Lost & Found in Barcelona

OK so this is where not reading and not paying attention really pay off.

We rose up after the 11 hour beauty sleep with a plan of spending the day seeing various Gaudi buildings and Park Guell. Wandered up Las Ramblas finding office buildings and what not, over to the cathedral, and then took the subway in the general direction, we thought, of Park Guell. We missed by miles. Took the wrong train (yes our hostess had written all the instructions on the map she gave us....) and ended up somewhere in the French Alps I think. We would point to the map and say "Park Guell" and the people would shake their heads and look puzzled.

Barcelona is not a flat city, and it was quite hot and sunny that day. We walked the better part of 4 hours, seeing interesting parts of where ever we were, but not the park. Finally, hot, thirsty, footsore (oops I forgot to mention that last night, as we were out looking for dinner restaurant, we thought we'd pause for a little light libation and some tapas. I thought John had the cash with him, he thought I had the cash with me....I had to run back through the streets to our pension to get cash, leaving John at the bar....and got blistered feet in the process. The bar owner was quite gracious about the whole thing.) and bordering on peeved, we spotted a local pub doing a good business, with outdoor tables. A beer! Wine! We took a table, ordered the beer and wine, and then noticed that the table next to us had some gosh darn good looking plates of stuff that smelled delicious. We ordered the little fried squid - chopitos......wonderful.

And then the waiter figured out where we were on the map, and set us off in the right direction. Park Guell is magnificent (we got lost getting OUT of the Park too....) and the trek to find the little squid worth every mile.

Barcelona Afternoon

Our hostess told us there is a wonderful food market just off Las Ramblas, just around the corner from the pension. We got there just before it closed, too late for tapas but still time for the wonderfully refreshing fruit drink/frappe for 1 €. Perfect.

We spent the rest of the afternoon rambling in and around Las Ramblas, through the Barrio Gotico, looking, smelling, and planning dinner. The hostess recommended avoiding dining on Las Ramblas as the prices would be higher than other places.

We found a popular, fairly touristy but nice place, La Fonda. We fell for the tourist menu (gazpacho - a creamy version garnished with hardboiled egg, and paella - way too much, and not as tasty as we hoped) but the people at the table next to us had wonderful fish and other things. We got to talking with them, ended up sharing another bottle of wine with them over dessert (or was that dessert) before toddling home to sleep for 11 hours.

Flying

American Airlines vs Easy Jet:
American Airlines was tight even for me at 5 ft 3. John was miserable. The steward hated us. Let's try to avoid that flight ever again.

Easy Jet is spacious, friendly and casually fun, although with odd ideas about efficient check-in procedures. We did not check any bags on AA, but Easy Jet Charles DeGaulle felt that we should so here's the deal: You check in and the check-in person gives you a slip of paper saying how much you owe for the luggage so you leave her podium and go to another wing of the airport to pay the fee, and then come back, butting into the line to hand her the slip of paper and get your bag tagged and checked in. Then you go to the boarding area and wait, boarding by group.

Oddly, in Spain, Easy Jet does it differently, and took a different view of the luggage situation - we did not have to check the bag.

32 Hours later, we landed in Barcelona, sunny, gorgeous, warm. Found the bus to Plaça de Catalunya, managed to locate Pension Nevada on Portal del Angel, and I managed to stay awake while the very gracious and lovely hostess welcomed us and marked all the important spots, with bus and train connection numbers, on the Barcelona map. M.P. dozed off during this conversation, with dire consequences later.

