Back in Dartmouth Park!

I've been back in London for about ten days now, but it was only yesterday that I returned to Dartmouth Park for a drink with friends at the Lord Palmerston, or as Becca and I came to call it, the Tap (Lord Palmerston -> LP -> lumbar puncture -> spinal tap -> tap).  That climb up Dartmoouth Park Hill from Tufnell Park felt awfully familiar.

English Pubs

Just something I was thinking about today...here is a list of things that can happen in English pubs that would rarely or never happen in an American bar:

1. A discussion with the bartender about spotted dick. (2 months ago)

2. An 8-year-old boy explaining the rules of rugby to you. (6 weeks ago)

3. A 3-hour long session of Settlers of Catan. (3 weeks ago)

4. A dog sits next to you and demands to be rubbed behind the ears for 10 minutes. (this afternoon)



But here's something you can see in pubs in both the US and the UK: grown men crying at football.

Remember us?

Well hey there, strangers! It's been a whole month since our last blog post, so I figured, if not now, when?

I'm sure you've all been very busy since our last post and haven't really been worried about our absence from the blogosphere, but I'll give you a quick update on what we've been doing anyway. But first, let me present to you, what might the MOST random photo of the day:

This was posted on our very own street in London. In the countryside people worry about foxes snatching their hens, but I guess in big, bad Dartmouth Park there are other foes about.


Okay, on to a brief wrap-up of what we've been doing lately. Last time I wrote Danny and I were living a liminal existence: preparing for our final months in London, but not yet sure where our destination in the US was. Well no longer, because on March 17th I matched to Cambridge Health Alliance (yay!), and just 3 short (but long-feeling!) weeks later we landed our dream apartment in Somerville, just 0.4 miles from the hospital and 0.15 miles to the best ice cream ever. And near many good friends! All of this is very exciting, but it's been keeping us away from the blog!

But perhaps more importantly, in the past 4 weeks we've been doing a lot of this:
Enjoying the surprisingly warm and sunny weather that London has delivered, and spending time drinking outside with friends. We've had 3 excellent visits from friends from the US, had some good times with friends here (first ever English garden party!) and we've been preparing for Danny's family to visit at the end of the month. And of course, we've been watching some cricket.


This weekend we took advantage of a particularly nice day to walk around Golders Green (NW 11), which is currently the main Jewish neighborhood of London. I had my doubts as to whether it would deliver, but for a few blocks it really did feel like we were transported to Brookline, or even Brooklyn. Within a 0.5 mile radius there were over a dozen bakeries, several kosher butchers, 3 Judaica shops, a Hebrew bookstore, a Polish bookstore, 3 large kosher grocery stores, and groups of young boys in kipot and girls in long skirts (and women in wigs, but we won't get into that). Many delis, not so many pubs. The air smelled like a mix of rugelach and white-fish salad, in a good way.

We went with 2 main goals in mind: buy some Matzah and other K for P food, and get bagels. And I'm happy to report that we succeeded on both counts! None of the bagels were as good as Kupels, but they were much better than the doughy ones we got at the way over-hyped Brick Lane Beigel Bake. The places we tried were Daniel's (of course!) and Carmelli's. One thing we didn't see much of was flavored cream cheese, which was disappointing to me, but overall it was a very lovely way to spend an afternoon!

Here are some photos for you to enjoy!

More treats from Belgium

These were treats we brought home with us:



Belgian chocolate: worth the hype.

Also, we discovered the secret of Belgian waffles! When you purchase a waffle from a little waffle stand, they're made in advance. At first this seems disappointing - wouldn't a fresh waffle be better? But it turns out that the key is in the reheating. After the magic Belgian waffle makers make these treats, they sprinkle sugar on them, then let them sit. Then when you stumble up to the counter in a gueze-induced haze and order one, they put the waffle back on the iron to warm up. In re-heating, the sugar sprinkled on top starts to melt. You can tell this is what happens because when they remove said waffle from the iron, a thin wisp of candy sugar trails behind it, and waffle is encrusted in sweetness. To quote the old Italian woman who was in line in front of us, "Oh, che buono!"

iiiiiiit's Pancake Day!

Well, okay, yesterday was Pancake day, but I couldn't write this post yesterday because we were watching the incredibly frustrating Arsenal vs. Barcelona game. But I couldn't help blogging about Pancake day, because it leads neatly into a larger discussion of silly British holidays that have food associated with them. Now, while I think it makes perfect sense to have particular foods for particular holidays (almost time to make Hamantashen!), these British ones seem funny to Yankees like us for the same reason that most British things are funny to us: they have funny names. After I decided to write this post I realized that there are actually only 3 holidays I can think of that fit into this category, but I'll try to make my discussion of each holiday as witty and amusing as possible in order to make it worth your time.


St. David's Day: Somehow we missed this one, which was March 1st this year. St. David's day celebrates, unsurprisingly, St. David, who is the patron saint of Wales. So needless to say this day gets much more attention in Wales, but it's worth mentioning here because 1) one of the traditions of this day is to wear either a daffodil or a leek pinned to your lapel, so it fits into my category of having a random food affiliated with it, and 2) I have a funny story about St. David's day. The original story with the leeks, Wikipedia tells me, is that during one of the many times when they were fighting the English, the Welsh decided to wear leeks on their uniforms to tell the difference between the two troops.

