Food and Drink

Everything about things to eat and drink. Recipes and restaurants and cafes too.

Reading Aloud

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

I’m getting faster now. After the trip to the library I read this one almost without putting it down.
Carme Riera is a good writer and L’Estiu De L’Anglès is a black comedy – actually scary at times – about a woman who is desperate to learn English and goes to stay with a very eccentric teacher in an isolated house in England.  Soon she is speaking it well but only because her life depends on it!!

This by the way was my birthday breakfast in Estartit – eaten slowly while I read the last part of the book out loud. Apologies to those who hate to see a book lying like this – I’m too old to stop now!

Virtual Vermut

~ Kate Wilson ~ 8 Comments

So at last we can sit down for a virtual vermut. It’s sunny and hot and I want to enjoy it to the full as I am off to Cornwall again on Wednesday and someone told me it’s cold there!
Sorry about Friday – I don’t know what happened with the blog site but it was impossible to get online. But my friend Bodhi Chicklet was ready with a bottle of bubbly on the right day so I hope you went over there instead!
So much of life seems dependent on technology now and it can really wind me up – only a few years ago these things didn’t exist and I don’t like feeling so vulnerable to the whim of the airwaves. Perhaps they are the new God – we don’t understand them but we try to please them and hope they won’t suddenly knock us to the ground.
I have the feeling that I keep up, but only just. I can’t get my phone to send pictures by email – something which would evoke derisive laughter from the Resident Adolescent, if I dared to ask him for help! And now yet again my  whiteboard drawings are stuck on the phone and I can’t send them here. Not even by Bluetooth……which I am quite proud of knowing about. It still fills me with awe that I can press a couple of buttons and music or a photo will just invisibly move from one machine to another.
If this is how I am at age 54 then how will it be in ten years time?
54 – yes, it was my birthday at the weekend and we went to the Costa Brava.  Sometimes I feel like an innocent abroad, a wide-eyed child who still jumps up and down with delight

I still get a thrill from words like Costa Brava, Mediterranean, Barcelona…..I have to pinch myself that I am here. Must be all those years living in rainy cold climates huffing with asthma and being buffetted by sharp winds. By the way, do you see those small beginnings of muscles on my arms? That’s the gym starting to work……more on that later.

So, when I see a vegetable market I HAVE to look round the stalls

And after shopping, I HAVE to have a coffee on the terrace of a cafe.
The sight of a pastisseria makes me HAVE to eat a cake

and when I find a beach with  sparkling blue green Mediterranean waves, I HAVE to swim

The taste of Orxata makes me swoon although I could have it every day if I wanted

Duna came too and enjoyed the sea, drinking it by the bucket after a long hot walk with the inevitable consequences later that night

Talking of markets and my excitement when I see one – I took these photos in Granollers last Thursday. I love this one of the men’s arms stretching across a sea of fruit and vegetables

These aubergines looked like a painting

Talking of arms…….I don’t know what to do about Golds Gym. I had a really good session last week and also a more tense one. Depending on who is in charge there is music on Flashfm or a combination of videos and music on CD.  If there are videos you get the opportunity to study at close range some of the fantasies of the men in the room. I don’t think you really want to know about this in detail. Perhaps another day I’ll tell you more. But sometimes I am so glad that I am probably the only person in the room who understands the words of the songs!
After one of these not-so-nice sessions I girded my loins to return on Thursday – only the promise that ‘running will make the weight drop off you’ makes me go on days like these. When I arrived the place was almost empty. No videos, no pumping muscles, no stern unsmiling faces to greet me at the door. I did my running – more than 20 minutes straight through. When you get on a roll it feels like you could go on for ever. Like you get into a groove and it carries you along.
No sign yet of ‘the weight dropping off’ me though.
Then, for the first time ever, another woman, who wasn’t Tiffany, walked in. Ok she didn’t look at me or smile and she was young beautiful and slim and dark. But somehow I felt the presence of more oestrogen in the room and it made me relax. I ran another 15 minutes before leaving with more of a strut than my usual scuttle to the door.
When you arrive in the gym this picture greets you

– after that it is all sweat and iron, noise and boys.
Hope to see you next week. We might have to make it a virtual gin and tonic? Not sure where to get vermut in Penzance.

Belated Vermut!

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

I was ready to have a very early vermut with you on Friday morning – like the French men who you see in cafes at 8am having a calvados. I couldn’t meet later as we were off to the Costa Brava for the weekend to celebrate my birthday. But I wanted to meet up first and share a virtual pre-birthday drink. However, Bloggr was having some problems and I couldn’t access the site nor write a post so I left for the seaside without even taking my computer, and I’m sorry if you came by hoping for a chat.

What about tomorrow – I’ll provide the cake – we bought it on the way home in a French pastisserie called Xidors.  I can tell you all about the trip and show you my photos!
Hope to see you!

Somewhere to eat in Granollers

~ Kate Wilson ~ 7 Comments

(I am sad to tell you that this restaurant has since closed down)

Thanks to Tiffany we went to try out the Lebanese Restaurant Baalek in Granollers. What a joy to be able to choose from different vegetarian dishes instead of asking for something meaty to be adapted for me. We started with Baba Ganoush and Falafels and then there was veggie rice or couscous

The woman serving was actually from Morocco – a long way from Lebanon but she said the owner is Lebanese.  There was absolutely noone else there at lunch time but apparently it gets full in the evenings when men come to use the hubble bubbles.
Why didn’t I take a photo of the Baclava? It was delicious and so was the hot sweet mint tea

A Night in Falset

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

For some time I have been dreaming of going to Falset.
Something about the name conjured up an image of a garden of delights.
When we finally went there a couple of weeks ago it didn’t disappoint.
We had only one night, staying with a kind and interesting aunt who made us very comfortable in her beautiful house with it’s idyllic walled garden

Walking around the town, I heard and saw my first swallows of the year

The place seemed peopled by some strange new race who smiled and greeted you on every corner. Even the children called out Bon Dia and Adeu! The houses have hooks outside the doors conveniently placed for tying up your donkey

Duna found a friend and spent half an hour circling and sniffing and approaching and retreating without a single growl or curling of lip

We walked on Sunday morning to the St Gregory hermitage which is set in the rocks and scented by wild rosemary, passing on the road this strange mysterious arch

 The aunt has adopted the wonderful habit of eating all her meals out, thus avoiding the problem of shopping, cooking or washing up. Who is it that does this in London? Gilbert and George I think.
So we had lunch and dinner in the restaurant at the local pool, La Piscina, where she was greeted with hugs and kisses from all the staff and we ate wonderful things like grilled asparagus with Romesco, fish soup

 baked cod

 and of course puddings!  Crema catalana and apple tart

All accompanied by the delicious wine of the region. Perhaps it is because I first tasted the wine from Falset before going there that I had such a predisposition to love the place.