Spring Forward Smørrebrød

This was my nod to the all-too-premature "spring forward" Daylight Saving Time command last night--a spring-like addition to our regular Saturday evening Danish smørrebrød, simply because I happened to have fresh asparagus in the house. Asparagus is not a usual accompaniment to Danish open-faced sandwiches, though it does appear occasionally on ham with Italian salad, I now recall. But it is not usual with us, since we concentrate more on good, healthy herring (shown here in the five smaller tidbits circling the spring sandwich).

We washed down our five different herring and the spinach-egg-tomato-asparagus-shrimp-dill mayonnaise concoction with a less healthy Carlsberg beer and aquavit. It was delicious, as always. I have been doing some thinking this weekend about the distinction between a habit, a tradition, and a ritual. A habit is done regularly, but without thinking. A tradition has been done before--a few times anyway--and tends to acquire meaning in the fact of being handed down. A ritual is also performed on a regular basis and has meaning; it is ceremonial and, according to Merriam-Webster, has "religious, courtly, social, or tribal significance."

I have been making smørrebrød for almost fifty years. It wasn't until we lived in Spain and had easy access to the ingredients (yes, Spain) that we started to enjoy it every week. Now, back in Cincinnati, we also have easy access to many, though not all, ingredients (bless Ikea and Jungle Jim's). Our Saturday evening dinners go beyond habit to tradition and ritual.

Turning the clocks forward or backward is just an annoying habit.

Happy New Year!

We were part of a Chinese New Year's celebration last night, hosted by a couple who have recently returned from spending six years in China. It was a gala evening of wine, "real" Chinese food, a slide show of pictures, and good conversation.

Only once before have I celebrated Chinese New Year. That was many years--decades--ago, in Boston, when we went to a parade in Boston's Chinatown with some Danish friends. It was colorful, but not as elaborate as the parades and fireworks I saw on TV yesterday. I remember that the weather was very cold. Perhaps we topped off the afternoon with a visit to Joyce Chen's Cambridge restaurant. Joyce Chen pioneered Chinese cooking in the U.S. She had a cooking program on WGBH, the public television station in Boston, which aired in 1966-67, after the better-known Julia Child had begun to teach America how to cook French. Joyce Chen was the first TV cooking chef I knew, as I was still living in Ohio in the early 1960s when The French Chef began broadcasting, from Boston but not all they way to small-town Ohio.

The New Year's celebration last night was in a warmer locale, and the food was better than I remembered from Joyce Chen's restaurant, when I had been surprised by very sticky white rice. For one thing, we had the option of brown rice last night, in addition to the traditional white (but less sticky). With the rice we had an egg and tomato dish, which our hosts explained had been their regular Monday night dinner while in China, because that was what their housekeeper prepared. It reminded me a bit of the Egg Foo Yung that had been featured on one of the episodes of the Joyce Chen program that I had seen during my early married years, but the egg was fluffier and there was lots of tomato, which was an ingredient that I don't recall Chen using, and which I don't think I've seen in American Chinese restaurants.

Prior to the egg, tomato, and rice we enjoyed a delicious cold salad of diced cucumber and carrot with boiled whole peanuts, with a nice dressing that could be spiced up with various sauces. Most cuisines have a cucumber salad, I have learned, but this may be the best I have ever tasted. It probably would not be bad with garbanzo beans instead of the peanuts, but less authentic, I suppose. It would also make a refreshing main dish summer salad.

After the rice and egg we made dumplings, a traditional Chinese New Year food, we were told. Some of us made them, that is. I just watched, sampled, and observed a handy little plastic dumpling press that the hostess told me she had found at the CAM International Market in Cincinnati, a giant supermarket that I had stumbled upon and previously walked through in awe, but where I had been too unprepared to buy anything. Now I have a mission: that dumpling press is the perfect gadget I need to make mini-empanadas for an Argentine meal.

We had been warned that the Chinese don't do good wine, so I went prepared to stick to the Chinese beer that had been promised instead. But our host had found wine with labels depicting roosters, and since we were entering the Year of the Rooster, that was a good enough excuse to offer wine as well and still be in the spirit of China.

