Friday -- We Do History

So once we'd woken up (despite the incredibly dark wooden shutters), we made our way over to the bus to the Alhambra. The bus ride was slightly harrowing -- Granada is a maze of twisting little one-way streets, and the bus was almost the width of many of them -- but less so since I wasn't driving or responsible for the thing. And we were glad for the bus: while the Alhambra isn't precisely far, it's up pretty steep hills the whole way, so it probably wouldn't have been a great walk for us. We wound up chatting with a nice Italian lady who desperately wanted to know what Real Americans think about visiting Europe.

We wandered in about 11:30, more or less on schedule. It turns out that going to the Alhambra requires a bit of pre-planning: you really want to buy your tickets to the Palaces in advance (since they sell out, especially for the best times), and while you can enter the general Alhambra whenever you like, you have to enter the Palaces within a specific half-hour window.

Truth to tell, there isn't much for me to say that hasn't been said many times -- there are some good websites on the subject -- but it does give more of a sense of being surrounded by unadulterated history than most historical sites. There aren't as many informative signs covering everything, and it hasn't gotten as messed-up by later generations as most. It's a fascinating mix of periods, but the later ones tended to build new buildings instead of knocking down the old ones. And the reconstruction work has been meticulous and tasteful.

We were there for about five hours, which was about as much as we could cope with. If you visit, make sure to wear comfortable shoes -- "not handicap accessible" doesn't even begin to cover the amount of walking and stairs involved, and you can easily wander several miles within the Alhambra's nooks and crannies.

Of course, ( I took pictures )

We took the bus back down into town in the late afternoon -- having failed to find an appealing-looking place for tapas up on the hill, we sat down in what I believe was called The New Plaza for wine and a nice scallopy-cheesy thing served in a big scallop shell. The main entertainment as we sat was watching what appeared to be competing companies (what I thought of as "the guys in red" and "the girls in yellow") trying to talk tourists into Segway tours.

Following a bit of afternoon siesta, we mosied back to our usual plaza for dinner. This time, we split a paella mixta, because I was determined to see what an actual Spanish paella comes out like. It was tasty, but only semi-successful -- we'd done the mixta so that she could focus on the Meat while I mostly did the shellfish, but there was a *lot* of shellfish for her to work around. And I was slightly confounded by the large and very intact prawns in the mix, unsure of how to eat them. I mean, these things were practically little lobsters, complete with heads, legs and lots of shell, and I realized that I have no idea how to eat one with none of the special forks and stuff I'm used to for lobster. I got a fair amount of the meat, but wound up feeling like there has to be a better way to do this.

(And I was disappointed by the lack of crispy bits. The first time I ever had paella, in southern CA, one of the treats for me was the crispy bits from the bottom of the pan. But it appears that Spanish restaurants, like American, don't actually serve those to the customers. Humph.)

Then another round of yummy dark-chocolate gelato, and off to bed.

Tomorrow: Touristing our way around Granada

I continue to turn up the most interesting things...

Going through all the books has turned up a lot of interesting reading matter, but it's also turned up the occasional surprise that just happened to be sitting on the bookshelves. Possibly the most surprising is material indicating that Jane's mother Catherine had learned how to use a computer -- in 1959.

She never made the slightest reference to it -- indeed, I never saw her use a modern computer, although I think it likely she knew word-processing -- but the materials seem clear. I found a telegram, inviting her (back in her assistant-professor days) to take a course on programming a Univac the week of August 31st, 1959. And elsewhere on the bookcase, I found a ton of related materials: a Univac manual, notes, and a thing that looks vaguely like a circular slide rule whose use I am entirely unclear on. I assume we inherited it when she died ten years ago, and Jane never got around to filing any of it.

Very neat stuff, although once again I find myself wishing there was *someone* left from the family that I could ask about this...

Mmm -- always nice when lunch experiments work (Eggplant Stacks)

AKA "Okay, what the heck do I do with this leftover eggplant?"

This Sunday was, among other things, Cooks' Guild. It was a great meeting -- almost all of the regulars showed up, and we collectively wound up cooking six different dishes. I brought along Rebecca, who is a friend of Anne and Darker's who has expressed some interest in SCA crafts. I forgot to look at cookbooks on Saturday, so Sunday morning I decided to go for my traditional safe route, pull up the online copy of the Manuscrito Anonimo (my pick for the best cookbook of the middle ages), and see what appealed. The answer was, "eggplant", so I bought some fixings on the way, and Rebecca and I did a couple of recipes from them.

Specifically, we did the Mahshi with Eggplants and Cheese, a sort of eggplant souffle, which I would judge as a noble failure: not bad, and could be improved, but didn't inspire folks. OTOH, the Eggplant Isfîriyâ, which are mostly the same recipe done as fritters, worked well -- even the folks who don't like eggplant thought they were pretty good.

Anyway, we only got through two of the three recipes I was thinking about -- we didn't have time to try the Dusted Eggplants (essentially triple-fried eggplant slices) -- so I was left with a spare eggplant. It's not Kate's favorite food, so she charged me to use it for lunch.

So today's project (actually, yesterday and today) has been to reverse-engineer the concept of the Eggplant Stack, a dish that I've gotten from Whole Foods a couple of times, which was solidly Okay But Not Great. It was a total win, so here it is for the record (and to remind me to write it up for the Cookbook eventually):( Click for yummy crispy eggplanty goodness )