LENTEJAS EN MIAMI - LENTILS IN MIAMI

Cuando viví en un apartamento de Venetian Way en Miami Beach, una de mis vecinas era una joven española encantadora, Tatiana, una graduada reciente de la Boston University que había decidido mudarse a Miami a pasar una temporada. Trabajaba como redactora/publicista en una revista editada en esa ciudad. Hicimos muchísima amistad. Ella había perdido a su madre recientemente que tendría mi edad, y yo tenía a mi hija (que tenía su edad) en Londres. Total, que fuimos como madre e hija. Ella tenía una pandilla de amigos muy simpáticos, jovenes arquitectos españoles recien graduados de universidades americanas, la novia de su hermano una preciosa colombiana y algun que otro YUCA (Young Urban Cuban-American). Hice mucha amistad con todos ellos hasta que se convirtieron tambien en MI pandilla... Me invitaban a todo, a la playa, a las discotecas (siempre, por supuesto, salía antes que ellos aunque insistían de que me quedara). Fueron adorables y amorosos. Decidí (echaban de menos las lentejas caseras) hacerles lentejas una vez a la semana. Dicho y hecho. Ahí estábamos comiendo lentejas ¡con un calor tropical-pegajoso insoportable! Gotas de sudor resbalándonos por las sienes pero ¡todos encantados!

When I lived in an apartment in Venetian Way, Miami Beach, one of my neighbours was a very charming young Spanish woman, Tatiana, who had just graduated from Boston University and had decided to spend some time in Miami. She worked as a writer/advertiser in a magazine that was published in that city. We became great friends. She had recently lost her mother, who was my age, and my daughter, who was her age and lived in London, transformed our friendship into a mother/daughter relationship. She had a great group of friends, young Spanish architects who had finished their careers in American universities, her brother's beautiful Colombian girlfriend and some YUCA'S (Young Urban Cuban-Americans). I became a great friend of all of them to the point that they always invited me to go to the beach with them and to the Disco's (of course I would always leave before they did although they insisted that I stay...). They were adorable and very lovable. One day I decided, because they missed their home-cooked lentils, to make a lentil-dinner once a week. Said and done. There we were eating lentils in that horrible-sticky tropical heat, with perspiration "pearls" dropping down our brows but everybody enjoyed it!