The Rooster is one of the twelve zodiac signs of the Chinese calendar and connotes fidelity and punctuality. That "punctuality" characteristic would prove that I am not born in any year of the rooster. Rather, I discovered, I was born in the year of the pig, which suggests a whole host of characteristics that are not particularly pleasing to me.  The best that can be said for the year of the pig is that it behaves itself and wishes no harm to others. Therefore I will refrain from any further comments on the Chinese zodiac.

Epiphany

I remember that it was an epiphany for me a few years ago when I realized that the serious Christian holiday of Epiphany coincided with the Spanish holiday of Three Kings Day, the day on which Spanish children received their Christmas gifts, brought by the Three Kings, not Santa Claus.

The Three Kings, or Three Wise Men, had to go on a long journey to get to the baby Jesus after they heard he had been born in Bethlehem. It took them 12 days--the Twelve Days of Christmas. Ah, suddenly all these yuletide references are coming together.

I loved the Spanish star, which showed motion from one point to another, where it hung over Bethlehem to show the way for the Wise Men. It was featured in all the belenes (the Bethlehems),  elaborate Christmas village scenes that were the centerpiece of each town's Christmas celebrations (no worries about celebrating a religious holiday on government grounds here).

I also loved the tradition of not having to have all Christmas decorations down by January 1st. Since Three Kings Day falls on January 6, and that's when the Three Kings come to deliver gifts, it is perfectly acceptable to have Christmas decorations up through January 6.

So now I have begun thinking of January 6th as the day that I should start thinking about taking down Christmas decorations. And since it fell on Friday this year, I figured I would have the weekend to remove traces of yuletide from my house. But we had gotten only a few decorations up this year, since we were doing a major kitchen renovation, which somehow seems to spill over into the rest of the house--at least the first floor--and we got them up late. And then we had an unexpected event on Friday that demanded attention through Sunday. So here I am Sunday evening two days after Epiphany, and the decorations are still up. I'll get to them tomorrow, maybe. Well, probably not, since I will be out all day. Tuesday, then.

But then there is the Danish Christmas song:

"Julen varer lige til Påske."   [Christmas lasts until Easter.]

So I still have time. And the julenisser (Christmas elves) can stay nestled on the mantle for another day or two.

Making a Home in Cincinnati

It has now been a little more than two years since we formally moved from Spain to Cincinnati to call it home. Mostly it has been pleasant, but there have been a few rough spots. Nothing, however, as rough as the time the Alhamoud family has had since their home in Syria was leveled by bombs in 2011and they lived first with grandparents, and then in a refugee camp, before coming to the United States in October 2015.

In a three-part feature, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported this week on the first Syrian refugee family to find its way to Cincinnati to be resettled. They had received a call from the United Nations in July 2015, while they were in a camp in Jordan, asking whether they would come to the US. Yes, said the father, thinking primarily of the possibility of a peaceful future for his children. It took more than a year of vetting before they set foot on the plane that took them from Jordan to Rome to Miami and then to Greater Cincinnati International Airport, in northern Kentucky.

The Enquirer story talks about the life they had in Syria before the war, the loss of their home and numerous family members, and the effort that they have made over the past year to adjust to life in Cincinnati: for all to learn English; for the father to find a good employer; for the mother to learn to care for her family in a very different environment and help them and herself heal from the terrors from which they have tried to flee; for the children to go to school and make friends; for everyone to manage to live with an uncertain future.

My UU community has been working to be connected with a refugee family to "adopt" for the past year, and this week I thought that we were close to finding one. But after we gathered commitment from at least five members to be actively involved in providing English language tutoring, transportation to grocery stores and medical appointments, help with children's homework, assistance in preparing for job interviews, and providing a general welcoming presence and orientation to the community, we learned that we were too late for the two families coming in the next two weeks. It's a good thing, I suppose, that there are more people wanting to adopt refugee families than there are families, or is it? There is not a dearth of families needing resettlement; there just are few coming to the US and to Cincinnati. And we are entering an era in which there may be even fewer coming across the Atlantic than there have been.

Nevertheless I expect there will be some more refugees and some more chances. I recommended the article "Finding Home" to the refugee support group this morning for background reading, because of the illuminating picture it gives about the resilience of refugees and the many people and efforts required to help someone make a new home for themselves.