But my story about learning about St. David's day is funnier. 5 years ago Danny and I did trivia with some friends on what apparently was St. David's day. Of course, our friend Chris knew this, and he brought leeks for everyone to wear, either tucked into your ponytail or behind your ear or wherever. We won a very difficult trivia that night (anyone know where the Gulf of Taranto is? Mike did.), under the name, wait for it. "The Leeky Cauldron". I've never seen Chris more pleased with himself when he came up with this name, except for maybe when he picked 4 gelato flavors that complemented each other perfectly.


Shrove Tuesday:...okay, I actually didn't realized until just now that is actually what the rest of the world calls Mardi Gras. But it's an honest mistake, right? I mean, come on, Shrove Tuesday? what's that supposed to mean?. But that's almost a moot point, because at this point it just goes by its more informal name, Pancake Day. Again, wikipedia to the rescue: supposedly the pancakes came into popularity so people could use up sugar, eggs, butter, and other yummies before Lent started. Now, unsurprisingly, many more people make pancakes than give something up for Lent (although I'm always surprised by the number of people who actually give things us for Lent. Though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since I never go to Synagogue but always keep Passover). I should point out that what the English mean when they talk about pancakes is actually crepes. We don't have our crepe pan with us, so Danny and I made old fashioned American pancakes, nice and fluffy, with a little whole wheat flour and oatmeal, cooked on a hot buttered pan, and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Dee-licious!


Guy Fawkes Night: this one has also picked up a more colloquial name: bonfire night. Guy Fawkes was a Catholic conspirator who was trying to assassinate King James 1 in 1605 by blowing up Parliament with a load of gunpowder. The holiday started as a celebration that the plot failed and the King survived (the King James Bible wasn't going to write itself, after all), plus a chance to burn an effigy of a Catholic terrorist. Now it's mostly celebrated by large bonfires and people setting off fireworks in their backyards, and by calling it bonfire night they can play down the sectarian origins of the story. But the desire to keep the peace doesn't prevent some people from continuing to burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes each year. To each his own. The food connection is that jacket potatoes (baked potatoes) have become the tradition food of bonfire night, because you can easily cook a potato by wrapping it in foil and throwing it in a fire. But I think these days people just throw them in the microwave instead.


Huh, I think that post ended up being kind of boring. Sorry. Really, it was all just an excuse to say, "We had pancakes for dinner last night, and it was awesome!"

Beers of Belgium

This is far from comprehensive, of course.  You’d need months of dedicated, er, work, to get through the breweries of Belgium.  Instead, here are images of some of the beers we had on our trip to Belgium.  Belgians take their glassware seriously, which means less need for captioning.

 

Gueuze at the Cantillon brewery.  Gueuze is a combination of variously aged lambics, which are naturally fermented and uncarbonated.

Kriek, more or less the cherry version of gueuze.  Take lambic and soak cherries in it for a while.  This is a far cry from the Lindeman’s fruit lambics you sometimes see in the US, which the Cantillon brewery pooh-poohs as cheating (they add sugar to help along the fermentation and sweeten the final product).  ‘Pleasantly sour’ is the way I’d describe this.

Nearly spring…

Signs of the times:

• The crocuses are peaking out of the ground in all sorts of glorious colors. (I’m relying on Becca here that these are, in fact, crocuses.  I’m hopeless with flowers beyond roses and tulips.)
• The sun now rises before 7:00 in the morning.
• More importantly, the sun was visible all day the past two days.
• Most importantly, the neighborhood children have begun chalking up the sidewalk.

(Sorry about the lack of blogging recently.  Aside from an awesome visit from friends from Boston, we’ve just been going about our normal lives without anything terribly remarkable happening.  But don’t worry – we’re off to Belgium this weekend and should return with plenty of material to write about.  The last time I was in Belgium I had three waffles, three beers, and three servings of chocolate in about five hours.  The mythical triple Belgian trifecta.  I hope to replicate it this weekend, albeit over a longer period of time.)

English Football

Have I said enough great things about Denmark on this blog? I think not. Here's one more thing that's awesome about the home of Hamlet: breakfast. Here's a Danish breakfast that Danny and I tried to recreate at home:

This was inspired by the discovery that we could buy traditional Danish 100% rye bread (rugbrød) at the farmers market. I can really only speak for breakfast as it existed at my host family's house, so that may not be completely universal, but I like to think that all Danes sit down to a breakfast as complete as we did in Jyllinge. I guess that first I should specify that the version that Danny and I created was more of a mix of breakfast and lunch. What's more typical is that breakfast would involve some plain white rolls, with many options for toppings: solid cheese, cream cheese, 2 kinds of jam, butter, and Danny's favorite, thin chocolate wafers. On weekends breakfast was expanded to include yogurt and soft-boiled eggs. Weekend lunch would be rugbrød with cheeses, many kinds of herring, hard boiled egg slices, and liver paste. Danny and I threw in poached eggs because we just can't get enough of them. Importantly, it was in Denmark that I learned that putting jam on top of a slice of mild cheese is delicious. Seriously. Try it.


But right, back to English football. In some ways, I can't believe it's taken us until February to write about football, but actually this makes sense for several reasons. In Europe, football is a winter sport, so the season didn't start until some time after we'd been here. Then for most of the early winter we were totally preoccupied with The Ashes, and we weren't paying attention to the football (on a related note, the cricket world cup starts Feb 19th!). Then our first foray into going to a football match - an England vs. Montenegro Euro cup qualifier match at Wembley - was perhaps one of the most boring soccer matches you could have asked for. It was a 0-0 draw. Seriously. Do you know the population of Montenegro? Less than 700,000. You'd think that England could have at least gotten one goal in, you know? Anyway, English fans booed the team at the end of the game because they had played so badly, and honestly, they deserved it.

