Category Archives: food & drink

getting that christmas feeling…

23 Tuesday Dec 2008

Posted by in christmas, food & drink, friends, sevilla, tapas

≈ 17 Comments

cuarenta_y_tres1

It’s all been feeling rather Christmassy lately, even mundane stuff like getting my hair cut.  The photo above was taken on my way home from the hairdresser’s yesterday, when I stopped in at Bar Campanario to do some bloggy research for a virtual Christmas dinner being planned over at FFE’s.  At one point Sledpress mentioned a Spanish liqueur called Cuarenta y Tres (43), which I had never tried. So I asked my friend María Paz if she would let me have a wee taste, which led to her offering me & Nog free drinks and tapas … and well, we couldn’t say no.

Last weekend Nog & I had gone to pick out my Christmas prezzie (which is still a secret) and on the way home passed a tapa bar that – gasp! – we had never been to. After checking out the menu we decided to stop in at Pando for a snack, and look at what we got for just 12 euros (including two drinks!)…

Continue reading →

slow travel

22 Monday Dec 2008

Posted by in blogging, culture, food & drink, friends, holidays, photos, trips

≈ 7 Comments

slow_snail
slow

Slow Travelers go to Europe to experience different cultures and lifestyles, but they do it differently than most tourists. Instead of staying in hotels or B&Bs, they stay in vacation rentals – apartments, cottages or houses that you rent by the week. Staying in your own temporary “home”, even if just for a week or two, lets you experience a place more intensely because you get involved in the community where you are staying. You shop for groceries and supplies in the local shops, stop at the same cafe every morning, see the people in your village or neighborhood each day.

About a year ago I was looking at the Live Traffic Feed on Sevilla Tapas and saw that someone had visited from a place called Slow Travel. So I went and checked it out …

Continue reading →

christmas cake recipe

20 Saturday Dec 2008

Posted by in christmas, food & drink, humour

≈ 7 Comments

christmas-cake

Years ago I used to make my annual Christmas cake just after Halloween, wrap it in rum-soaked cheesecloth and (with frequent re-soakings) let it sit in a cool cupboard until the big day. It was a very dark and dense cake, baked in a bundt pan. No icky candied fruit for me, I always used dried fruit (apricots, raisins, currants, dates) and freshly chopped nuts (pecans, almonds, hazelnuts), so that in the end the actual cake batter was just barely holding all the fruit & nuts together.  It was best served very thinly sliced and was also good with a slice of very sharp old cheddar cheese on top.

It’s many years now since I made one of these fabulous cakes, but I was reminded of them yesterday when my dear friend Lizzie sent me a Christmas cake recipe that looks quite fun to make, especially as I could also practice being a pirate (ho ho ho and a bottle of rum) …

Continue reading →

new widget

19 Friday Dec 2008

Posted by in food & drink, restaurants, sevilla, spain, tapas, wine

≈ 9 Comments

tapas-widget I’ve been playing around with my Fotki albums the past couple of days and came across this widget, which I thought might work well on my Sevilla Tapas blog (the old front page pic I was using was this one).  So I went through my files and chose 80 or so of my favourite pics and put them together so that visitors could get a sneak preview of what the various tapas look like. You just click on the pic to get a new tapa.

But you’ll have to go over to Sevilla Tapas to check it out (it won’t work on WordPress.com).  And on azahar-sevilla.com I’ve put a different Fotki widget in the sidebar. Let me know what you think.

f_redwine.gif

lunch in sanlúcar

07 Sunday Dec 2008

Posted by in food & drink, friends, health & happiness, restaurants, spain, trips

≈ 15 Comments

feriasanlucar

Had lunch in Sanlúcar de Barrameda yesterday.

It was the first time I’d been out of the house in a week (not including the hospital visit last Wednesday) so I was quite looking forward to getting out and going somewhere nice for lunch with Pipocas.  I was also feeling cautious of overdoing it like I did on my first day out after the liver op. And so of course I ended up going on a six-hour trip in order to eat the famous langostinos of Sanlúcar…

Continue reading →