Cooking and bureaucracy

I've been in cooking mode lately. So far (aside from the risotto, sushi and empanada) I've also made pizza with homemade pizza base, homemade spaghetti with sauce, chocolate macaroons, carrot cake, banana bread, burritos, choc chip biscuits, anzac biscuits, cuajada...

Last weekend I made teriyaki skewers with homemade teriyaki sauce and raisin bread.

I'm not very good at Spanish food because it's so cheap and easy (and tasty) to eat out here but I have two awesome Spanish cookbooks that I'm going to conquer.

Yesterday I went to the Oficina de Extranjeros (the Government office for aliens and yes I think they actually use the word aliens in their official text) and was given a ticket and told I had to wait more than two hours.

This debacle started at the end of October when I applied for my residency card. They told me they'd send me a letter within a month and I'd have to go in with an ID photo and get my fingerprint taken. At the beginning of January after returning from holidays I still hadn't received the letter so I went in to the office, waited almost an hour in queue and got told they were delayed with lots of paperwork but I should get a letter within three weeks. Three months later (and five months after I was supposed to get the letter) I still haven't received anything.

You'd think after a five month wait, spending two hours in queue isn't too much. But frankly I don't give a damn any more. If they've already sent me the letter and it got lost in the mail, they can damn well send me another one if they want me to have my card so badly (which I sincerely doubt) and if they haven't sent it yet, I'm not going to wait two hours to be told to wait another three weeks.

Meanwhile, Friday is another public holiday and with one thing and another, I'll only have worked two days this week. With a working week like this, I can put up with shitty bureaucracy.

The Camino has begun!

Last weekend, Beza and I walked from Alfaro to Calahorra, which was about 25 km, as part of the Camino de Santiago that I want to complete some time this year. From Alfaro to Logroño isn't part of the popular French route of the Camino de Santiago, but I wanted to walk through La Rioja since it's been my home for nearly two years.

Also (and more importantly), there was a festival of vegetables in Calahorra, which is apparently famous for its greens. So I thought I could kill two birds with one stone- start the walk and eat some pinchos in Calahorra. We were going to walk two days but the weather forecast said it would rain on the weekend so we just did Saturday, caught the bus early in the morning to Alfaro and returned to Logroño in the afternoon.

As usual, the weather forecast was wrong because it didn't rain, but it was less wrong that normal. Usually if it says it's going to be sunny, I put on a scarf and extra jumper just in case. And the last few times it's said it's going to snow it hasn't. But on Saturday it was very cloudy and extremely windy.

We stopped halfway to have almuerzo in Rincón de Soto, a village famous for its pears (don't know why- I didn't see any). Almuerzo is a Spanish concept that I don't quite understand but like a lot. It's like brunch, at about midday except people also have breakfast and then afterwards, at about 2.30 or 3 pm they have lunch. Which means they eat three meals before they hit dinnertime.

The wind was blowing against us the whole way and about half an hour after we left Rincón de Soto, we could already see Calahorra in the distance, which was very encouraging at first but then took another two and a half hours to arrive at.

Still, we had some awesome pinchos. My favourite was the one in the picture- ostrich meat with brussells sprouts and carrot on a potato puree base.

Beer and waffles in Belgium

For some reason I couldn't sleep so ended up sleeping maybe 3 hours and was very nasty to be around on Wednesday. Plus our plane was delayed and I was hungry but refused to buy overpriced prepackaged semi-plastic food at the airport. I started biting Beza and I think he was quite happy when our plane finally arrived. (Photos: Mannekin Pis; Jannekin Pis)

Things improved in Brussels. I thought we'd booked an upmarket hostel but it turned out to be a fantastic guest house and the owner was really friendly and helpful. Visited Mannekin Pis, his less aesthetically pleasing sister Janneke and had our first waffle and first litre of cherry beer.

