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Espana Part Four: Barcelona Part Two

by janet on July 21st, 2010

Do they really need ALL of us to hold them up? Don’t they has wings?

After our toothpicky fun, R2 and I went to the Barcelona cathedral – technically Catedral de Santa Eulalia de Barcelona. Saint Eulalia was a poor 13-year-old girl who was tortured 13 times by the Romans for refusing to recant her Christianity before being crucified on an X-shaped cross; this X appears on every pew and all over the catedral.

Until I wiki-ed it right now, I didn’t quite understand what “tortured 13 times” meant, but apparently this included cutting off her breasts, putting her into a barrel with glass or perhaps knives (details) and rolling her down a hill, and decapitation (at which point a dove allegedly flew out of her neck stump?).

Intensezors.

To lighten the mood, R2 said:

Catedral. CATedral. LOLCATedral. Get it? Wordplay.

Janet: [weakly] heh heh

R2: [insistent] LOLCATedral! …Where we sacrifice Buttins [Tinx's cat; see below] to Satan! …That’s YOU! [Satan is indeed my nickname in some circles] Didn’t you say you wanted to eat a beating snake heart? You can eat a beating kitteh heart!

Janet: [stares]

R2: [getting more desperate] Or a BUNNY! But it has to be a CUTE bunny! A…white one! Virginal! It MUST be the cutest bunny on all the earth to satisfy the mighty and terrifying LOLCATedral gods!

Janet: I’m SO putting this in the blog.

R2: Noooo I’m gonna seem creepy!

Done and done.

The law clearly states you can’t do anything mean to me or my heart once my pupils reach a certain size

For dinner we did a Rick Steves-sanctioned tapas crawl in the Ribera district. We went to Taller de Tapas, which was a trendy and upscale tapas bar where we paid much money for standard fare. Standard meaning jamon de croquettes, bacalao de croquettes, deep fried artichoke, and pan. After a day of walking around, and after the tall pitcher of cava sangria (white sangria with bubbly) we had on the waterfront, we much enjoyed the food as efficient calorie-delivering vehicles.

R2 sang the word “balls” to the rhythm of that Shots song

Next we went to Sagardi, which sounded fun in the guidebook because it was a grab-whatever-you-want kind of place, and the actual establishment was HOPPIN. But as soon as we got there, I had brain/worm deja vu. And I looked farther down the bar and realized that ALL the tapas were identical to that we had seen earlier at Taverna Basca Irati which was a disappointment and a half since (a) we had eaten it all earlier and (b) we realized Rick Steves was playing favorites but trying to lie to us about it. Just to confirm, I looked at their menu, which had the same logo as Irati, thus confirming our suspicions. We said “PAH!” and stomped out (but not before eating a smoked salmon pintxo with nommalicious horseradish).

We put the guidebook away (why were we trusting a guy who (a) has two first names; and (b) has a weird already-pluralized last name so it’s confusing as to where to put the apostrophe in the first place?) and went into a smaller but still classy joint a little bit down the street. We were not given a menu but were commanded to order by a scary lady, so we just pointed to some things that were out on the bar. We ended up with some sort of meatball and some sort of fish stew.

Damnit did I use my R2 balls story already?

I wish wish wished the meatballs were lamb, but instead I think they were beef. The green olives nestled in there were the best part.

The fish stew was oilier than I preferred, but so salty it zinged all the way into my eyebrows (which I like).

R2 said “CLAMS CLAMS” like that robot Mafia dude on Futurama

I loved Espana, but I was missing cheese. Manchego is nice but as mild as butter. So we headed to Cheese Me, where we got a Spanish cheese plate.

The blue cheese on the slab was so sharp it made my mouth hurt and tingle thereafter for at least three minutes. It was sharp enough to the point that eating it became a game, akin to consuming Pop Rocks or Atomic Fireballs. I would play blue cheese roulette by going around the platter in a circle, making excited Wheel of Fortune noises when I got close to landing on the blue cheese.

I may have been massively drunk.

Chickens can’t make this – yet another reason why fowl sucks

The following day we went to Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia – a super cool outing with dizzifying circular stairs up and down incredibly tall spires. I liked looking at Gaudi’s desk, which was preserved exactly as it was on the day of his death.

If you look closely, you can see his sack dinner hanging there. Apparently his dinner consisted of two small slices of bread spread with honey and a small handful of raisins, thus proving to me that he might be an architectural genius, but he’s a glycemic index dumbass.

[Menacingly] I eat dinners like yours for BREAKFAST

Now that we knew that Rick Steves recs were generally American-friendly and chain-ey, we decided to do his “dark,” “rough-edged” tapas crawl that will “stain your journal” along Carrer de la Merce. We assumed that this meant, in normal speak, that this would be just a normal tapas crawl. And it was.

First was R2’s favorite resto and favorite dish in all of Spain, at La Pulperia. There, we had pulpo – octopus – a la plancha. It was grilled, salty, and flavorful, and rapidly cut up into bits by Mr. Pulpo (R2’s name for him) using scissors.

It’s ok it’s ok – that’s paprika on us, not blood

Then, to La Plata, which served only fried anchovies (FINALLY! We had been hunting for them since Madrid), salad, and super cheap keg wine. Fried anchovies might be my new popcorn.

Then, to a place not mentioned in the guidebook, but another one of our favorites. The people there were cheerful and friendly. We ordered sidra, the native hard cider, and appropriately marveled when he poured it out from the height of at least five feet over a barrel, and then promptly choked when the first sip hit our mouths. How do I describe it? Like a salty beer with a malty aftertaste that smells of apples. Not…great.

I assure you no walrus wants this bukkit

As we were politely suffering through our sidra, a family from New Orleans came over. The dad in the fam was clearly overserved, though in a jolly kind of way.

Dad: Now, that beef thang – HOW long is it aged?

Owner lady: Two years.

Dad: Now I’m talking about about that beef – that amazing beef. HOW long is it aged?

Owner lady: Two years. Yes, it is very delicious. Two years.

Dad: [to wife] Dang that beef was good. I asked her how long she thought it was aged but I couldn’t get a clear answer outta her. [To us] Y’ALL GOTTA TRY IT!

We obeyed.

We’ve been aged X number of years!

It was just like the luscious jamon, but this time with beef. Exactly in between ham and jerky. Well, perhaps more on the ham side. It was smoother and more deeply flavored than the jamon we had encountered, and was indeed worth getting riled up about.

We were chock full of food at this point, and couldn’t finish our entire plate, which deeply concerned both owner lady and owner man. We insisted that it was just because we were full, but they were unconvinced and to this day I wish I had just sucked it up and eaten it because their heartbroken eyes were too much to bear.

Leaving Barcelona was too much to bear. Luckily we were destined for the ultimate European beach holiday…in Mallorca!

Posted in Awkward, Food, Travel | 1 Comment »

Barcelona Part One

by janet on July 19th, 2010

Lucida says mmm

Phreww. Remind me never to go this long without posting again, because I just had to moderate 499 spam comments that had built up while I was slacking (shouldn’t have bothered – 100% of them were indeed spam) while I was getting into some shenans with my mom & sis and obsessed with the Millenium Triology and other busy-ness in the past couple of weeks.

The spammers are getting cleverer. Everything would be fine if I had friends who didn’t just comment “awesome!” but I do, so I have to read through them all. I do this also because I’m guessing you don’t want to buy cheap Uggs, and I KNOW you don’t want FREE SEX VIDEO!!! right??

