Habas con Jamon, by Yaiza
My parents grew Broad Beans out in the garden of my childhood but never did we make anything as interesting as Habas con Jamon with those beans ...
Today Yaiza had to use water for the final part of the preparation. That would be instead of beer or white wine but still ... it was delicious.
Thank you to Yaiza who patiently taught me these recipes, and put up with my camera, and with my constant note-taking too. Details were recorded and my big hope is that I can recreate tonight's dishes next week.
Learning to Cook Spanish Food
Today I learned how to cook 3 different Spanish dishes ...
Yaiza came over, armed with the ingredients I didn't have, and showed me how to create a delicious Tortilla. And an Aioli sauce that is so divine I'm not sure how it won't be on the menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Or that's what everyone was saying as they handed the pot of it round the table.
Then there was the Habas con Jamon ... and I was left wondering how it was that New Zealanders could have failed to create that dish with their Broad Beans and ham??? Then, as the final touch, Picaillo. A divine salad, small pieces of boiled potato and eggs, cherry tomatoes, green beans, and tuna.
And oil.
So much oil but it was truly divine.
Tonight I'm realising how much I missed in life due to my mother not knowing to send us out into the world - to the beach, the forest, or simply 'out', with a package of cold Tortilla to save us from hunger and associated horrors. Ithink my childhood might have been that much happier if my mother had copied the Spanish mothers and done this simple thing.
Oh my ...it was all so good. Here is a close-up of the two Tortilla's created here in my kitchen. More of this Spanish cooking is planned.
Today ...
Today is all about creating ... text for the workshop descriptions, and more text for the Newsletter I'll be sending out soon.
Then I want to process Federico's photographs from those days in Genova. And I have a range of interviews almost ready to publish. And some more to transcribe.
But that photography workshop last Sunday ... it's still making me smile. Ellen sent this photograph she took of Anna.
That Photography Workshop for Women Last Sunday ...
I led a photography workshop for women on Sunday and all I can tell you is that I absolutely loved it.
My intention was to introduce this small group of women to their cameras ... so that they understood how to use their cameras off Auto, how to work with light and take the best possible photographs.
But I need to mention how much fun it is to bring women together. It's always so powerful somehow. There's a different kind of energy that flies between us all. There are the conversations over lunch, and the curiousity about each others lives, the sharing ...
I know that part of the pleasure I get from putting these workshops together is simply about the people I get spend time with. Remarkable souls.
Anne Lamott, writing from the last Saturday of her 50s.
This is the last Saturday of my fifties. The needle isn't moving to the left or to the right. I don't feel or look 60. I don't feel any age. I have a near-perfect life. However, I grew up on tennis courts and beaches in California during the sixties, where we put baby oil on our skin to deepen the tan, and we got hundreds of sunburns. So maybe that was not ideal. I drank a lot and took a lot of drugs and smoked two packs of Camels (unfiltered) a day until I was 32. I had a baby and then forgot to work out, so things did not get firmer, and higher. So again, not ideal.
My heart is not any age. It is a baby, an elder, a dog, a cat, divine.
My feet, however, frequently hurt.
My skin broke out last week. I filed a new brief with the Fairness Commission, and am waiting to hear back.
My great blessing is the capacity for radical silliness, and self-care.
I'm pretty spaced out. . I don't love how often I bend in to pull out clean wet clothes from the washer, and stand up, having forgotten that I opened the dryer that's above, and smash my head on the door once again. I don't know what the solution to this is, as I refuse to start wearing a helmet indoors. I don't love that I left my engine running for an hour last week, because I came inside to get something, and then got distracted by the dogs, and didn't remember I'd left the engine on. It was a tiny bit scary when a neighbor came to the front door to mention this, and I had to feign nonchalance, and act like it was exactly what I had meant to do all along.
Anne Lamott, an extract from her Facebook post.