Maintaining Control

It's been anything but a quiet week in Lake Wobegon since Garrison Keillor left us out on the Prairie for the last time this past week. Two sudden, vicious, and senseless murders of individuals going peacefully about their business, targeted for no defensible reason by people who have been entrusted with the responsibility of helping preserve the peace. The subsequent retaliation murder of five other individuals actively engaged in protecting people's right to peaceably assemble to petition redress of grievances. The resulting shock level throughout the country seemed greater with this accumulation of killing than it has for months, even years, though heaven knows that killings of this nature are no strange event to life in these United States. Churches and caring communities have come together to mourn and try to hope, social media is flooded with reactions and admonitions, and even the broadcast media is still devoting full time to video replays and analysis, since nothing else has yet taken place to fill up the airwaves.

And yet, we keep on keeping on. We have to, perhaps, in order to maintain some control over lives that we fool ourselves into thinking that we have some control over. This week I did a positive thing by meeting with my family members to jointly sign and validate State of Ohio Advance Directives: the Health Care Power of Attorney and the Living Will Declaration. A task that we have been  meaning to do for months, and for which we have all, by this stage of our lives, received several reminders in the form of sad and tragic brushes with death and ending of life of various family and friends. We are so lucky that all in our family have similar ideas about how to approach end of life decisions in the event of diagnosed terminal conditions or sudden catastrophe, so it was not too hard to select the agents who will have control over my medical treatment if I myself have lost control.

Two days this week my plans for the day were disrupted by unexpected events, other than those in the national news. On Friday I had scheduled a luncheon meeting with a friend, and I was really looking forward to seeing her and going to this particular restaurant. But the day before, the oil light had come on in my car, or so I thought, and when my favorite mechanic told me that the oil repository was full and the light was a "check the engine" light and that we should go to the dealer immediately, we did. So that luncheon engagement was cancelled. I found out in due course that the engine light signified only that I needed a new gas cap. The visit to the dealer solved that problem and allowed the opportunity to get the factory recall airbag replaced, a potentially dangerous situation that I had been neglecting for no good reason.

The other day with unexpected events was the day I had been scheduled to observe English language classes at a refugee center. In this case, I still showed up at the center, but there was a surprise celebration of Eid, the end of Ramadan. We had an unexpected free and interesting lunch, but there were only a few minutes available for observing classes. It was extraordinary and humbling to meet several refugees one-on-one, who each introduced themselves, saying "My name is ... " [something I could not repeat, nor distinguish first name from surname], "I am from ... " [a far-away country I have never been to, most Bhutan, some Gambia, one Syria], and "I have been in the United States for ... " [a ridiculously short period of time, ranging from five days to two months].  The composure of the individuals I met was astounding for someone who had been uprooted from their own country, living in a refugee camp for years, and then suddenly dropped into a mid-sized Midwestern U.S. city.

Since we were there, with a car, we were asked to take two clients to an appointment they had at a  health clinic. Although we have been here for two years, we did not recognize the name of the health clinic, nor have any idea of how to get there. And though we were introduced to the young man and young woman who we were to transport, we could not communicate with them beyond hand signals and "thank you." It was a long 20-minute drive down Reading Road and into the university health center area, with only the mechanical voice of the GPS lady to tell us where to go. I sat and enjoyed the feeling of having some recognition of the area we were driving in, though I never could have found it myself and would not have been comfortable driving alone. And I marveled at the trust of our passengers who had willingly and politely allowed themselves to be deposited in the automobile of a couple they had never seen before, to go to a place they presumably did not know how to get to, when I am uneasy about getting into a taxi cab alone in a city I do not know. I think they must have learned something about the illusion of control and real control from their experiences. They certainly had learned something about grace.

We all want to control the big things like where we live, and for how long, and under what conditions, and we can make plans for some eventualities. But war, or hate, God, or fate--life--can intervene at a moment's notice, and the unexpected will happen. The only control we have is the way we meet it. Each day. Each minute.

Faces of Cincinnati

This has been a week spent largely beyond our dwelling place in the city of Springdale in north Cincinnati. In spite of our location adjoining a somewhat dated Latino shopping center, with an Hispanic and a Halal grocery store, and a Mexican restaurant, the feel of our neighborhood, and our experience, is distinctly white suburban. This week brought us welcome interchanges with the world beyond.