Some spam comments are obvy:

Intimately, the post is really the sweetest on this worthw hile topic. I harmonise with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your upcoming updates. Just saying thanks will not just be sufficient, for the tremendous clarity in your writing. I will instantly grab your rss feed to stay informed of any updates. Genuine work and much success in your business enterprize!

Nevermind that it’s all true – it’s still spam, ya dingus! My favorite by far, though, and one I almost let through for its sheer weirdness:

Shakespeare’s feeble attempt; Mehears the lady LOL, mehopes not at mine nether hole

So, returning to the Europa Vacation-of-Lifetime, R2 and I arrived in Barcelona for a three-night stay. Just like in Madrid, we had not thought to look up how to get to our hotel, so all we had was an address. After asking two people who not only didn’t know but also hated us for asking, a subway employee pointed to a stop on the metro map and made a slow heil Hitler motion.

We got off at the designated station and I found a random map and figured out the direction of our hotel. Then we realized as we huffed and puffed uphill that that’s what the guy meant – go uphill after exiting the station.

We stayed at Hotel Medium Aristol and were greeted by Ibo, who was truly awesome. Kind, cute, silly, friendly, incredibly informative, go-out-of-way-ey, stylish, cool. R2 and I discussed how we would write a letter to Hotel Medium management and demand that he be promoted. Also we planned to mail him our leftover metro card that still had like five rides on it. We have done neither, shoot.

Thin and limp – bad for peens, good for jamon.

Ibo recommended that we go to the Joanic area of Barcelona, where apparently there is fun nightlife and tons of places to eat. We obeyed and found a cute open square where a cafe had set up tons of tables for al fresco dining. I got a big old beer (Chimay Rioja – a wine beer??) and we hit the top four classics of tapas – jamon (ham), pan (bread with tomato topping), patatas bravas (potatotes, fried) and croquetas de bacalao (mmm deep fried fish stick thingies filled with a luscious salted cod mousse).

True to late-eating-even-for-Espana form, we closed out the cafe, lost our nerve when we attempted to go into a seedy local-ey bar, and instead went to a tiki-vibed bar that stank of expats. Here, R2 had a drink called “Monkey’s Lunch” which was full of bananas and Bailey’s and I’m sure Kahlua and was frothy and yummy and would have made true Spain lovers ashamed of us for being so safe.

The next day, we took a walk down the Ramblas where we saw all manner of animal for sale. But you already know all about that. We also went into La Boqueria market – an amateur food photographer’s dream.

Even as a frog phobic I could stomach (get it?) this

Pineapple kind of looks like pound cake

Everything here will blow out your butthole

Pictured above – some fresh squeezed juices. If we ever have a proper fight R2 gets an automatic pass, because when we purchased a kiwi & coconut juice, he said “Let’s get another one” and I said “no” like a fucktard. This is my greatest regret. Stupidballs! Gah.

Pictured top were strips of ham marketed like french fries. I could only giggle at the wonderfulness of it all as I sucked them down like they were spaghetti.

For lunch proper, we went to a Rick Steves recommended pintxo bar. It was Taverna Basca Irati, and it has 40 kinds of hot and cold Basque pintxos (smaller tapas, usually on a slice of bread) where you pay by the honor system – you are charged for the number of toothpicks on your plate.

They kind of remind me of the things in Nausicaa

It was empty at the weird time that we went, smack in the middle of siesta. Our server, a guy who looked like Spanish from Old School, made our tinto de veranos with extreme love and care, and so I loved him in return. The emptiness meant we had our pick of the pintxos and gleefully bounded from one end of the bar to the other, grabbing pintxos at random.

Brains with worms on them

TWO kinds of caviar? Your awesomeness is crushing the bread below

Despite all the fanciness and prettiness, my favorite was just a hunk of bread with a lone spicy sausage toothpicked awkwardly on top. We overstuffed ourselves and even though the pintxos were 1.50 euro each, racked up a gigantic bill, natch.

So, I learned that people prefer shorter posts and more frequent posts, which is orthogonal to my style, but I’m going to try. Next will be Barcelona Part Two, in which I tell a story that R2 has begged me not to tell because it’ll make him look creepy.

Posted in Food, Travel | 1 Comment »

Espana Part II: Toledo

by janet on June 30th, 2010

“Holy Toledo” is what R2’s FB status was when we went here. Toledo was a relatively spur-of-the-moment stop for us – we wanted to stay in a parador (a state-run converted castle) and this one was the closest one to an AVE (high speed train) stop. Just thirty minutes south of Madrid, the Parador de Toledo is on a hill outside of the main city with fucking KILLER views. The picture above, taken with the panorama function on The Kraken, barely got taken because both R2 and I were subject to a sudden spider cloud ambush. Horror and squeals. Except R2 was taking a photo of some English tourists for them at the time, one of whom said “You’re one hundred times bigger than that spider!” so he couldn’t squeal at the monstrous arachnid dangling from his elbow. [He kind of just stopped breathing and trembled until I rescued him and killt it.]

This was the view from our balcony. Our room was clean and bright and atmospheric and had a canopy and warm tile floors and I loved it.

The city proper (the entire city has been declared a national monument) is two winding miles away and everything you want in a vacation spot. Tiny streets barely the wider than most of your flat screen TVs, all cobblestoned and meandering down and up and down and up with charming doorways and stores and – SMACK! Right into the most gorgeous cathedral I’ve ever, ever, ever been in. The Toledo Cathedral does not allow photographs, unfortunately, but even compared to later cathedrals (Sagrada Familia, Barcelona Catedral) that are bigger and more famouser, this one was just breathtaking. It was all I could do to not burst into flames, it was so beautiful and spiritual.

Plaza de Zocodover is the main square in tiny Toledo, and all roads lead back to it. We stopped at a cafe on the square and I had my first experience with churros.

We did it wrong, totally. They had clearly been sitting out forever, and were cold and salty (?) and I didn’t get a hot chocolate as one was supposed to so I was dunking them in cafe solo (black). I huffed a little and wished I was at Disneyland but then realized I was in fucking SPAIN so I snapped out of it.

Across the street to Santo Tome, purveyor of Toledo’s specialty, mazapan (marzipan). All these online reviews say their website is great, and it should be, since they’ve snagged mazapan.com.

I adore almond flavoring. I also adore nondescript globs of things. From soft (flan) to hard (Lemonheads). As I type this now, I’ve had to text “I WANT MAZAPAN” to R2. Twice.

We then went, based on Rick Steves’ recommendation, to Cafeteria Cason Lopez de Toledo. It’s the cheaper version of the fancy restaurant “located upstairs in an old noble palace,” specializing in “Castilian food, particularly venison and partridge.” The cafeteria version, “…while called a ‘cafeteria,’ is actually a quality restaurant in its own right…where the locals dine, enjoying the fancy restaurant’s kitchen at half the price.” Sounds great!

We showed up at eight, apparently too early for them, for the restaurant was empty and the waitstaff kept rolling in for work after we were practically done. But methinks the restaurant was empty for other reasons…

They had a 11 euro prix fixe deal, and our amuse (?) was the mussel … ceviche? Shown above. Ceviche doesn’t technically contain raw fish, since the acid from the lemon/citrus “cooks” it. These looked pretty raw, however.