Les Vacances de Monsieur Paree

John and I, aided and abetted by my sister Randa at the Travel Connection (randa@alaska4you.com), booked a Mediterranean cruise and got out of town on Oct. 7. Somehow, we did not make the Air France flight direct from Seattle to Paris and instead ended up taking an American Airlines flight Seattle to Dallas and on to Paris, with connections on Easy Jet to Barcelona, a 32 hour expedition.
On the upside, Dallas is a nice enough airport to spend 6 hours in, they have very friendly and helpful visitor information folks all around, there is nice artwork, I had time to get my toenails painted (at 1/3 the cost it would have been on the ship) and we got to have some pretty decent pre-airplane food in a Tex-Mex restaurant. John went for the fajitas with iced tea.
There was a pretty good bookstore there, luckily, since I had not had time to get a bunch of trashy novels at Friends of the Library before leaving.
Picked up Maytrees by Annie Dillard, the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Dust by Martha Grimes, Daddy's Girl by Lisa Scottoline.

Blueberries, Ginger, and Lemon

Our friend Sue reported that she had made the blueberry pie recipe from the Fiddlehead Cookbook and really liked it, so another day just cooked up the blueberries according to the recipe. She had noted that there was a suggestion in the sidebar to add a bit of candied ginger to the whipping cream on top of the pie, so, because it was her daughter's birthday and ginger is her favorite flavor, topped ginger ice cream with the blueberry sauce. Apparently it was incredibly delicious. (Wild blueberries make all the difference. Domestic blueberries just don't have the same "flavor profile" as John would say. Get free range blueberries for this.) Sue actually went up to Eaglecrest and picked a little pot full and gave them to me!

So, I had one of Mrs. Rizzo's Almond Cakes (Let me know if you need the recipe for this), all ground almonds, lemon, eggs and sugar, in the freezer. We had the family over for Sunday Dinner (now that Ren has moved out, we decided to try to have a regular family night dinner just like the good old days). I cooked up the blueberries, and we poured them over the cake, topped with vanilla ice cream, shaved a bit of candied ginger on top, and served. Pretty dang good. If I do say so myself.

Go now. I think there are still blueberries out there. Let me know, I'll email the cake recipe.

Remembering Brown Rice Salad

John has this dish he calls "Open Frig, Cover with Cheese, Bake" which is a tasty way to use up leftovers.

The other day, I got home first, so dinner was my task. In the frig: yesterday's Dominican Republic Chicken (an old TimeLife Cookbook recipe that involves rum and is pretty tasty), some rice, some tomatilla sauce (goes well with the DR Chicken), lettuce, and some patty pan squash.

Scott Miller developed this wonderful Brown Rice Salad at the Fiddlehead, and the recipe is in the cookbook. (favorite memory of this is some coworkers at UAS ordering one to go, opening it up and enjoying the better portion of it before realizing they'd forgotten to put in the rice). For some reason, a Brown Rice Salad seemed like the way to go.

In place of the green peppers: Squash.
In place of the tofu: slices of chicken.
Added to the vinaigrette: Tomatillo sauce.

So. Sprinkle the lettuce with a bit of red wine vinegar and olive oil. Sauté the squash and some diced onion untill wilted. Stir in the chicken slices, add the tomatillo sauce, and some salt and pepper. Stir in the rice, and cook until heated through. When John walked in, put the rice and chicken mix on top of the lettuce, top with grated cheddar, and eat.

Fruit salad, and wine.

We hadn't had Brown Rice Salad in a while, and John requested it again on Saturday, using the leftover bottom round. It is a tasty and flexible way to use leftovers.

International Bacon Day

In honor of International Bacon Day, we had Spaghetti Alburezzia tonight. Pretty darn simple:

3 Tblsp olive oil
1/2 cup fatty bacon, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2/3 cup chicken stock
1 Tblsp parsley, chopped
4 leaves Basil, chopped
S & P to taste
2/3 cup Pecorino cheese, grated
fettucini pasta

Heat oil; Add bacon and onion, Fry gently, five minutes; Add stock, parsley, basil, S&P; Cook gentle simmer until slightly reduced.
Cook fettucini in boiling salted water until al dente; Drain well, place in warmed serving bowl. Add sauce and cheese.

Started with homemade avocado/lime juice/garlic/salt/salsa dip on Kavli (ultrathin crispbread). Manhattans.

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