Impromptu dancing with men and women at World Refugee Day.

On Wednesday we went to Saint Francis de Sales parish on Madison Road near downtown Cincinnati, to participate with others from The Gathering at Northern Hills in preparing and serving a hot lunch to elementary school students who are members of the UpSpring of Cincinnati summer camp enrichment program for homeless children. I am not used to cooking in quantities of 100s, so it's a good thing that I was not in charge of the menu and planning. But I did enjoy chopping more onions that I every had before in a single stretch for sloppy goes, stirring one of six pots of the mixture, and then preparing the plates for the sloppy joes, cole slaw, and tortilla chips. It had been busy with adults  in the kitchen from 10-12, but when the kids came into the dining area after their morning activities, the activity level skyrocketed, as did the decibel level. I went out to check some of the kids in the dining room later in case they wanted seconds, and it was hard hearing above the roar of the crown, even though any child that wanted individual attention from adults stood patiently with hand raised in air to attract attention from one of the teachers or volunteers. We heard details about the work of UpSpring, which sadly has increased the number of people it serves during the summer months in the seven years that this congregation has been performing this service. Shockingly more than  half of all children living in Greater Cincinnati live below the poverty line.

A very young attendee at World Refugee Day.

Friday morning I made a quick stop at the Northminster Presbyterian Church in Finneytown, catching a group of adult refugees at the tail end of their weekly English and citizenship classes, sponsored by Heartfelt Tidbits, a relatively new local non-profit organization that concentrates its efforts on refugee resettlement. I spoke with the executive director, and I am hoping to start some tutoring of adults in this program in the upcoming summer weeks.

Saturday was World Refugee Day, and Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio had planned a festive event for the refugee families it serves. My volunteer efforts there included the making and sharing of a Vietnamese chicken-cabbage salad and a late pot of South African yellow spiced rice--both these in more customary sized quantities, for a couple families. There were lots of volunteers and lots of other food offerings, too, and some beautiful music and dancing. The large majority of the refugees to Cincinnati now are from Bhutan., but several African and Asian regions are represented. One of the unique experiences I had Saturday as I helped staff the soft drinks table was to hear the Nepali national song and see it interpreted in a graceful dance.

So much joy and grace in this dance! Smiling faces all around!

Home for the Holidays

We are home in Cincinnati, having touched down at the Dayton airport on Thursday morning after a short trip to Denmark by way of Orlando. We spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Copenhagen. We didn't sit down for the traditional turkey dinner on Thursday with family, but we did sit down for a very good dinner and warm evening conversation with cousins of Johannes earlier in the week, and later in the week we enjoyed several days with old and good friends in Aalborg. And we had taken advantage of our Orlando safe departure point (safe because we thought we might not have to fight bad weather if leaving from Chicago or the northeast, and we were right) to spend a day with my aunt, who is approaching 92 and still living independently in Kissimmee. Good visits, all.

Now I have done three loads of laundry, and most of the books, DVDs, recipes, clothing, Christmas decorations, and food that we acquired in Denmark have found their proper places. Well, the Christmas material is in a staging area until I pack the fall decorations away--they were out a very short time this year. And yes, I did carefully avoid the customs' officer's question "Did you bring any food with you?" and waited to answer "no" until he specified "fruit, vegetables, meat." We declared the two bottles of aquavit, and I kept my mouth shut, until now, about the seven packages of kransekager that I was bringing back to the julefest of the Scribblers and Readers groups of the Scandinavian Society of Cincinnati. I honestly forgot about the ham bouillon cubes, the cardamom, and the yellow dried peas for soup that I had purchased the week before. (It's hard to believe that I blanked out about the cardamom after the security agent in Copenhagen airport had thoroughly disrupted my carry-on bag, searching for a container the size of a roll-on deodorant, and came up with a spice jar instead, but these lapses happen when you travel over time zones.)

