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 Blueberries and cherries and strawberries have been replaced by apples and funny-shaped pears.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.

Great cinema, or best cinema?

Hola, amigos! Or, as I should really say, Hola, amics! Danny and I have just returned from two and a half days in Barcelona, and a quick look at my photos suggests that we spend the entire time eating, walking, and looking at buildings designed by Gaudi, which I would say is pretty accurate. We were very happy to have 3 beautiful sunny days in Spain, even if the country does have the second highest pork consumption per capita (behind....Denmark). More on Barcelona later, I just wanted to do a belated description of the most awesome movie cinema I've ever been to. But first, our random photo of the day:


Some say it can't be done, but Danny and I have proven again and again to doubting friends that you can make a good vegetarian french onion soup! There's no real secret, just substitute veggie broth for the beef broth; the soup is really made delicious by the caramelized onions and the melted gruyere on toast. Almost hidden behind this oversized bowl of soup is a bowl of actual salad - our first green salad in a month, it seems! By some miracle, one of the organic grocers at the farmers market was still selling lettuce and purslane, so we were lucky enough to get fresh greens in January. Delightful! Also equalized the fattyness of the melted cheese, right?

But on to the Electric Cinema, where last week we saw everyone's favorite Harry Potter/Pride and Prejudice/Australian actor mashup: The King's Speech. We loved the movie - great acting, great dialogue, jokes about England, and a chance to see Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett happily reunited on screen (if just for a few seconds). The film was aided by the fact that we were sitting in large, leather chairs, sipping wine and munching on pita and hummus.

The Electric Cinema in Notting Hill (yes, that Notting Hill) just has one screen, with about one hundred seats, all soft leather armchairs. In the back there is a bar where you can get beer, wine, and delicacies such as a cheese plate or pita and hummus that are never to be found at your average movie theater. If you book early enough, for an extra fee you can reserve one of the two-seater sofas at the back of the theater - good for scary movies that provoke cuddling. And kindly, the first three rows are a little cheaper than the better seats, so by sitting in the front row we probably got the cheapest movie tickets in London, but because we were sitting in armchairs having to gaze upwards was no problem at all. It felt like a very civilized way to spend a Monday night.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2011, everyone!

Unfortunately for you internet addicts out there, our new years resolution was clearly not to blog more often, seeing as we're over a week into the 2011 and we haven't blogged once. So I thought I'd give you a quick update on what we've been doing. But first, RPOTD:

We had dinner with our landlords, and I made this French apple tart for dessert. Recipe is here, on Joy of Baking.com. It was nice and apple-y, not overwhelmed with sweetness or buttery-ness.

So let's see....unmentioned activities of late have included a Boxing Day rugby match at Wembley, courtesy of our friend Lianna who won the tickets in a raffle. It was the Wasps vs. Saracens, both of which are London teams. Because it was Boxing day, and because there were musical entertainers as well, the atmosphere was more family-friendly than rowdy, though it was so cold I wouldn't have been upset if someone had started a bonfire in the stands. We also discovered that although we know the general game-play of rugby, the individual rules about fouls are beyond us, plus it's pretty hard to see what going on in the middle of a scrum or ruck, so there were some parts of the game when we got a little lost. But overall it was a good time, and during halftime a member of the audience, participating in a classic half-time kick challenge, hit the crossbar from about 30 yards out, winning £250,000. amazing! For anyone who is interested, Saracens won 13-6.

Between Christmas and New Years there wasn't too much going on, but we did have the pleasure of getting together with two other expat Swatties, Ele and Jeff, who have recently moved to Oxford. We checked out the Christmas market at Hyde Park, which was bigger than the market in Scotland and had more rides, but it was somewhat lacking in charm (since when are haunted houses traditional Christmas entertainment?). But it was not lacking in warming beverages and french fries in paper cones, so it was overall a good experience. Then we went to the Tate Britain (British art from 1500), which is most famous for its collection of paintings by JMW Turner, and we managed to get about halfway through before museum-foot set in. Then Ele and I did a lot of reminiscing about playing soccer and lacrosse at Swarthmore, and we all headed home to put our feet up.

New Years Eve proceeded in typical New Years Eve party fashion, except this one included a German brother-of-a-friend-of-a-friend setting off fireworks in our host's backyard, which was exciting. We spend the next day recovering and making an enormous pot of veggie chilli.

