Zorionak

Christmas holidays are serious in the Basque Country-lots of time off, lots of eating and drinking. When not catching up on various projects, F and I have been making the rounds-visiting with his family and friends and eating extremely well. So well, in fact, that it may be time for Conversations With Your Pancreas:
Pancreas: You can't live on marzipan, you know.

Self: Fine then, we'll throw in some chocolate for balance (there is a Christmas-specific chocolate here that is wrapped in gold foil with the tag line "hecho de tus sueños" <made of your dreams> and it is kind of like a thick Nestle's Crunch bar, if Nestle's Crunches were crafted in cauldrons made of hammered narwhal tusks and mixed with diamond-coated whisks by immortal gold-crown wearing noble centaurs...which is to say the pancreas has no chance here)

Pancreas: Fine, then-won't cut out the sugar? Then chronic facial dermatitis it is, then. 

While hanging out with a friend of F's who lives in Catalunya, near Barcelona, we learned that the Catalans have a really interesting version of Santa Claus-to file under 'they do things different over there.' They make a little creature out of a log-they put a couple legs on it, with eyes and nose and a mouth-and they put a blanket on it at night and leave food for it starting around the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and continuing through the holiday season. The expectation is that it will (sorry to be crude) poop presents. Not iPads, mind you, but like, nuts and candies and such. They even have a song in which they hit the log with sticks and entreat it to poop candy, else they will hit it more. I can't imagine why this hasn't caught on elsewhere...
So anyway yeah, it's sheep milk season here (see baby sheep), which means...mamia. This is a Basque dessert made of fermented sheep's milk-it is delicious and will send you straight to naptime. Like we needed more desserts over here.
We recently went to the local science museum, which inexplicably has probably 20 or so very detailed scale models of Basque buildings in its front yard. Kind of surreal, but neat. Otherwise I have been somewhat remiss in my photographing duties so here are some dormant sycamores outside a sagardotegia (cider house) that I see on my regular walk, and a couple pics from a hike we went on a while back-would you trust the water from this fountain?
Wishing you and yours a most excellent New Year, and hope you have no nightmares now about pooping logs...

Santo Tomas

  The start of Saint Thomas' festival was announced yesterday by a bunch of students at our institute in traditional baserritar (19th-century Basque farmer oufits) yelling the irrintzi and playing the trikitixa (accordion) while they paraded out of the building with a big Olentzero (Basque Santa Claus) doll at 11 in the morning. Officially a way to commemorate the day that farmers came to town to pay the rent, it is now a kind of Basque Pride day, with lots of traditional arts, including eating and drinking and partying down in the rain.The Old Part of Donosti was totally packed, with people forming long lines to buy talo and txistorra-corn bread and sausage-along with cheeses, honey, Basque Cake, hard cider, and all manner of Christmas pastries. There were people selling crafts, including hand-made pelota balls. Pelota is what they call Jai Alai here-Jai Alai actually means 'happy party' in Euskara-and instead of using baskets for hurling the ball here, they usually hit it with their hands. It's crazy, but very popular, and people bet a lot of money on pelota games. There were a couple guys playing the txalaparta, which was a couple people hitting wooden blocks with sticks, and which was originally used to communicate messages between the mountains.

At some point I've got to be Donosti's Bill Cunningham and get a picture of this Anthony Bourdain look-alike from Avenida Madrid (Bourdain has gone on the record as saying that yeah, Barcelona's ok, but Donosti is where he wants to be in the end) as well as this lady I routinely see on the train who has the most impressive hair sculpture. evah. But we will save the non-baserritar style for non-festival days.

Zombies Ate My Cupcakes

This is an actual cookbook that is currently available for purchase. The review says that it has recipes for Marzipan Beetles and Gingerbread Tombstones. Sounds like Christmas cookies to me! It also says "If Ozzie Osborne made cupcakes, this would be the result."  I've been waiting so long for this! I knew Lily Vanilli would come out with another one eventually...

