Pique (Puerto Rican Hot Sauce) Recipe

If you like your food hot and spicy then you need some Pique in your life! There are two types of Puerto Rican pique: pique verde (Puerto Rican green hot sauce) and pique criollo. Pique verde is usually made with green Caballero hot peppers, green Cubanelle peppers, culantro, cilantro, onion, garlic, olive oil, and lime juice. On the other hand, pique criollo usually consists of Caballero hot peppers (and or Habanero peppers), pineapple, vinegar, oregano, peppercorns, garlic and or onions. Today’s recipe is an example of pique criollo, also known as Pique boricua de botella.

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$5 Million Can Buy You a Castle in Rincon, Puerto Rico

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If you have $5 million to spare you can be the proud new owner of the Castle of Rincon in Puerto Rico. The 9,000+ square foot mansion that sits atop a private mountain in Palatine Hill is playfully referred to as the “JLo Castle” by local residents… and for good reason. The gated fortress boasts its own watch tower, helicopter landing pad, an extensive security system and more.

According to Forbes:

The Castle of Rincon has four bedrooms, five bathrooms, two kitchens, a library “guarded by an armored knight,” and a great room peddling a wood-paneled ceiling and seating for 100 guests. There’s a rooftop observation deck and you can take your pick of either the glass elevator or the floating spiral staircases to access it. Balconies wrap around most of the main house and doors slide open to catch the mountaintop breeze. Outside, the coral deck hosts a saline pool with spa, a wet bar, and a changing area with bathroom and laundry facility (so you don’t have to drag wet clothes inside).

Other buildings in the gated compound include a guest house, a three-car garage with attached wine cellar, a carriage house and a “barn”. The driveway tapers off to a helicopter landing pad as well. And scaling down the side of the mountain is an actual lookout tower. The Hellings (current owners) use it primarily for meals, as it offers views of the entire valley and beachfront below.

The listing agent Nicole Travis claims that the compound is powered by 95% green energy and the utility bills usually run around $75 per month due to the installed wind turbines and solar panels. For those of you worried about doomsday, the current owners also added a 30,000 gallon water reserve tank.

What more could you ask for? A video plus photos of the mansion in Rincon below

English to Replace Spanish in Puerto Rico Schools

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Starting in August of 2012, the Puerto Rican public school system will be introducing a comprehensive Bilingual Generation program. The goal, according to Governor Luis Fortuño, will be “to ensure that in a period of 10 years each and every child who graduates from high school in Puerto Rico is perfectly bilingual, with full command of both Spanish and English.”

The program will replace Spanish with English as the language used to teach most courses in 66 of the system’s 860 schools. According to Education Secretary Edward Moreno Alonso, in 31 schools children aged 5-9 will be taught all courses in English except history and Spanish. The other 35 schools will offer some of the course work in english, and eventually the government plants to complete the switch to English in all schools within 10 years.

There are differing opinions on the motive of this change in the Puerto Rican public school system. Alonso states that the change is due to parents’ demands. Others believe that the real motive behind the change by Fortuño is to have Puerto Rico annexed to the U.S. as its 51st state. Whatever the case may be, word is that the schools that are implementing the changes have the longest waiting lists, which is a sign that bilingual education is in fact in high demand.

Both Spanish and English are the official languages in Puerto Rico but according to statistics, only 30% of Puerto Rico’s residents speak English at a high level. Spanish is the primary language for 96% of the Puerto Rican population.