Went to Ghent the following afternoon. We were going to stay but couldn't find cheap accommodation so caught a train to Brugges and stayed the night there instead. Brugges was so idyllic it was almost scary. Like a picture perfect village in some horror film, where all the people are friendly and there are horse-drawn carts (which there were in Brugges) and picturesque houses and suddenly all the children turn evil and decapitate the neighbours. (Photo: in Ghent)

The weather was basically shit the whole time in Belgium except on Saturday which we spent in Antwerp. In the morning we went to an open market and had snail soup (well, I had snail soup and Beza watched with disgust) and in the afternoon we went to a legal graffiti park and had a picnic of horse jamon (like pork but leaner, very interesting) on bread.

The most disappointing thing was we only managed to fit in two waffles each in five days because we were too busy eating/doing other things.

And on the way home, the plane was delayed again so we missed our train and had to catch one three hours later. Which then broke down in some God-forsaken village for an hour and a half. And had to backtrack for some unfathomable reason. BUT we went back to the station on Monday and got a full refund on our tickets, ha!

Bilbao for Easter

I had a fantastic Easter break. A few days out from the school holidays I felt like I was going insane and if I had to tell another kid to sit down and shut up (not that I actually do that- it's not in my job description- I just stand there looking at the ceiling patiently until the class quietens down) I would pull out my hatchet and splice someone's head open. Plus there was a bit of tension in the flat, with some certain person not liking the way other certain people were doing things. (Photo: pintxos in Bilbao)

On the Wednesday when school finished up, JC also went home for the holidays so I had the flat to myself and I ran around screaming with glee.

Some of my friends were going to a refugio in the mountains, which I was going to go to as well with them but there was a pretty cheap deal in Bilbao for 2 nights and a Murakami and a Cai exhibition at the Guggenheim so Beza and I went. Just as well- it was Andres's birthday on the Saturday so when we called to say happy birthday, he told us it was raining and about to snow. Plus there's no running water and no toilet.

Ness and Cyrille were coming to Spain on the weekend and I totally forgot Ness had told me she was going to Bilbao before visiting me in Logroño so when we arranged to meet, it turned out we'd both be in Bilbao. So we met up on the Saturday night, had some pinchos and travelled back to Logroño together on the Sunday. Stopped over in Haro for lunch, waited an hour and a half at a restaurant, till about 4 pm for lunch and I got incredibly cranky. I started eating the toothpicks while waiting, I was so hungry. But really, if the waiter says there's a 20 minute wait and you end up waiting an hour and a half I think you have a right to be pissed off. Still, the food was great. (Photo: On the way home from Bilbao, we took a detour to a beach)

Ness and Cyrille left on Monday and on Tuesday, Beza and I went to Zaragoza with Rubén because our flight to Brussels left mid-morning on Wednesday and he'd kindly offered to let us stay.

When Rubén told us his flat was big and his flatmates friendly but that it smelt of old shoes or someone anti-anti-deodorant, it wasn't an exaggeration. His flatmates are really nice but it did smell a bit of... something. But very cool guys. We paid a visit to El Pilar, one of the most famous/important cathedrals in Spain and I saw my first confession box ever with a real live priest inside.

Roman markets and other matters

A few weekends ago, Juan Carlos invited us to his place in Calahorra for lunch. It happened to be the weekend that they were putting on a Roman market in the village so it coincided quite nicely. (Photo: falcon at the market)

Pablo and I caught the bus up early in the morning and had a look around the market which was fascinating. They had an aviary with vultures, falcons, eagles and owls and cheeses that looked like giant pebbles. While we were waiting for JC to finish work, they put on a gladiatorial demonstration. Apparently in Hungary or Romania there's an actual gladiatorial school, where they teach the guys how to use tridents, nets swords etc. One guy got cut on his belly but JC said last year, some guy got his finger cut half off and another one was rushed to Emergency with blood pouring out of his neck.

Afterwards, we went to his place where they had a vegetable patch, an outdoor fire and hunting dogs and his parents stuffed us with about 10 kilos of meat of spare ribs, sausages, chorizo, cutlets and chops as well as salad, homemade bread, shrimp, canapes, flan, fruit, cake, donuts, coffee, beer, wine... On the way home on the bus, Pablo and I both fell asleep from our gluttonous afternoon and nearly missed our stop.