My name is Carolina Luisa Ginorio Rios. I like my tostones crispy and my pegao even crispier. 

I’m an art director and designer born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico—where, if I’m honest, I took my culture a little for granted. It wasn’t until I left for college that I truly began to value all of the things I grew up with: the people, the music, the landscape, and especially the food. I learned to cook because I kept getting homesick, and the only thing that could cure it was a belly full of arroz con habichuelas. 

But it’s hard to find culantro in Savannah, Georgia. And it’s even harder to spend hours cooking traditional recipes after a full schedule of classes and shifts at a retail store. In those early days I called my mom a lot, trying to learn how to fold banana leaves or decipher her handwritten notes in the margins of Cocina Criolla. It was her who taught me that it’s okay to put your own spin on things, to cut a corner or two just so long as the end result still tastes the same. 

This whole project started as a way for me to combine two things that I love: food and art. I wanted to make colorful videos, play with recipe designs, and cook my favorite dishes. But I ended up finding a community of people online who also love this food and miss their island, and slowly my motivations changed.

I’ve become passionate about trying to keep these flavors alive in people’s homes. And if you have the time and the willpower to shred vegetables by hand to make masa, or to double fry a tostón that’ll disappear in two bites—more power to you. I love spending hours in the kitchen laboring over a special meal, but personally I don’t think the best parts of my native cuisine should be relegated to big family gatherings or weekend dinner parties. 

I want to be able to finish working my day job and still have time to make chuletas and arroz con gandules. I want a bag full of pre-flattened tostones in my freezer, ready to drop in the oil and serve up in minutes. To me, all of the purists who claim the traditional way is the only way are just making it harder for these flavors to survive. 

So screw ‘em. Put your plantain in the microwave. Make your masa with a blender. Come, bebe, y se féliz.