R2 picked one up and noticed a bunch of hairy … things coming out of the blowhole of one of them. He (with effort – shudderrr) yanked them out, and not knowing what to do, threw the hairy bundle onto the ground. I didn’t tell him at the time for reasons that will become apparent, but it reminded me of a particularly horrific wart I got on my toe in middle school in moist and humid Tokyo. The Japanese name for that type of wart is uwonome, which in English means fish eye. My specific wart, though, looked just like the thing in the mussel – a circular ring with skin formations that looked like tiny hairs poking out the center. I just vommed a little thinking about it.

Anyway, I ate one and thought “FISHAY!” R2 went for the now-de-haired one but I stopped him. He put that one aside and picked up another one and popped it into his mouth.

“I still can’t get over how beautiful that cathedral was. And it’s crazy to think that it’s tucked away here in this random cit–”

I looked over to R2 at that moment and stopped talking, because R2’s face had gone from his usual Jew-pale to an ashen, translucent putty color, streaked through with green.

“ARE YOU OK?”

“GULP.”

“NOOO DON’T SWALLOW EET!”

He swallowed it. And proceeded to look shaken for the rest of the meal (I think he was actually shaking), with perspiration at his hairline. Poor thing.

He also had the bad luck to have ordered gazpacho, which in this case apparently meant salmon gazpacho. Cold soup when you feel like you want to mon (the opposite of nom get it?) is not great, but an intensely fishy cold soup with cheese on top…R2 is only a man, after all.

I told him he didn’t have to finish it and offered him some of my salad, which came with white asparagus, which I love (this is the nicest thing I can say about this place – that they happened to serve something out of a can that I like) but also with tuna mixed throughout the lettuce. This resto really loves their fishy meme.

The server, noticing that R2 had barely touched his soup, grew concerned. She asked if he wanted a salad like mine? Did he not like his soup? What else would he like instead? and R2, in a trembling voice, insisted “…me…me gusta!”

I had to give it to him – he delivered this lie without crying.

Bad luck upon bad luck, R2 had ordered a fish dish as his entree. I stole it quickly away from him. The fish wasn’t bad – it was just normal.

In return, I gave him my scalloped beef with potatoes. Again, it wasn’t fabulous, but the potatoes settled his tum I think. After this was flan and bread pudding, which R2 tore into to wash the whole tragedy of a meal down.

As we walked (he, shakily) out of the restaurant, we decided we could not end our night on that note (they didn’t even have the promised venison OR partridge, jyerks!), so we decided to go to a wine bar, once again recommended by Rick Steves.

“Adolfo Vinoteca is the wine bar of the highly respected local chef Adolfo, who runs a famous gourmet restaurant across the street. His hope: to introduce the younger generation to the culture of fine food and wine. The bar offers up a pricey but always top-notch list of gourmet plates and fine local wines per glass – don’t economize here. Adolfo’s son, Javier, proved to me the importance of matching each plate with the right wine. I like to sit next to the kitchen to be near the creative action. If the Starship Enterprise had a Spanish wine-and-tapas bar on its holodeck, this would be it.”

Guess, just GUESS which part of that description sang to R2.

We went, and had to double check that it was still open, since it, too was empty. But they had both partridge AND venison on their menu, so we ordered both (both came as stews; the partridge dish was described as partridge with discolored beans lol). We asked, in accordance with Rick, for them to pair a wine with it, and our server was like, “???” and we said, you know, what wine would go well with the dishes we’ve ordered? and he was like, “?? Well, we have red wine and white wine.” And we said no, like, what specific wine would go with the partridge and the venison? and he finally, seemingly haphazardly, said, “this wine is very good.”

They first brought out what we encountered often in Toledo – a potato salad sandwich. Just the thought churns the stomach, and this one had cooked soft carrots which I found highly displeasing, and it was all on one of those airplane-esque yucky rolls. Particularly on the heels of our prior meal and on a full stomach on top of that, I couldn’t enjoy it (but you better fucking believe I ate it).

Who knew discoloration was so delicious? I heard from my friend Saxy that beans help cure nausea (this came up at a chili cook-off when she was in that particularly pukey stage of pregnancy) and perhaps this was why I fished out and ate most of the beans. The partridge tasted like any other bird, though tender and flavorful.

I knew even before I ate it what word was going to come out of my mouth after I ate the venison: gamey. Of the two, I liked the partridge better than the venison.

But I realize as of Saturday that I had no inkling what gamey meant until I had a slice of ostrich at the Bellagio buffet. Holy shit that’s like the Cranium of meats right there.

Anyhoo, it really was a shame that we didn’t just come here, as we didn’t have the stomach space or fortitude to truly enjoy their offerings.

We walked out, back to the Plaza, a little bit scared now that it was very dark and the tiny streets were so confusing. Rick Steves said Toledo’s “medieval atmosphere” was vibrant and “wonderful after dark.” I am looking down at my iPhone notes and I believe right about then is when I typed “Rick Steves needs to check his shit.”

The following day we decided to take full advantage of our parador and swim, laze around, sun, read, and lunch at the parador’s own restaurant before taking the AVE to Barcelona. We were seated in the midst of three Japanese dantai tours – each with over 20 middle-aged, chatty, beer-drinking Japaneezy tourists. I love how my people booze it up at every meal – lunchtime and even the tiniest of little ladies was three-drinks deep.

OMG not here too! High brow though the little tart cups may have been, it was still the same god-awful potato salad shit.

I mean, I confess I’ve dipped my KFC biscuits into my KFC mashed potatoes before (hasn’t everyone?) but starch on starch does not a pleasing bite make!

My app was roasted red pepper cradled around fish mousse. R2 the amnesiac scarfed it up, while I was a little bit turned off by the fishiness (why the hell were we eating so much seafood in land-locked Toledo anyway? God we suck.)

R2’s app was a salad of some sort; overdressed and with canned (?!) mushrooms at the bottom; not my favorite and until I figured out they were mushrooms, I paranoid-ly thought that it was a squeaky, chewy, sour fish of some sort.

I just kept working through the half-bottle of white wine that I ordered.

His entree was something I want to eat when I’m drunk, with beer. It was their special – the Don Quixote, with over-easy egg, chorizo, and fried bread crumbs. R2 loves eggs, LOVES chorizo, and LOVE LOVE LOVES Don Quixote (for his thirteenth birthday he asked only for a copy of Don Quixote, which his dad got him – used – for $6.95).

Against ALL common sense, I had ordered pulpo a la plancha (that’s grilled octopus) for my entree.

My reasoning was this – octopus isn’t fishy. If anything, it’s reminiscent more of chicken, or even pork. Plus – can you say blogworthyyyy?

Something I learned in Spain – octopus needs to be grilled for a long time to render out the very very thick layer of fat between the skin and the meat. I started at the tip, which was salty and crunchy and the tiny suction cups popped in my mouth like crispy caviar. Awesome and tasty. As I ate my way up the tentacle, however, I encountered said fat and the shiver started from my toes and took a full 10 seconds to work its way up into my eyebrows. I mean, unrendered fat is gross. Fishy unrendered fat – even grosser. Packaged in a very raw-looking, giant slab of slime – it was very hard not to faint on the spot.

Am I losing my foodie mojo? I wondered.