In addition to catching up with work, I have spent time creating a fun quiz for the Scandinavian fest on Monday. It has been interesting to have thoughts of, for the most part, descendants of Scandinavians who formerly immigrated to the U.S. and of friends and family who are presently living in Denmark all going through my head at the same time. Thoughts of those journeys and those efforts to create home shuffle around with thoughts generated by the book, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia (Michael Booth), which we discussed at Readers and which I am using as a springboard for the Christmas party quiz. Part of the conversation with others and with myself over the past two weeks has been a new awareness of immigrants who returned to their home country--and we could include expats in that group--and why and how. And so I woke this morning with a deep appreciation of the experience of living in this modern world that now makes it relatively easy to travel periodically from one home to another and to enable individuals to preserve and strengthen ties with friends and family no matter where they live.

Back to Sundays in Cincinnati

It has been a very, very long time since I updated Sundays in Cincinnati. That's mostly because it's been a very, very long time since I spent a Sunday in Cincinnati. On the rare occasion when I was here, I was returning from elsewhere. Here's a round-up.

On August 9 I was in Chicago, relaxing after a drive across Indiana the previous day, and preparing to board a plane Sunday evening for a 14-hour flight to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. We made use of the time by finding a shopping center with a Barnes & Noble, where I bought three books, which I stored in the back of the car that we were leaving at a hotel near the airport while we were away.

The next Sunday was not in Dubai.  We had spent three interesting days there ("that's more than enough," the Emirates airline agent had said to us when we checked in, but we found plenty to do). On Sunday, August 16 we were in Cape Town, South Africa and it was the inauguration ceremony for the World Library  and Information Congress, sponsored by IFLA. The ceremony was a glorious colorful extravaganza with music and dance, celebrating Africa's story-telling tradition. It was only the beginning of a very exciting time at the conference itself and at several places--and with several people--in Cape Town and environs.

The following Sunday, August 23, we were back in Dubai, breaking up our return trip (9 hours from Cape Town, 14 to Chicago) by a single day at The Dubai Mall. Yes, we spent the entire day there, or at least that portion of it that was left after arriving very early in the morning Sunday and leaving very early in the morning Monday.

By Sunday, August 30 we were back in Ohio. But we were only returning to Cincinnati from farther north, Sidney, Ohio, where we had spent an enjoyable and emotional weekend while attending my 50th high school reunion. It was a treat to see and exchange conversation with so many classmates from 50 and more years ago.

Last Sunday, September 6, I was in Cincinnati--at least my body was. I managed to get to church and to Ikea to buy curtains and rods (we had had six new windows installed during the week and determined that we did not want to put the same old window treatments up over them). But I was a little "out of it," as I had also had periodontal surgery on Friday, aided by a good dose of sedatives and painkillers, thank you very much.

Today, September 13, I am also in Cincinnati. All day. And I have been here all week! The season has changed--I put on fall clothes last night to attend a Scandinavian Society of Cincinnati dinner, but I was back to late summer attire for church this morning. But fall activities have started, and the social calendar is already full. Scribblers group starts tomorrow, with the Readers group and Cincinnati's OLLI lifelong learning courses the following week. We are still in the middle of house renovations (replacing a wood-burning fireplace with gas), and that is a bigger project than first anticipated, as we have had a whole corner of the living room wall and flooring knocked out and now they are in the process of being replaced. We will reach a pausing point by the end of Wednesday, when the contractor goes on his late-summer vacation. That will give us time to finalize arrangements for house guests who will be with us next weekend--including Sunday--taking a spring vacation from Argentina.

I may post more detail about some of my recent adventures in the coming days--I have several jottings--if there is time. At any rate, I am delighted that we are coming to a stable period where our activities are mostly contained within the boundaries of one state.

Spanish Tapas in Cincinnati

I've been too busy to write about them before, but there were two significant events in June before we left to sell our house in Spain. The first was that we "catered" an afternoon of tapas at our new home here on June 7; the second was that we "catered" an evening of Danish smørrebrød the following week.

Both these events were sponsored by my first sister and brother-in-law as fundraisers for their church fellowship. Both had been planned for months--the seats were auctioned off at the church last October--and the dates had been carefully selected to avoid any foreseen conflicts with the four hosts involved. The first change was that both the sponsor-host and the caterer-hosts moved house between the auction and the event. As the time neared, we all decided that it would be easiest to handle the food preparations and serving at our new home, and that gave us the motivation to get things organized for entertaining after our move, as well as help in doing it! Perhaps not knowing the guests in advance removed some of the tension from first-time entertaining, too.

