obviously, so she helps out. Brother 3 finds her female equivalent in the school production’s accompanist, a jazz musician looking for her big break. The whole time, they’re resisting help from their mother’s boyfriend, the pastor, who seems able to walk into any room in town because he’s the pastor. For example, he’s able to be backstage at the school’s theater whenever he wishes to do so.

The play is a success. Brother 2 plays The Grump and proposes to his girlfriend afterward, a natural move. Brother 1’s wife (I think they’re married) comes back from a girl’s trip she was on, so the plot about them staying at the mom’s home even though they live in the same town and could stay at their home works. Brother 3 begins a relationship with his female equivalent, and they call each other out on their crap, and that way, they’re better artists or something.

In the end, the three brothers embrace change, including the fact that their mom is dating and very serious about this pastor, who has unlimited access to places. Fin.

There, I just saved you an hour and twenty-four minutes. You’re welcome.

Carlos Fuentes

In December of 2023, I bought a book called “The Art of the Personal Essay,” a compilation of essays from around the world by Phillip Lopate, an American film critic, essayist, fiction writer, poet, and teacher. Sadly, the book sat on my to-be-read pile for most of 2024 until New Year’s Eve, when I decided to pick it up and read one essay. I figured that reading one essay a week—there’s more than seventy-five in the book—would be good fodder for the Smorgasbord. I want to read more in 2025, and one essay a week seems doable.

I decided to read “How I Started to Write” by Carlos Fuentes first because he is Mexican, and I read one of his books in my high school literature class. I didn’t know he was the son of a Mexican diplomat, was born in Panama City, and spent his childhood in Washington, DC. Fuentes talks about Mexico as an imaginary country made up by his father to keep him entertained after school. He contrasts the history of the United States vs. Mexico, one being a history of victories, while the other being a history of defeats.

Fuentes was ten years old when President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized the oil industry in Mexico, automatically making him a communist in the eyes of the “Depression-era little sons of bitches at Henry Cooke Public School on Thirteen Street N.W.” He then realized that Mexico, his father’s country, was real, but it would take him six more years to finally live there. Before that, he took a detour via Santiago de Chile and Buenos Aires.

In Chile, Fuentes fully entered the universe of the Spanish language, Latin American politics, and its adversities. There, he found Neruda, who once said the Conquistadores took our gold but left us theirs, the Spanish language. Fuentes’ upbringing taught him that cultures are not isolated and perish when deprived of contact with what is different and challenging. He also learned that reading, writing, teaching, and learning are all activities aimed at introducing civilizations to each other. It was also there, in Chile, where he decided he wanted to write in Spanish. Oddly enough, this essay is part of a book of essays he wrote in English.

I lived in Mexico for twenty-eight years before moving to the United States, where I’ve been for almost thirteen years. To some extent, I feel like I’m living the inverse of Carlos Fuentes's life. I can relate to the sentiment of living between cultures being introduced to each other. I’m writing in the lingua franca of the world. Still, after reading this essay, I’ve been thinking about writing in my native language and seeing if my tone and style would change, especially after spending ten days in my hometown over Christmas. Mexico is still as surreal, if not more than when I left.

Carlos Fuentes used his young adult experiences of running wild in Mexico City as fodder for his debut novel, “La región más transparente” (Where The Air Is Clear), about a man who left his revolutionary ideas to become a financier. However, the book has a collection of vignettes of Mexico City that made it an instant classic. He was twenty years old when it was published. Similarly, with “Cristóbal Nonato” (Christopher Unborn), the Mexico City post-1985 earthquake is the backdrop for the main character, Christopher, whose parents hope to be born on the first minute of October 12, 1992, the 500 anniversary of the discovery of America to win a contest.

If anything, this essay has energized me, as you can tell by all I had to say about it, and I hope your interest may have been piqued so that you may read one of his books.

Caldo Tlalpeño

Vips is like a Mexican Denny’s and is home to one of my most coveted comfort food items: Caldo Tlalpeño. This was one of the few things I didn’t get to enjoy while I was in Mexico, so I decided to replicate it at home, and I have to say, it didn’t disappoint.

But what’s in it? You may be asking yourself. Excellent question. You’re very inquisitive. I like that about you. Yeah, so this is a soup that consists of chicken broth, shredded chicken, peas and carrots, and Mexican rice, topped with Oaxaca cheese (think Mozarella), avocado slices, and chipotle chili. They usually give you limes on the side if you want to squeeze them. You should.

Sopas y cremas en restaruante | Vips México — This is how the Vips soup looks like

Before I show you my version, here is some history. There are several urban legends about this soup's origin; one says the soup was created to cure President Antonio López de Santa Ana’s hangover and that his cook named it Caldo Tlalpeño. Another story says that a young Mexican entrepreneur who sold chicken soup near the Tlalpan train station started adding chickpeas, carrots, cheese, avocado, cheese, and chipotle to his chicken soup to differentiate, and it has caught fire since then. And last but not least, the Doña Panchita theory, which has Doña Panchita, a street vendor at Calzada de Tlalpan (a huge road in Mexico City) that shushed up the chicken soup she was selling by adding, you guessed it, chipotle, avocado, and cheese. Regardless of who invented it, I’m grateful it exists.

I didn’t have Oaxaca cheese or peas, so I used Queso Ranchero and celery. For a single bowl of soup, I used 6 oz of chicken broth, 1/2 cup veggies, 1/2 cup rice, 1/2 cup cheese, smashed avocado (I followed my heart), and half of a chipotle chili (I should’ve used the whole thing).

I didn’t have that fancy garnish, but we all know you toss that out of the way as soon as the soup is in front of you. The broth looked red after I mixed in the chipotle, so it resembled the Vips soup a bit more. Did it taste the same? Not really. Did it satisfy my craving? Definitely. Did I still have room to house the dino nuggets my kids didn’t finish at dinner? You bet, but that’s beyond the point of this story. Also, it’s dino nuggets with sweet baby Ray’s BBQ sauce; I wouldn’t let those go to waste.

There you have it—something that’s not a taco but also part of Mexican gastronomy. Let me know if you make it at home. You should, especially if you want something warm and hearty with a little kick.

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Sobremesa

Have you watched any Hallmark movies before?
Do you live in between cultures? If so, which ones?
What’s your favorite comfort food?