Fish, Fish . . .

I eat like a queen here.

Saturday, para almorzar (I love that meals come in the verb form: desayunar, to breakfast; almorzar, to lunch; cenar, to dine) we had a three course meal.

First mejillones, mussels, from the shell . . . mmm, steamed with lemon. ¡Come! That is what Alicia and Jaime tell me every meal, ¡Come! It means eat, in the imperative form. :) Outside of meals I am always hearing “tranquila.” Anyway . . .

Part two: Sopa de Pescado. Dump a bunch of little fish (whole) and the head of a goosefish (? the fish name in Spanish is rape—rah-pay) into a pot with hot olive oil in the bottom and add onion, tomato, red bell pepper, garlic, fresh parsley, oregano, laurel leaves, paprika, salt, and water. But the water, and this is important, is added bit by bit—add some, wait for it to boil, add more, etc. Then cover the pot and let it cook for two hours, and vòila: broth. Of course, strain out the fishies and veggies and what not. With the broth, 4:1 ratio, cook rice, and that is it. It seems so sparse, broth and rice, but the broth has such a smooth and amazing flavor. Just believe me, fishies and veggies make the best broth I have ever tasted. Yum, yum, yum.

Part three: Fish. Yeah, umm, I should have taken pictures, but I didn’t, so trust me here: mussels, soup, fish. As in two pieces of fish, each about two centimeters high, six inches long, and two to three inches wide. Seafood, anyone?

That was amazing. But so was Sunday’s comida: pimentones rellenos. Stuffed bell peppers. Stuffed with rice. Alicia told me she’d teach me how to make them next time, but she did explain to me that the rice is cooked entirely by the liquids of the pepper. She puts the rice in raw with a bit of meat sautéed in garlic and olive oil, wraps it in tin foil, sticks it in the oven and it comes out cooked. I saw a handful of good sized bell peppers come home from the mercadillo, but on my plate was an enormous, swollen pepper, splitting and spilling out red rice which would form a mountain on the skin, covering my entire plate. I’m running out of descriptors for wow and yum and it is only week two . . .

Since I lack foody photos, the ones I included are of the view from the deck and a close-up of the ocean. 

La Paella de Arroz Negro

Okay foodie friends, here we go with something exciting and fun and riquísima! But first, primero, en español. Comimos en el domingo paella y arroz negro. Las ingredientes (afuera del arroz, lo que recibe su tinto de la sepia) incluyen el aceite de olivo, alcachofas, habas, ajos enteros, sepia, y tomate rayado. Todos comen directamente de la paella. Mientras esperábamos la paella, comimos de mejillones, tomates, aceitunas, y (claro) jamón serrano.

What we ate before, while the paella was finishing: olives, tomatoes, mejillones (the word in English, I don’t know, it is the meat from mussels), and, you guessed it, jamón serrano. People can eat pork, sure, and I’m not used to it, of course. And I am not being sarcastic or ridiculing, trust me, but I do find is surprising that the “dieta mediterránea” is considered so healthy, according to mi mamá. Perhaps it is because although pork and meat is here, there, and everywhere, as seen in the picture the plate is full of little slices that five people (not including me) were picking from rather than a hunk of meat in every person’s plate with a side of vegetables.

Anyway—paella. ¿Qué? What? Delicious, that is what. And why is the arroz, the rice, black? And what is sepia? I’m working on the sepia part. But the ink from the sepia is what gives the dark tint to the rice. Alicia, mi mamá aquí, told me how to make several hours ago—and I did not memorize it on the spot, but I have the general idea.

In the pan one heats up, of course, olive oil, nice and hot. Then the sepia (a relative to squid, I suppose—yup, “cuttlefish”) that one has cleaned is added and cooked almost entirely before adding artichoke (leaves and hearts). Then bit-by-bit one throws into the mix beans, whole garlic cloves, rice (not cooked), and grated tomato, then water, twice as much water as rice, and it is covered for twenty minutes. And magic. It is delicious. Truly delicious. 

Un Poco de Español and English

Del Torre de Jarro (y sí pronuncia la “j” porque es Valenciano)

¡Dénia! ¡Bienvenidos a Dénia mis amigos! Llegue aquí, a España, del día que salí de San Francisco, he hablado más español que inglés (en Alemania fue más conveniente usar el español), y solo he perdido una cosa: el biscotti (con naranja, canela y cardamomo, no me di cuento de que esas ingredientes serían problemáticas) que había hecho para la familia. Hoy caminábamos por una ruta a lado de la mar Mediterráneo  . . . un pedacito de lo que había (y había mucho a ver), de lo qué recuerdo lo más (horita): la manera en que el viento corría por la mar, bailaba por la mar, contra las corrientes y olas (¡y que pequeñas fueron las olas!). Y un momentito de Valencia (donde me quedo con una familia bien amable de cuatro): la noche antes del día de los reyes Lara hablaba y hablaba aunque su madre la había dicho que fue la hora para acostarse pero Elsa (la hija menor), cuando su mamá mandó que se prepara para dormir respondió con cara de un angelito «Vale» y dobló a su hermana y dijo «Lara, ¿me acompañarías?» y las dos se fueron. Tal vez la razón que me hizo sonreír fue la amistad de las hermanas o la sinceridad de Elsa, no sé, podría ser, simplemente, que el verbo acompañar me parece formal (y vino de la boca de una niña muy joven y pequeñita) . . . De lo que he visto de España: hay un “hunk of meat” en cada cocina que he visto de que he oído. Jamón serrano. Sí, mis amigos, lo como, pero hay que saber, después de un semestre sin comer carne y después de evitar por unos años la carne afuera de pollo y pescado, es un poco raro ver carne y comer carne cada día así. Pero, vale, la comida ha sido riquísimo.