The next day we got together with another Swattie, yay! Our friend Abigail, who is currently working for the US State Department in an undisclosed location (okay, it's Jordan, but isn't it cooler to think it's top secret???) decided last minute to come to London with her "beau", and we met up with them at the British Museum to catch up and look at old things. The British Museum is really an amazing collection of artifacts from all over the world...some possibly ill-gotten marble statues from the Parthenon, a huge supply of Egyptian mummies, and piles of ancient coins and armor and pots that were literally found in people's backyards all over England.

After the British Museum we split up - Abigail and Tony went to the Tower of London, and we'd both already been there - and we got lunch in Covent Garden then went to the London Transport Museum, which is way more awesome than it sounds (although admit it...to a lot of you this sounds really awesome). I'll spare you the details on the history of the Tube and the bus (short version...when the bus first started it was pulled by horses, and they shat a lot), but here are some cool images we came across.








The first is a sketch of Archway in 1823, which is now a busy tube station and bus interchange right near where we live, and the other is essentially an advertisement from 1907 for our neighborhood and surrounding "suburbs", which are now soundly in the middle of London.


Last week was just a usual work week. Danny went to the archives and I went to my office at the LSHTM. I thought a lot about keywords and journal databases, and Danny thought about religious broadcasting on the BBC. We cooked vegetables.

Oh! just kidding, last week was not just a usual work week...it was the week that England won The Ashes in Australia for the first time in 24 years! And they didn't just win, it was an absolute crush job. So last week was a bit of a blur, because the matches didn't start until 11pm GMT, and we stayed up late watching every night. And I killed time before they started by engrossing myself in Pride and Prejudice (yay for old classics free on Kindle!) and The Magicians, an "urban fantasy" book that John lent me when I was back in Boston. Kind of a Harry Potter meets Narnia, but set in the US, and with sex and drugs. A fun and engrossing read.

This weekend we furiously set about trying to check things off our ginormous list of things to do in London. Places we hit up:

Apsley House, former residence of the 8 Dukes of Wellington, that now has an impressive collection of things and artwork that were given to the Dukes over the years. Basically, the first Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon on multiple occasions, which caused most nation-states of Europe to shower him with riches. Highlights of the collection included a sword that belonged to Napoleon, The Waterseller of Seville, and multiple detailed, if inaccurate, paintings of the Battle of Waterloo.

Harrods. Again. But this time we were drawn there by some gift certificates we each had. Plus there are massive sales going on in every store in London at the moment, so this is the one time of year we can actually afford anything there. I got some cute green shoes and Danny got a luxurious cashmere scarf.

The Brick Lane/Shoreditch area. This was today's expedition. Our original intention was to check out some of the markets and shops in this artsy neighborhood, as well as one or two small museums that are in the area, but we got a late start and were totally overwhelmed by the markets, so we decided to save the museums for another day. We started with Old Spitalfields Market, which hosts dozens of stalls of funky clothing, old books, and hand-crafted jewelry and accessories, all surrounded by restaurants and cafes. I got a skirt that has owl-printed fabric in the pleats (bird-patterned clothing purchase number two of this year!), and I bought it directly from the designer/maker, which was cool. Next we checked out the Christ Church Spitalfield's, which was built in the mid-18th century in an effort to provide more churches to the "godless" immigrants who were rapidly filling London's east end. Funny how Christians always thought of Jews as godless...

Our next destination was Brick Lane Beigel Bakery, which was just a few blocks up Brick Lane, but it took us about 45 minutes to get there because we were drawn in by lots of used clothing shops, artisanal tee-shirts booths, and stands selling fresh noodles and veggie buns. Danny searched for a classy jacket that would fit his shoulders properly, but alas. Also, I've also never been accosted by so many people advertising their curry houses. The beigel (yes, that's how they spell bagel) shop was a bit disappointing...it's supposed to be one of the best in London, but the bagels just tasted like a Lenders bagel. Oh well...we'll be back to Kupel's in a few months! Then we spent some time exploring the side streets and seeing the Columbia Road flower market close up for the day. Overall the neighborhood has some cool little shops (including one where we bought some Sicilian oranges and home-made jam), but I wouldn't describe it as "gentle", as this New York Times article did.

Okay, I think that just about brings us up to speed. And speaking of speed, in case you didn't know, Danny and I are running a half-marathon in June when we get back to the states, so we've also been running a lot lately. Expect some running-focused blog posts in the upcoming future! Here's a running-related photo to tide you over:


Self-inflicted by repeated kicking, or tendon re-attatchment surgery? You be the judge...