Return to Paradise

That's how it feels when we return to Galicia; more specifically, to our part of Galicia, the village of Trasulfe. We arrived in Santiago, Sunday, September 8th, around 5:30. Our friends, Terri & David picked us up at the airport and drove us to the village.

After opening the house, we went out for dinner, already on Spanish time,  at 9:00 p.m. or therabouts. (We were pretty sleepy.)  We went to Torre de Vilariño, a really charming cafe/bar/restaurant that we've been to often with our friends, and had champiñones al ajillo, mushrooms sauteed in olive oil, with garlic, salt, and red chile flakes, and truchas, small, delicious, crispy fried trout, served with Galician bread, which we really like so much. I don't have a current picture of Torre de Vilariño, but I will get one to post later.

The next morning, the first thing we did was walk down the hill  to greet all our neighbors, marveling again at the late summer/early fall scenery. You have to admit, those cows look pretty peaceful.

It wasn't long before our neighbors started giving us of their bounty. They are some of the most generous people we've ever met. The first morning Eva gave us eggs and home-made wine. Milagros gave us peppers and tomatoes. Miguel gave us potatoes and wine. A few days later, Eva gave us a huge bag of potatoes and another huge bag of peppers and tomatoes.  

You can see we are going to be cooking a lot of dishes with potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers. And we have had omelets a few times already. I do save some of the eggs to bake cakes for the neighbors in return. 

Later, we drove into Monforte, the nearest good-sized city that flanks the Parador, a former noble's castle, part of which was once a monastery. Now the castle is a hotel with restaurants and coffee shops, although its cathedral still is in regular use for worship. The building itself always grabs me. From any angle and any distance, to me it's very haunting.

We like to go to the indoor cafe/bar and have either coffee with a crescent tapa or a glass of wine with Spanish olives.

After that, we walked around the main plaza in town, happy that we had such beautiful weather. (When Rajan came in spring, while we were still taking turns with our dog, it rained every day except two.)


Over the week-end, Friday and Sunday, we were busy cooking Indian food for our British friends. Other days we worked at home and then in the evenings we went to the bench to chat with our neighbors. (They chat. We listen. We are getting better at understanding, though, until they switch to Gallego, just when we think we are getting the Castiliano. As a result, we've picked up a few Gallego words, too. )

On Saturday we went into Monforte again, this time to have lunch at our favorite cafe/bar in town, Adega do Carlos. We don't have a good picture of Carlos to share, but you can go to his Facebook page and see how warm and welcoming he is as the owner. (Like his page, too!) We ordered two of our favorite racciones to eat with bread and wine:

Grilled Champiñones. The centers are
stuffed with garlic, parsley, maybe
 chopped mushroom stems and
 all ground together in a paste
with wine.

Pimientos de Padron, simply
sautéed in olive oil with salt.
So simple. So good!

You can see how much we liked them:

Afterwards I went to have my hair trimmed in a beauty shop in Monforte, called Tempus. I don't have my hair cut often, and never short, just trimmed. But I went this day especially because the grandaughter of our super neighbors, Eva and Manolo, is apprenticing at this shop. Her name is Lucia, and we've watched her grow from an early teen-ager, who would sweetly dance with her grandfather at the fiestas, into a young lady who drives and is planning a career. 

We thought she did a very good job. (Please pardon how dark the photo is.)

Sunday afternoon we encountered hunters on the road near Antonio and María Elena's farm, using walkie talkies and dogs to track the javalís (wild boars) attacking the wine grapes and rooting for potatoes. This is kinda javalí season. Monday, we learned either 8 or 9 had been killed, five of them near the farm above, the others here and there, but still in our area. No pictures to share, but Rajan is predicting they will show up on menus in the local restaurants.

On that happy note, I leave you for now, but I'll be back with more news and photos later.

Meanwhile, have you ever seen a live boar? (I haven't yet.) What is your favorite snack food? (Racciones always seem like snack food to me.) And do any of you have a good potato recipe?

We’re Here in the Land of Mist and Mañana

We left Sacramento Sunday morning, and already the week is drifting by. How can Saturday have come so soon? 

It’s a long flight from Sacramento to Santiago. We changed at Dallas and again at Madrid, with generous wait times between flights to make sure any delayed flight would not make us miss the next. Our friends met us in Santiago. By the time we picked up our baggage, it was 6:30 in the evening. They drove us to Monforte, a drive of about an hour and a half, where we shopped for basic groceries. Then we all had dinner around 8:30 at a cafe-bar-restaurant called O Pincho. (Dinner at 8:30 or later . . . . That’s when you know you are in Spain.) 

After trudging through airports and lugging carry-ons around for close to 26 hours, we practically fell into bed Monday night and had a good long sleep. One of our last, I might add, because jet lag kicked in the next day and is only starting to fade: we become sleepy or wide awake at very odd hours. 

It’s wonderful to be here, taking short walks with our neighbors in the village, driving into Escairon for café con leche, or into Monforte to sit at an outdoor table in the big plaza, enjoying a glass of wine. Or going to Adega do Carlos for raciones at lunchtime (which is between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. in these parts.) Or meeting our neighbors again, late in the day, at the bench down the lane, sitting and talking with them until clouds turn pink and the air turns suddenly cool. Already these lovely friends have loaded us up with potatoes, figs, tomatoes, peppers, and home-made wine. In addition, we’ve been setting up lunch and dinner dates with friends we haven’t seen since our last trip, and tomorrow night is the Fiesta in Tuiriz (a village/town within walking distance, although we will drive, since we won’t go until around 9:30 or so.)

Meanwhile, the mist rises each morning in the lowlands beyond the pastures below our gate—rises and disperses in wispy curls before a new misty layer forms below. It’s a procedure that repeats with variation for much of the morning. I watch it from the galería window as I study my Spanish.

But I have other homework on this trip, thanks to Rachael Harrie at Rach Writes and her Challenge #2 for the Platform Building Campaign. I have to figure out how to come up with 200 words, using miasma, lacuna, oscitate, synchronicity, sneaking in a reference to a mirror, and including the word imago in the title. It certainly is an interesting and fun assignment, but thank goodness she is giving us a week-and-a-half for this particular challenge!  

Hopefully I’ll have come up with something in a couple of days, so keep tuning in. In addition, you can connect at Rachel's site to the versions all the other writers come up with, and it's really wonderful to see the creativity in the different responses to the same challenge. 

Ciao for now.