Spanish food at home

 Hello, everyone.

Thanks to the very interesting YouTube channel Spain on a Fork  my repertoire of Spanish Tortilla has expanded beyond the basic tortilla de patata.

Today I tried making Tortilla Murciana de Verduras, which is not only delicious, it's also low-carb and suitable for Lenten Friday dinners. (Contains no meat.) 

This was so good! It includes bell peppers, onion, garlic, spinach, and Baby Bella mushrooms. 

Recap of Camino Primitivo: Lugo was a rest day

 Hello, everyone.

I think that Lugo was talked about with some detail in the en route posts. Today I will only put up some photos that I think were not in the first discussion.

Breakfast pastry and coffee the morning of our rest day. The pastry has vegetables in it, if I remember it correctly.

The game board from the Roman house museum. The ancient Roman house, or its successor buildings, had been used off and on almost continuously for well over 1000 years.

Wine with our dinner on the rest day. The little bit of pastry is the last of a "New Mother's Cake" which was custard and chocolate in a crust. Very tasty!

A small break from Camino posts

 Hello, everyone.

A couple of south Texas items:

A really pretty moth we saw on our porch:

Isn't he something?

And we had a cold snap, which meant covering tender plants and moving some inside.

The dragon fruit cactus, inside of a sheet. We also added
incandescent Christmas lights to it.

And to finish off, we saw a very bold squirrel at Bentsen Park a few days ago:

Can you see what he's holding in his right front paw?

Recap of Primitivo: Day 6 to Fonsagrada (updated: day 7)

 Hello, everyone.

We left Grandas de Salime heading down the road to Fonsagrada. The prior, en-route post showed some of the things we passed. 

We walked past more fans on this day. 

Another thing that we noticed was that, even though the days were getting shorter and chillier, there were many beautiful flowers and other plants.

Some blooming begonias

A stand of pretty mushrooms

It was fairly chilly that day. Not all of my layers of clothing are visible in this picture. The Buff was very helpful keeping my ears warm and preventing earaches.

In the prior post, there was a photo of the beef cheeks we ate for dinner that night. They were so good that we have learned how to do this at home.

Recap of Primitivo, day 5: Berducedo to Grandas de Salime (updated: day 6)

 Hello, everyone.

After a busy week-and-some, it's time to return to the Camino Primitivo walk.

We woke up in Berducedo and everything was enveloped in a cold fog. We bundled up and headed out. It was so foggy that when we passed windmills we couldn't see them. We did hear the WHOOMP WHOOMP sounds they make.

The fog lifted a little and after a couple or three kilometers we came to another albergue, which had an open bar/coffee shop. We settled in for some toast and coffee, the toast was oven made and huge and very welcome. We did meet some other pilgrims while there, a couple of ladies who arrived after we did. After enjoying a few words with each other, as we were through eating, we left, donning our huge blue ponchos and headed out into the cold again. This was probably the coldest day of the pilgrimage.

When the fog lifted we came to the descent to the famous dam: Embalse de Grandas de Salime, which seems to take its name from the nearby town of Grandas de Salime. The en-route post discussed the strong winds, I think. 

A view of the canyon from the top of the descent. The path left the road here, and went on "well marked forest paths"--clear path but not much in the way of forest due to a forest fire some years back--zigzagging down to the level of the dam, then returned to pavement to cross over and after that for quite some way. We elected to stay with the pavement when the path left it again as the grade was much more comfortable than the climb we saw from the road. We did, of course, keep well to the left of the road and walk single file on the twisty pavement into the town.

These are some more photos from their Ethnographic Museum there. 

A detail shot of the traditional footwear of the region, which is both elevated above the mud and water resistant.

And a look at some of the soda factory equipment from the past. 

The church in the town was under major refurbishment. As it was now past October 15, very few places to stay were open. We slept in the albergue at the entrance to the town. They have a kitchen and a good-sized eating area. 

Recap of Primitivo, Days 3 and 4 (updated: Days 4 and 5)

 Hello, everyone.

Today, since much of what was to be said about the walk to Campiello has already been said, I thought I would combine that with the following day from Campiello over the Hospitales route to Berducedo.

First off, the walk to Campiello was deliberately a short day. We got there about noon and immediately had a coffee with a egg-and-chorizo bocadillo tapa. Then we got with the people about a bed to sleep in and the washing protocols (bought tokens) and got after the laundry. Then we had a snack of "seafood-rice salad" from their little grocery and finished off the laundry. At suppertime we ate a pizza in their cafe and also got jamon and cheese bocadillos for the next day's picnic lunch. These turned out to be huge.

