» Halftime! AKA Abraham Bacoln

July 6, 2007, 9:00 am
Filed under: Spain

If you’re hungry the words about food are at the end.

I’ve been here three weeks now. It’s Friday. I’m halfway through and I can’t believe it.

My first two weeks here weren’t rough by any stretch but I just didn’t really feel like myself. I told one of the girls (a fellow American) who was staying at this house that I know it didn’t seem probable to her but back home I talk nonstop and joke constantly and make everyone laugh [with / at] me. She looked at me like I was a space alien because I’d been this rather silent and somewhat dejected-looking lump. I didn’t blame her for thinking I was lying.

But now … now! Now my brain is back in gear. That one housemate girl – who quite honestly I didn’t like – is gone, so I’m more relaxed. I’ve made better friends with the other girl and now feel like I have an annoying younger sister here. I tease her mercilessly and she reciprocates just like my last French little sister Marie (a foreign exchange student lo these many years ago). I passed my test and advanced a class so that makes me feel good. I’m in a new class, in a new room that’s not so damned hot, and there are fewer students so everything’s more intimate. In the last room I sat where I could hardly see the professor(s) and therefore felt a little alienated. Now I sit at one end of the table and they at the other, so there’s always a clear view. My Spanish is better so I know how to make jokes. I’m louder and more confident. I’m more outgoing. I make everyone (professors included) laugh during class at least twice a day. I am known in the room as SeÃ±or Fantastico because of a conversation a few days back. This all took place in Spanish, of course.

During a team exercise:
Ludivine: Well I think that a good answer to this question is [ whatever ].
Me: Ludi, that’s a fantastic answer. YOU‘re fantastic.
Professor Leopoldo: Oh, so Ludi is fantastic?
Me: Yes, of course, but … you know. Not as fantastic as me.
-Ludivine shoots me a dirty look-
Professor Leopoldo: Is that so?
Yuri: Yeah, you’re really fantastic.
Me: Every morning I wake up and the first thing I do is say [loud voice], “I AM FANTASTIC.”

Life is back to normal, and life is good.

What else, what else? Oh yes, on Wednesday I went downtown to take pictures and see about getting my hair cut. I arrived too late for the haircut so I just sat on the main pedestrian street and took pictures of people (some of which, but not all, are here). Then some very kindly old – and I mean old – Spanish lady came over and asked me what I was doing, and so I told her I was taking pictures of interesting people. “Why?” she asked. Well, honestly, because my brain is rotten and I won’t remember any of this in two years so I want to preserve the memories, etc. This slowly but surely devolved into her being very angry with me because she thought I had taken pictures of her and her friend, and I tried to show her I hadn’t, but she just thought I was giving her the runaround, so I had to explain how a telephoto lens worked and point out architectural details that were behind where she was sitting and how in the pictures you could only see this one little bit and not any of the bench where she was, because it’s a zoom / telephoto lens, see, and then she went off about how it’s impolite, no, it’s more than impolite, and she doesn’t want her pictures to travel on a plane back to America, and I promised her that if there was even a hair on her head visible in any of the pictures I would delete them, and she told me she should call the police and have me arrested, and that in this country and my country it’s illegal to take pictures of just anyone you want without consent, and I came sooooooo close to debating her on that but then I realized I don’t truly know the laws for public privacy in Spain, only the US, and what’s the point of telling her it’s legal back home because hey, Kevin, you’re NOT BACK HOME. Finally she settled down and I left.

The point of all this is that I couldn’t be bothered to be annoyed or worried about this conversation because halfway through (before she started getting ugly) I realized I was doing it all in Spanish without any glaring major errors or miscommunications and that made me very happy.

So there’s that.

Afterwards I ate dinner downtown at a place called Klick Wines. It’s a restaurant and bar run by a Californian (is that right word? seems wrong) who owns a winery there and a restaurant here. He couldn’t really tell me why other than, “It was something I wanted to do” which I think is the perfect reason. We talked for a while about the wine regions of Spain, the grapes, the growing of said grapes, the food at his restaurant, and so forth. It was a great diversion. By the time I was done there I had almost forgotten about old yelling lady. My full belly and I rode the bus home in the most contented fashion possible.

