Who is Riveting Rosy?

Who is Riveting Rosy?

Born in 1980, I’m one of the last Gen Xers (and damn proud). I’m Tony and Giselle Morales’ daughter. One of four crazy kids who grew up in Miami in the tiniest, most loving, and hilarious house you could ever dream of. My parents immigrated from Cuba in the 1960s as kids but unlike most of my friends’ Latin parents these two love birds were total hippies. We were raised on a healthy diet of rock-n-roll (Stones, Janis, Jimmy), Motown (Al, Diana, Sam, Marvin), and bad boy country (Willy, Leon, Johnny, Waylon, Bocephus) and we always turned house cleaning into a disco dance party. We all speak fluent “movie quotes” from the 80s and 90s and are not afraid to drop an obscure reference. While our family has certainly received more than its fair share of trials over the years my parents were magical, and I can honestly say I had an incredible childhood where these hardships never turned into traumas. I always get so excited when anyone is going to meet my dad or siblings for the first time because we are seriously one helluva memorable bunch!

I’m a true Miami native and only left here for a one-year stint at FSU my freshman year. I’m the product of Dade County Public Schools and went on to study Music Performance (FSU) and then Theater Performance at Florida International University. Needless to say, I’m pretty good at karaoke and was even a wedding singer for a time (shocker). While at FIU I fell in love with wine studies and went on to earn my minor in Hospitality which turned into a sommelier internship at a major hotel in Coral Gables. Over the years I’ve worked as a restaurant manager, catering director, spa sales manager, beverage sales executive and lastly a mom. I met my incredible husband Rene back in 2013 and never looked back. There was also that time I nearly made it onto MasterChef right before I got married but that’s a story for another day. We’ve been married almost 8 years and have two awesomely crazy kids, Emilia (7 years old) and Vicente (4 years old).

So, when on earth did I become a writer? My daughter asks this all the time. Growing up I always thought that being a writer meant creating stories using your deepest imagination and while I’m a creative person this was never my forte. I have a decent grasp on grammar, sentence structure, syntax, etc. but was I a real writer? I never thought so. However, I figured out by my late 20s I that I’m a pretty funny storyteller and even had a blog based on my adventures from living in South Beach (I’m not going to reveal the name here because my use of exclamation points at that time is painfully embarrassing). But did I ever attend the creative writing class with Vada Sultenfuss*? No, I did not.

A few years back I was sitting at a charity dinner when I met a fabulous woman named Johanne (one of my fairy godmothers) who shared my spirit for drinking “like a man” and dressing fabulous while up to no good! She quickly put me in touch with her daughter Samantha who had recently started an advertorial newsletter in Miami called 305Hive. Sam was in need of a funny article about wine pairings with Halloween candy and so my writing career began. Turns out I had a very quick knack for writing these silly articles and I was honestly cracking myself up as I wrote them. But after a while I wanted to try writing something a little more from the heart. The lack of holiday pomp during the pandemic created a need for laughter so I was able to try my hand at writing some more serious (well, only slightly) work and it was a success! My confidence grew and I began to create a dream.

I dreamt of creating my own writing forum where I could connect with readers and write about subjects that I suspect others obsess over as much as I do. I wanted to be that voice that says out loud all the crazy things that roll around our heads all day. I wanted to be your cheerleader in the kitchen because you don’t have to be a gourmand to be able to prepare yourself a meal. Most importantly, I wanted to find a way to monetize just being myself. Seriously, we need to drum up some subscribers here to get the ball rolling!

I’m not 100% sure where everything is going with this newsletter just yet but I have so many ideas and hopes for the future. I want to provide you all with smiles, laughter, pride, joy, and a sense of recognition for hopefully feeling seen by my viewpoint. The sky’s the limit and I’m taking you all along for the ride!

Quick Recipes for Busy Bitches

I know, I know, you’re all too tired to cook or worse, you “hate” cooking. Look, I hear you but mostly you need to quit being a whiny bitch and get into the kitchen. The majority You don’t have to be Julia Child to whip up a delicious meal and I’m here to show you it’s not only simple but completely possible. Honestly, the majority of people I know are very insecure in the kitchen and I want to help correct that. The kitchen is my happy place and food is my love language. If I can’t physically make a meal for you the least I can do is help you create that love on your own.

This is a section where I’ll teach you extremely simple recipes that you can crank out in a pinch. No major skill is required and I promise, it’ll be painless. Let’s start off simple this week with something we can all appreciate: a delicious chicken soup in under 30 minutes. Get ready to learn to measure with your heart because my recipes tend to be extremely flexible. Enjoy!

Quick Chicken Soup for Busy Bitches

Ingredients:

2 Cups shredded chicken (shred up leftover from the last rotisserie chicken you bought but never finished and freeze what you don’t use for future recipes)

1-32oz carton of Low Sodium Chicken Stock

1 Bag Frozen Vegetables for Vegetable Soup (or whatever other blend of veggies you like)

White Truffle Oil (a generous drizzle)

Garlic Puree (about 1Tbsp or whatever you want, it’s your soup!)

Herbs de Provence, Sea Salt and Pepper (measured with your heart and tasted with your mouth)

Filtered water as needed (its all up to you)

Food never tastes good if it gives you stress to prepare it so turn on a little music (I use ear buds to tune out the kidsanity), pour yourself a little drink and maybe even invite in a little help. This shouldn’t be a task that’s on par with adding a coversheet to your TPS Reports**, it should be the opening line to the final chapter of your day. Now go enjoy your soup and for God’s sake please pour yourself a glass of wine!

A Few Random Thoughts to Leave You With

We all saw the video of Gwyneth Paltrow discussing her sad diet looking like dry toast and then saw how great she looked at her trial, right? I honestly feel like the lighting in the court room was adjusted whenever she took the stand like some kind of strange extension from her regular acting contracts.

Anyone else miss when there was a daily headline on George Santos? Shit is getting way too serious out here and I could really use more images of him in “drag”.

If you don’t follow golf but you love an amazing human interest story I urge you to google Sam Bennett. He’s a top amateur golfer from Texas who’s motivated by his late father’s final advice to “do something” and if you read about him and don’t cry you have no soul!

It’s Easter weekend and I’m sticking money into plastic eggs this year because I can use it to teach my kids about currency and avoid melted candy grossness. Did I mention I’m taking the coins directly from their piggy banks so it costs me nothing? You’re welcome!

*Vada Sultenfuss was Anna Chlumsky’s debut role in the movie My Girl where her best buddy Thomas J. (played by Macaulay Culkin) dies and she has to deal. I’m still crying from this film.

**TPS Reports are a reference from Office Space and if you’ve ever hated your job and never seen this movie you have homework!