Friday, December 31, 2010

To Infinity and Beyond - or at least 2011

OK - so far so good. Goals and plans for 2011.

Our objective is to move to Galicia as soon as possible. Whether or not it´s possible to have the house habitable, or partly habitable, is a good question. There is always the option of renting a cheap apartment for a few months to facilitate the process, but that means big changes in our lives that require a lot of thought.

1. The house - We will need to meet with an architect to develop a work plan which will have to be approved by the City. Then we´ll need: a septic system, plumbing, electricity, and a new roof, windows and doors, not necessarily in that order. Our plan includes as much insulation as possible in the roof and floor and double glazed wooden doors and windows. We´d like to heat with a wood stove and a wood cooker in the kitchen. Ideally, I´d like thermal solar for domestic hot water in the spring, summer and fall and a back boiler on the wood stove for the winter months. The possibility exists for under floor radiant heat or radiators, but I´m hoping the house is small enough not to require them (120 m). I anticipate a lot of resistance from the family and Jose to these plans, since none of them are thinking in terms of the resource scarce future I foresee.

I have been reading the Green Building Forum and Eco Habitar. But if there are other sources I should be looking at, please feel free to let me know.

2. Our domestic economy - I have to investigate setting myself up as an independent contractor (autónomo) and develop a free-lance translation business. In addition, I need to research the bureacracy involved in agricultural/craft production for a future business selling products. That could be as simple as a stand at the local farmers market on Sundays or a full commercial internet/mailing set up.

V will need to leave his job. Quitting isn´t a problem since he hates it. The major stumbling block there is if he can somehow arrange it so as to receive unemployment afterwards, which would give us some much needed breathing room. But even if he can´t, I want him out of there for health reasons if nothing else. The stress is seriously affecting him.

I´ve been laid off - so I can leave whenever it´s convenient. My unemployement runs out in May, which seems like a good date to loosely plan the physical move up there.

Personal goals:

1. Bread making - a dear friend (waving at Whitney) brought me scads of yeast from the US (another one of those things I can´t locate at a market here). So I need to try out some different types of bread. Now bread here seems pretty cheap to me (.50 per loaf for a good baguette) but I´m told it´s full of chemicals so it´s worth trying, and I´ve never seen any advertised as ¨organic¨. Certainly at least for pizza, which is one of the things we do buy frozen. I haven´t had a decent pizza since coming over. But I don´t have a pizza stone and haven´t ever seen one. Not one of those things you really want to pay shipping for.

2. Cheese making - I found rennet at a pharmacy here in Madrid, but no luck on the cultures - so I ordered some from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. I got mesophilic, thermophilic and some calcium chloride to try. I was going to get cheese wax, but it weighed too much to be worth the shipping. There must be some place in Galicia (or Madrid) you can buy cheesemaking stuff, but it´s one of those things someone has to tell you, I guess.

3. Garden planning - In case the financial situation blows up and interrupts international shipping/ordering, I´ve ordered some seeds from the US for things I thought might be difficult to get over here - OP/heritage sweet corn, pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes. But I´d like to do some more ordering, even though we probably won´t be able to get a garden in until 2012. I´m now looking at the Real Seed Catalogue, but if anyone has any suggestions, let me know. This will be another future post.

4. Keep soap making - I´d like to come up with a good shaving soap. And I´d like to try some lotions and salves. I´m addicted to Nivea body milk, especially in winter, but at 5€ a bottle - that needs some re-thinking. I also think there might be a market for a heavy-duty hand salve up in Galicia, sort of like bag-balm, which a lot of people use for their hands, made with locally available ingredients.

5. Start embroidering again - I can´t knit, but my Mother taught me how to embroider when I was about 10, and that I did manage. Lately, I´ve happened on several websites that have inspired me to take it up again. A subject for a future post.

6. Revisit oil painting. The problem here is having to get out all the stuff and then put it all away again - there´s no space here to leave up a studio. But I haven´t done any painting or drawing in over a year, and I should do a portrait of one of the nieces to accompany one I did of her older brother.

7. Once again - resolve to watch what I eat (did you see the first 2 entries??) and work out 3 times a week.

8. Keep up with the knitting - sigh.

Wishing all of you a happy, healthy 2011!!

Thursday, December 30, 2010

The Year in Review

I might as well join in the end of year review/new year goals tradition for the holidays. Like a lot of people, I feel big changes beyond anyone´s control underway, and at the same time an odd sensation that some things seem to continue in an odd sort of stasis. But my unease is more powerful than the pressure to keep struggling to maintain the status quo.

So 2010´s accomplishments:

1. I got my Spanish Driver´s License. What a giant pain that was. All I can say is that the incredibly tedius and expensive Spanish instruction system is making a lot of money for someone, and given the number of accidents, I´m not convinced it´s worth it for the end user. Enough said.

