Pedro’s Spanish Kitchen – Sevilla Orange Tortas

OK, so Pedro doesn’t actually MAKE these, but he did FIND these typical Spanish yummies the other day in good ol’ Reno, Nevada.  And for this blog, that’s good enough.

These delectable goodies are known as “Tortas” in Spain and at least until now, I’ve only seen these a) everywhere in Spain; b) a specialty cheese shop in Placerville, CA c) occasionally at the “Hispanic” market in town.  But thanks to a spontaneous trip to the market the other day, we now know you can buy these at… Whole Foods!  Whoo-who!

And whoo-who is right.  I feel it is not only correct of me to share this discovery, it is my moral responsibility to do so.  These Spanish “tortas” are akin to a deep-fried Mexican tortilla (not the same as a Spanish tortilla) and are generously coated with olive oil, and up until now, I had only seen them covered with sugar and anise seeds.  NOW – thanks to Whole Foods, we know that they also come covered in cinnamon sugar and…..OMG……Sevilla Orange.  YUM!

I wholeheartedly recommend you gobble up multiple packages of these Sevilla Orange tortas.  They are not only covered in olive oil (a staple of the Spanish flavor profile), sugar and orange essence, but are also sprinkled with zest of oranges from Seville!  I cannot begin to describe how yummy these are.  Sevilla Orange zest has a bite to it, which balances out the sweetness of the sugar – not really with a bitter flavor, but with a strong orange flavor.  These tortas are usually enjoyed as a breakfast snack, with coffee.  But if you are lucky enough to not to be a coffee drinker like me, you are free from the restraints of coffee-drinking rituals and can gobble these up at any time of the day and with any drink you wish!

 So if you have been to Spain and wish to re-live the flavor of the country, I suggest picking up a package of these.  Or if you haven’t been there and want to get an inkling of what you are missing and why Spain should be next on your travel list, pick up a package of these as well. Or if you could care less if you ever set foot in the country, and just want something with lots of flavor to snack on, try these as well.

I’m telling you…your craving for all things Spanish will be satisfied with a package of these Orange Tortas…if only for a minute or two.

Pura Vida, Indeed!

Beach outside of Puerto Jimenez, Osa Penninsula
Costa Rica

Well, I am back from Costa Rica and (unfortunately) all settled back in my boring routine at home. Our time in Costa Rica was nothing short of awesome, and what was especially neat about this trip is that every single day we had some kind of adventure that was just as amazing as the day before.  Two of the three locations we visited were pretty remote – one we took a rather small plane to (Puerto Jimenez) and the other was accessible by an hour and a half boat ride through the jungle (Tortuguero National Park). The other place we visited, Arenal Volcano, is set up to be more accessible (and is accordingly a little more touristy) but the experience we had at Arenal National Park felt equally as far-away and solitary as the other two.  I can’t begin to do justice to the many experiences we had if I try to fit all of them into this one blog, so I’ll leave the stories to dribble out over time, much like my experiences in Spain do.

 But for now, here’s a taste of what we experienced in Costa Rica.  And, sadly, for the last time for a while…PURA VIDA to all the magnificent Costa Ricans we had the privilege of sharing a bit of our life with.

Matapalo National Park, Osa Penninsula
Near Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica

Arenal National Park
La Fortuna, Costa Rica

Sunset over Tortuguero National Park

Costa Rica – Here We Come!

The Nicoya Pennisula from our hotel in Monteverde.
January 2006.

After much debating, planning and anticipating, we are finally headed to Costa Rica for 12 wonderful days!  Yay!  We are sooooooooo ready for some exciting adventures, to see a bunch of cool wildlife, take oodles of photos and eat lots of good Costa Rican food! 

I won’t be posting on the Pancake Merienda while I’m there, but I MAY post a few photos on Facebook.  So if we aren’t Facebook friends yet, send me a “Friend Request” and you can see what we are up to.

In the meantime…Pura Vida!!

Pedro’s Spanish Kitchen

Pedro multi-tasking with a Tortilla Española and... whatever he is chopping.

One of the best things about being married to a Spaniard, or at least my Spaniard, is that he does all the cooking in our house.  Why?  Well, that’s a question that requires some digging into the Spanish and their relationship to food.

