Meet Barbara and Suzy Velasco of Sweet and Sabroso

Today we’d like to introduce you to Barbara and Suzy Velasco.

Barbara and Suzy, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Sweet and Sabroso is a food and wine blog inspired by our passion for food and wine and deep connection to our Spanish-Cuban heritage. We launched the blog on June 18, 2017, Father’s Day. Since then, we’ve been working on growing our blog by posting quality content, including recipes, food and wine pairings and wine education. Sweet and Sabroso is dedicated to our father, who passed away a year before we started the project. You can read more about us and our story on our blog under the About section.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Well, we wouldn’t necessarily say it has been a smooth road or a rocky one. It’s been a lot of hard work, especially because we both have to demanding “day jobs”. Balancing our day jobs with working on the blog has been one of the most difficult challenges. We only have so many hours in a day, so it can feel discouraging at times when the blog traffic isn’t growing like we want. So it’s about time management, remaining focused, determined, and patient.

Please tell us about Sweet and Sabroso.
As mentioned earlier, Sweet and Sabroso is a food and wine blog inspired by our Cuban-Spanish heritage. This is our niche and we’re super proud of it. We want to share it with the world.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
One of our favorite memories from childhood is listening to our mom respond to others when they asked her for a recipe. Our mother (who we called Mami) and father (Papi) were of Spanish ancestry born in Cuba.  Mami — who didn’t learn to cook until she was in her late thirties and already married to my father — was an incredible cook (and yes, we know that nearly everyone says this about their mother, but by all standards, she was truly incredible!). She cooked both Cuban and Spanish dishes, all of which were amazing.

Our mother passed away unexpectedly when we were young, and as result, we didn’t have many opportunities to learn from her, at least directly, how to cook in her fabulous way. Interestingly, she also never kept any detailed recipes (hmmm . . . perhaps by design?). In fact, as friends, family, and just about everyone raved about her cooking, they would make certain to ask (and sometimes beg and plead, especially when a certain chocolate cake was involved!) for the recipe.

But my mother, who had a great sense of humor and was known for finding it in nearly every situation, would each and every time, and without fail, teasingly respond: “No, porque cuando me muera quiero que te recuerdas de mi por algo” (No, because when I die, I want you to remember me for something)! To this day, friends and family still fondly reminisce about her and her wonderful food just as she teased them that they would. Mami’s passing, while we didn’t realize it at the time, would be the beginning of a lifelong journey to honor the memory of our parents and our heritage through its cuisine.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sweetandsabroso.com
• Email: info@sweetandsabroso.com
• Instagram: @sweetandsabroso
• Facebook: @sweetandsabroso
• Twitter: @sweetandsabroso
• Other: Pinterest: @sweetandsabroso

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