This experience left me assuming that the old days of English soccer hooliganism were completely over, and that lack of crowd-control and mugs of beer had been replaced with calm, serious fans and mugs of tea. And while I was happy there were no riots or broken beer bottles or destruction of stadium property (seriously, click on the link above - it used to be bad), I was a little disappointed by the lack of passion from the fans. But it turns out we just hadn't been to the right game yet.

On Sunday we took advantage of a friend-of-a-friend connection to get cheap tickets to a Queens Park Rangers game. In order for this to make sense, let me take a minute to explain the workings of the English football league. According to wikipedia, there are about 7,000 clubs that are technically members of the league. Let's just pause on that number for a minute. That is a huge number. Not all of these clubs are professional, of course, but the defining characteristic of the football league is that it is completely fluid. As in, if your team plays really well one season, you get bumped up to a higher division the next season. And vice versa. So theoretically, some local team of guys who play football in their spare time could become amazing and one day be playing against Arsenal. Theoretically.

The highest division is the one you hear about - the Premier league, which contains well-known teams such as Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal. There are always 20 teams in the league, which is sometimes also called the premiership. The second highest division is called the Championship (not to be confused with the champions league, which is a Euro-wide competition between the best club teams from each country). Below the championship are League One and League Two, which, confusingly, are actually the 3rd and 4th levels, but whatever. At the end of every season there is a well-regulated method of moving teams up and down between divisions. And sadly, it looks as if our localest team, Barnet, will be moving down out of league two after this season, currently being in 24th place out of 24.

Alright, all that was just background, so that me saying that Queens Park Rangers (QPR) are currently in 1st place in the championship and will likely be moving up to the premier league next season will mean something to you. Between this fact, and the fact that Sunday's rival Nottingham Forest were not far behind at 4th place, the atmosphere at the stadium was great. The stadium was packed - topping out at over 17,000 fans. We happened to be sitting very close to the Nottingham fan section which led to some amazing heckling. Well, I don't really want to call it heckling, because it was much more that that. Each fan base has a full arsenal of songs and chants that went on for the entire game practically non-stop (many of which are the same, just with their team name thrown in), and their comments are quite pointed.

I could talk about intra-England prejudices for quite a while (and don't even get us started on intra-Scottish factions, which neatly break down along Catholic-Protestant divide), but for the purposes of this game, it's enough to know that to Londoners, anyone from north of Cambridge is a rural country idiot or a grimy former miner who's living on benefits, neither of whom ever learned to speak proper English. And to anyone from the North, Southerners are posh elitist snobs who stupidly pronounce R's as W's. (Note: the Southwest doesn't fit into these categories, and people there talk like the Irish. but I digress). Of course these are huge generalizations and there are many people who like and respect their Northern/Southern compatriots, but for the purposes of the QPR match, Nottingham fans were referred to as a bunch of "sheep shagging c**ts". And as for what the Nottingham fans were calling the QPR side, I couldn't understand it at all; you know how funny those country folk talk.

QPR and Notts drew 1-1, though with Notts playing with only 10 men for the last 60 minutes of the game, QPR really should have won it. We'll see about that promotion...

Taking Advantage

Random photo today:


Cake. You know you want it. And this one is almost healthy, made with lots of apples and olive oil. Though that's before you smear on the butter and cream cheese frosting, which is delicious. Luckily many other foodies have posted the recipe before me, saving me the trouble. You can find it here, just scroll about a third of the way down. My icing is a different color because I used dark sugar.

As some of you may know, Danny and I have now booked our tickets back to the states. May 18th is our departure/return date, which means we can now start counting down our days in London. This means we're trying to fit in as much as possible before we go - from local restaurants to travels across the EU. The past few days we've been doing some fun neighborhood stuff. I'm sorry if this post is a bit mundane, but hopefully it gives you a taste of what it's like to live in Dartmouth Park!

Thursday: The Star. We've mentioned this local pub many times, but on Thursday we did something especially fun, which was to bring our awesome travel backgammon set, on loan from my parents, with us to the bar. The Star has something that many good English pubs have: a real fireplace, and comfy couches around that fireplace. Why don't more American bars have fireplaces? And why aren't any of them quiet enough that you could sit and play a board game? We sat with our pints and absorbed the warmth from the dying embers, and although I quickly went up by 4 points, we ended the night even-stevens. Though I'm still up by 5 points overall.

Friday: A few months ago we happened to walk by an Italian restaurant up Highgate Hill from us (about a 10 minute walk) that featured pizza by the meter. Well then. We both had a productive week, so we decided to reward ourselves with pizza at Fabrizio's. The food was good (an appetizer plate of various fried things, and 1/2 metre of thin-crust pizza), but the most endearing thing about the place was the intimacy of it. The restaurant is small; there's just one waiter and one woman who's sole job seemed to be to grind fresh pepper and grate fresh parmesan onto your food, plus Fabrizio the chef, and everyone is Italian. Fabrizio brings out some of the food himself, and he clearly gets a kick out of chatting with the patrons. Earlier in the night he had mentioned to us that the fried rice balls we were eating were a specialty from Rome, which is where he is from. So of course later on in the evening Danny told him that he had lived in Rome for 3 months, and Fabrizio looked very pleased. 30 seconds later he came back to our table with a sly look and asked which Rome football team Danny liked. uh oh. Danny stated that he didn't have much preference, but that he had once been to a Lazio game. Right answer! Fabrizio got really excited and proceeded to congratulate Danny on having good taste in football teams and to give the waiter, who was apparently a Roma fan, and hard time. It was pretty amazing.