2. We bought a car. We took a hit on the eco-cred here, since we were forced to use public transportation, carpooling, and good old foot power for the first three years we were here. But the sheer logistical nightmare of getting to Galicia via plane, train and bus was just too much. It is somewhat mediated by the fact that we don´t really use the car except for travelling back and forth, but the mileage is considerable. We paid cash for a used, diesel vehicle with ample carrying capacity and pretty good fuel efficiency with an eye to future use of bio-diesel, should the need arise. I guess we´ll just have to see.

3. We bought a property. After 2 years and lots of disappointments, we finally found a property! It´s in our price range, close enough to a village with services, has neighbors near enough for emergencies, but private and with electrical and water on site. It´s a bigger renovation project than we´d envisioned, but that also gives us the chance to really get to know the locals, with one thing and another, and will require real investment in the community. And it´s lovely. And we love it. Just got the registration/deed in the mail and Jose tells us the property has been cleared of weeds/brush. Planning to go back up in January.

Personally, I:

1. Learned to spin. The resulting yarn is pretty horrible, but there it is. And I met Lala De Dios of Indigo Textile Studios who has spent the last 30 years in the textile arts in and around Spain and internationally. I caught up with her at Textil Arte in Madrid before Christmas and picked up some more supplies. I hope she will be a valuable contact for future projects. More later.

2. Learned to make soap. This is really intriguing to me and fortunately what I´ve made so far is being positively received. Soap/salve making has the potential to be an ongoing future hobby/income producing endeavor, especially when paired with herbal remedies on a home garden scale. I have real hopes for this.

3. Brewed Beer! We´ve started with the beermaking equivalent of packaged pasta and jarred sauce, but still. Next we´ll be making the sauce and boiling the pasta and after that will be making it all from scratch - if you can follow that metaphore. And it was all drunk apace. Second batch bottled and in repose.

4. Cooked some new stuff, including making yogurt and pickles. I need to stop buying new cookbooks and just start experimenting. Again, took an eco-cred hit on not using more local/organic ingredients, but when figuring miles traveled etc., I´m just promising myself to utilize local products more conscientiously once we´re moved. I do try to buy vegetables and fruits at the local fruit stand, not the supermarket. Given the speed at which it goes bad, and the lack of aesthetic perfection when I buy it, I´m hoping it´s at least Spanish in origin and not from, say, China.

5. Grew some stuff on the terraza. Granted, it was only tomatoes and herbs, but it was from seed! From seed! And some of it grew! And we ate it! Onward and upward.

6. Tried knitting again. We know how that went.

7. Lose weight/shape up. Miserable failure. Started with a functional exercise program in September but lost track in November with multiple trips and just gave up over the holidays. Not helped by farm food recipes. Back to the drawing board.

8. Started a blog. Draw your own conclusions.

All in all I feel like we´ve taken some (very) concrete steps in changing our lives in a direction we hope will be in some ways simpler, in some ways much more complicated, and hopefully more rewarding personally, if not monetarily.

Next post will be goals for 2011 and beyond.

Monday, December 27, 2010

No stockings this year either



Frankly, I suck at knitting. My mother is good at it and would like me to take it up - but it´s so FRUSTRATING. If I start out with 20 stitches, inside of 10 rows I can end up with 30 or perhaps 15, both have happened - and have no idea how I do it. You wouldn´t think such a repetitive activity as knitting and purling would be so irritatingly complicated.

I started this little exercise last summer visiting my Mom. Basic little knitting and purling, and really, the 5 x 5 alternating blocks of stitches and rows produce a really interesting basketweave pattern. Haven´t touched it since, but when I knitted a few rows the other day - I once again dropped or added a stitch and now I´ve had to rip out what I added (and more), and I can´t even get it back on the damned needles.



For me, the more I think about it, knitting becomes horribly like 3 dimensional math.

I just want to be able to knit warm, fuzzy socks.



Well, warm, fuzzy socks and slouchy hats. Socks, hats, scarves, mittens and gloves.




And someday, in my heart of hearts, one of these.




Since I seem to tend to drop stitches, maybe I´m a natural.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Cocido Madrileño



Given the cold wave - I thought I would make V happy on our 12th anniversary and cook his favorite Madrid food, the traditional cocido madrileño - a garbanzo and pork extravaganza.

I use the recipe in 1080 Recetas de Cocina by Simone Ortega. All my sisters-in-law and certainly the MIL can rattle off how to make one by memory. There is a Galician version - which includes pigs ears and rabbit. I stick with the Madrid style.