I refuse to think that. I think Toledo is just a food wasteland. Definitely, definitely go, but stick to bocadillos and for the love of god avoid anything with tendrils coming out of it.

Up next…Barcelona!

Posted in Disappointment, Drink, Food, Travel, Vom | No Comments »

Espana Part I: Madrid

by janet on June 23rd, 2010

Listen up! In Spain there is a magical thing called jamon iberico. It’s cured ham made from pigs that are fed only on acorns. In my head, there is a magical lush green expanse where pink, pink pigulets trot around flipping smooth rocks over with their snouts and crunching on acorms that they ferret out from underneath.

In reality, I’m sure it’s just as horrifying as this episode of This American Life where they do nothing but eat and hang out in a concrete box and squirt out baby pigs thereby making sound guys vom.

How did I get there? I was intending on talking about our first stop in Spain, Madrid. We got our feet wet by going to the most Americaney joint in town, Casa Botin. But wait, there was a REASON why we went there – because it is the World’s Oldest Restaurant, certified by Guinness Book. Further, we were told about its specialty – roast suckling pig, which has crackling skin and is allegedly so tender that they slice through them with plates rather than knives, purportedly just to be fucking showoffs.

We walked into the resto barely before closing time – in SPAIN, where 9 pm is an afternoon snack. Go us. The kindly gentleman at the front led us to a charming corner table upstairs, squarely in between American couple #1 and American couple #3 (we were #2). Couple #1 was having a fight. The chick was a real gooshbag and was picking at her poor boyfriend. Apparently her friend had called him while the two of them were broken up and she JUST didn’t understand that. She said, “I guess I don’t have girlfriends because I’m not close to my mother.” He kinda grunted, and she said, “I JUST had a MAJOR breakthrough and YOU don’t! even! care!” and he, who must have noticed me and R2 INTENTLY listening while trying not to appear so [R2's mouth was open and he was straight up staring, so it was obvy] said, “I don’t care! Why are you telling me this! If we were on our first date I would think you were CRAZY!”

On the other side was a couple where the guy was, in R2’s words, a classic B-level frat guy (who still spoke more Spanish than we did *shame*) who we played the Drunk or Douchebag game with. We both decided on Drunk, and I thought it was rather cute how she would pick up her sangria glass and he would pound his fists on the table and shout “Drink! Drink! Drink!” and adoringly haze her.

We ordered garlic soup with egg, artichoke hearts with jamon, baby squids in their own ink, and the aforementioned pig.

The squids were beyond tender. Like chewing gum when you’ve had it in your mouth for three hours – but in a good way. The ink was umami-licious, and my Japaneezy palate didn’t even register that my food might be Fear Factor-ey to R2, who later confessed that he was scared of it. He who eats EVERYTHING! Shocked.

“Beyond tender” is a good descriptor for the suckling pig, as well. I stole bits of it away in the most wonderful way – by making tiny roast suckling pig burritos where the innards were swine and the “tortilla” was crackling, crispy fatty pig skin.

And if you know me, you know that I instantly snapped off the pig tail and crunched it up. It tasted exactly like a pork rind.

At midnight, we toasted R2’s hatch day with a swig of sangria that tasted like four-times concentrated Kool-aid, which he loved of course and made me shudder for a good minute.

The next day, we went to the Palace, which was, well, palace-y. Which unless you see it you don’t really understand just what it means that there’s a fucking HUGE palace where, like, two people were meant to live, and the whole thing is gaudy and gorgeous and gratuitous. We were not shown the kitchen (nor the aseos) but we did get to walk through the Smoking Room, which was designed to look like a Chinese opium den (Chinese things were very trendy at the time of Isabella and Ferdinand) and there was no furniture – just pillows that lined the entire floor. You don’t have to be a cat to be thrilled with that idea.

We lunched at the Palace cafeteria, where we had our very first bocadillo (sandwich).

Pardon the chewed-up-ness of this. I just tore into it and was almost three inches deep when R2 said gently, “Did you want to blog that though?”

We also had a Kas, which tasted like a Sprite.

This made me angry, because I went to Europe to get AWAY from sugared drinks and there wasn’t an agua con gas (fizzy water) in sight.

From there we meandered to Plaza del Sol, where we got some gelato and sat by the fountain where all the pickpockets in Madrid converge. We came up with a new abbreviation for them: “pee-po” and turned it into a verb “did you get pee-po-ed?” “nope, I didn’t get pee-po-ed yet” and watched a costumed character Homer Simpson walk around, along with a Winnie the Pooh. Winnie is already obscene in that he doesn’t wear pants, but THIS Winnie didn’t even have a shirt!

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped by an awesomely atmospheric (dingy, dark, dirty, dotted with old video game machines here and there) cafeteria for a coffee, which was staffed by a big, burly, debonair man who looked so out of place – probably was a spy/assassin/spysassin on his off hours. R2 sidled up to the bar and, without betraying a quiver in his voice, said, “Dos…cafe…UNO…con…leche” and sat back, quite proud of himself. Spysassin said, “Skfj a;lkerja lwekjral skjdf ?” and R2 said, “?” and Spysassin said, “Do you speak English?” and R2 said, dejectedly, “Yes. Two coffees, please, one black and one with milk.” Fail.

So, quite awesomely, Sharisa and her hubby Tron were in Madrid at the same time as us, for one night only. Since neither of us had cellphones in Spain, we had made plans two weeks earlier to stay in the same hotel and meet in the lobby at 4:30 on the 18th after their train got in. But, R2 and I couldn’t get our act together (meaning we couldn’t wake up till 1:30 in the afternoon) and so I left a note at the front desk telling them to meet us at 7 pm instead. But when we got back to the hotel at 6, I spied the note in the cubbyhole for room 204 still sitting there. The attendant confirmed that they had not picked up the message. PANIC! They didn’t get it?! Did they wait for us at 4:30 and then give up and leave? Were R2 and I going to spend his hatchday sadly picking through delicious tapas with just the two of us??

I wallowed and then called their room to at try to leave a message. No answer. Dejection. I ignored common sense and immediately called again. And then – ! “Hello?” “SHARISA?!” “Hii Janay!”

YEEES! It turns out that they HAD gotten the message. In fact, hotel staff had typed up my (rather silly, tilde- and heart- and obscenity-filled) handwritten message and somehow beamed it onto their TV screen?

Reunited happily, the four of us went to La Latina, a cute neighborhood chock full of tapas bars. Our first stop was a place that I can’t remember the name of – Google Maps makes me think it was Taverna Txakoli but hard to tell for sure since they don’t have Street View here yet I guess. Perhaps Sharisa will enlighten us in the comments.

I. Was. SO. EXCITED! My first tapas bar – and a pintxo bar at that – where yummy things sitting on small slices of bread are out for the taking.

This was their “hamburger” pintxo – jamon, mustard, quail egg, and a cute french fry spear on top!

Why didn’t we get this? We’re stupid Americans, for god’s sake! Instead we veered away and got the following.

Sharisa’s spidey sense tingled. She said, “morcilla…I can’t quite remember what that is…” and trailed off and didn’t eat any of it. R2 and I dug in mightily. Couldn’t tell what any of it was but we liked it. We also had a classic pintxo with bacalao (salt cod) and red pepper on it, another one with tortilla con jamon y bacon (not tortilla like we know but an egg dish, kind of like a fritatta), and tinto de verano (red wine mixed with sparkling water/Sprite, depending) all around! [Thank you guys for teaching us this drink, as we drank it as if our life depended on it for the rest of our trip.]