 [That meat is jamón serrano, and although I did not eat meat almost all last semester-two days exception of turkey and chicken, I do eat it here. It was suprising to me to see so much meat at once in every kitchen. Next time I'll have a picture of what I ate yesterday which is more appetizing to look at :)]

¡Saludos de Dénia!

Para mis anglohablantes . . . I’m here and alive! From San Francisco to Frankfurt, from Frankfurt to Madrid, Madrid to Valencia, the only thing I lost was the biscotti (with orange zest, cardamum, and cinnamon . . . I didn’t realize that was dangerous enough to be removed from my checked baggage) I had made for my host family.

In Valencia I spent the night with a family (many thanks to the family and my sister) with two adorable little girls. It was the night before el día de los reyes, which is similar to Christmas. “Los reyes” are the three magi, and they come and leave presents for the children who have behaved, so the girls where quite excited that night and the next morning they were all smiles. Ana made me a cup of coffee . . . and tell you what . . . coffee here is a whole . . . “nother” I just re-realized, is not a word, it is sloppy English, instead of another story, a whole nother story . . . do I speak this language? . . . anyway, coffee here is superb. Ana y Juan drink it watered down a little . . . coffee is espresso. So what they drink is what one would order as an americano at a café in the U.S. Except with less water and darn good espresso. Mmmm.

First impressions of Dénia now: wow. Between Valencia and Dénia one can see how parts of Spain and California resemble each other . . . and there are oranges everywhere. Brilliant orange oranges. Delicious oranges. Natural, freshly squeezed orange juice every morning. Two oranges in one glass. 

Lo Nuevo

A New Year, a new blog. Not really. But to an extent, yes, it will be different. January 4^th I fly out of San Francisco, touch down in Germany, Madrid, and finally Valencia, where I spend the night of the 5^th, leaving on bus the 6^th to Denia with the Calvin Study in Spain program. The posts will probably still pertain mostly to the scenery and food, but whatever adventures I run into are fair game . . .and the last twenty days will regard the adventure of arriving to Brussels in time to see the city and catch my flight out in June. Unfortunately, there will not likely be a Sem-Pond Jump in Spain for me. Seeing as I too much enjoyed wearing a walking boot last spring, summer, and fall, and so upon returning home, I just had to get another; having a stress fracture in my heel made that quite easy. 

'Tis Later

I said pictures later, so here we go. I went out to capture bits and pieces of what I love on camera, failed miserably, but who can capture the essence of a moment in words or on camera?


The colors were magnificent as the sun melted into a soft neon pink: melting baker's chocolate in butter as the colors spread across the ocean, rippling and running up the sand. It moved with a swift calmness and grace, not lingering with the applause as it begged for an encore, no matter the waves of standing ovations, but bowing out in humble radiance.

Pictures Later

Today . . . today, today, today. This week. Hmm.

First ah-ha moment. Moreover, first, I-told-you-so moment. I went with a friend out for coffee and conversation. We headed out to Westside Coffee, which led us to West Cliff Drive, where we found a bench and sat and chatted and oohed and ahhed over the ocean and the sky. The sky was filled with varying clouds, cracking open occassionally to stream light down onto a silvery, choppy ocean that would glow golden with the peaking sun. The rain from which we received respite that day had lit the cliff tops and slopes electric shades of green and cleaned the air--we could see the towers at Moss Landing and the hills rising up behind Salinas and Castroville. We interrupted ourselves and eachother with oohs and moments of necessary basking and blathering as the sun broke through over our bench and commentaries on the beauty and oh look! a dolphin! and we ran further out onto the cliff to stand and point and become ever so much more excited each time the dolphin or its playmates resurfaced. Driving away from West Cliff, there ahead rose the Santa Cruz mountains, dripping, absolutely dripping with deep green trees. Not slopes, not inclines, but mountains. Not Shasta or the Sierra Nevada Range, but mountains. And then descending into the valley, down Graham Hill Road, with trees leaning, light streaming, a road cut in between descending hills . . . I was not wrong to feel helpless in attempting to convey a piece of this to my classmates in CAS 101, it is not comparable to anything anywhere I have ever seen, I was not idealizing it, painting it rosy in my mind to stab my heart. No. It is that beautiful, indescribable, irreplaceable.