Much has been written about the Spanish culture and its special connection to food.  I would characterize this relationship as sacred.  Food, on a daily basis, is something to be revered and prepared and enjoyed at its highest level.  Spaniards, for the most part, shun frozen food - as well as fast food - in favor of fresh, home-made fare.  In fact, in many food stores in Spain, there is only one, small frozen food case as opposed to multiple aisles of it in the typical American market.  While many Americans were raised on frozen food and think nothing of eating it (and think it’s pretty good!), most Spaniards seem pretty “grossed out” by the idea.  That’s not to say a Spaniard won’t eat frozen or fast food at all, they just do not eat it in the quantities near that of Americans.

Spanish Deviled Eggs - to die for!!!

That may change in Spain someday, as families simply do not have the time required to prepare a complicated meal.  It seems that nowadays, many a Spaniard will still go to grandma’s house or mom’s house for the main meal of the day (everyday) and consume the home cooked meal they are used to. But I can’t think this will go on forever, and the next generation may succumb to the American way of eating more fast food and yes, even more of the dreaded frozen food, simply due to the time constraints.  Spaniards, however, I’m sure will deny this. 

 

 

Anyway, when Pedro and I first got married, we had a plan to share the cooking responsibilities.  But that didn’t last long, as Pedro, like his compatriots, preferred Spanish cooking to my plainly prepared American food.  I don’t remember using a lot of frozen food as I don’t care for it much myself, but what I prepared was no substitute for the taste of his mom’s kitchen, which he really can reproduce quite accurately.  Fast forward seventeen years, and the kitchen and the food we eat are wholly his domain and with a few exceptions, pretty much all he prepares – and all we eat - is Spanish food.

A tableful of Spanish goodies including Sauteed Mushrooms with Ham (Champiñones al ajillo con jamón),
Spanish Tortilla (Tortilla Española) and Gazpacho made with Beets (Salmorejo de Remolacha)

And that brings me to a new feature of this blog:  Pedro’s Spanish Kitchen.  I think deep down inside Pedro has always longed to be one of those Food Network chefs, sharing the appropriate way to cook Spanish food with the masses.  While I can’t make that happen, I can share with my readers the things he makes and a bit about how he makes them.  To an American audience, some dishes will look great, others not so much (I just missed an opportunity to document a soup he recently made with baby octopi that I promptly named “Spider Soup.” Use your imagination!).  Other things will not be “dishes” per se, but little treats from his childhood that he makes for me today. 

If I am fair, it is really though his cooking – and the stories the surround it - that I have learned about his family and Spanish culture.   And now I am hoping to share this with you.

Buen Provecho!!

What to Do, What to Do

These photos were taken in Toledo's weekly flea market "El Martes" or "The Tuesday." 
I have seen so many (inexpensive) things in these Spanish lea markets that Americans would absolutely love. 
Could I make a living off of selling these treasures to folks back home?  That remains to be seen!

Ever since we’ve talked seriously about moving to Spain, I’ve had to think a lot about what I would do to make a living there.  One thing I don’t want to do is to move to Spain and (I see my Spanish friends and family chuckling here) …be poor. (My Spanish friends and family are saying, “You’ll be living in Spain – of course you’ll be poor!)  I don’t have to make tons of money either, but I certainly want to make enough to be able to do the things we like to do, such as travel and consume good food!

What to do for a living in Spain is perhaps one of the most daunting questions for me. For the past 15 years, I’ve worked as a “grant writer” for various non-profit or charitable entities in northern Nevada.  Grant writing is a branch of fundraising, in which you are the author of anything from simple letters to formal proposals for the purpose of raising money for charitable purposes. In this job, I’ve mainly worked for social service agencies, the arts and currently, education.  In Spain, I’m not sure there is even a profession such as “grant writing” and even if there was, not being able to speak or write the language with the fluency of a native pretty much disqualifies me.  Some of my freelance clients here have said that I could still write their grant applications even if I lived there via the internet/email, which is pretty much how I work with them now anyway.  That would be great, but I wouldn’t make enough to live on either.

Should my new career include exploring Spanish flea markets?

