Food and photos and well, food.

As you can see, I've managed to upload a couple of photos.....




The end of the wisteria season...................

A part of a doorway..................

The local lemon tree...............

Chuck.................

All photos by the youngest.

I have managed a few fairly uninspiring photos, chiefly because I am having trouble having a turn on the camera, you see it also takes videos...short ones and not such great quality, but enough to excite the wits out of the girls.

We have now viewed several videos of them giggling madly.

I am going to try an upload something, and I had planned on experimenting more with it today, but both girls managed to convince me this morning that they were sufficiently ill to stay home. I had some doubts, and they are at school this afternoon, but it meant that my available time was more limited.... also the computer and I are having a bit of a disagreement about where and how the photos are stored and how they are uploaded to blogger. The Lumix software doesn't want to talk to the Picassa software....I will have to adjudicate more firmly.

Baby emu photos should be coming soon.

On another note,
While I was at work today, one of my fellow teachers asked me what you call "pels de porc". Pig's trotters I answered. Not a frequently used word in English. Especially since the only people I know in N. Am who eat it are French Canadian or Cajun....

Turns out that she was doing a translation into English of a Catalan recipe for a local magazine, so I had to explain to them how we Anglos are rather squeamish about our food. We don't really want to know that it came from an animal. You would be hard pressed to find a chicken in the stores with it's head still on and a fair number of it's insides still in place, so when she described the recipe, it led to some cultural exchange.

"Pigs feet with cracklings, and aioli with almonds and half-cooked liver" would be the exact translation of the name of this dish. I mentioned that this would make a fair number of people want to throw up, so we altered it to..."Trotters with crackling and almond "aioli" served with "foie mid cuit"

Sounds a bit more appetizing to the pallid Anglo palette....I am of course making broad generalisations here, but......this is a land that deep fries pigs ears, and folks will happily float a pigs snout in a stew. A lot of Anglos have trouble with tongue....

Aioli is a,... well a garlic mayonnaise is a weak description. It is a classically Catalan sauce, although of course the French claim it also. Ideally, according to the Catalans, it is made by pounding vast amounts of garlic in a large mortar and drizzling in olive oil until you have a white creamy emulsified sauce. Pound too long and it will break and turn yucky looking. The French, according to loyal Catalans, have corrupted this, and add a raw egg yolk or two, which makes it much easier to build, and much less likely to collapse....but that is not the pure goods....

la dee da

On that note, while the kids are away next week, I am already planning some of my activities...there is a restaurant in our town that is supposed to have VERY good food, and they have fixed menu plates during the week at lunch that are very reasonably priced. 11Euros if you are feeling basic, and 16 if you want to live it up. This includes a first and second course, wine, coffee, and bread. Pretty good deal. Well, the man's lunch isn't long enough for this sort of an extravaganza, and going with the kids, well, it's a white table cloth kinda place, so I thought I would go while the kids were gone....but by myself? I'm game, but food is also about sharing. So then I talked to one of the ladies at work and she was keen, so we were on. Then I figured we might as well make it a bigger do, and stuck up a note at work, giving the time and date....we'll see who comes, at this stage, there are three of us I think. If no one shows, I'll dine alone.

Finally, I think I have cemented my English-Catalan lesson trades, it looks like we will meet on Tuesdays and Fridays from 4ish to 5ish, one day English, the other Catalan.

I am so excited.