18 Monday Feb 2008
Posted in food & drink, sevilla, spain, tapas
This is turning into one of my very favourite tapa bars, thanks to guspemar (though he’s actually never been there himself). The thing is, Wednesday evenings are typically when Nog & I go out for tapas. Places are usually not as busy mid-week and I finish my evening classes with guspemar at 8.30, which is also early enough to still find either a table or space at the bar, depending on where we go. And it’s always so nice to come out of class and find Nog waiting for me. . .
17 Sunday Feb 2008
Posted in books & writing, films, food & drink, friends, language, life stuff, retail therapy, television
I came across this old post from last year on Letters Home the other day. Oh how I wish everyone had a ‘recent comments’ widget for people just passing through or for when I’m just having a quick look around a few blogs without using my feedreader. In fact, I probably would have just read the comment to this post on my feedreader without clicking on the post itself. But seeing it on ian’s sidebar I clicked on the comment and saw the original post. Anyhoodle … it was all about things ian misses from the places he used to live after having moved on to somewhere else.
Like ian, I’ve lived in a few different places since leaving my birthplace Winnipeg, Canada (aka Winterpeg) at age 25. Since then I’ve lived in Toronto, Bristol in England, and Salamanca & Seville in Spain. Here is my list of things I miss …
11 Monday Feb 2008
Posted in food & drink, friends, sevilla, spain, tapas
As I mentioned on the crackberry post, I was heading out for tapas on Friday with a new friend I’d met at the AWC lunch. First Traci and I met for a drink and were later joined by T’s husband and Nog. Las Golondrinas (which means The Swallows in English) is one of my favourite tapa bars. And the new second location we went to on Friday night had the very same excellent food. But what was missing for me was the charm and cosiness of the original place. Still, a lovely time was had by all and you can check out the photos here…
[updating a few hours later…]
I thought I’d also add photos taken at ay Maricrú yesterday afternoon when Nog and I went out for lunch before going to see No Country For Old Men. (photos 15-17) . I don’t know why but I get a lot more blurry pics with the new camera, even though it has an ‘anti-shake’ option. I wonder if it’s because it’s so small and not as solid as the old one to hold onto. I almost never got blurry photos with the old one. 😦
10 Sunday Feb 2008
Posted in food & drink, fun stuff, quizzes
| You Are a Strawberry |
 You are friendly, outgoing, and well liked by many people. You are popular, but there’s nothing you ordinary or average about you. You a very interesting person, and you have many facets to your personality. Sometimes you feel very conflicted. Your different sides of your personality pull at you. You are a very sensual and passionate person. You are fiery… you can’t help it. In general, you keep your passionate side under wraps. You are only wild in private. |
~ found at Archie’s ~
04 Monday Feb 2008
Posted in food & drink, health & happiness, home
First ever lamb stew … also first ever dumplings.
I can’t believe I’ve made it this far in life without ever having made these two very basic things before. It all started a week ago when I was preparing the weekly casa az stew (a tradition I’ve been carrying on since I talked about it over here) but then – eep! – after making up a chicken stew last Sunday night it was left out overnight by accident, which made me wonder if I should keep it as long in the fridge as I usually do (3-5 days).
So I posted what I thought was a very simple question on Ask h2g2 and OMG, you wouldn’t believe it. There were suddenly all these ‘foodies’ telling me that I was about to die, how could I do this, food should always be prepared fresh every day, blah blah blah… but amongst the nonsense there were also a few saner comments, the best ones including other stew suggestions. And one hootooer wrote that one of her favourite things in the world was lamb stew with herb dumplings, which kind of stayed in my mind and so yesterday I decided to try it out.
After googling around for a dumpling recipe it seemed that the recipes themselves were pretty standard – in general it’s just flour, baking powder, butter and water (or milk) with parsley or chives added. And I saw two basic cooking options – cooked on baking tray in the oven before adding to stew, or cooked directly in the stew. But then Delia Smith had a third option – a recipe for ‘crusted dumplings’ that is a combination of both methods – “When the stew is ready, remove the lid, place the dumplings all over the surface, then transfer the casserole to the highest shelf of the oven (without a lid) and leave it there for 30 minutes or until the dumplings are golden brown and crusty.” And that’s the one I went for.
Looks good, eh? It really was quite deliciuos.
But Nog is going to have a helluva time getting that pot clean…
casa azahar 