Ready, Steady Cook!

Yes, it is marmalade time of year again. Some of you may remember my efforts last year when I was still in our rented flat with no big pans, or other equipment to help me. Then I was given a bag of bitter oranges, so I couldn't resist the challenge to turn them into marmalade. This year I am better equipped with a new five ring hob, plus my pressure cooker and preserving pan so I set about finding some seville oranges. This proved much harder than I had expected. Any jam the Spanish make is very sweet, so they don't appreciate the use of bitter oranges to make orange jam or mermelada. I asked at all the market stalls in our village and at Turre, but none of them had any or were able to get any for me. I also asked at church and at my sewing group if anyone knew where I could get them, but to no avail. Two weeks ago I went back to a lady in our market called Josephina. I am beginning to get to know her because I buy most of my fruit and vegetables from her stall. She speaks no English so I dug deep in my head and found enough Spanish to ask her again for naranjas amargas (bitter oranges). She said 'No, no my oranges are very sweet' and proceeded to cut one up so I could taste it. I said how lovely it was and duly bought some of them, and then asked again for the bitter ones 'to make mermelada'. She shook her head, but at the time she was also talking with another lady who was speaking fluent Spanish, but I spoke to her in English and I realised she was actually English. I now know that she works as an interpreter. I told her that Josephina keeps giving me her oranges to taste how sweet they are, but I want bitter ones to make marmalade. They need to be bitter for the flavour, and to help it to set. So she then talked to Josephina again, and who tapped her head to show me she would try to remember to find some. I said I would come back the next week. So this Tuesday I again went to her stall, and she asked me 'Do you want oranges, yes?' I nodded and she went behind the stall and fetched me a carrier bag full of oranges. I couldn't tell if they were bitter ones but I thanked her profusely and asked 'How much?' She shook her head and said 'Nada. They are a gift. They are not good' I thanked her again and said I would take her some marmalade, but she scewed up her face. I think she thinks that will be bitter too! I weighed them when I got home and there were five kilos of them. So that afternoon I got on with making my marmalade. I only used three kilos and that filled my preserving pan to capacity. I pressure-cooked the fruit first which makes it very easy to shred the peel. This batch made twenty six pounds of marmalade. I shall be giving quite a bit away and selling some for our church funds, and of course keeping quite a bit for us. I may try using some more of the oranges to make a few jars of darker, thick, chunky cut marmalade for some friends at church who prefer it. I like mine shredded as fine as possible. At least if I ask Josephina again next year, she will have a better understanding of what I want and why.

I told you in my last blog about the new butcher in the village and the rather large chicken I bought from him. Well I roasted it on Sunday and it was beautiful. I stripped it down that night and put away five more meals for two people in the freezer, plus enough cold meat in the fridge for sandwiches the next night, and made a big pot of chicken and leek soup from the stock I made by boiling the carcass, so all in all it wasn't so expensive after all. At the same time as I bought the chicken I also asked him for some beef mince. There was none in view on the counter, but he leaned across and picked up some big lengths of very fat beef (probably from ribs), trimmed it up and minced it in front of me. It was a very coarse mincer and the fattest mince I have ever bought. It didn't look very appetizing, but I wasn't going to waste it so I put it in my slow-cooker with a little stock, added a chopped onion, and cooked it gently for a couple of hours. Then I strained it and left the juice to settle. I removed a whole cereal dishful of fat from this, and stirred the stock back into the meat. Again I froze three boxes of this for future use, and put the last portion in a dish with a suet pastry crust for our dinner and it was absolutely delicious and very, very tender. So although my first visit to the new butcher was not quite what I had expected, it turned out to be very worthwhile. Out here you just have to adapt, and not reject things because they are not like we had in England, and sometimes we are pleasantly surprised by the results.

While I was helping Chris to sweep up the yard this week, I saw this bug creeping across the path. As our dogs will eat anything that might possibly be food, I thought I had better move it in case it was poisonous to them, so I persuaded it to walk onto a stone, and tossed it over the back fence into the rambler. But first I took a photo of it. It was a handsome beastie with a black, segmented back and a pretty pink under belly. I have no idea what it is, but I think it must be larva for something.

A day out in Lorca

As most of you know, every Wednesday morning I go to a 'sewing' group in a little town called Turre, five minutes down the road from here. It is called a sewing group, but actually it is just a group of ladies from all over the area, who enjoy some sort of craft work. Some do cross-stitch, other embroidery, quilting or knitting, a few make cards and sometimes one or two make lace. I used to do my latest cross-stitch project but I now have my next lesson in lace-making each week. I have just finished my third project; a small lace circle that I can use to edge a cloth, or fix around a photo frame. I am quite pleased with it. It was a bit more complicted than the bookmarks, and I didn't do a fantastic job of joining it up, but hopefully I mastered the technique, and will do it better next time. Next week I am going to start on a square. I don't know yet whether this is a solid square, or a square edging, but Pam is bringing the pattern for me next time.