Saturday: This Saturday started out like every other Saturday when we are in London - a short run, a cup of tea, then a trip to the farmers market. The rest of the daylight hours were spent going to two other neighborhood pubs (The Dartmouth Arm and the Lord Palmerson) to watch sport. First was the Manchester United vs. Manchester City soccer game. As I recently learned, these matches between local rivals are referred to as "derbys", and with Man U and Man City close to the top of the league, this was going to be a big game. As the linked article states, Rooney's winning goal (Man U won 2-1) was absolutely brilliant. He may be the baldingest man in the Premiere League, but don't say he's lost his touch. After the football was England vs. Italy in the rugby 6 Nations. With a 59-13 victory for England, this game was perhaps less thrilling, but it was still fun to watch. And by the way, Chris Ashton, who scored 4 tries for England, was born in 1987. oof. On an unrelated note, know what else I like about English pubs? People bring their kids to them to watch sport. It's cute.

Not wanting to feel to cramped by NW5, we ended this day with an evening at the Tate Modern. Neither of us are huge fans of modern art, but the Tate is kind of a big deal, so we felt we should give it a chance. There were some pieces I liked, but there were also moments where I found myself thinking "Do you think someone should tell the curator that the painting they have labeled as 'Unfinished Painting' is really just a mirror?" And things like that. Added bonus of the evening was walking back across the Millennium Bridge towards an illuminated St. Paul's Cathedral. Beautiful.


Sunday was more football! We went with our friend Leanna to see the Queens Park Rangers vs. Nottingham Forest, which is a Championship game (2nd tier teams). This was an experience worthy of it's own blog post, so I think I'm going to leave it at that. And now, I'm off to have a slice of leftover pizza for breakfast...

They break the Sabbath, I relax and refresh myself

Polo, as you may have heard, is something of an upper-class pursuit.  A sport that requires multiple horses for each player over the course of a single match isn’t something that little kids can pick up on the street.  It’s not an accident that Ralph Lauren’s aspirational clothing brand co-opts the image of a polo player and magnifies it beyond of all semblance of proportion.

It’s polo’s association with the wealthy and the famous that led to one of the more engaging exchanges of letters that I’ve come across in the archives.  Prince Philip, the Queen’s husband, is something of a polo fanatic.  Well, I have a feeling he doesn’t play much these days, seeing as he’s now almost 90 years old.  But in his youth, it seems as if there was no better way to spend a Sunday than playing polo.

Therein lies the problem (and how His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is likely to end up in a PhD dissertation on postwar Christianity).  Back in the 1950s, sabbatarian groups like the Lord’s Day Observance Society didn’t take kindly to anyone playing sports on Sundays.  The Lord’s Day was for churchgoing (twice, if possible), prayer, and quiet time spent with the family.  In the eyes of the LDOS, virtually everything else was a sin against God and destined to bring about national ruin (seriously – here’s what they said about a 1966 bill that would have allowed theatres to open on Sundays: “the Bill […], if passed, […] will result in a further departure of our Nation from Almighty God, His Word and Commandments, with both ill effects upon the spiritual and moral life of the nation and the certain removal of the Divine Blessing from us as a people.”

So you can imagine why the Lord’s Day Observance Society wasn’t too happy about Prince Philip playing polo on Sundays, especially with hundreds of paying spectators there to watch him (and the other seven players).  For a period in the mid-1950s, the LDOS was writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, every year, pressing for Fisher to do something about 1) Philip’s Sunday polo playing and 2) the Queen’s presence at said polo matches.  Reading this correspondence, it’s pretty clear that Fisher wanted nothing to do with this dispute.  He didn’t have much sympathy for what he saw as sabbatarian fanaticism, and he definitely didn’t want to piss off Prince Philip or the Queen.  But in 1955, prompted by the Free Church of Scotland going public with its criticism of Philip’s Sunday polo-playing, Fisher delicately raised the issue with Philip.  While being careful to avoid personal criticism of Philip’s Sunday activities, Fisher warned that Sunday polo by a member of the Royal Family might provide ammunition for “all who are now constantly seeking to invade the domesticity of Sunday rest and recreations, and who when the time comes will press very hard for legislation to remove all restrictions upon the full secularisation and commercialisation of Sunday”.

Philip’s response to Fisher, unfailingly polite, began by agreeing with Fisher on the sanctity of Sunday, the importance of churchgoing, and the undesirability of any paid labor being done on the Sabbath.  This included professional sports on Sundays: “I would resist at all costs any suggestion of professional Sunday football.  I would go further.  I would ask all organisers of charity cricket or football matches on Sunday not to ask any professional to play in them.”  He went on to suggest that any recreation that involved “killing” (hunting, fishing, and the like) should be avoided on Sundays.

And yet, in spite of this apparent sympathy for a certain degree of sabbatarian rigor, Philip wasn’t at all ready to give up his Sunday polo.  As an amateur sportsman, his participation in Sunday polo would not violate his stricture against payment for activities performed on Sundays.  Nor was it his fault that spectators were interested in watching the game and willing to pay to do so.  “As far as I am concerned I would not mind playing behind a screen without anyone looking on but unfortunately the club which organises the game cannot afford to do this.  It encourages people to pay to come and watch in order to reduce to some extent the expense of the game.”

