I do quite like rice and beans weirdly, I don't know how or why. For me I always eat my beans first one by one and then savour the rice because it is bloody fantastic.
I have my great grandmother's recipe for black beans, all the way from Cuba, and I know how to make those. I'm actually pretty good at it now. But my first time, the beans actually exploded in the pot, so I had black beans just dripping from the ceiling - which is actually a dream come true for most Cubans. It was a nightmare to clean.
I like beans. Lentils are beans, right? I love beans and rice.
I grew up in Louisiana. We have red beans and rice, and there's a Popeye's on every corner.
I can't eat beans - all beans. I think because I'm half Cuban. So growing up, we were always eating black beans and rice, and I think I just said, 'Enough with it,' and I can't even stand to taste it anymore.
As for the first guitar I actually bought, I believe it was a Cherry Red Kramer! I think I bought it because Eddie Van Halen played Kramer, and I remember it had a Rockinger tremolo on it.
I'm half Puerto Rican and every Friday we have rice and beans and chicken in my house - so that's like a very Latin staple. It's just so comforting. I look forward to every single Friday because I just can't wait for my rice and beans and chicken.
Look, I made a commitment to corn 17 years ago. Sure, I'm a man. I like to go to a barbecue and see beans that I like: baked beans, red beans, black beans, big plump garbanzos. But in the end, I always come home to my sweet, sweet corn.
That was one thing my mama instilled in me: to be well trained in the kitchen. Growing up, I was always in the kitchen with her. You name it, I make it: red beans and rice, lasagna, chicken, pork. I am the queen of cooking.
I remember the first 45 record I bought. It was called 'A Dog a Donut'; it was a breakbeat. Actually, I think I bought two at one time, and the other one was 'Dance to the Drummer's Beat.' Those are breakbeats. I paid a dollar for it, for each one. Your average producer or DJ would know who came out with those.
I would have to say that my very first encounter with the arts was when my mother bought me my first record player when I was six years old as well as a Karen Carpenter record.
I found that when I went from Albany to Savannah, that I needed to put that white rice away, and I needed to turn that into Savannah red rice because they were big into that sausage, tomato-y, bell pepper-y rice mixture.
When I was up in New York, the first record my parents bought me was the Terror Squad record with 'Lean Back.'
It's because of football that I bought my first car, I bought my first house and I probably had sex for the first time... actually, that was definitely because of football.
I'm really Americanized. The only real Latina thing I do is cook rice and beans with chuletas and tostones. I do the healthier version of what my grandmother would have made: a lot less salt, a lot less fat, a lot more vegetables. Sometimes I serve it with brown rice, which is, like, sacrilegious.