Food of the British Isles

We had - *gasp* - really tasty food in the UK.  Pick yourself up off your chair.  I know they don't exactly have a reputation for being culinary geniuses (understatement), and they aren't going to surpass France or Italy anytime soon, but the Brits can pull off some good belly-filling grub.

Let's start with breakfast, shall we? The Mister really went for  it here with THE BIGGEST BREAKFAST, listed below.  Pretty much all of it was good except the haggis, which is a traditional Scottish sausage-ish mystery meat made of all the unsavory parts of your favorite barnyard animals.

If you are eating in the UK, I recommend that you follow that up with a nice lunch of a cheese and pickle sandwich, which to my shock and amusement had little to do with cheese and nothing to do with pickles.  I kind of thought that it would be like slices of cheddar or something with dill pickle slices.  When I mentioned this to a British woman who was sitting near me, she snickered and said, "Pickles? Like gherkins? Interesting. That wouldn't have occurred to me."  Then I asked her what exactly "pickle" is in the British sense, since it looked, as you will see below, like a trail mix held together with some kind of salty brown sauce.  "Well," she said uncertainly, "it's just pickle."  

"Yes," I said, "I have been educated now, no more of that silly gherkin nonsense.  But do share with an underbred New Worlder: what exactly is pickle?"  

She floundered helplessly, "Well, you see, it's pickle."

It was most enlightening.

For dinner, wrap it up with a classic fish and chips.  I don't even like fish too much and this was transcendent.  Crunchy, smooth, greasy.  Perfect. 

Oops, focus was off. I must have been overexcited at the prospect of actually eating this baby.

For an authentic touch, soak the fries/chips in vinegar before eating...and eat them with a fork, please.

Wash the whole thing down with a Scottish soda, Irn-Bru (pronounced iron brew , no word yet on why the Scots decided to ignore basic principles of English spelling while naming their favorite drink).  To really get the feel for this thing, imagine bubble gum, Smarties candies, Red Bull, and plain sugar mixing in a toxic brew.  Add some carbonation and artificial neon orange coloring, and you'll have the general idea.  But don't listen to a malcontent like me, listen to the residents of Scotland who have made it their best-selling national soda - beating Pepsi, Coke and all the other behemoths.

For dessert, chase the whole thing with an Edinburgh tradition, a deep fried Mars bar.  If you think this would only fly in the American South, think again.  Scots aren't afraid of anything: not men in skirts, not the English and certainly not a little wussy thing like cholesterol.

Delicious foods not pictured included bangers and mash (twice!), sticky toffee pudding, treacle tart (Harry Potter's favorite dessert), sausage rolls and plenty of meat pies.

Oh, and for the truly curious among you, here is what pickle really is.

Either way, the sandwich was tasty.

  

Nottingham and Sherwood Forest

   

After our time in Edinburgh, we headed into England and down to Nottingham to visit with our friends Christy and Duncan.  We had an awesome time catching up with them and getting an insider's view on  everyday England.  On our way to Nottingham we had a few hours on the streets of London, where we managed to sneak in a lunch (of mouth-wateringly delicious South African spicy roasted chicken) with Kristin, a friend from college.  We hadn't seen each other in a few years, and she's living in London now, so it was so fun and trippy to be hanging out together in London, of all places.

Anyway, I digress - back to Nottingham.  I will now answer the burning question on everyone's mind: YES, Sherwood Forest is real, and YES, I visited, and NO, I did not meet the Sheriff of Nottingham.  

Come visit Sherwood Forest with me:

And some general pictures from around Nottingham:

Edinburgh, the haunted city

The next phase of our trip after the Highlands was wondering around Edinburgh.  What a cool city. It's full of old graveyards (it happens to be the most haunted city in the world, did you know?) and castle turrets and cheerful, hardy people. Their accents are hardly understandable, but everyone was just so danged pleasant that I just nodded and smiled all the time anyway.

I offer as picture proof:

Scotland, land of the Scots

Well hello there!

Our UK trip was awesome, and two supposedly mythical things occurred: one, we didn't use our umbrellas for the entire week we were there; and two, we ate really good food.

While we were in Scotland, during the first half of the week, we frolicked the dandelion fields in Edinburgh (just kidding about the frolicking, but there were lots of dandelions), saw some very nerdy/awesome Harry Potter-related paraphernalia, and took a bus trip to the Highlands to visit Loch Ness (where we failed to sight Nessie).

Taking time to stop and smell the...well, you know.

I'm in either England or Scotland at the moment, and I scheduled a few posts to run while I'm gone. Be back next week!

This past weekend The Mister and I went for a stroll in a nearby rose garden.  We've been walking through it all winter, when it's been all twiggy and brown and gnarled, and anticipating the spring bloom.

I'm happy to say that it has finally arrived!

And, believe it or not, for the second time in about two weeks, look who ambled into my picture:

I bet it's the same fame-hungry bee.

Diva.

  

It's Holy Week! (please read the disclaimer)

SUPER IMPORTANT MUST-READ DO OR DIE DISCLAIMER: 

These are not photos of  a Klan rally. Most unfortunately for Spain, the KKK decided to model their uniforms off Spain's Semana Santa getup, which has been around since the 15th century and only has holy and reverent connotations for the Spanish. Keep that in mind.

Okay, with that said, here we are: Holy Week in Spain, called Semana Santa,  is a BIG DEAL. Not a big deal but a BIG DEAL. Málaga has one of the more famous celebrations, although if you ask any Malagueño they will sniff and tell you that they have the only celebration. 