These “expense of the game,” it seems, was in large part paying the wages of the grooms, timekeepers, and bus-drivers that made the game possible and easier for spectators to watch.  Philip deemed these “paid services” “unfortunate,” but ultimately worth the while, since he needed physical activity on Sundays to “relax and refresh” himself from the hard mental work of the rest of the week.  “It so happens that I like playing polo.”

So there you have it.  Wage-earning on Sundays?  Bad.  Unless, of course, it enables someone else to relax, enjoy themselves, and re-charge the batteries for the next week, especially when that someone is married to the Queen.

Little things that made my day awesome

1) A newly-installed washer and dryer in the flat.

2). Caramelized garlic.

Root cellars and fruit sellers: thoughts on fruit and veg through the seasons

Ha! I like that title. In the spirit of today's topic, which has to do with the changing of the seasons, the random photo for today will actually be 2 exciting photos from yesterday:


It was sunny! We celebrated by going for a run, then spending the rest of the day inside having brunch (or, as Danny called it, "Not brunch...breakfast AND lunch" and going to the national gallery. oops. But then when we got out of the gallery we were greeting by another surprise: it was still light out! This is around 5:10pm, and we were pretty excited. Okay, we still have a long way to go, but it's about the baby steps.

Okay, on to the meat of today's post, which is fruit and vegetables. When we first got to London, Danny posted the following picture of our weekly farmer's market haul on Facebook with the caption "The bounty of the English summer." Our friend snarkily replied "soon you'll have the discontent of the English winter." Nice. But the joke's on him, because I'm finding the English winter to be quite pleasing so far, particularly the farmers market!





When I heard that our farmers market was year round I was excited, but fairly certain that by winter the color of our purchases would be almost entirely brown - potatoes, turnips, bread and dairy products. But as you can easily see, there are many green and other colored things available in the winter! And it's not so much that foods have disappeared as much as they've been replaced. Blueberries and cherries and strawberries have been replaced by apples and funny-shaped pears. Zucchini, broccoli, cucumbers and peppers are long gone, but oodles of brussels sprouts and a half-dozen types of cabbage have taken their place. Tender lettuces and bok choi are gone, but kale and sprout tops are here to stay (though there is one vendor there still selling salad greens, which they grow in their 5 acres of greenhouses!). And of course there are the piles and piles of things that grow underground and keep very well in a root cellar: carrots, potatoes, parsnips, beets, turnips, celeriac, swede, etc. And luckily, bread, cheese and eggs are always in season! Interestingly, winter squash season seems to have already come and gone. Sad.

With these new winter vegetables have come some well-timed cabbage and root vegetable recipes from the New York Times. We've made four of them in the past few weeks, and the last one I'm planning on making this week. They are:

Braised Cabbage (really good over couscous)
Bess Feigenbaum’s Cabbage Soup (I trusted a woman with the name Feigenbaum to make a good cabbage soup. And it was amazing! The first time I used savoy cabbage, and this week we're making it again with red cabbage)
Winter Root Vegetables over Polenta (yummy, but not earthshattering. I like polenta better when make with 1/2 water and 1/2 milk)
Spicy Braised Sweet Potatoes (make sure not to overcrowd the pan - ours took forever to cook!)
Soba Noodles in Broth with Sweet Potato, Cabbage and Spinach (making this week!)


While we're talking about vegetables (when aren't I talking about vegetables?), I just want to give a shout-out to all of the American fruits and vegetables that I've missed since being here. Of course, the produce market is global, but as we've mostly been trying to buy things from the farmers markets, there are some things we've either given up or haven't had much of. The things I've missed are: corn on the cob, mackintosh apples, peaches, Japanese eggplant, collard greens, sweet potatoes (yeah, we cheated on this one and bought some at the grocery store), heirloom tomatoes. Hmm...I guess that's it. But overall, this farmers market has many things that theone in Brookline didn't, so overall I'm very pleased. If you couldn't tell.

Next time - another recipe for apple cake!

Handball with the Danes? Ja, tak!

Today's random photo is dedicated to a) anyone who is as of yet unconvinced that making your own baked beans is an awesome idea, and b) anyone who doesn't think it's worth spending the money to buy free-range, organic eggs. Just look how well that egg held together! and the yolk is practically orange! Also, protip: I asked the guy at the farmers market today if there's any thought on exactly how the color of eggs is related to the taste (the eggs we buy are all brown, but there's a range in darkness). He didn't know about that, but they found that the lighter eggs tend to be the ones that were laid outside in the yard, and being in the sun makes them lighter.

Close watchers of facebook may have noticed that last night Danny and I discovered that not one, but TWO of our friends and readers of this blog have doppelgangers on the Danish national handball team. Crazy, right? While it is very imaginable that Danny would have discovered this one day via random internet searching, we found out the better way: actually watching handball. Backstory: As we wrote about back in October, I lived with a wonderful family when I studied abroad in Denmark. This week, my "little" host sister Catrine was in London with 3 of her friends. They spent 2 days in Cambridge visiting another friend who is a student there (King's College, for those of you who were wondering), then they spent 3 days in London. We met up them after work each night to show them around a little and be impressed at how perfect their English is. The first night we took them to get Indian food, and it became clear that a) they had never had proper Indian food before, and b) they weren't used to spicy food!