For the record, here (below) is the menu for the tapas festival, the first event.

Taste of St. John’s

An Afternoon of Tapas

Sunday, June 7, 2015

“Bienvenidos”

Cava

Endibias (endive with tuna filling)

Tortilla Española (Spanish “omelet” with potatoes, spinach, and onion)

Olives

Almonds

Queso manchego (Manchego cheese) and jamón serrano (serrano ham)

At the Table

Cóctel de Gambas (shrimp cocktail)

Barras de pan (Bread)

Albóndigas (Meatballs) en salsa con guisantes (peas)

Patatas alioli (Potatoes with garlic mayonnaise)

Gazpacho

The quintessential Spanish summertime soup

Paella Valenciana

with chicken and chorizo

Sobremesa (Afterwards)

Dulces (sweets) y café

From my point of view it was a good party. I had fun planning a diverse but representative menu, canvassing food stores throughout Cincinnati for the right ingredients, and working with my sister on the project. There were no culinary disasters. The guests said they had a good time, and the conversation flowed. There were enough left-overs to spread around the next day, but not too many. That was a good thing, because by then we were on to Denmark...!

A Danish Dinner

There are plenty of tapas restaurants in Cincinnati--and everywhere else--so the guests at that event had a pretty good idea of what to expect. But Scandinavian food is not as well known, and the Danish open-faced sandwiches called smørrebrød are not available in restaurants here. They are, however, available in our home almost every Saturday evening, so preparing for this event was not difficult at all. The only problem was accepting that some of the wonderful food combinations had to be left out, because, after all, the dinner had to be consumed in one sitting. Below is the menu that I finally settled on.

Taste of St. John’s

June 14, 2015 at 6:00 PM

Smørrebrød

Danish Open-Faced Sandwiches

Snitter

Appetizers

Hardcooked Egg with Herring Bits ~ Paté of Sprat with Cucumber

 “Victor Borge”

The favorite sandwich of the Late, Great Dane

Smoked Salmon, Egg, and Shrimp on White Bread with Dill Mayonnaise & Caviar

“Stjerneskyd”

 A Shooting star, or fireworks

Baked Breaded Tilapia with Remoulade, Shrimp, Caviar, & Tomato on Dark Bread

 “Hans Christian Andersen”

What the Famous Storyteller Ate When He Wasn’t with Company

Mushroom & Chicken Liver Paté on Whole Wheat Bread, with Tomato, Aspic & Horseradish

“Summer Salad”

Egg with “Italian salad”

or

Sliced New Potatoes with Curry Mayonnaise and Fried Onions

Citronfromage

A classic light summer lemon dessert

There was a bit of a cosmetic glitch in this dinner, with the lemon dessert, which is definitely not traditional with the smørrebrød but is traditional in spring and summer, and the weather was perfect for it. It tasted fine, too. Again, the conversation flowed--this time with beer--and inspired.

Gazpacho and More in Cincinnati

I first wrote about gazpacho, the quintessential cold Spanish summer soup, in my earlier blog, Sundays in Spain. The first post, from 2009, was titled Gazpacho! and recounted how I learned that you never order gazpacho in Spain except in the summer time. The second, from 2011, had the same title, with slightly different punctuation: ¡Gazpacho!  I had obviously acquired a Spanish keyboard in the intervening years, and I could add the upside-down exclamation mark at the beginning of the title.

I was mortified that I had actually published two posts with the same title in one blog. Now I have searched back through Sundays in Spain to find references to those two posts so that I could link them in the paragraph above. Two interesting facts manifested themselves. First, the Google search engine on the Sundays in Spain blog was not able to find the 2011 ¡Gazpacho! post--probably because of the punctuation, and--with a new U.S.-style keyboard--I am unable to make the upside down exclamation mark. Since I was unable to find that post by searching for it, I decided to browse through all the posts that I had labeled "food" in that blog. The second interesting fact is that I wrote an awful lot about food during the six years I wrote that blog in Spain. Sixty-five posts to be exact! You might wonder whether I did anything else other than eat and drink and write about it!