So with a move to Spain, I would have to figure out this “career” thing all over again.  After graduating with my master’s degree and discovering that being a professor probably wasn’t in the cards for me, finding a profession doing, well, anything, was pretty difficult.  I had no idea what to do.  And then, like many people, I just stumbled into a career – grant writing - while working at an agency that provided services for people with HIV/AIDS.  In grant writing, I found a profession in which I could use my writing and research skills and make a positive difference. The rest is history.  Fifteen years later, I’m still doing it…and really kinda burnt out on it, if truth be told.

So for better or for worse, when we move to Spain that will be pretty much it for my grant writing career.  I’ll need to find something new.  Again, not speaking the language well – at least at first – will render me unemployable in a regular job there for a while.  That and the fact that there are few jobs to be had there anyway are obvious barriers. So what I am thinking is that I will need to “create” a few small jobs to make a living.  Some of the things I’ve considered are teaching English part-time (although I really don’t like to teach – maybe teaching in Spain would be different?), starting an internet import/export business with the cool stuff I find at Spanish flea markets (Shopping? In Spain?  For a living?  Whoo-hoo!), selling stock photography (I’d need a better camera – not to mention better photography skills - for that!) in addition to grant writing for clients back in Nevada.

"El Martes" yummies!

But reality aside…it’s always fun to dream about what COULD be.  What we’d really like to happen is that we find a awesome little bed and breakfast to buy and renovate either at the beach or in the mountains or maybe even close to Toledo.  I would continue to blog about Spain, and naturally the blog would garner enough attention to be made into a book and then I’d be offered my own travel show focusing on Spain, much like Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” although by nature I’m not quite as “bad ass” as he is.  Nor do I drink like him.  The show would spin off into speaking engagements, which of course would pay very well.  In fact, I’d only have to do this for a few years…and then retire back to our bed and breakfast, which by then would just be converted to our personal residence, where friends and family could stay for free! 

So what do you think?  Should I go the safe route and teach?  Should I become a professional shopper?  A stock photographer?  Or should I become rich and famous as the modern day James Michner?

I know what I want to do!

Let the Travel Season Begin!

Spring is upon us again, and accordingly…it is snowing in northern Nevada!  Even after our unusually warm and dry winter, our spring has lived up to its reputation of being cold, windy and snowy. Ugh.

But the flip side to this is that it gives us plenty of time to plan our travel schedule for this year. Pedro likes to point out, however, that our travel “season” really never stopped or started this year.  Christmas break was spent in San Diego, he went to Florida in February, we went to San Francisco/Point Reyes in March and I went to LA a week after that.  So here we are in April, which is traditionally when we plan the year’s travels.

Pedro under a waterfall near the Costa Rica Peace Lodge, which was heavily damaged in the 2009 earthquake.
I'm not sure if this waterfall still exists or not, as there was a major landslide
in the surrounding areas where this waterfall was (is)?

It is an “off” year for me to go to Spain, so instead, Pedro and I will be making a return trip to Costa Rica in May.  We were there six years ago and absolutely loved it.  We will be visiting Tortugera National Park, Arenal Volcano (again) and the Osa Peninsula in the South.  Upon our return home, Pedro will do a quick load of laundry and will be off to Spain until August. (He’s planning on doing some “heavy-duty” looking at places in the mountains and at the beach for us to move to!)  I will be lucky enough (!) to go back to work for the summer, with maybe a trip to LA in July.  When Pedro returns in August, we will be going to Mammoth Lakes for our annual family trip there, and we may also do a river rafting trip on the American River in northern California in September.  I also want to go to LA again in the Fall, to either attend a USC football game, or at least watch it on TV with my brother and sister-in-law, who live in Valencia, a suburb of LA.  (Go Trojans!!!)  Also in the Fall, we will probably make a few trips to “Apple Hill” near Placerville, CA for some berry and chestnut picking and then probably go somewhere (hopefully) warm for Christmas break in December.

Arenal Volcano from the porch of our room.  I hope we get to see the top this time!

But there are still so many places we want to go!  I am dying to visit my pen-pal Julie and her family in northern England (maybe next year on my way to Spain!).  We both want to go to Australia and visit my sweet friend Stacy and her family in Perth.  Pedro is dying to go to New Zealand and visit “Hobiton” and pretend he’s Legolas from Lord of the Rings.  I would love to go to South East Asia, just for something totally different.  And before we move, I think Pedro should see more of the US – the Pacific Northwest and the South especially. I would love to visit South Florida to experience the Cuban culture there and see the Florida Keys.  And then there’s the Northeast US and New England that I’ve always wanted to see.  And – oh!  I’d love to go visit our friends in Iowa, too.  Oh well – so many places, so little time and money.