Last night I went to an Argentinean restaurant called La Paloma (The Dove) with two of my classmates, the aforementioned Ludivine (Ludi) and Yuri who are from France and Japan, respectively. We met up at 9:30ish or so for dinner and I intentionally didn’t wear my watch because I didn’t want to constantly worry about bedtime, etc. Well, Ludi insisted that we speak only Spanish for the night which was of course a great idea in which I reluctantly participated. We must have been quite a sight (sound?) for the other restaurant patrons, us with our accents and no dictionaries and constantly hunting for the right words in Spanish, French, and English when necessary. After hours of delightful discussion and fantastic food and wine we wrapped it up and checked the time. Suffice to say it was closer to 2:00 AM than 1:00 AM, so we headed home. Now I have officially stayed out way past my bedtime while engaged solely in the act of eating dinner. I feel like I’m doing it right.

———————-

And now for the food, which has been separated so that you can ignore it if you so desire, you philistines.

At Klick: pulled pork served on toasted bread (dressed with olive oil) that was covered with a slice of melted brie. The pork had some subtle spices and was seriously some of the most delectable I’ve ever had. It was superbly soft and tasty though not with the somewhat smoky character of barbecued pork. I asked him to describe in brief the method without giving away his culinary secrets and he said it involved a lot of experimentation and a pressure cooker. It was simply fantastic. There was nothing overt, no strange spices or glazes or splashes or sides or anything – just four simple items (pork, brie, bread, oil) that came together for a final dish that far exceeded the sum of its parts.

Dessert was an apple tart that was round with a chewy pastry base. The apples were perfectly soft, no acidity left, and with just the right amount of cinnamon. There was an almost savory flavor somewhere between them and the pastry – I pretended that it was extra butter and that made me happy. The tart itself was surrounded by homemade whipped cream and topped with a tiny bit of a rather standard vanilla ice cream. All of this was given a drizzle of bright yellow lemon syrup, more for appearance than anything as its flavor was immediately drowned out by the whipped cream.

While there I had two glasses of wine – one a rather nakedly un-oaked Rioja Crianza that went well with my pork, and the other from Jumilla was big and exciting in an unfamiliar way. I won’t bore you with the rest of my notes.

Yesterday’s lunch was the first time that I’ve come close to … well, disappointment is far too harsh a word. There have been so many fabulous lunches here at the house that to have a normal or bland one was just unexpected. The salad was as usual, the main lunch was a pile of rice with pimientos del piquillo (rapidly becoming one of my favorite things to eat here – it’s a certain kind of very mild red preserved pepper with a fantastic flavor unlike anything I’ve ever had) and a little bit of fish on the side. Nothing bad by any stretch, just a touch dull. Dessert: fruit. You knew that.

At La Paloma last night I got an empenada (little folded and fried pastry) of cheese and onion, a tasty tiny filet mignon (appropriately rare inside, hooray), some fries on the side which were not shabby at all but hey, they’re still french fries. The best fries I’ve ever had were at Lulu’s in the Garden (district) in New Orleans and those were fried in duck fat and delicious beyond imagination. Compared to those, all other fries are simply a side item to be consumed without much thought.

Desert was GOING to be a panqueque de dulce de leche con nueces. Now I understand dulce de leche as a caramel-like flavor, I know that nueces are nuts (probably hazelnuts) and that a panqueque is most likely – bear with me here – a pancake. I know. It’s a long road, linguistically, from one to the other. Try not to get lost. ANYWAY the kitchen was apparently out of panqueques so I ended up with a brownie and ice cream which was a split-second decision that I later regretted. It was fine, sure, but nothing I couldn’t have had at home. Still, the ladies really liked their brownies so I lived vicariously through them, ha ha.

We’re returning there tonight to meet up before going out, so I’m going to get my panqueque for sure. If not, I’ll do something horrible, mark my words.

Today’s lunch was ajo blanco (literally: white garlic) which is a soup made from ground almonds, breadcrumbs, a little bit of garlic, cream, water, oil, etc. It was tasty yet I couldn’t finish the entire bowl – a bit intense. Main meal was the potato and egg torta (tortilla? for some reason I can’t remember how it’s called) and the skillet-seared green peppers and a few slices of raw tomato dusted dried oregano or basil, couldn’t tell which. I’m a failure. Dessert was fruit splashed with white wine and a little bit of tiramisu ice cream on top.

And now I sleep. Mmm. Sleep.

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