Here I am now, in Cincinnati, in the middle of Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial beginning of the summer season, and I am thinking and writing about gazpacho again. I have already had my first gazpacho of the season this year. That's because I have begun preparations for a special afternoon of tapas for a group of people from St. John's Unitarian Universalist Church, to be held in two weeks. After much thought and discussion we have selected the menu, depending primarily on my memory and a cookbook called Classic Tapas: Authentic Spanish Recipes, translated into English (and other languages in other editions) but including the Spanish names and pictures.

Having selected various tapas, however, I had to learn how to make them. After all, as my trip through the 65 Sundays in Spain blogposts on food revealed, I had done a lot better at enjoying eating tapas than in preparing them myself. Among other things, we are having Spanish tortilla, paella, albóndigas (meatballs), and, of course, gazpacho. All things that are typical and that I have enjoyed often, but none of which I had ever actually prepared before. Tortilla and gazpacho are ready-made staples in most Spanish grocery stores, and that's exactly the method of preparation I had always used when serving them in my home. I never made albóndigas at home because they are almost always available as a tapa at a bar, and eating a tapas-sized portion is so much better for you than cooking a family-sized recipe for two people. Nor did I make paella at home the Spanish way (in a topless paella pan), because it was so much easier to have it out at a restaurant, prepared by experts, and also because I was sure, from many years of cooking, that you had to cook rice in a covered pan.

So it has been an adventure to find the recipes, locate the equivalent ingredients, and experiment making the various dishes for our tapas. In the last few weeks we have had a feast of Spanish evening meals and I have perfected my techniques for the upcoming afternoon of tapas. I even am comfortable now in cooking paella in a pan without a cover (my un-used paella pan being one of the few cooking utensils I brought back with me. We are holding a respite from eating Spanish for the next week or ten days, but I will then swing into full gear to prepare for the party. I might read through some of those 65 food posts from Sundays in Spain in the meantime, however, for vicarious enjoyment and inspiration. But I will not allow myself to change the menu!

Hanging On

We had been coming through a very busy time. Just as we finished the major part of our move, we were hit by a series of social events--good things all, but in the sort of squeezed sequence that makes you wish you had a bit more control over the timing of so much goodness. But that's life, and we were hanging on and enjoying it.

We spent an interesting evening sampling an Indian dinner, won at a church benefit auction months ago. We entertained non-family visitors for the first time in our new house--the Scandinavian Scribblers from whom we receive stimulation to write and enjoyment from sharing experiences. We made it to the local cinema--on Senior Discount Day, no less--to see The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. We met a new group of people at the Torch Club of Cincinnati and heard an excellent overview of recent genetics research. We attended a Danish Dinner with talks about Piet Hein and Jørn Utzon, and samples of æbleskiver and homemade pumpernickel bread. I lead a book discussion on A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman, at my new reading group, and I molded my mind to applying a developing knowledge of XML protocols to a web publication. We attended an evening lecture on current Alzheimer's disease research being conducted in Cincinnati and Lexington, Kentucky and I was contemplating whether I should offer myself as a subject for (I hope) a control group.

And then in the space of just one hour after a pleasant but uneventful lunch of green salad, mixed fruit, and working on the Word Game puzzle from the daily newspaper, it went from every-day routine to crisis.  An emergency trip to the hospital, which we had remarked casually only days before was just 15 minutes away, never dreaming that we would need it so soon. A harrowing time as I saw my husband become faint, weaken, go into shock, and lose consciousness from acute internal bleeding. He revived slowly after IV fluids started dripping into his arm, but not before I realized with a conscious certainty that I had not experienced in awhile that I really was not ready quite yet to go into that next phase of my life alone.

He hung on through the night and through the corrective procedure the next morning, and then he hung on well enough through the day so that he was released from the hospital by supper time. And we are hanging on during this weekend, following doctors' instructions meticulously. And in all the days ahead I will try to hang on mindfully to that conscious awareness that I experienced during those few interminable hours of crisis, for the perspective it can provide when I am faced with irritations that should be small.

Sliding past Christmas

The little Christmas tree at the entry

It is Sunday, January 4th, 2015 and my Christmas tree is still up, the Christmas place mats and dinnerware are still in use, and the other small decorations--mostly candles and another miniature tree in the entry--have not yet even begun to be gathered in one place so as to collect them all (always missing a few) to be put away in boxes until next December.

