Trip to a Trapiche

 The day after my Honey Experience I got invited to walk down to a "trapiche" or a sugar cane processing place.  Being Cuban-American, I'm kind of sad I've never experienced this before.  I remember my Dad bringing sugar cane to my grandparent's house one weekend and me chewing on that and thinking it was gross but never really drank too much cane juice afterward.  But being as how it was one of the most widespread grown crops in Cuba for some time I find it closely linked to my heritage.  Especially since Allan spent most of career working to efficiently process it, and my hearing about it regularly from Dad.

I had intended to find out with the trapiches are run around here and go to one so when my host-sister-in-law invited me I jumped right on board.  I walked down with them and managed to slip and cut my hand up a little on the walk down.  Once we arrived Eric had already run all of the cane through a machine that squeezes all of the juices out.  The juices trickle down through a pipe to this gigantic vat which sits over a wood burning oven.  It's pretty intense.  He had been boiling it for a couple hours when we got there so we didn't have to wait long. We got to shelling peanuts to put in some of the candies we were going to make.

We heard some people on the next farm over and went to visit and check out their trapiche run by "bueyes" or oxen.  Some of my neighbors and students were there having a little party as their dads, uncles and sons worked processing the sugar.  They offered me a wok full of cane "miel" or honey.  It's the juice after a certain point of boiling, or what they scrape off the top of the boiling cane juice.  I had a few spoonfuls and had to beg they make me not eat it all because it was just too much sugar!

We got back to what used to be my host-dad's trapiche and is now his son's and he was starting the first candies.  He was taking some of the cane and putting it into what looks like a large wooden canoe.  Most of his wooden tools are over a hundred years old he explained to me.  The canoe thing was carved straight out of a tree to make sure it could deal with the boiling cane juice.  He mixed up the juice until it started to cool and solidify a little and we added some peanuts.  Then, they placed this mixture onto a palm leaf to make some candies.

Lastly, he pours all of the cane juice into the wooden canoe and then started picking up smaller amounts and pouring it into long blocks of "tapas" molds.  He fills each one up and lets them cool.  While they do Cinthya and Mauricio walk me down the "quebrada" to show me the water Eric was using to clean all of machinery and tools.  We sit along the rocks as Mauricio points out all of the cows he's named and splashes us as he throws rocks.  It was a beautiful break from a very hot morning around a use boiling vat.  When we get back to the trapiche Eric and Macha are flipping over the molds and we hear the popping sounds as they fall to the table.

It's a Semana Santa custom that people usually go down to a trapiche on the first Saturday of Semana Santa and use the dulce made to make cookies and all sorts of deserts throughout the week.  People give their visitors entire tapas or bags of the coconut/dulce cookies they make called "cajetas de coco."  These are by far my favorite part of the Semana Santa traditions.  The fish soup, sardines and excessive consumption of fish is a little much for me.  Then, there's "picadillo de aracache" which is like most other picadillos but based off a different vegetable that was interesting.  I did enjoy trying everyone's arroz con leche or cajetas de coco though. I finally got a chance to make some the following weekend.  Carving the coconut out and then shredding it was tough work.  All in all, I still don't like sugar cane dulce very much, but mixed in with coconut, I can definitely learn to be Cuban.