Buoyed by the wine and company and sheer relief that we actually managed to meet up with Sharisa (who was walking around on a SPRAINED ANKLE! Way to rally, my dear), I was in the mood to make a sweeping gesture at the entire line of pintxos, shout “ONE OF EACH – FOR EVERYONE HERE!” and take off my top, but instead we went next door to Cafe Lucas.

Here, we got an English menu, where it said morcilla again. We asked our server what that meant and he said “blood sausage” to which Sharisa and Tron visibly blanched. I was rather shocked because Sharisa is the OG Foodie. The waiter also took notice and said, “This is my favorite thing!” so we ordered it, along with one we got that had pork and corn mousse on top with a soy glaze and some chicken one. The morcilla didn’t look like sausage at all – it looked like black sloppy joe. We all took a bite and made high-pitched “hmm!” noises. I quite enjoyed it, even the potentially icky lingering metallic taste at the back of my tongue.

We then went to Chato, but it was closed. So we went to the parakeet place, which had parakeets in a cage outside. Sanitation be damned! It worked really well – not a soul walked by without cooing, and the boids netted about 30% of passers-by when it came to actual people walking in and ordering.

Here we ordered my most favorite tapas dish in all of spain – bread with mojama (wind-dried tuna, which tasted like a softer, fishier turkey jerky) and a deep-fried almond on top. It sounds like nothing but was truly a revelation. We also got smoked cod with fresh tomato, which was intensely fishy but I didn’t mind.

We then meandered to another bar, which struck Tron as too claustrophobic, so we went to another place, more wine bar than tapas bar, but we weren’t feeling it so we left. But then we decided to go back, where the sort-of miffed bartender became even miffier when we asked for a tinto de verano. He only had REAL wine, apparently. Which was fine with me, as I was kiiiind of starting to perish from the sweetness of the TDVs. We all ordered riojas, and then, even though none of us is a smoker, and just because we could, had a cigarette INDOORS! What a country, what a country.

Next, we lolled our way into an open square and sat down to have a TDV al fresco. THIS server didn’t frown upon us for ordering our un-manly refreshment, and in fact served them to us with bendy straws. <3 Here, we talked about our favorite cities (cities that came up: San Francisco, Vancouver, and Sharisa’s favorite city in the WHOLE WORLD, Sevilla).

But then we realized that everywhere with food closed at midnight, so we scurried back down the street to find one last joint. We did, in the nick of time at 11:59, where a very growch man hacked off some slices of the hallowed jamon iberico and threw some patatas bravas into the microwave.

You see, each place has a huge leg of jamon on display, and that’s where they cut off the thin slices. And when an intruder comes in, you also have a handy and delicious weapon.

We then jumped in a cab, hoping to make it to a sherry place that Tron had gone to some night prior and loved – La Venencia, I believe. We walked in only to be told that they were closed, and no amount of imploring in mangled Spanish could change the owner’s mind. A pity, because my heart was pitter pattering seeing the old sherry bottles lining the walls, some with dust a centimeter thick covering them. Cooooooool.

Instead we went to a bar where they played Beyonce.

When we tired of that, we retired to our hotel, where we played with Tron’s iPad and Sharisa iced her ankle. We were so sad to see them go, but we were onto our own adventures, sans any Spanish ability and friends to hold our hands.

Up next…Toledo.

Posted in Drink, Food, Travel | 1 Comment »

Guest Post 1(d): Homemade Pop Tarts

by tinx on June 21st, 2010

Roasty Toasty

This is post 1(d) for Daniel being gone this time, get it?! Hahaha so clever?!?!?! Ok fine.

I have recently become obsessed with another food blog (blasphemous, I know). In my defense, it focuses only on recipes (rather than restaurants) that the blog owner likes then makes and perfects before putting them up with beeeeeoooootiful pictures. A few weeks ago, a post popped up on my Google Reader that caught my attention right away: homemade POP TARTS!! OMG!!!1!

I luuuurve pop tarts. Fave flavors=frosted strawb and brown sugar cinnamon, of course. I think they are far superior to Toaster Strudel, that evil, floppy-even-when-toasted twin that tastes strongly of oil and burns your mouth with its lava-hot, overly runny filling. Anyway. Pop tarts. I think they’re awesome even when not toasted, but some people think they are a bit too hard and chalky when cold. Thus, the excitement when I came across this recipe that claimed to be the perfect compromise between a pastry and a pop tart.

These pop tarts came into fruition about two weeks ago. I made them on a Sunday morning and I was looking forward to them so much. But let me tell you, they were a pain in the butt to make! It took me almost two hours to get them in the oven. Probably because I decided to make mini pop tarts with four different fillings: raspberry jam, brown sugar cinnamon, white chocolate macadamia, and parmesan black pepper. First up: preparing the fillings.

Om nom nom. Jam tendrils.

I made minuscule amounts of each since the recipe only makes around 16 2″ x 3″ pop tarts. For the jam filling, you just cook the jam down with some cornstarch and then strain the seeds (skip this step if you have seedless jam) and let it cool. The other fillings are pretty self-explanatory–mix brown sugar, cinnamon, and some flour; cheese and pepper; and chop up white chocolate and macadamia nuts. I set aside my pretty bowls of fillings and started on the dough.

This dough has SO. MUCH. BUTTER. Well, only one stick. But it seemed ridiculous when I pulled them out of the oven and the butter in the dough had oozed out all over the pan. You can even see it in my crappy iPhone pictures, see? More on that later.

Ok, maybe it’s not that obvious. Look closely for glisteny bits.

So, the dough. You make the dough and then roll it out into two rectangles of 9″ x 12,” which you then cut into your desired amount of pop tart rectangles. I had some issues rolling my pizza cutter in a straight line, so some p-tarts were a bit wonky and small, but whatevs. Then you brush one set of tarts with egg wash, spoon filling in, cover with the other side, and use a fork to crimp the edges and poke holes in the top for steam escape-age.

So raw. So real.

I had some issues with the dough being suuuuper sticky, but not sticking together when I tried crimping it? Weird and annoying. But I put sugar on the jam tarts and pepper on the parmesan ones and they looked soooo cute when I was ready to put them in the oven! BUT WAIT. Must refrigerate for 30 minutes (arbitrary, much? why is this necessary?). So, after waiting 30 more minutes, in which time I stuffed my face with lunch, I popped them in the oven and waited for happiness to emerge.

Let me give you a warning: do not make these after you’ve had a fatty meal. I had just eaten leftover chicken madeira from Cheesecake Factory (if you’ve never had it, it’s chicken with some sort of eggy coating covered in mozzarella and madeira sauce) and by the time the pop tarts came out of the oven, the sheer amount of butter in them made me gag a little. I tried a bite of each kind, and was HUGELY underwhelmed. The recipe just didn’t quite work out. The pastry was wayyy too overwhelming and I hadn’t put enough filling in some of the tarts. The best was the jam filling, but it still wasn’t great. Maybe I just was too full to appreciate them? In any case, they keep for a week in an airtight container, so I waited a few days and tried again. Better, but still not nearly up to par with the original pop tart. CRY. These babies are still in the tupperware on my counter, untouched beyond my exploratory nibbles. Disappointing, overall, especially because every recipe I’ve tried from that other food blog has been fantastical. These were so un-fantastical that I didn’t even want anyone to taste them.

