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Christmas in America:

Join Our Annual

Family Celebration!

The Three Guys from Miami make their third appearance on the Food Network in December on a special holiday presentation, "Christmas in America."

This one-hour program, hosted by Rachel Ray, features unique Christmas celebrations from all over the United States. For the Cuban Noche Buena segment, the Food Network taped our annual celebration at Raúl's home in Westchester.

If you've never seen us roast a pig, this is the show to watch. You'll see Raúl do his magic with the pig roaster and a big assortment of traditional Cuban foods prepared and served at the big celebration. Everybody had a great time last year and the pig was delicious!

Other segments on the "Christmas in America" special include a big Italian family gathering in Chicago, an old-fashioned Christmas at a sixth generation farm in Vermont, a neighbor helping neighbors in Hawaii, and a "Low Country" celebration with traditional Gullah recipes.

Christmas in America Premieres:

Sunday, December 14th at 10:00 PM EST/9:00 PM CST.

Additional Showings:

Volcanoes in Cuba?

The volcano was a common sight in backyards in Cuba, and today many Cuban Americans carry on the tradition. It's basically an outdoor single-burner stove. The burner is sized to fit a large cooking pot. The pot can be filled with oil for deep frying or water for boiling. Many people prefer to fry fish outdoors -- it keeps the smell out of the house, and some people think the abundance of fresh air outside actually makes the fish taste better!

For parties, a volcano and a large pot of water could be used to boil up a huge batch of yuca! Volcanoes in Cuba were usually fueled with wood or charcoal, although some were made to use kerosene.

Lighting the kerosene-fueled volcano was not an easy task. There was a pump that was used to pressurize the kerosene. It looked a little like a bicycle pump and the user had to pump this handle several times before lighting the stove.

A small quantity of alcohol was added to a tray in the center of the gas ring. You lit the alcohol on fire, waited awhile to make sure the flame was steady and then you opened a little valve to release the kerosene gas.

If you were lucky, the kerosene gas would pop to life with a steady blue flame. If not, the gas would fizzle and smoke and you had to go through the entire procedure all over again!

Many volcanoes in use today -- like the one pictured above -- use propane.

The Shocking Truth about Hot Water in Castro's Cuba

The modern hot water heater has a pretty short life span. As most people know, eventually the tank rusts, or the heating element burns out. So by the mid 1960s, with no new water heaters to be had and no parts, many Cuban families found themselves without hot water. However, resourceful Cubans came up with some new and ingenious ways to avoid a cold shower!

Many Cuban showers had a device that most Americans would find really shocking! We're talking about an electric showerhead! These devices are still a common sight in many Cuban homes, where you'll see two electrical wires running down from the ceiling and into the shower head.

At the Castillo house in Cayo la Rosa, the showerhead consisted of a two-inch long pipe with a carbon element in the middle. The Castillo's carbon core rod had been cannibalized from an old crank-type telephone battery. One wire was connected to the carbon element and the other wire was attached to the pipe. The cable then had to be plugged into an electrical outlet on the wall outside the shower!

"There is a common belief in Cuba that 110 volts won't kill you, no matter how wet you are," Jorge says.

Operating the electric shower head was a tricky undertaking. You had to first adjust the water flow to just the right amount -- in practice little more than a trickle. If you ran the water too fast, it would not get hot enough as it passed over the hot carbon element.... (more!)