A bit of scenery after leaving Tineo. (By the way, Tineo had installed street lights on the walking trail out of town. By the time we ran out of lights there was starting to be walking light from the sky.)

I think pictures from the Albergue Casa Ricardo in Campiello have already been included in the en-route post about this stage.

The next morning, we left before actual light, but there was no traffic on the road and we were able to follow it.

The sun came up while we were walking. (Actually that tends to happen with us. Even more so when we walked this time, into the shortening days.) 

We passed through Borres and didn't locate the little bar. Well, we passed it, but after considerable discussion didn't try the door to see if it was actually open or not. After Borres we came to the split in the routes. A number of the people who were walking at that time had mentioned that they were going to take the low route, as it has a lot more facilities en route. They were still going to end up in Berducedo, probably as there is precious little in the way of lodging along this stage this year. (I think there may have been an option to sleep in Pola de Allande on the low route, but as we took the other one it didn't matter to us.) The low route has more kilometers and, significantly for us, a lot more climbs and descents according to the information we had. We went the high way because once we got up there is would be mostly ridge walking. Which is fairly even. And it was.

Y'all will note that while there is a real slope here, the trail isn't sloping a whole lot.

That little grove of trees in the background, and the famous ruins, are about the only place one could take shelter from a big wind up there. And with the said wind, the pine branches might fall on one's head. Other than that, it's a whole lot of open area.

This is an interesting bug that we saw along the way that day. It looked a bit like it was laying eggs in the grass. We had never seen this critter before.

Later we passed along the very dooryard of a farm in the hills, large friendly dog there, and through the village of Lagos, lovely water fountain at the church, no bars at all, and arrived 5:30 in the evening at Berducedo, for a 30 kilometer day. We were so tired. We ate the remnants of our bocadillo picnic sandwiches (most of them, we had only nibbled at lunchtime) for dinner along with a bottle of Spanish wine from the little grocery there and went to bed.

Recap of Camino Primitivo, Day 3

 Hello everyone. I had located photos for this day of travel at the same time as I located photos for the previous day of travel, so I thought I would get after it and make the post for the walk from Salas to Tineo.

One initial thought: apparently the meal served at the albergue in Salas was vegan. It had no meat, no cheese, and while there was some rice in the vegetable soup, there was no bean element so no complete protein at all. And it was awfully low fat for people who are hiking all day. I completely ran out of energy and hit the wall around 2 hours into our walk. But we made it into Tineo and it wasn't super late in the day after all. Though we did arrive during siesta time so not much was open until later.

This was part of the path towards Tineo.

We also passed black raspberry plants, some of the berries ripe, but didn't take pictures of them. The berry I ate had a sort of dark, musky flavor. (Pick your wild berry above the height of doggy investigations if you try one! Just saying.) I never picked a berry that appeared to be under cultivation, as that would be an utterly tacky thing to do.

We passed an amazing growth of mushrooms along the way. They appeared to be growing on the roots of some dead trees.

This sundial is on the outskirts of Tineo, along the hiking path. There is actually a sort of "parks belt" along there before you enter the town. The whole town is clinging to the side of a mountain/huge hill and they also have at least one terrace below the nearby street that is used for a vegetable garden by someone there. I saw large plants that looked like asparagus, busy storing up energy to turn into lovely spears in the spring. The little bar we were sitting at, through a little tunnel across the square from the Palacio de Meras, and on the left, had terrace seating with a beautiful view of the town. Also very tasty croquetas for a snack.

We stayed in the albergue space of the Palacio de Meras hotel which was quite nice. You go to the main entrance and ask and they check you in. Also ask for your sello! I did and DH forgot, so for that day I have 2 stamps and he has one (the little church dedicated to SS Saturnino and Justino I think their names were.) The albergue space there has little 4-bed (2 bunk-stack) cubicles with a heavy curtain across the door to somewhat contain the sounds of snorers. I remember lockers and electric plugs, too. The hotel offers a pilgrims' meal at I think 8 pm, for an extra fee.

We had a (really big) hamburger in their bar for dinner. Very nicely done and filling, too. We didn't think that we could do justice to a full 3 course pilgrims' meal so skipped that option.