Innards!

Fast forward to tonight, when I was watching The Best Thing I Ever Ate: Sweet Tooth on Food Network and one of the things was a pop tart from Michael’s Genuine in Miami Beach. They looked sooo good so I might try to make these puppies again. However, I would use my favorite pie crust recipe (that’s a bomb-ass apple pie, btw) and try to make a fresh fruity-jammy filling of some sort. And fill the crap out them. And roll the dough out super thin so it’s not overwhelming. And not make mini tarts so I can get enough filling in there. I guess I have to make them again! Or I could make the super-secret-super-delish recipe for Sour Cherry Pie that I got from my cousin’s gf that she hasn’t shared in 15 YEARS but she shared it with ME. Damn, I’m special.

Homemade Pop Tarts
Recipe can be found here.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Porchlight: Kitchen Confidential

by janet on June 17th, 2010

Do you listen to This American Life? Sometimes they broadcast episodes from The Moth, which is an event where people tell interesting stories. Porchlight is not that. It’s…almost that. Poor man’s Moth. I went with Choco and R2 and Lex to the Kitchen Confidential episode of Porchlight – their most popular event, which was standing room only filling the Verdi Club.

The performers were:

Nikki Silva, one half of the Kitchen Sisters (that NPR show). She told a story about how she randomly met the person who invented Rice-a-Roni (actually an Armenian pilaf adaptation). You can hear the story here, but the best part was hearing the old-timey jingle for Rice-a-Roni: “A de-LICIOUS break from potatoes!”

Saul Nadler, owner of Flora Grubb Gardens who talked about his time as Tom Brokaw’s personal chef at his ranch in Montana. He was cooking for the ranch hands when “You heard the one word you don’t want to hear when you’re on a ranch.” “Sushi?” I wondered. “Stampede!” he said. He told a funny story about putting Tom Brokaw (choking on a buffalo sandwich after heroically dealing with the stampede) in a sleeper-hold rather than correctly executing the Heimlich maneuver. I leaned over to Choco and said, “Henry Heimlich went to Cornell, you know.”

Cecilia Chiang, 90-year-old owner of The Mandarin. Apparently she rubs elbows with Alice Waters and James Beard and did for Chinese food what Julia Child did for French. She told a story about how, back when Chinese food was only chop suey, she ended up translating for two Chinese people who wanted to open a restaurant. Not understanding (a) American currency and (b) English, she somehow got into the situation where she wrote a check for the $10,000 deposit for the restaurant. The Chinese duo backed out, leaving Cecilia with her lost deposit, so she said “OK, I guess I have to open a restaurant now.” The rest is history, you dig? She also talked about how Jefferson Airplane came into her restaurant twice and gave her a lame tip of “two lousy cigarettes in an envelope!” lol.

Speaking of the skunk, the dreamy-accented Pascal Rigo (owner of Bay Bread i.e. La Boulange) told a hilarious story about how a famous producer’s manager in LA asked him to make rolls with $45,000 worth of marijuana baked in for a partay. As the rolls got baked, so did he, and when their K-9 unit copper friend came around to visit – well, HIJINKS! He also took a picture of us from the stage and crooned at us to “say fromage!”

Jerry Townsend, founder of Ghetto Gourmet, talked about the origins of the Ghet, which included, on the nights of the first dinner parties, driving around to their friends’ houses to get plates, around the neighborhood to find abandoned cabinets to use as tables and using towels as tablecloths. He also has a pitbull named Shinobi (sp?) and “fucking BLEEDS hip hop.”

The two mehs of the night were musician, Leslie Harlib, who sang campy food songs including the lyric “I just love his SAUSAGE / I just can’t do without my kitchen man.” And Dawn Agnew, maitre d’ at Gary Danko, who told a story about something.

On that scintillating note, go git yer tix to future Porchlights here.

Posted in Food, Random | No Comments »

Europa Part I: Ocean & UK

by janet on June 15th, 2010

England? Britain? I never know what to call it so I always default to UK, which seems to work even with the locals. As you know, R2 and I went on an epic journey that included LA, London, Madrid, Toledo, Barcelona, and Mallorca. Mallorca we decided to go to because I live on Mallorca street in San Francisco, and R2 thought it would be cool to say that I went across the world just to end up where I started.

Getting ahead of myself. We flew Virgin Atlantic which I have to say was pretty motherfucking awesome. Almost 40 movies to choose from, on demand – GOOD ones like Fantastic Mr. Fox and this freaking crazy Japanese movie I watched (to brush up on my language skillz but all I really got brushed up on was the Japanese penchant for insane overacting and twisted plot mindfuckyness) called Kaiji.

R2, armed with his new Kindle named Tars Tarkindle (a hatchday gift from yours truly) barely touched his entertainment screen, but totally got a boner for the crap airplane food that they served.

I got the beef cottage pie, solely based on the fact that it came with cheesy potatoes. I must say that it was superb hangover food, which was a godsend because we had spent the prior night consuming more than one of a monstrosity that we invented called a van-bomb, which is a carbomb but with an entire pint of Guinness and a tumbler full of Bailey’s.

What else? Oh yeah, they were like “how can we keep up the reputation of airplane food? I’ve GOT it! Pasta salad with peas dressed with mayo!” Vom.

And what IS it with that shitty weird roll that they always give you? I didn’t know that bread could elicit nausea.

We were met at the airport by Rom, who proceeded to (after introducing us to his cowts) give us the most fucking BRITISH (say it without the hard “t” like Bri-ish) experience ever.

First, fucking Jane fucking Austen’s HOUSE!

We drove through winding country roads surrounded on both sides by lush fields of rapeseed (lol rapeseed) flowers to get there. I snapped a picture of her kitchen for posterity.

Also, did you know that Wedgewood (open your mom’s china cabinet – you’ll see some in there I guarantee it) existed all the way back in prehistoric Pride and Prejudice times??! Here’s her family’s original set.

Then we went across the street to Cassandra’s Cup Tea Room (Cassandra is Jane’s sister) and had a cream tea. What IS cream tea? All I know is that it’s Englishey. Is the “cream” the clotted cream (my new obsession – a lighter, refreshing version of whipped cream)? Or is it the cream that goes into the tea? Anyway, it came with the Englishiest of English baked sidekicks.

Rom: What’s the fastest pastry?

Rom: [not waiting] -SCONE!

R2: [Delighted gasp!]

Baby Rom: [Baby-type inept hand clapping] GURGLE!

R2 warned me that the Brits take their tea with milk, and they will get offended if you don’t. So, I gritted my teeth and and let my tongue be coated with creaminess, YECH. The scone was SCONE into my tum immediately – that coated with the most delightful of jams.

We then went to a motherfucking pub and had a motherfucking PINT…WHILE WATCHING MOTHERFUCKING CRICKET IN THE MOTHERFUCKING POURING RAIN SO ENGLISHEYYY! We watched the game from the safety of the pub – it’s a field where Prince Harry likes to play. And then we went and had a CURRY!