The first night they mentioned that Denmark was playing in the handball world championship, and the semi-final game was on Friday night, and did we think there would be a place in London where they could watch it? I was doubtful, but luckily Danny knew of a huge, tacky, American-style sports bar near Trafalgar square (conveniently located next to the Texas Embassy Cantina), and the website said they would be showing the game. We arrived, doubtful whether it would actually be showing, and expecting that we would probably just find a quiet corner in which to enjoy some terrible nachos and watch just the 6 of us. Boy were we wrong. The initial shock of being carded for the first time since we arrived in England was followed by the even bigger shock of finding the back room completely full of really, really excited Danes watching the Danish-language sports channel on about a dozen screens. Wow.

So we ate our nachos and drank our Carlsberg, and enjoyed being the only non-Danes in the room. The atmosphere was awesome. Handball is a HUGE deal in Denmark. The team had been totally dominant in the tournament so far, and the national team hadn't been to the final in 44 years, so people were pretty excited. The game was great - Denmark went up by 4 points shortly after the start of the game, but at halftime it was tied 12-12. DK had an awesome second half, and the final score was 28-24. Want to see how excited people were? This video quality is bad, but it captures the feel of the evening very well. Although with the poor light, it's hard to see just how blond people are. You'll have to trust us.

The final against France is on Sunday, 5pm Continental time (11am EST) - get excited! As Danny points out, it's in Malmö, so it's practically a home game for Denmark. Watch for lots of red, and lots of flags!

A long weekend in Barcelona, part 3

As Becca mentioned, we’re going to be running a half-marathon in June, which means that we’re now committed to running most days of the week, with no exceptions for vacations.  So last Sunday we went on the longest run of my life: roughly 8 miles: down La Rambla, along the beach, up through Poblenou, then back to our hotel along Avenida Diagonal and Gran Via.  It was a great way to see bits of the city that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen, and we got to enjoy the sun along the beach and dip our hands in the Mediterranean.  Let me tell you: the Mediterranean in January?  Warmer than the Atlantic in Maine in July.

After the long run, we were pretty hungry, but we kept getting sidetracked before getting a proper meal.  First was the Mercat de Sant Antoni.  During the week, it’s a food market, but on Sundays there’s an eclectic collection of old books, bottle caps, picture postcards, and the like.  But the real highlight, surely, was a video game booth with an old-school Nintendo (with original Spanish-language packaging!).

We held our hunger at bay for a little while longer with a roasted sweet potato from a street vendor.  Then came our next distraction: a large group of people dancing the sardana, a traditional Catalan circle dance.  Wikipedia suggests that “As a a relatively slow, non-performance dance, the sardana does not require special fitness.”  Becca described it as a “gentle hora.”

Next up was what was either a dog park or an incredibly amateurish dog competition.  Given that there were cones, ramps, and similar obstacles for the dogs and their owners to (not) maneuver around, I’m pretty convinced that it was a dog show.  Let’s just say that it’s not surprising that your mental image of the dog show world doesn’t have much space for Spain.

At this point, we finally found a place to eat.  I was craving sugar after that long run, so I had a Fanta to go along with my manchego sandwich.  Becca got a tortilla española and we shared some patatas bravas.  Best of all, all the required exchanges took place in Spanish.  I’m especially proud of the fact that I managed to communicate the fact that the drinks didn’t appear on the receipt and that we should be paying more.

Our main plan for the day was to see the Romanesque collection at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.  The collection’s highlights are church murals from around Catalunya that were moved to the museum in the early 20th century.  But here, I’m afraid, our best-laid plans began to be foiled.  Somehow we had missed the fact that the museum closed on Sundays at 2:30 in the afternoon.  So when we reached the top of the steps at 10 minutes to 2, it hardly seemed worth paying the admission fee.  It turns out that the Romanesque collection is closed to visitors until June, so it’s just as well.  We did, at least, get a nice view of Plaça Espanya.

So instead of medieval Catalan wall paintings, we opted for more Gaudí, this time the Park Güell in the northern part of the city.  Writing about whimsical architecture like this always feels a bit futile, so I’ll just post some pictures instead.

After the park, we hit something of a dry spell.  Maritime Museum?  Closed for renovation.  Palau Güell?  Closed for renovation.  A second visit to Granja Viador to lift our spirits with chocolate and churros?  Closed.  Belgious, a recommended waffle place?  Closed.  Things were getting pretty desperate by this point, and if Becca hadn’t found some cute earrings with swallows on La Rambla, this portion of the day would have felt like a failure.

Just when our spirits were at their lowest, we were rescued by… beer.  La Cerveteca appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, to warm our hearts with winter ale (for me) and something Belgian and fruity (for Becca).   In addition to the beer on tap, they also had a pretty good selection of imports in bottles.  It’s always really interesting to see what American beers ‘make it’ as exports.  Brooklyn Lager, Anchor Porter, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale – it’s as if we’re back at the Trader Joe’s in Coolidge Corner.

Rejuvenated, we suddenly realized we were just a few steps away from the pastry shop recommended by our friend Laura.  Fortified by the sugar of a cornet con trufa (basically a chocolate ice cream cone) and a piece of chocolate cake, we practically raced to an Irish pub to catch the tail-end of the scoreless draw between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United.

The exciting last few minutes of that game proved a nice prelude to the main event for the evening: a trip to Camp Nou for the Barcelona-Málaga match.  For those of you who aren’t keeping up with La Liga, Barcelona are solidly in first place, with Málaga towards the bottom of the standings.  So were were expecting something of a rout.  And that’s what we got.

Scattered thoughts on the action:

- David Villa’s first touch is simply extravagant, no matter at what height or angle the ball reaches him.  With that sort of ball control, it’s not surprising that he’s already at 14 goals on the season.