The hallmarks of the thing are the parades. They close down all the major streets in the city and pretty much continually march up and down, in slightly creepy costumes, holding religious icons, candles and huge floats called tronos.  The floats are carried by men, hoisted on the shoulders, sometimes up to 250 or 300 men at a time.  It's quite impressive really.

It's United Kingdom time!

This coming week is Semana Santa in Spain - Holy Week.  Schools are out, processions involving the Virgin Mary are in.  The Mister and I will be here through the weekend to take part in some of the festivities, but next week we're taking advantage of the school vacation to visit Scotland and England.

First we'll be in Edinburgh for a few days - I've always heard what a great city it is, so I have high expectations here.  Maybe we'll see ghosts (it's supposed to be haunted, you see), and I'm hoping to try both Scotch whiskey and haggis.

Then we'll head to Nottingham via London, where we'll get to visit a pair of friends that we met while in Burundi in 2008. Christy was a roommate of ours, Duncan was a roommate of a friend, and they met and sparks flew and now they are married and living in Nottingham.  That's the condensed version, but you get the general idea.  Anyway, we haven't seen them since we were all keeping crocodile watch in Lake Tanganyika, so we're pretty excited to get a chance to hang out.

I'll try to check in a few times next week, and never fear - my trusty camera La Rebel will be by my side.

Yes, it's true, they go topless sometimes

Oh boy is it getting warm here on the Costa del Sol! The beach is starting to fill up with topless female Spaniards, Speedo-ed male Spaniards, and scandalized British tourists, who almost invariably look like Harry's Uncle Vernon (Harry Potter reference, for those of you who missed the zeitgeist).

Me, I am a sunblock-and-umbrella kind of beachgoer. I suffer from a syndrome called Trying To Avoid Cancer. I have alabaster skin, you know. And freckles.  Skin cancer adores people with freckles.

Anyway, I am starting to feel alone in my caution. Everyone else is out roasting like shrimp on a barbie and there I am, reading my library book in the shade. I feel lame.  But at least I don't wear this strap sandals over tube socks (see above re: British tourists).

Busy Bees

Summer is looming.

School ends at the beginning of June, and the lazy months will be upon us.  The Mister and I have been contemplating how to fill the time, and a perfect opportunity came up.  We have been officially hired to work in a summer camp for Spanish kids that are learning English.  I was hired as the camp blogger/photographer, keeping all the parents up to date on the goings-on of their precious little bundles of joy, and The Mister will be their music teacher.  He's already strumming the guitar and thinking what kind of musical instruments they can make in arts and crafts.

We're pretty excited - it shall certainly be an adventure!

* picture above taken  Saturday in a little pueblo called Antequera -

there were busy bees and daisy patches,

and I got lucky.

The Mister has a party

Claire. Me. Becca.

Jose Carlos, The Mister, Bradley, and Torston

I felt like making The Mister a cake for his birthday. And it would be rude to make a whole cake and then eat it all by ourselves, right?

So we had a nice little party.  Our apartment is barely large enough for a box of Kleenex, so our friends Becca and Bradley provided the five-star location, and we had ourselves a nice little shindig.

(Oh, and The Mister liked the cake)

They always want to hold my hand - an evil conspiracy, no doubt

It's a lovely day outside, and I am stuck in with a cold. Sore throat, headache, stuffy nose - the works.  It feels like about the five billionth cold I've had this year, despite getting a flu shot, and I know exactly who to blame: my five-year-old students.  

They are big-eyed, chubby-cheeked, filthy little cherubs.

They wouldn't know what hand soap was for if it hit them in the face.

Those little punks.

A picture for you

April 1, 2011.

2:30 p.m.

Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain.

Temperature: 24 degrees Celsius

Taken while laying barefoot in the grass.

How to eat a Spanish churro

  A lot of people get pretty confused over Spanish cuisine.  "Ah!" they exclaim, "you're in Spain? They must have the best burritos ever."

No.

Mexican food and Spanish food have about as much in common as Korean food and Ugandan food. Which is to say, nothing at all.

Except this one thing:

Churros. Sticks of light dough, fried golden brown and crispy.

Dang these suckers are good.  If they had to pick one food to duplicate across the ocean, I am not fussed at all that they went with the churros.  Mexican churros are often dusted with sugar and sometimes cinnamon too.  Spanish churros are served with dipping chocolate.

You eat them like this:

Step 1: Admire the churros.

Step 2: Admire the chocolate. 

Step 3: Dunk.

Step 4: Repeat as necessary. 

Santiago de Compostela

We had a fantastic weekend celebrating our anniversary and The Mister's birthday.  We headed to Santiago de Compostela, in the northwest corner of Spain, for a relaxing weekend.

They're known for making some of the best octopus around, so we played along.  We've had octopus, but it's been here in Andalucia where the fried kind is popular, so of course it's good.  You can fry practically anything and it's got a 93% chance of being delicious.  Unfortunately we ended up preferring the fried version, because the fatty, almost jello-y texture on a few of these pieces got a little intense, and we ended up stuffing a few pieces in our napkins so the waiter wouldn't get offended that we weren't exactly swooning over their signature dish.

Overall though, a fabulous time and a fabulous birthday.  We wandered around parks, took naps on the grass, had leisurely lunches with good wine, and slept in late.  I was with my favorite person in the world, and the spring daffodils are blooming in Spain.

Not too shabby overall.