By this point I was rocked by the combination of redeye sleep deprivation on top of a soul-shaking hangover, and regret to inform you that I do not remember the exact constellation of dishes we ordered. All the food there (Viceroy Indian Restaurant in Hook) was excellent – whenever I am nauseated, the spices in Indian food seem to mellow out my stomach. That plus the hair of the dog Kingfisher remedy, good company, and the realization that I was actually on that side of the Atlantic (!) cured me of what ailed me, and soon thereafter I blissfully crashed my head on the cat-hairy (mmm soft and cute and allergy-ey) pellow.

My bliss reached stratospheric levels when, aided by a totally fucked up circadian rhythm, we woke up early enough to go for an All-Day Breakfast at the Shack Cafe before our flight to Madrid.

It’s literally a shack, with bits of cardboard and flooring covering a dangerously uneven, sloping dirt floor, where the smell of grease instantly nestles itself into the deepest fibers of your clothes and pores. I’m not quite sure that the clientele had ever seen an Oriental before.

An All-Day Breakfast involves…sausage, two slices of ham, over-easy eggs, choice of beans or tomatoes, bread with butter, and FRIED BREAD!

OK, imagine this: the yolk is running everywhere, lapping up against the stewed canned tomatoes that you have squished with the back of your fork. You spear a generous sliver of ham, dip the corner of the fried bread (did I mention it’s FRIED holy shit?) into the salty, greasy tomato-yolk mess, and wedge the whole shebang into your mouth.

It’s difficult to tear your eyes away from your gigantic plate (which also comes with fucking milk tea again) to look at the tea towels on the wall. But you do, and you see this:

Hee hee. You giggle, because you’re giddy from the fat and salt clogging your axons. Thanks for the send-off, Monkey.

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Life is Like a Box of Chocolates…

by Daniel on June 11th, 2010

..but hopefully not this one. Unlike Janet, I am a huge Sweets fiend. Growing up, my aunt who lived in Las Vegas also owned a bakery and we would get all manner of free baked goods whenever we were there (like once a month AT LEAST). Endless maple donuts, chocolate eclairs, brownies, cookies… EVERYTHING. My aunt even taught me how to decorate cakes, and when they retired the bakery, I inherited a bunch of piping bags and tips… I digress. The point is I love me some sweets and am willing to try some crazy shit like putting chipotle hot sauce on a mini dark chocolate hershey bar. TASTY! Except I only like experimenting with flavor combos when I consent to the experimentation (NO MEANS NO!). I once ate one of those gourmet chocolate bars with crystallized ginger and hated it, but I knew what I was getting into.

Enter this unassuming tray of chocolates pictured above. They were sitting out on the table at my parents’ house and no one else was home when I happened upon them. My mom often gets random treats and such from coworkers and families of the babies she takes care of as a nurse, and she just leaves them out for us to deal with. The last set she had brought home was a box of gourmet Belgian white chocolates. DELISH! I should’ve been warned by the number of chocolates left, but I was too excited and popped an entire chocolate in my mouth.

I chewed it once and then started to feel tears gathering in my eyes. OH THE BURNING! Sadly the tears were not a product of finally tasting the most delectable piece of chocolate. NOPE. What I’d just eaten was a wasabi infused white chocolate my mom had brought back from her recent trip to Korea. And I’d eaten it all in one bite. I gasped from the intense burning/flavor filling my mouth and glared at the chocolates.

I don’t even know if I can describe it, because all I could think was DO NOT WANTTTTTTTTTT!!!

But if you want to know what it’s like for yourself, the easy solution is to bring a piece of white chocolate with you the next time you go out for sushi. Take a butter knife and use it to slather a generous glob of wasabi on your precious piece of white chocolate and eat it all at once. Remember to write down your thoughts and post them in the comments, because I sure as hell don’t care to try it again.

Anyway, this entire post was just an excuse for me to let you know that Tinx will be dropping in sometime next week to guest post while I’m out on vacation: LA – San Juan, Puerto Rico – Willemstad, Curacao – Oranjestad, Aruba – Roseau, Dominica – Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas – San Juan – LA and then a few days before ending the whirlwind in Vegas. MTFB seems to have a penchant for Spanish speaking countries. I’ll be back in July, so don’t think you’ve finally gotten rid of me.

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Marina has a culture!

by janet on June 6th, 2010

Before I embark on my Espana series, I wanted to bust in and talk about two events that happened this weekend. Saturday – Union Street Festival, Sunday – the first ever Fort Mason Farmers Market!

On Saturday night we had rezzies at Fleur de Lys for R2’s belated hatchday so I sincerely wanted to take it easy in terms of eating during the day. But as R2 always says, if wishes were horses, even beggars would ride. So I ended up gorging myself at the street fair.

There were lots of children at the street fair. And by children I mean Marina-ites, recently described in the following fashion:

Marina residents subsist primarily on ripened fruit, insects, birth control, Jägermeister and poultry, with marijuana cigarettes making up the remaining 20-30% of their diet. Fashion, sobriety and pregnancy are the animals’ only predators.

lol.

But seriously, everyone was so blonde, skinny, tan, drunk, LOUD, and seemingly available! The beer gardens (three of them in a six-block festival?!) were chock-chock-full, but the balloon guy was barely doing any business.

I really wanted a corm and that’s all I wanted. But R2 insisted that we walk the festival from end to end so we had to literally touch the guard fence at Steiner and the guard fence at the other end, at Gough. My b-shug was so low that even the bounce house made me angry (“Ugh it’s just so fucking annoying“). I was rescued by perhaps the most delicious foodstuff ever to exist: BBQed oysters. Pictured top, mofos. Look at that shit. Swimming in hot buttery sauce, each oyster bigger than my tongue. I was practically full after just one.

Next, we had a knish. A knish is basically a hunka mashed potato wrapped in dough and fried. Lord almighty. This one had onions in it too, and we slathered it with Tapatio.

R2: It’s knish-ious!

Next up, the hallowed corm. Every time the guy took the brush (a legit paint brush) and doused the cobs on the BBQ with melted garlic butter concoction, a huge plume of buttery smoke was released into the sky. Glorious.

There was a big line, so the guy at the BBQ was feeling pressured to hand out the corn quickly, resulting in less-than-done corms being handed out. Unacceptable. So when we got to the front of the line, I made sure both R2 and I stood a little bit away with our backs turned to him and pretended to be making super hilarious conversation so he didn’t feel rushed. But then some douche Marina ass pushed in front of us and started breathing down his neck. So this is the corn we got:

I ate the three burninated kernels you see, and then the rest very quickly. It was knishious and sweet despite being slightly undercooked.

I understand that the bird is the word, but I am not a fowl fan. But I spied in someone’s hand chicken kabobs that looked shiver-inducingly scrumptious. I asked where they got it and they pointed to the stand, where I got one and tore into it so fast that I forgot to take a picture till it was too late:

It was like a mouthwatering version of Pay it Forward – someone immediately came up to me and said “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?” I felt a warm glow as I, too, lifted my pointer finger to the consecrated stand.

That warm glow spread across my entire body when I spied, crouched down talking to a little girl and surrounded by buff suited men in wraparounds, the one, the only – GAVIN NEWSOM. Swooooon! I hyperventilated for a bit, got shy when R2 asked if I wanted him to take a picture of me and the manalicious mayor, and ran away, all the while updating my Facebook status to brag.

Finally, sausage and chicken jambalaya. R2 used to, as a child, walk to the festival near his house, buy jambalaya, cover the entire top of the bowl with green Tabasco until it looked like a swampy pond, walk home with it to let it soak in, and then watch The Empire Strikes Back while he ate it. Then he would take a nap, and then walk back for dinner and get another bowl, cover THAT one with green Tabasco, walk home, and watch The Empire Strikes Back again.