Cocido (serves 6 people)

300 gr. garbanzos (1 large breakfast coffee cup - I love her recipe measurements - CH)
1 k french cabbage
1/2 k carrots (not too large)
6 medium potatoes
1/2 k morcillo (beef shank stew meat - not to be confused with morcilla - CH)
4 beef bones with marrow
1/4 chicken breast
1 chorizo (not too soft)
1 hamhock slice or piece of jamon serrano
1 rice morcilla (blood sausage or black pudding - CH)
150 gr. salted fatty pork,fatback or bacon
1 good handful of tiny angel hair pasta (fideos cabellines)

The night before put the garbanzos in tepid water with 2 tsp. of salt.

In a large pot full of cold water, place the meat, bones and fatback. Heat to boiling, then add the drained garbanzos. You can use a net bag to keep them together. When it returns to the boil, lower the heat to a simmer. After 1 hour add the chicken and the chorizo. Skim and cover. Simmer 3 1/2 hours. An hour before serving add salt and the peeled carrots split in half the long way, and half an hour later the peeled, washed whole potatoes.

Chop the cabbage and cook separately. When serving, drizzle with olive oil in which some garlic has been sauteed.

Boil the morcilla separately in a small pot (because the strong flavor would affect the rest of the cocido) or slice and fry, according to taste.

When the cocido is finished, separate enough broth to make a soup, leaving sufficient in the cocido so that it neither gets cold nor dries out. Boil the pasta 15 minutes more or less in the reserved broth and serve separately.

Serve the sliced meat, the chorizo, morcilla and the chicken (if not being saved for croquettes the next day) on a platter, the cooked marrow spread on toast. Serve the garbanzos with the other vegetables on separate platter.



I confess I buy the prepackaged meat/bone/sausage ingredients from the market, Spanish ladies purchase the various cuts separately at the butcher counter. And I also don´t fuss much about whether it´s chicken breast or a leg or two, since I (and this is sacrilege) don´t really care much about chorizo. I always cook the morcilla separately and I always seem to buy the wrong kind. There is morcilla for frying and another for stewing. They all look identical to me.




You can buy the jarred garbanzos instead of using dried, since mine often don´t ever soften all the way through no matter how long they simmer. Just rinse off the liquid they´re canned in and throw them in - this would reduce the necessary cooking time considerably.



Like all stews this is even better the next day, which also gives you the opportunity to take off some of the excess fat. A tip from a friend - you can make a puree of the garbanzos that are left over, adding paprika and good olive oil, to be served on toast the next day.

V was delighted.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Appalling

Last week US Senate Republicans filibustered funding for the serious healthcare issues faced by 9-11 responders.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
9/11 First Responders React to the Senate Filibuster
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog<The Daily Show on Facebook


It seems to me that the US is now utterly disfunctional both politically and economically. Anyone over here waiting for it to somehow drag the rest of the world out of the current crisis will be sorely disappointed.

And until the Neocon koolaid drinkers in Europe are somehow out maneuvered, removed or shouted down, I don´t see things getting better. It´s depressing, but The Automatic Earth compiles a wide ranging selection of economic/political media. This recent edition focuses to some degree on Europe.

And can anyone explain to me why Moody´s, Standard and Poor´s and the rest of their ilk are still in business (not to suggest perhaps jail)?

Friday, December 10, 2010

Puente de Diciembre

The sixth of December is Constitution Day in Spain and the 8th is Day of the Immaculate Conception (La Inmaculada), the patron(ess) Virgin of Spain. This produces some really great long weekends - in this year´s case falling Monday and Wednesday, so if you take off the Tuesday (forming the bridge or ¨puente¨) you get a 5 day weekend. Sweet! Next year - Tuesday and Thursday, so if you can manage the Monday and Wednesday - you get an ¨aquaducto¨.

So we headed back to the ruin. Met with Jose and gave him the go-ahead to start demo/cleaning/weed-wacking on the house and the barn. He introduced us to the original owner - a lovely old guy (90-something?) who lives around the corner and did a little circuit around the property with us. He indicated where he thought the well was, and sure enough - a couple of hours of hacking later we discovered it, along with another (4 so far) old cooking pot.
It´s all the way on the other end of the barn - the furthest side from the house. Not someplace we would have immediately considered. But, at last found.

That, and an old gas stove buried in the undergrowth.


Some time in January we´ll go back up to see what the place looks like without the falling rafters and tiles, and hopefully to meet with a few architects for the work plan. So in the meantime - any help with identifying the following would be appreciated.

These appear to be planted in a short row of 3, but I don´t know what they are. Spiny fruit trees?


Also - this is that fungus stuff. It looks terrible. Maybe I´m worrying about nothing.



Should I worry? Is there anything to be done?