Cascarones!

Cascerones in Mexico

As mentioned in my previous blog about the 'L' word, we made cascarones for the recent Easter holidays. Naturally, the children wanted to know Everything possible about cascerones, so we Googled, and amongst other things, we learned that cascarones originated in China. This surprised me, because I've only ever known them as originating from Mexico.  It's thrilling to learn new things!

I was introduced to cascarones back when I lived in Los Angeles, California (1988-1993), which has a large population of Mexican culture. Before moving to Los Angeles, my only exposure to anything Mexican was 'Taco Bell' which is a fast food restaurant in America that serves....Taco's! Well, after living in Los Angeles for a long while, (briefly married in to a Mexican family from El Paso, Texas) I picked up a lot of customs and culture along the way. And, I learned that the stuff Taco Bell serves isn't even CLOSE to real Mexican (yummy) food.

Taco Bell Taco

Mexican Taco

I appreciate the Mexico (pronounced Meh-He-Co) culture. It's colourful and the mariachi music paired with a margarita goes really well together. The food is spicy, but I come from the Cajun culture of Louisiana, which invented the word 'spicy'. (though the Thai's may claim they did).  Mexican culture is passionate and soulful with their music, food, dancing, and their spiritual connection to all rites of passage.  In Los Angeles, I lived near a large park (Los Feliz), and was always fascinated by the Quinceanera's  held there on the weekends. Girls dressed in glorious bridal gowns enjoying their 15th birthday, with the entire extended family celebrating with her. Seeing those parties I wondered what a real wedding party must be like, and I was later fortunate enough to attend one in El Paso. The wedding lasted 3 days! It was during those 3 days of festivities that I also learned I do NOT like the traditional Mexican hangover cure, which is a soup called Menudo. Give me a Bloody Mary with spicy green beans any day, but hold the Menudo (blech). But other than the Menudo, I can tuck in to some Mexican cuisine.

One of my brothers is married to a Guatemalan lady he met in Los Angeles, and she was the one who introduced us to cascerones one Easter. Cascerones are hollowed eggs filled with confetti that are then covered in colouful tissue paper.  After playing hide-n-seek with the eggs, everyone breaks the eggs over each others head, and confetti flies everywhere.  It's fun, colourful and festive, albeit a bit messy.

My children thoroughly enjoyed making cascerones this year. From emptying out the egg innards, to covering the eggs with colourful tissue paper and glue, to filling them with birdseed (and later eating lots of omelets and quiches).  Yep! we used birdseed instead of confetti so our garden could be enjoyed later by hungry birds, versus littered with colourful confetti.

notice how intent on concentration
my children are with this project.
it was lovely watching them 'take over' and teamwork
together to make the cascerones. with little involvement from me!

The funnest part, of course, was cracking the cascerones open with friends later. Unfortunately, one of our little guests learned the hard way that English eggshells are a weebit harder than American eggshells.  I tried to demonstrate on his head how to crack the eggs over someones head, and....um...errrr, well, let's just say I'm glad he didn't have a concussion.  Thankfully, I was then quick witted to instruct everyone to crack the cascerones open with their hands instead of over heads.

cascerones and flowers we left for E.B.
notice the Chinese vase (and a Smarties vase)

Well, I'll end with explaining why I may seem a hypocrite after my post on avoiding the 'L' word. I learn now that you're suppose to break cascerones over someone elses head to give them good luck.  I didn't know this before making them, and, anyway, I think our little friend who left with a cascerone headache probably wouldn't agree with the whole cascerone luck theory. Regardless, they're great fun!! (just remember, when using English eggs...use your hands to crack the cascerones. otherwise, suffer the unlucky headache)