So we got the jambalaya, consulted my almost-photographic food memory (WAIT! I REMEMBER GREEN TABASCO AT THE FIRST PLACE WE ATE!), surreptitiously shook out half a bottle’s worth onto the rice, and shoveled it in. Awesome.

By the way, Fleur de Lys was amazing. Even though salsify is not in season which made me close to suicidal, we had a great time. They couldn’t seat us for a little while, so they gave us a half bottle of bubbly for free. The sommelier remembered that I had moved here recently-ish from LA, recommended just the PERFECT bottle of wine that was one of the cheapest (!), and gave us a superb port to go with our dessert. And then… the celebrity chef himself, DJ HUBERT! He came out and said hi and I managed, unlike last time, to refrain from screaming “I LOVE SALSIFYYYYY!” at him with my purple teeth.

Today, we went to the inaugural Fort Mason Farmers Market right near my house. When I moved into the neighborhood, I just couldn’t believe that there wasn’t a market nearby. I mean, it was ok because it spurred me to get my CSA box, but still. And now that is all remedied.

But since I left the charger for The Kraken somewhere in Spain, my cammy was out of batteries. So I don’t have beautiful photos of the cherries (only two weeks left in the season, folks!) I got, nor of the ugly fava beans in their pods, nor of the baguette that was longer than Ron Jeremy x 18. We also got a messload of used books at Book Bay (Push, Sellevision, Sophie’s World [$1!], The World According to Garp, and an antique biography on Le Petomane, the “fartiste” whose famous act at the Moulin Rouge was blowing out a candle a foot away by farting.)

So! Expect my used book collection to grow weekly, and many future reports of me cheating on my CSA.

Posted in Food | 1 Comment »

European Aminals are just as cute

by janet on June 1st, 2010

Because dealing with the 1000+ photos from my Spain trip is overwhelming me, and because I just had to kill the hugest spider in my shower (I WAS NAKED! IT COULD HAVE CRAWLED INTO MY VAGINAAA!) with my bare hands (IT HURTED MY PALM! DID IT BITE ME AS IT DIED OR WERE ITS LEGS JUST SHARP? EITHER WAY, AAAAAUGH!), I am unable to properly blog any real part of my LA-London-Madrid-Toledo-Barcelona-Mallorca-London-LA trip. So I am going to kick off my series of Europe posts with the various animals I encountered. The series started because The Kraken (my new camera) has a pet setting, where one is to choose whether it’s a dog or a cat, and whether it’s a light-, medium-, or dark-furred thing. Love it!

First up – the cats that look like cows! Cowts! They were at R2’s friend Rog’s house in a freaking charming cottage outside of London. One was named Percy and one was named something else. They were both aggressively friendly. To the point where when I was lying down reading – BONK! Desperately needing a head rub, Percy bashed his head against mine purring like a dragon with laryngitis. Ow. They also loooved rolling around (like dogs that roll around all over the grass to scratch their backs) on my pillow, greatly exacerbating my allergies. Fucking rascals.

At this residence was another cute creature.

THAT’S NOT AN AMINALLL! Get out of this post, rapscallion!

Next, we arrived at our destination of Espana – lovely, lovely Espana. We didn’t encounter any animals in Madrid, our first stop.

But in Toledo, shoot.

On the windy (windy as in winding as in curving, not windy as in blustery – yeah that confused me too in the guidebook) and impossibly narrow streets of Toledo, we encountered this sad/bored pupersons. Sad/bored also means sitting still, which was good for the photo.

We found this tiny Basement Cat in a gift shop just off the Plaza de Zocodover. When you got near him with an outstretched hand, he would immediately flip onto his back for a belly rub. See how his tail is also wagging, doglike. Squee. The shopkeeper was so enamored of and distracted by his own pet that he utterly failed to talk me into purchasing Toledo purse hooks as gifts for my girlfriends.

Contrary to what was written in our guidebook, Toledo was a fucking ghost town after 9 pm. To the point where it was kind of eerie. And then – perfect! A ghost dog! I couldn’t even get a good picture of his face – that’s how ghostly he was. I named him Casper-Marshmallow.

It was an animal field day in Barcelona, our next stop. On the famous Ramblas, there were several pet stalls, hocking conventional wares like hamsters and boids (causing R2, a cockatiel owner, to continually emit small, delighted gasps followed by cries of ”ohhhhhh!”), although some of the bird selections got super weird, like pigeons that sadly sat in their too-small cages while wild pigeons strutted about inches away, free.

Also – BUNNERSONS!

Basement Bun! So fluffy I couldn’t stand it. It brought back memories of Will the Wabbit, my pet in college, who loved my roommate more than he loved me and so I returned him. (Actually, I returned him because of my heretofore undiagnosed extreme rabbit allergy.)

Also, look at this adorable Alien we found!

Mom, can we keep him? MOoooOOOOM! PLEEEEASE?

In the courtyard of the La Seu cathedral, we found a buncha geese. Apparently geese are too far from cockatiels to be interesting to R2 so he didn’t care, but I liked them. They have been there for five centuries and are used as an ultra low-budg warning system against intruders.

Near La Sagrada Familia were two awesome catches. The first I named Big Cashew and we found him sitting near where we had a cafe solo and cafe con leche, respectively. He was exceedingly mellow, good for photography.

Tinx likes it when dogs go gray/white in their fur from old age, so I am guessing she would have loved this puppers.

The next dog we saw from across the street. The light had turned green so I had to get my shot in quick. The dog was not old or mellow and was trotting hyperly towards me so this is all I got:

This one I named Cashew. This is R2’s favorite photo. I like it too, because it looks like I resized the photo but got the aspect ratio wrong so it’s squished, when that’s just what he looked like. (All dogs are boys and all brown ones are named Cashew in my book.)

Gaudi, master architect genius/crazyperson, was also apparently a dog lover. I know this because on the one facade (Nativity facade) that Gaudi worked on, I spied this:

You don’t see it? Look closer.

Bam. I named him Rocky-Cashew. Oh, man, Rocky-Cashew – you got bird shit all over your face!

Up on Montjuic, we found two wild specimens.

I named them Sushi and Mochi, from left to right. As I frantically stalked them with my camera, snapping a rapid succession of pictures, the people nearby got super interested in what I was photographing. When they realized it was just cats, they were a little bit angry with me for wasting their time.

Finally, in Mallorca, R2’s bird-spidey-sense tingled and he made us lunch al fresco at a restaurant that had this:

He was big! I named him Big Bird. When excited, he would release a eardrum-shattering SQUAWK and shift his weight from one foot to the other. He would also show off by retrieving fallen seeds from the bottom of his cage through the grate. R2’s boid Bootie has gout in one foot (she IS 23 years old, after all) and it’s frozen solid so she can’t pull tricks and shit like that. So every time Big Bird did his trick we would shout “SHOW OFF!” in his direction.

In sum, I has confirmed that animals also exist on that side of the ocean, and I love them just as much.

Before I sign off, a great many thanks to Tinx and DJ Deer for their fantabulous guest posts, and Daniel for conceiving two posts without the proper gestation period.

Posted in Cuteness, Pets, Travel | 2 Comments »