The weekend: Saturday

We had a lovely day on Saturday when we went to visit Matt´s dad and Carolina. I enjoy visits to Nava as Carolina always makes us lots of tasty food. This time it was avocado vinaigrette, followed by courgette flan, potato and beetroot mash and French beans (all of the main course came from their garden), and for desert a piece of cooling melon, which was perfect as it had turned into a very hot day from a cloudy start. We also had something very interesting to drink which was some posh lemonade by Minute Maid (part of the Coca-cola company, unfortunately), made with lemon juice and pulp, sugar - no nasty sweeteners - does everybody know where aspartame comes from? No? Well I´m going to go off on a tangent here, so sit down, make yourself comfortable and I´ll tell you story:

Once upon a time some very clever scientists in the United States were developing a pesticide to kill all those horrible bugs that live on our fresh fruit and vegetables. One day, one of the clever scientists was going about his work and accidentally tasted the pesticide. Well, wasn't he surprised to discover that is was very sweet and tasted just lovely. So, the clever scientist got together with all the other clever scientists and decided that it would be a very good idea if they could sell the pesticide, which they decided to call aspartame, to drinks and food companies as an artificial sweetener. However, first of all, they had to ask the government for permission to do this. Now, the nasty government said "hang on a minute, you want to let people eat and drink a pesticide? We don´t think that this is a very good idea." So the poor scientists carried on their work with pesticides and put the aspartame plan to the back of their minds, but did not forget it. They were waiting for the opportune moment. A few years later this moment came. The people had decided that they didn't want the nasty old government any more but that an old film star was a much better idea for a president. The clever scientists were very excited about this as they had some friends who were friends with the film star. So they went to the government with their brilliant aspartame plan and this time the government thought it was an excellent idea and said "Well done, you clever scientists you. Of course you can sell aspartame as a sweetener and make yourselves and our companies a disgusting amount of money. Did someone mention cancer? No, I didn't think so". And so the clever scientists were given permission to sell their wonderful product, nobody got fat or lost their teeth any more, and everyone made a fortune and lived happily ever after.


And that, dear reader is the story of how aspartame came to our dinner table.


Anyway, to get back to this delicious lemonade. What made it extra special - apart from the lack of aspartame - was a the tiniest touch of spearmint. It was scrummy, and next time I have a spare few minutes I shall try and make some myself, although getting hold of spearmint might be difficult. I wonder if the peppermint from our garden would work instead?


So, we had a very tasty lunch and then went to a ´Medieval Market´being held in a village down the road. It was the usual fare, although I would've liked to have had my camera with me as there were people spinning wool and making silk and others in traditional dress doing Asturian dancing. There were lots of stalls with hand-carved wood and a mirror took my fancy until I saw the price. So we satisfied ourselves with a loaf of bread and some rather fine home-made, wood-smoked cheese which we had for dinner along with other bits and bobs, including Matt's own red tomato and ginger chutney, when we finally got home. We downed it all with (what I later discovered was) almost a full bottle of Lidl´s finest fino (a bargain at €1.49).


Saturday's dinner

Coming soon - 'The weekend: Sunday - John Mayall and The Bluesbrakers'

Birthday weekend

I had a full, but happy birthday weekend. I managed to escape from work at 6.30 on Friday to meet my Mum, Keith, her partner, and Matt and we went straight to the house my mum has in a hamlet near here for the weekend.

We had a tasty dinner of home grown broad beans and new potatoes, with a herb omelette made with fresh, free-range eggs from our neighbour, washed down with some very quaffable red wine that they'd brought from France.

Saturday morning we went up the Peña Mayor, and it was cloudy, again. I keep saying that the next time I do it, it'll be with clear skies but I haven't made it yet. We only did part of the walk as the meadows were covered with 'viscious' horned cows - my mum has a slight bovine-taurine phobia since she was chased by a bull years ago - so we turned back once the cows became too numerous, mum looking over her shoulder just to make sure we weren't being followed by the beasts. To be fair, there were so many cow bells ringing it did sound as though we were carefully being stalked and surrounded. The effect was heightened by the birds circling low, overhead - I think they were of the same type we saw last time, eagles or possibly vultures we think; we've been speaking to people in the know and you get griffon and Egyptian vultures in the area, as well as golden, short-toed and booted eagles.


Horse and foal on the Peña Mayor - the meadows were full of horses and their young.



A nosy calf - this my mother could handle - no horns yet!



One cow too many - this was when we had to turn back.

Anyway, we eventually made our escape down the mountain, unharmed, you'll be pleased to know, and completed our Saturday with a piggy lunch at the local bar near the house, where Keith was invited to join in with the locals chess game - he politely declined saying to us he'd never known a game of chess to be so loud - and we went back to the house for a relaxing afternoon on the terrace.


The hamlet taken on our way back from lunch.


We awoke on the Sunday to bright sun - perfect for the Peña Mayor if only we hadn't already been up there the day before. So we decided to go to the beach and spent the afternoon at Vega. I had been looking forward to a doze in the sun but we spent it jumping waves, walking along the beach and finding unusual stones - the geology of the area is quite interesting, even for someone like me who normally takes little interest in that sort of thing - and there are all types of rocks and stones on the beach in as many colours as you can imagine with lots of blue-green coppery shades mixed with deep red sandstone and seams of white marble in jet-black rock.

When we finally made it back home after dropping mum and Keith off at her house for their last night we were too tired to do much celebrating. We poshed up a simple pasta dinner with a bottle of something sparkling, then watched James and the Giant Peach on DVD before going to bed.


A birthday tipple.


I'd left the boxes of books in the kitchen to be dealt with on Monday morning and I've just about got them all squeezed into the office now. Unpacking them was great, I kept discovering books I'd forgotten about and would squeal or "ooh" and "ahh" with glee whenever I came across one. I now also have a good stock of new books from Amazon that should keep me going for a fair while too.




Elbi investigating my books - she had to be removed when the nibbling started.

Early birthday treats

I´m terribly excited at the moment. My mum is coming tomorrow for a weekend visit. Now the visit in itself is excitement enough, but this one is special. She´s coming from Wales via her house in France with all my books that we couldn´t bring over here when we first moved and that have been stored there (France) for the past two years, plus a couple of packages from Amazon that I had sent to her in Wales (for free, instead of paying horendous prices to have them sent here). So not only do I get to be reunited with some old friends (mostly Spanish history books) but I get to drool over lots of new, virgin paperbacks. What´s even better is that two and a half years ago, when packing to come here, I stuffed a few odds and ends in with the books in the small gaps that you get when you pack unevenly sized books into boxes. As it was so long ago, I can´t quite remember what I put in there so there´ll be a few pleasant surprises when I open them up - just in time for my birthday on Sunday.

Happy Birthday Mum!

My mum is 60 today, so happy birthday mum, have a lovely day! Deciding on a present was difficult, but my sister came up with idea of getting our photos taken professionally - her together with my niece in the UK, and me here. Great idea I thought and off I went to a photographer in a town up the valley. He was very friendly, but I absolutely hate having my photo taken, especially in a situation like that - just me, star of the show, in the limelight, ugh. I'm completely incapable of posing for the camera - it always seems so unnatural - and spent an excruciating 60 minutes trying to find a pose that would produce a photo good enough to send. The good news is that I did manage it - eventually, the photographer got me talking about my cats and I started to relax (yes, I know, I'm turning into a mad old cat lady before my time) and my mum loved the photo; it even produced some tears so it must've been good. However, I should've warned her not to expect another one on her 70th! I don't intend to go through that again, I shall have to start thinking now about an alternative gift. Any ideas?