Anyway, this group also arranges a few social activities each year away from the hall where we meet. We had a lovely Christmas dinner together last month, and yesterday we went on a coach trip to Lorca market and shopping centre. We had a lovely little 23 seater coach. It was clean and comfortable, and had a huge front windscreen so we had a lovely view as we travelled along. Lorca is a town about an hour's drive down the motorway towards Murcia. It is renowned for it's large market just on the edge of the town. We had a couple of hours to wander around it. There were lots of clothes stalls. It looks a bit like a jumble sale in these pictures, but actually things were quite organised and it was just a case of rooting for the size you wanted. I love the line of 'legs' displaying thick tights and leggins. The Spanish, and some of the British, really feel the cold, and they wear these thick tights for much of the year. There were also quite a few jewellry stalls and I bought a triple string necklace purely to take apart and use the beads and 'dangles' as embellishments on my cards etc! It was only €4 and it would cost me a lot more than that to buy so many charms and beads. The fruit and vegetable stalls were well stocked with a much wider variety of goods than we get in our little market. It was s good day to be buying greens at this stall. Doesn't it look inviting, and it is all so lovely and fresh.

It was a bright sunny day but very, very windy, which made it rather cold. There was no shelter in the market so we sat at an outside stall and had hot chocolate with brandy in it to warm us up! These are my four friends, Yvonne (far left) who owns my local craft shop, Iris, Liz and Sylvia. I asked them all to pose for my blog. The wind got stronger and stronger during the morning and we were all glad we had decided not to leave our coats on the bus. We saw a big planter with a tree in it, blown across the sreet, and one group was caught in a whirlwind and their hair was full of dust and grit. But at least it wasn't raining!

At 1.00 we all got back on the coach and drove to the other side of Lorca to a new shopping mall that only opened about a year ago. Unfortunately this was just as the recession started to bite, so it was bad timing, and several units were unused. It was a lovely modern arrangement with rows of small shops in narrow alleys with wooden awnings to provide shade in the summer. Everything was bright colours and interesting shapes, unlike our long straight rows of shops in UK. There were stairs and escalators to an upper deck where there were mostly food outlets. (Needless to say there was a Burger King among them, but at least there was no McDonalds!) The floor was very shiny marble tiles, (they look wet in the photo but actually they are just highly polished), which must be quite slippery when it rains. Over it all there was a huge canvas awning on a long pole which waved back and forth in the wind in a rather alarming way. And beyond it all there was a beautiful vista of distant mountains. Our little group went into a Chinese restaurant for our lunch and I think it was the best Chinese I have ever had. There were fresh salads, eggs, prawns etc for starters, lots of ready cooked meats and vegetables in crispy batter, bowls of rice and noodles, and a huge choice of meats, fish and vegetables that they cooked for you in a wok or on the grill while you waited, so it was all piping hot. Then there were lots of fresh fruit and catalan creme for dessert. There was a sign that said 'You can come and chose as many times as wish, but please don't take food you cannot eat'. It was very quiet in there so there was no waiting around, and we had lots of little courses, and certainly ate our money's worth. It was also spotlessly clean and a very pleasant place to be. While we were in there, we watched all the tables and chairs outside get blown across the plazza and pile up outside the door. The manager had to try to stack them before anyone was injured. We had our meal from about 2.00 until 3.00, and as we were leaving, it was just starting to get busy. People eat at very odd times out here.
After lunch we went around the main shops to see what was in the sales. I bought a pretty top, and Yvonne bought some clothes and make-up. The whole centre was very very quiet. They must have been glad to see our little group arrive. I hope the economy picks up a bit soon. It would be a shame if now they are finally geting some more modern shops in the area, they all folded again from lack of trade. I really enjoyed the day, though I don't really miss having these sort of shops closer to home. Mostly I am happy to just go the supermarket and the little places in the village.

We have a new shop in Los Gallardos - a butcher - so I thought I would pay it a visit this morning. I knew it would be a bit dearer than the supermarket meat, but I like to support the village traders when I can. So I bought a whole chicken to roast on Sunday. It was a bit dearer than I had expected but when he gave it to me, it was also a bit heavier than I had expected. I looked at the ticket and found that it weighed 3.5 kg, that's about 7lbs! It's more like a small turkey. The chicken portions I buy out here are big, and one is always enough to do a dinner for both of us, but this time I think we'll be eating chicken all week, and all in all, it wasn't expensive at all!

And finally I can report a measure of progress on our road works. We have a new lamp right outside our house! It was on for the first time last night. It is brighter than the one we had before, but at the minute both lots are on. As you can see, we still have a set of paving blocks beside it, and the men are still about 100m up the road from us, but we live in hope that next week our paving will also be done.