Second ah-ha. The sky. Today was an all day in San Jose day. San Joe-zee. (I'm kidding if you, reader deary, don't speak Spanish or are not native to this area--'tis San Ho-say.) And a long while at the car dealership, where I plopped down on a strip of grass, layed on my back, and stared at the sky. Wow. Yup, wow.

It is not that the sky is a place of infrequent visual perusal, but rather that its importance just registered. It was so still. It was blue and puffed with clouds but still. Later, it acquired cloud streaks of a drying brush and feathered clouds and soon a river of watermarked clouds flowed through the center of my field of vision, behind the original sedentary clouds. The sky is like the ocean. It is always there, but it is always different. It is changeable, unreliable in form, but reliable in existance. It would be heart breaking, it is heart breaking, to see it polluted and unhealthy. And I rely on its existance. The sky does not replace the ocean for me; the ocean has branded a lodging for itself upon my heart where only it will ever fit. So I live with its absence in Grand Rapids. But in Grand Rapids, the sky took hold in a way it never had. Here the sky is big. Here it can blend with the ocean, expand into the ocean, be sawed by trees or mountains. Here it is dark at night, lit by its own stars. In Grand Rapids the stars are not so available, but the sky moves. The clouds are more and more variable. The sunrises and sunsets have a dynamism unlike those here--for while they set along flat horizons and softer, rounder, smaller trees, they set with an expansiveness that shrinks one down to the reality of one's smallness the way the ocean can. They set in a dancing, painted sky of immense proportions. The sky, the sky is necessary.

Third ah-ha. Driving back from San Jose, over 17 by myself in the van. KRTY playing, as I swung up and down the curves through the mountains, George Strait's "I Saw God Today." Maybe it is a cheesy song. Maybe I am "cute-sy" as a roommate stated this semester.
"Just walked down the street to the coffee shop, I had to take a break, I'd been by her side for 18 hours straight. Saw a flower growing in the middle of the side walk, pushing up through the concrete, like it was planted right there for me to see. The flashing lights, the honking horns all seemed to fade away, in the shadow of that hospital, at 5:08, I saw God today. I've been to Church, I've read the book, I know he's here but I don't look near as often as I should. His fingerprints are everywhere, I just slowed down to stop and stare, opened my eyes and man I swear, I saw God today."
I haven't read the book, I won't comment any further on my unorthodox status of haves and have not's and do's and do not's, but I will say this much: those moments of finding a flower in the sidewalk are the most overwhelming moments of ah-ha. How else would the sky be noted in San Jose and Grand Rapids and be found to be so compelling?

Sweet Potato Love and Home Grown Granola

Yes, yes, it is known: Annie loves sweet potatoes. And Granola. It might be a sin not to like the latter, being a rooted Californian from Santa Cruz to top it. Rooted: we have no clue when Grandma Joy's side of the family (Dake-Phares-Biggs) showed up in California (they popped out of the ground--like daisies!!)--and Grandma was the fishing, farming, composting, green-type. Grandpa Rex and the Williams-Kelly klan came over when he was in his teens from Wisconsin. Wisconsin is not remembered warmly. (Haha.) The Murray family is Texan. The Murray-Cheek-Ferrero-Rodgers side is Texan (isn't there some southern connection with Sweet Potatoes?). But Mom was born and raised in SoCal. And Mom and Dad (Mr. Arcata/Eureka) went to school at Humboldt (Big Trees and Hippies) and ate granola and yogurt. Then we were born. We being the siblings and I. Two down south, two up here in Santa Cruz. Granola and hippyish tendencies are in my blood. I can't help it. Potatoes. Hmm. I don't know where this obsession came from but they are tasty and cheap. So what happens when you take thrifty meal food (potatoes) and mix them with thoroughly ingrained tendencies (granola-making)?

Sweet Potato Granola!!
6 cups Oats of sorts
½ a large sweet potato, diced
2 cups almonds
½ cup sunflower seeds
¼ cup sesame seeds
¼ cup wheat germ
2 T cinnamon
1 T ginger
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup applesauce
1 cup honey


325º For decreasing intervals of time (10, 8, 8, 6, 6, 5, 5, until it is done) , stirring/flipping the granola in between. 
I'd advise mixing the dry ingredients first. Measure the oil a liquid measuring cup large enough to accommodate close to a cup of honey on top of the oil. The oil can be swished around so that honey doesn't stick--which makes cleaning less of a hastle. Just plop the the applesauce directly onto the dry mixture. I'd err on the side of less in the spice department and more in the sweet potato--these are all estimations (I didn't measure the spices or the potato or the applesauce, I just threw it in). But it is so tasty. The applesauce makes for a chewier granola, so if you want more crisp, I'd cut down on it, or maybe just cook it longer. Mmmmmm . . .