Chateau D'Abbadia

We had most of last week off and so we took an excursion. Just hopped on the train and after a little more than half an hour, and lots of near-comical Basque town signs later, we were in the French Republic. Hendaia is still the Basque Country, but people speak a different dialect of Euskara, and fewer people know it there than where we live. We were just across the river from Hondarribia, which is in the Spanish state-where you would never know you were right on the border because there isn't much signage in French-but in Hendaia, there's a lot of stuff written in Spanish-you can get paid a lot more to work in France, and the real estate is equal or less than what you pay here, so there are a lot of Spanish citizens who decide to learn French and improve their fortune. You also see the same calls for Basque independence from the Spanish state as you see on the other side of the border. Interestingly, all the train tracks built in the Spanish state during the time of Franco are a different width than those built in other parts of Europe-to prevent invading armies from getting supplies through. If you're taking an older track you have to stop at the border so they can fit an adapter to your train so you can cross. We walked along the coast of Hendaia, where there are many campsites and places to stay for summer vacation, and on to the Chateau Abbadie.

The castle was built relatively recently-in the late 1800s-by Antoine D'Abbadie. He was an interesting guy -born to aristocratic parents, his father was from Zuberoa (which is a Basque province known in French as Soule) and his mother was Irish. During his life he was an astronomer, anthropologist, and linguist. He spent a number of years in Ethiopia as well as the Middle East and Brazil. He had his own observatory, which was functional well into the 1970s, where he and his colleagues took manual observations with a telescope that is still at the castle, and made calculations to map the stars. The castle is now administered by the French Academy of Sciences, which recently restored the interior over a period of ten years. You're not allowed to photograph the inside, but there is a virtual tour online that I recommend. The place is just absolutely bananas-there are a lot of very detailed paintings of Ethiopian life, with springbok heads and ornate hand-painted wallpaper in Ethiopian patterns. The furniture is all heavy tropical wood with intricate carvings, and everything is symbolic-either from Catholicism, Ethiopia, the Arab world, or Ireland. All the rooms had fireplaces and gorgeous furniture that was all done up with marquetry or whatever. It's hard to imagine why the rich folks now living would ever put up with cruddy Prada stuff in light of what it used to mean to be wealthy. I mean, the craftsmanship was just ridiculous. Abbadie was buds with Napoleon, who stayed in the Emperor's bedroom, and the family had their own personal chapel, where Antoine and his wife were buried. The castle overlooks the sea and the exterior is ornamented with all kinds of stone animals- snakes, snails, elephants, crocodiles, cats, and conch shells. Anybody who visits will be going to see this place because I want to go back...
Pictures I wish I had taken this week: Bolivian woman in downtown Donostia wearing a traditional bowler hat and an iridescent (I am talking about Little Mermaid Blue) dress of her own design. Very inauspicious among all the elegant European ladies. A flock of 40 snow-white egrets-at first I saw them through the trees with a herd of sheep, and for a second, it looked like the sheep were flying. An ad in a bank window with a picture of a Sean Connery look-alike with a jovial expression at the helm of a ship with the caption "Retire like a German..bank with Caja Laboral." Do Germans all get boats when they retire? I want to know.

Auténtico Crack

So the other day my favorite cooking show host David De Jorge hosted a segment that included the North American staple peanut butter, which features prominently in his weekly segment "Guarrindongadas," which is slang for food nastiness (example: chocolate donut sandwich with ham, chorizo, and mayo). I thought this recipe was kind of clever, so I translated it here. Is it "auténtico crack" (yes, that's exactly what it sounds like)? You decide.

Peanut Liquor


8 ounces water
3 1/4 cups milk
7 Tbsp. peanut butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 pinch of cocoa powder
1 pinch of salt
1/4 cup of good rum
Bring the water and milk to a boil, then add the rest of the ingredients, save the rum, leaving it on the burner for a couple of minutes.
Put the mixture into a blender and add the rum, mix.
Keep refrigerated.