- Barça’s aggressiveness is something to behold.  Even after they were up 3-0, they kept up the pressure on Málaga, with the whole team in Málaga’s half of the field whenever the ball was there.  This could prove risky against a good counter-attack, but Málaga’s never looked like doing much when they had the ball, so it was fun just to sit back and watch the Barça players kill themselves to get possession of the ball back after turnovers.

- The lack of selfishness among the Barça players is pretty fantastic to watch.  It’s much easier to be selfless, I suppose, when there are plenty of goals to go around.

But just as much as the sparkling action on the field, the trip to Camp Nou was thrilling for the atmosphere of the crowd.  Men and women, all ages, willing their team to victory.  I went to the bathroom midway through the first half (thereby missing David Villa’s first goal), and the concourse was completely empty – no one wanted to miss anything on the field.

This video gives you a sense of the pre-game atmosphere.

So – not a bad way to round out the trip.  We made an early-morning stop at La Boqueria on the next morning for a quick breakfast and some goodies (dried fruit, marzipan, clementines), then it was back to London.

Cheeses of England #6: Mature Iambor in a Coat

Way back in August I wrote about a fresh buffalo cheese (a fresh iambor) from Alham Wood Organics. Last week we got another small iambor, but this one was matured quite a bit more. Their website has this to say about it: "A matured version of the fresh cheese, when very ripe becomes runny inside, a cheeseboard cheese for the connoisseur. (Be careful you might want to eat it all at once!)." Mature is right. Not sharp mature like the bizarre orange cheese Danny wrote about it, but a smoldering mature. So mature that after about a week Danny refused to eat any more of it because it smelled so strong. Oh well, more for me! It was delicious melted on seeded bread with slices of pear and parsley, and just with pear by itself.

 

And just in case you're worried that all we've been eating are these bizarre buffalo and goats cheeses and not the more traditional English cheeses, let me reassure you that we always have a supply of delicious mature cheddar in the fridge as well. And in case you're worried that all we're doing is clogging our arteries with cheese, my next post is going to be about fruits and vegetables!

A long weekend in Barcelona, part 2

All right, the second day falls to me. No random photo today, as this post will be epic enough as it is.

After forgoing our original plan for a short run in favor of sleeping in, we headed out into another day of sunlight with plans of getting breakfast at the world-famous Mercat de la Bocqueria, which Danny neglected to mention we spent bunch of time drooling over the day before. But we were still quite full from dinner the night before (see photo of glistening pan of cheese in post below), so we headed back into the old city to explore the old Jewish Quarter, or Call. Obviously, all the Jews of Spain (my ancestors!) were kicked out in 1492 after living there for centuries, but the Jews of Barcelona mostly left after riots in 1391 (for more information, check out this quick review), and it seems that the city has only recently begun excavating some areas of the ancient Jewish neighborhood. We looked in at the ancient "Major Synagogue" that was excavated in the 1990's, bits of which are through to date back to the 1st century. You can see some good photos and read more information from the Call Association of Barcelona. Then we went to the small but informative Call interpretive center, where Danny was pleased to discover that he could mostly understand a Spanish exhibition on Shlomo ben Adret, a Medieval rabbi.

I should add that even though we were still full from dinner, we did manage to find room for a "breakfast" of chocolate churros that we purchased from a hole-in-the-wall churreria. And all I can say is, I fear for what would happen to my coronaries if we lived near this place. They were somehow chocolately, sugary, crispy and chewy all at the same time. We munched on them happily as we walked around the quiet, narrow streets of the Call. And on that note, it was almost spooky how quiet and chilly it was in this neighborhood. The streets are extremely narrow and winding, and the stone buildings rise 3 stories on either side, so almost no sunlight or noise seems to penetrate, at least in the morning. So it was quite a jolt to emerge from this neighborhood onto Passeig de Gràcia (see photos of Danny for instructive difference).

This day, we had decided, was to be our main Antoni Gaudí day, so from here we headed up Passeig de Gràcia, a wide street lined with orange trees and sidewalk cafés, to scout out some of Gaudi's famous houses before arriving at our final destination, the Sagrada Família. We feasted our eyes on Casa Batlló and Casa Milà and enjoyed the feeling on sun on our backs. After a quick lunch up in the perfectly-gridded and stately neighborhood of Eixample, we emptied our wallets to see the inside of Sagrada Família, Gaudi's most famous, though unfinished, creation. I won't go into the whole history (why should I when Wikipedia has already done it for me?), so I'll just stick to our opinions. I thought it was awesome. I loved the stark, raw emotion of the Passion façade. I wasn't as big a fan of the chaos of the Nativity Façade, but it reminded me of drip sandcastle, so that was cool. And the inside...to me that was the best part. The canopy of tree-like columns, the unbelievably bright colors streaming through the stained glass at sunset, the lack of anything gold-encrusted, it was all great. I also love catching glimpses of it from all over the city, towering over everything else...like a 7-tier wedding cake sitting in the middle of a table of cupcakes (not that there's anything wrong with cupcakes!). We'll have to go back in 30 years to see it when it's completed! Danny, ever the historian, also points out that seeing an unfinished cathedral is really nothing distinctive. All of the enormous, medieval cathedrals we take for granted today were, for long periods of time, unfinished simply because they took so long to build. So by going to Sagrada Família we can start to imagine what it was like during the creation of those cathedrals. History is magic!

















