Rainy season, Amazon, and preparations for the Christmas market.

We always have a rainy season here, and it´s a common joke that it lasts for 9 months of the year. In reality though November is often pretty wet, this year though the rain has started a bit early and has left us with  a dozen jobs that really need attention outside, including firewood which we are only halfway to chopping and storing. It doesn´t do to bank on normal weather patterns when in truth there is no such thing as normal.

Steve has just gone to collect an Amazon parcel from town, we have never been able to persuade them to deliver to the house, in fact they insist that the house doesn´t exist. We have tried persuasion and threats all to no avail, so off we go into town to rendezvous with with delivery drivers in cafes and car parks, somehow it rather defeats the object of internet shopping. The right thing to do would be not shop on Amazon, but they are so useful we have never been able to hold out for long. Such is modern life I guess, but all the same I am grateful don't  do that much shopping, internet or otherwise.

Our washing machine broke down at the weekend, yet another link to the commercial world. The repair man is coming tomorrow, simple life or no I am not wanting to wash everything by hand.

I am having a stall once again at the Christmas Market of a friend, I rarely sell much, and it is always cold but we generally have a good time. It is kind of a tradition now. Normally I take way too much stuff so this time I plan on taking cowls only in lots of different colours . We will see how they do.

The walnuts are going down though I have to confess to being slightly fed up of putting walnuts in everything. Any way all last years are out of the barn now and in the pantry so I shouldn't forget them.

Weekends are different

I suppose that I thought that living in the country would mean that all the days would turn out to be pretty much the same. As it has turned out weekends are different. To Start with all the shops in Sarria close for lunch on Saturdays and don't re-open until Monday morning. No major problem there, but it does mean that our attempts to have a rest day on Sunday is supported by circumstance which helps us. It does make a difference to, I have way more enthusiasm for life on a Monday if we have had a quiet day on Sunday.
Steve gives English lessons to a neighbor on a Saturday morning, he agreed because it is a neighbor but I know that he feels that it is the hardest lesson of the week. It think that we hope that it dies a natural death as it is our only chance in term time for Steve to get jobs done around the house. He likes to think that we are moving forwards or at least keeping on top of things. For me it's almost the opposite problem because Steve has the car all week I like the chance to get and go for a coffee or a drink. I rarely get lonely and relish the quiet passing of the days but I do like some contact with the rest of the world.
Whilst Steve was teaching yesterday I took the opportunity do some work in the garden, the weather was threatening to do something unpleasent. Heavy cloud and gusts of wind, but in the end only a few spots of rain. There is so much work need doing but I was determined not to repeat Friday's mistakes. I chose a bed to work on and closed my eyes to  everything else. You really can only do what you can do.

Plenty of Work here

 I get quite a lot of satisfaction from restoring some sort order in the garden. although it will never be quite as regimented as the Victorian Kitchen garden that has remained my secret ideal,despite changes in gardening fashion, with a few days of good weather I should be able to prepare it for the winter.

Blight

My tomatoes got blight whilst I was away, inevitable really as the weather changed and Steve really had no time to mess with them. In fact we have had a pretty good crop so I'm not too disappointed.

Peashoots

The cooler damper weather has given the green stuff a new lease of life including pea shoots grown from peas that fell in the spring they make such nice salad veg, that next year I might grow some specially.

Failure on the walnut eating front I will try and do better tomorrow.

Time

Today, not for the first time I completely forgot my normal mantra of tackling only one job at at time and as a result I was exhausted by lunch. The kitchen was littered with a dozen started, but not completed tasks and I had left no room for,and gave no thought, to preparing lunch. As I surveyed the worktops my heart sank when I calculated how much time I needed to finish everything I had started. It was not going to be before midnight.

I did the most logical things that I could think of:- Panicked and then shouted at Steve. Steve was obviously being unreasonable coming into the kitchen at lunchtime and offering to set the table, with the built in implication that that we might be eating sometime soon. The fact that the table was no longer visible under the piles of washing in various stages of organisation didn't help. Rather than let him mess with my laundry system I told him to make the Salad. He said nothing, just looked helpless as the ingredients for the said salad were still in a bucket mixed with random vegetables  green stuff for rabbits and chickens all with a healthy amount of soil attached. It was also still on the Patio so not really obvious ( but irrelevant he should know where it might be!)

We managed lunch eventually, Steve went to work, I had a cup of coffee and tried to calm down. I also tried not to be angry with Steve for the unpardonable sin of finishing early on a Friday (Glass of wine, crisps and a film) and no chance of extracting myself from the unintentional chaos I had created this morning. I sighed and thought longingly of the life that some of my old friends in England still think I lead. A villa with a pool in the Sun and me on deckchair with a Gin and tonic.

Tomorrow I need to tackle the garden but tomorrow is another day.......

PS I didn't forget the walnuts, we had vegetable tagine for lunch and I replaced half the chickpeas with roasted walnuts, it was good move definitely worth repeating. Not as good as the walnut sauce yesterday but good enough. If walnuts really are a super food we will be so healthy by the end of the week.

And now for that glass of wine

Autumn, woodsmoke, and quiet.

I have arrived back in Galicia with the autumn, rain outside and my cocina lit. The cocina is fueled by wood and is the most common form of cooking, heating appliance in rural areas. For those of you in Britain it is similar in appearance to an "Aga", less sophisticated and far less expensive. In the UK I know that wood burners are trendy at the moment here where the population is small and most people in the countryside own a piece of woodland they make economic sense.

The down side of using a cocina is that they involve a great deal of work, felling trees if you have them (we buy uncut logs locally) chainsawing, splitting and stacking. all of which should be done by now. We still have logs to cut, but have some ready for winter from last years supply. Working a year in advance means the wood is better seasoned anyway, but every fine weekend is spent cutting wood and in our case scavenging wood from local logging sites (with permission) to eke out our supply,
Cooking on a cocina is also more of an art than a science and takes a degree of practice.

The up side of all this is that winter fuel costs little in terms of cash, the kitchen is always warm, the kettle is always hot as is the oven. A faint smell of wood smoke hangs over the village which adds to the welcome and I love it. I always wondered with Aga,s whether the attraction was purely psychological,  the always warm kitchen, the reassuring solidarity, the potential to dry anything from wellington boots to kittens, and the promise of casseroles and cakes. Our wood stove  would have no place in the super hygienic, pristine, kitchens of home makeover shows but carries the comfort and warmth that I want in a home.

I have just returned from a whirlwind week in the UK. The time shared between cooking for friends and being a Grandma. Both are occupations which are high on my favorites lists and I miss my family dreadfully. The longer we live here though the harder I find it to tear myself away, I am used to the quiet, the clean air and the steady rhythm of rural life. Besides that, being used to Galicia´s roads, good quality and almost empty the M1 seems like a nightmare version of eternal punishment. The cost of a bad cup of coffee is also bewildering as is the size of the cup. I fear that these examples of progress may one day reach here,and have to remind myself that "sufficient unto the day the evil there of....."


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Wood day

Its friday today so it must be wood day. Wood is at a premium at the moment and our winter supply has almost gone. I guess we want to be warm tomorrow so out we must go in the rain collecting wood . We are determined not to to buy and extra load of pre chopped stuff this winter so we have become scavengers, marching about with wheelbarrows and ropes looking for fallen branches. Maybe next year we will fill the wood shed and so avoid having to collect wet stuff in the rain heres hoping.