“It is a two-wall design, which preheats air in between the walls to ignite the smoke. Well-tended, this produces a bright, smokeless flame which produces little soot and leaves little to no scorching on the ground below.”

After he tested it in the driveway a lot of times, (Yes, it was bright and smokeless) we took it up to the mountains and confirmed that you can use it to boil water for cup-o-noodles for you and a friend.  Good thing he had his helmet on, huh?

Dill Pickles, originally uploaded by Vimos.

We made pickles again!

I just had a glass of iced tea, sweet, just like at Bill Miller’s. Oh my that’s good stuff. Told Samuel this kind of tea is better because when people offer you a glass they say “sweet tea” as they hand it to you instead of “tea” and that brings a smile.

 Stacy, the lady I bought my blue Volvo station wagon from, on the day I went out to look at the car offered me a glass. “Would you like some tea?” she asked, adding “it’s sweet.” (Not in an apologetic,”I’m not sure if you want it, seeing as it’s sweet” sort of way, but in an “If you’re not sure whether to have any, you should know, it’s sweet, so  really good, and in case you don’t know whether I really mean for you to have some tea, my telling you that it’s sweet so you will want it should make it clear.” sort of way.)

Drank the tea.  Bought the car.

All this talk about foraging for food, gardens and forest foods has me thinking about one of the best ways to use about any fruit. It’s a recipe from my friend “A” (you know who you are) from her time in France, I think. Ooh, how cool. I have a mysterious friend named “A” who once spent time in France.

The recipe is a version of the clafoutis dessert, but not all custardy like some, and is perfect for summer, winter, spring, and fall. Because we are Texan folk, we call it “that cobbler.” It tastes like candy on the edges, and is a great thing to do with tons of fruit. It is best with plums and/or apricots. No wait, it is best with apples and berries. No wait….just blackberries. No wait….

Anyway, here’s the recipe just the way “A” gave it to me:

Clafoutis

Set oven to 350 degrees.

Melt 1 stick of butter (or less if you’re on a diet) in a baking dish while you preheat the oven. By the time you finish preparing the other ingredients, the oven will be preheated. It’s okay if the butter browns slightly.

Mix and beat well together, then pour into melted butter:
1 c. flour
1 c. sugar
3/4 c. milk (buttermilk is good; if you use it, add 1/4 tsp. baking soda)
2 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt (Me: I only add the pinch of salt when I use unsalted butter, b/c our salted butter is quite, well, salty.)

Pour 3 or 4 cups of fruit over the batter. (When I use plums, I cut them in half and arrange them on top instead of pouring because it looks more beautiful. When I use apples, I mix a tablespoon or so of lemon juice in with them before putting them on the batter.) (If you think the fruit is not very sweet, you could sprinkle sugar on top before baking.)

Bake 45 minutes until browned and puffy. Especially good warm with ice cream.

We adpoted Bullet from the local poodle rescue organization. He’s 14 months old and still very much a puppy, so he gives our other dog, Dizzy, a real workout. He is a clown and a bit sillier than our Dizzy ever was. He gives us and Dizzy quite a workout.

We got him at the start of the big rainstorms last week, so he has been muddy and rinsed more often than you can imagine, and we have washed many muddy towels. We are tired, but having a lot of fun.

Menorah Papel Picado:

Fish/Flame Papel Picado:

Here’s how we made it:

1.  First, I folded a square of paper in half left to right and drew half a menorah (or some other symmetrical Hanukkah-themed object) in the center.

2.  Cut out the shape.

3.  For the menorah, i cut the flames separately:

I just made tiny folds (about where I’ve drawn in the dotted lines) to help me cut out the flames.

4.  Now you have the central image.

5.  If you unfolded it to see how pretty it’s turning out, refold it left to right and fold again top to bottom.

6.  Fold the 1/4 sheet sized square in half again so that you can see where the central shape is as you make cuts along the folds. Be careful to avoid the shape.

7.  When you’ve cut out as many slices, swirls, diamonds and rays as you think you should, unfold it so you have just the quarter sheet again. There will probably be some chunk that looks like it needs more cutting. See the upper right-hand corner of this one?
8.  There, that’s better.
9.  Open it up and say ooohh, ahhh.

Then I made them into jelly the way a friend taught me to.  But first, we  scooped out the insides:

They are covered with teeny, hairlike thorns my friend calls “itch-all-nights.” I tried to handle the tunas with only tongs and a dishtowel. Dang! those things hurt. The guy used all sorts of equipment, including rubber gloves, leather garden gloves, tongs, and, I think, the witchblade.  I cooked the the pulp, strained the juice, and made it into beautiful magenta colored jelly. 

Then we took them outside for their photo shoot.

Sukkot is probably our favorite Jewish Holiday. Very family, very fun, it’s part harvest festival, part religio-historical ritual.

The sukkah, or temporary shelter, is said to have been used by those who worked in the fields for shelter from the sun during the hottest part of the day…
The rabbinic authorities gave this harvest holiday religious significance by saying that the temporary shelter was like that used by the Hebrew people in the forty years of wandering…

Judith Seid, God-Optional Judaism, Citadel Press, 2001

This weekend we started our celebration by eating breakfast tacos on homemade flour tortillas, then building our sukkah while listening to Townes VanZandt and the Fabulous Thunderbirds, all the while cooking up a storm of fall foods (there are beans and stews, challah, and cinnamon rolls in our house now.)

As for the sukkah, well, first, we built the walls;

then, we added the roof

and anchored the whole thing.

Of course there were breaks  for wine drinking, taco eating, and chilling.

We got the Sukkah up,

We like the outdoorsy and harvesty aspects of the holiday, and we’ll spend a good deal of time this week sitting outside, in and around our sukkah, decorating a littte at a time, and eating warm foods (because it is getting coldish out there.) We’ll also try to spend some time thinking about the ethical themes the holiday suggests: scarcity amid plenty, homelessness, the fragility of our home (the earth) and of any of the “constructions” we use to give us the illusion of security (employer provided health insurance?), the plight of refugees and others who are far from home, try maybe to  think about what we ought be doing, if you know what I mean.

Nice front door, huh?  (Click through the picture and look at the big version on Flickr, it’s amazing.)

I loved the buildings, especially the tilework, and the royal photographer snapped a few photos of some favorites for me. 

Here’s a little something I like to call “my covered porch.”

The boy loved the mazes, ponds, gardens and birds,

and he promised to buy the place for me when he grows up if it ever comes up for sale. 

We expect we’ll live very well there.  I know one bird will be glad to see us.

Dang, I love it here. It’s funny now, thinking about the first few weeks here, how we were confused by the stern sound of the Catalan voices, unfamiliar with the food, lost so much of the time, wondering whether we’d made a teensy little mistake coming here for a year.

But now, we can’t stand the thought of leaving. We just discovered sobressada on bread with quail eggs! We can’t leave now. It’s summer. There are granizados and gazpacho everywhere, and you can get a bit of beer in your lemon granizado. Oh my, that’s good. Kids are throwing water balloons in the plazas, and there are fireworks all the time. And the apartment. A little too hot for just an hour or so in the middle of the day, and then after lunch, a wonderful breeze blowing through that just puts…you…to…sleep, and then the endless afternoon, until it finally starts to get dark around nine thirty, ten.

I won’t go, you know. Some folks say I’m not very good at change. I think I’m just not good at leaving Barcelona.