I am unapologetic. You cannot live in Spain for as long as I did without accepting that Christmas lasts way beyond New Year's Day--which was always the traditional day in our house for putting away Christmas, or else! It lasts until January 6, which marks the day following the evening when the Three Wise Men brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the Christ Child, and when modern-day Three Kings traditionally bring Christmas gifts to the children in Spain. I like the Spanish schedule for Christmas: It generally doesn't begin until the first week in December, on or about the day of celebrating the Immaculate Conception of Mary (December 8th), and preparations roll along at an unhurried pace until the 24th, when a grand family dinner is enjoyed by all.  Another special dinner happens on December 25th--indeed, the grocery stores are often the most hectic of commerce establishments during these days. With the large influx of northern Europeans in Spain in recent years, shopping malls often present Santa Claus, or more probably Father Christmas, to hear children's wishes and pose for pictures. On December 25th or 26th, however, Father Christmas miraculously transforms into one of the Three Kings, and he continues to hear children's Christmas wishes until January 5th. I will never forget the January 5th that I was in Madrid preparing to fly out early the next morning and discovered that El Corte Inglés, the large department store, was open until midnight so that the Kings' helpers could purchase last-minute gifts. The streets were abustle that night between desperate shoppers and families gathering to watch the Christmas parade at the 11th hour.

Golden tulips on January 4th

Spain has it right not only from the "how to enjoy the holidays" point of view, but from the liturgical view, too. The Twelve Days of Christmas start on the 25th of December and stretch through until January 5th (see a religious explanation here), and I don't understand why more people don't celebrate the twelve days and extend the joy until the day of Epiphany.

I am starting to think about the process of removing those decorations from the Christmas tree that La Guapa has not already pawed down--maybe tomorrow evening, maybe not until Tuesday, the 6th. And one of those days I will launder the Christmas linens and fold them together in one location while I try to collect the remaining symbols of Christmas to pack away in the same boxes. It will all get done on Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday. Or maybe even Thursday.

But even though I am hanging on to Christmas, I was not deterred this weekend from picking up a small bouquet of the first yellow tulips I have seen this year, and "planting" them smack dab next to one of the Christmas tree placements. Tulips were very rare in our part of Spain, on any date.

Living in Two Worlds / Viviendo en Dos Mundos

That is what I wrote about for my last OLLI Spanish class of the fall season:

Estoy viviendo en dos mundos. Una parte está en EE.UU. , donde assisto a las últimas clases de OLLI, buscamos una casa para comprar, trabajo con mi empresa en Connecticut, y visito a mi familia alrededor en Cincinnati. Otra parte planea nuestro viaje a España el domingo que viene, arreglando citas con amigos americanos allí para el Día de Dar Gracias, reuniones con el club de lectores, juegos de petanca con los daneses, visitas a mis amigos y a mi profesora de español, y las tareas de preparar a vender la casa. Es dificil vivir en dos lugares cuando ambos son tan atractivos.

I am living in two worlds. One part of me is in the United States, where I am attending the final OLLI classes, we are looking for a house to buy, I work with my job in Connecticut, and visit my family around Cincinnati. The other part is planning our trip to Spain this coming Sunday, arranging appointments with American friends there for Thanksgiving, meetings with my book group, petanca games with the Danes, visits to friends and my Spanish teacher, and the tasks involved in getting the house ready to sell. It is difficult to live in two places when both are so attractive.

Now as I write this on Saturday, "this coming Sunday" is tomorrow and the balance has shifted to the other side. We have done our final purchases of gifts and supplies to take with us, I have done the final laundry--not that we are taking many clothes--we have kitty-proofed the house and talked with my sister who will become Guapa's best friend for the next four weeks, I have done a good job of using up those items in the freezer and refrigerator that I do not want to face again when I come back, I have finished reading the book for book club next week and arranged for its return to the library, and we have picked up the rental car that we will use to drive to the airport and drop there tomorrow morning. All that remains is packing the suitcases and making sure I have everything I need for the trip. It should be simple, since we have a full house over there and are taking little, and I have been collecting things and making notes for a couple weeks. But it's the part of the job that I always hate. So I had better get to it.

If time and mind permit in the next few weeks, I will be posting my thoughts at my original blog, Sundays in Spain.