In the meantime, I gotta start getting ready to visit those Ticos.  Pura vida!!

Pedro contemplates the cloud forest in Costa Rica.
January 2006.

“There’s Never a Good Time to Move to Spain”

That’s the standard response I get from Pedro when I ask him when he thinks we should make our big move.  It always cracks me up. J

Maybe we should live here?
Mazarrone, Spain

One goal I have for this blog is to document our long awaited and much anticipated move to Spain.  Over the past six months, we’ve talked a lot about how to go about this, and this is pretty much the plan as it stands:  we will make our move in 3 years, at the maximum.  Why 3 years?  Because it is when I will be fully “vested” in my retirement at work (to my Spanish friends, I’ll explain below) and we are hoping that the economic conditions at least start to improve in Spain by that time.  But I think in the end, I agree with Pedro:  There’s probably NEVER going to be a perfect time to make a move like this.

For my Spanish friends and family this is the general idea of “vesting”: Pensions from the workplace are pretty much a thing of the past in America, at least for my generation. And Social Security from the government (our form of a government “pension”) is pretty paltry, so the solution to funding retirement is for employees to “put away” a part of current earnings in savings. And if you are lucky, your employer will match your contribution, if you contribute above a certain amount.  But the complications don’t end there.  You only receive 100% these employer contributions if you stay at your job for so long.  And at my job, that time is five years.  I am coming up on my second anniversary at my current job, and to receive 100% of my retirement funds from my employer (or to be 100% “vested”), I have to stay at least another three years.  I can leave before that, but they will take back a substantial percentage of their contribution. 

We always thought it would be cool to renovate this old house in Toledo...

...it is next to this cool wine bar!

 Financially and practically, it is a good idea to wait those three years. Doing this will guarantee an additional little nest egg on top of what we already have.  And if we happen to retire in this country (something that I’m not sure we could ever afford to do) we’ll certainly need that money. And although Spain is cutting way back on benefits for their citizens, retirement will still be more doable than it will be here, and this money will come in handy in that scenario, too.  And again, we are hoping that in three years, the economic situation in Spain will be less volatile than it is now.

Emotionally, well ….that’s a different story. Both of us are pretty burnt out on our current professions and are itching to start building something new in Spain.  What that “something new” in Spain is, we have some ideas, but how to make those ideas into reality is something neither of us is sure how to go about.  But what we do know is that we are both ready for this adventure, and if we could embark on this tomorrow, we probably would.

But unfortunately, reality stands in our way and the practicalities outweigh the dream.  But we do keep on dreaming and talking and making tentative plans, knowing one day, we will take the plunge.  Until then, we’ll just live…and live…and live… and enjoy the good life we lead now.

We also thought this place up in town would also be cool to renovate, as it has pretty filigree balconies...

Nuts!  Look like this kitty has beat us to it!

Who’s Counting?

OK, it’s been what… three, four, five months since my last blog post? 

Pedro and I recently returned from our annual Spring Break trip to the California coast, specifically San Francisco and our beloved Point Reyes, and aside from a much needed break from the daily grind, vacations also give me the time to think about what I really love to do and where my true passions lie.  And accordingly, my thoughts turned back to this blog.  There’s always so much I want to share:  the idiosyncrasies of our cross-cultural life, our eventual move to Spain, and my impressions about Spain itself, with all its complexities and ironies that fascinate me.  And then of course, there is the best part about the blog – the space it gives me and my Spanish family a way of getting to know each other on a deeper level without a language barrier, as Pedro’s translations of this blog are found on The Pancake Merienda en Espanol.

I am determined to make this blog a workable, sustainable part of my life. So here it is – I’m trying again. 

In the meantime, here’s a few photos of what we’ve been up to since November…Enjoy!

The First Annual Tapas Smorgasbord with friends Harry and Christina
December 2011

Christmas Break Trip to San Diego/La Jolla
December 2011

Made friends with a shy seal on La Jolla Beach
December 2011

Sierra Nevada Mountains - Winter Photo Class
January 2012

Galena Creek Park, Reno Nevada - Winter Photo Class
January 2012