Okay, our hope was to complete the Gaudí tour with Parc Guell, but it was getting too late, so we settled for heading further north to the Gràcia district to explore and keep our noses open for more chocolat and churros. Gràcia used to be an independent town, and it certainly feels more maze-like and understated than Eixample. We stumbled into a lively square with a church on
one side and cafés on all the others, with a group of teenage boys kicking a soccer ball around the middle. It all felt very...Spanish. So even though there was no hot chocolate we decided to stay, and we settled for tea and a plate of patatas bravas. From there we ducked into a small wine bar that our book recommended, and my butchering of "tres creus" (the delicious red wine I ordered) prompted Danny to give me a helpful lesson in Spanish vowel sounds (bottom line: easier than French!).

From there we raced back to Granja Viader to try to get more hot chocolate before it closed, but sadly we were too late. After this disappointment, even though it wasn't even 9pm, we decided we were ready for dinner. After checking out a few menus, we settled on L'Antic Forn (the old oven), mostly because they advertised Calçots, which we had read about in our guidebook. Basically, these are large scallions/small leeks that are seasonal in this region and consumed "in massive quantities" from January-March. The traditional way to serve them is battered and fried. So we obviously ordered these (turns out they are also served with a spicy, creamy sauce!), and rounded it out with Spanish omelette, a veggie pizza for Danny and a plate of spinach with raisins and pine nuts for Becca. So full, but so worth it!

A long weekend in Barcelona, part 1

Following the advice of countless friends, we spent last weekend in sunny Barcelona.  After the gray gloom of the London winter, it was lovely to feel the sun’s rays for a few days.  Here’s a rundown of how we spent our time there.

Day 1

Compared to some of other early departures, this one was relatively leisurely.  An 8:45 flight out of Luton might sound bad, but there’s a train from Kentish Town which makes it a snap.

By the time we arrived in Barcelona, met the Australian-Catalan hotel manager who used to live in Coolidge Corner, and settled into our room, it was the traditional Spanish lunchtime, i.e. 2 PM.  As you might know, Spanish cuisine is heavy on… pig.  So we were slightly anxious about how we’d fare.  Fortunately, we had some vegetarian restaurant recommendations, including L’Hortet.  My Spanish is decent, but my Catalan is non-existent, so we were very appreciative of the waitress who patiently translated the menú del día into English for us.

Fideos!  Or ‘fideus’ in Catalan.  They were different from the crunchier fideos they serve at Oleana, but that’s a garlic sauce you see on top, so this was delicious.  As was the kefir (a thick, fermented yogurt) and crème catalan we had for dessert.

Our standard practice on arriving in a new city is to wander, somewhat aimlessly, to get a sense of how it all fits together.  So it was down La Rambla to the Monument a Colom (Columbus returned to Barcelona after his first voyage).  Then we walked along the waterfront for a bit, which provided the perfect opportunity for the obligatory photo in front of boats.

Next up was working our way through La Ribera towards Santa Maria del Mar.  Our guidebook said it was built about 60 years ago, but when you step inside, you quickly realize that the guidebook is wrong.  Twentieth-century churches rarely look like this:

Looks a lot like a Gothic church to me.  Here’s the actual story: the church was built in the 14th century (though an earthquake in the 15th century made reconstruction necessary).  In 1936, during the Spanish civil war, anti-clericalists set fire to the church and destroyed much of the interior decoration.  As a result, the interior these days is rather stark.

For what it’s worth, now seems as good a time as any to comment on the almost complete exclusion of Spanish (and Portuguese, for that matter) history from ‘mainstream’ historical scholarship on modern Europe.  I’m trained as a modern Europeanist, but I’m fairly certain that at no point in that training did I read a single book or article on Spain, and I have a feeling I’m not alone in that.  I haven’t thought too much about why this should be the case, but I’ve always been struck by this rather strange collective ignorance of a rather significant chunk of Europe.

“Enough of the historiographical critique!” you say.  Very well.  How about some photos of hot chocolate, then?

That’s more like it!  In Spain, people don’t have dinner until late in the evening, so we needed to tide ourselves over with something a little sweet.  It’s hard to get much better than hot chocolate and churros at Granja Viader, which has been serving them up (along with other milk-based goodies) since 1870.  Spanish hot chocolate is famous for being so thick that it’s almost a pudding – that spoon you see on the saucer is as much for eating the chocolate as it is for stirring in sugar to cut the bitterness.  I was still getting into the swing of things in terms of actually communicating in Spanish, so the giant dollop of whipped cream was a bit of a surprise, though by no means an unwelcome one.  As for the churros, let’s just say I have another weapon in my arsenal to break down Becca’s defense against us getting a deep-fryer someday.

Between the walking, the chocolate, and the churros, we were pretty exhausted by this point, so we went back to our room to take a nap before dinner.  After walking around L’Eixample a bit, we settled on Úbeda, in large part because their menu had 1) English translations and 2) lots of tasty-looking vegetarian tapas.  We weren’t expecting to have to make many actual choices at restaurants in Spain, but Úbeda provided the opportunity.  We settled on baby leeks gently cooked in rosemary oil, little (fava?) beans in an oil and mint sauce, a mixed salad with walnuts, fig jelly (which I studiously avoided), and goat cheese and, the pièce de resistance, melted provolone and oregano.  It was all so good that I forgot to take a photo until we were halfway through.  Note how the provolone is still glistening on the left.

Then it was off to bed to get as much sleep as possible for a busy Saturday, which Becca will tell you all about in the next post.