Cascarones

I passed San Antonio south on I-35 on my way to the Valley and there was no doubt in my mind that Easter was near. I drove by vendors parked on the side of the streets with homemade signs letting everyone know they were selling "Cascarones" - Easter Eggs. Red, blue, yellow, blue and yellow, orange, purple, etc...

It reminded me of Easters as a kid. We'd go to church then go to the park. Every year, we would try to eat as many eggs as we could, so that when Easter came around we could have about 20 dozen cascarones. My mom would carefully break the top of the eggs when she was about to cook them. Then, we'd put them away till the week before easter when we would color them and fill them with confetti. Sometimes we would fill the cascarons with harina or every now and then someone would get crazy and stick a raw egg in there. I like to tell people that we used to eat: papas con huevo, chorizo con huevo, frijoles con huevo, jamon con huevo, y huevo a huevo!

I was talking to my friend a couple of days ago. She's from McAllen, but currently lives in Ohio. I asked her if they were going to make the cascarones and she told me people up there didn't do that. I said, WHAT?! I didn't know that. She also told me that kids don't crack the eggs over each other's head. Again, I didn't know that.

We always had the kid that would get too excited and start cracking eggs with the pointy part of the cascaron over the old ladies' heads! Oh man, after that it was on. Some of those suckers hurt. It was fun. No cascarones this year - but it was fun!