#1: My friend Julie, who is currently traveling the world, (Shout out to Julie!) came back to Madrid for a day between Italy and northern Spain. Well it happened to be her birthday the day before, so I made a feast for her and some IES friends (including Kate's mom and brother) of bean chili that I got from a vegetarian cookbook in the apartment (yupp, I cooked from a recipe all in Spanish, and it tasted GREAT!), baked eggplant chips, and delicious salad with the works: beats, corn, tomatoes, red onion...and of course, homemade dressing.
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| Alubias con curry, eggplant chips, SALAD! |
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| Happy Birthday cookie cake |
#2: Made cookies, with real nestle toll house chocolate chips (but shortly learned you can just buy a bar of chocolate and chunk it up (DUH!). Also had to scour the town for some brown sugar. Finally found it at the cursed Corte Ingles, the second one I went to. Brought them to Pilar and Sergey when we went out to dinner so I could say goodbye to them for the last time. It was great to see them! I didn't realize how much I was missing them! Hopefully we can exchange a few e-mails! Pilar told me she is looking for a new, bigger apartment, and Sergey had his final soccer game the next day. He also moved into my old room. It was weird to see it with all his stuff in there, but I'm glad that Pilar and Sergey now have more space. Funny where we went to dinner: VIPS. A chain restaurant that is pretty much like Denny's Lions, or any old diner in the states. Huge portions, not Spanishy food. Swore I would never go there, but just like Burger King, broke that one with Pilar and Sergey. Anyway, Pilar loved the cookies! We ate them after dinner with a glass of milk :)
#3: David, my good buddy from IES is doing the Camino de Santiago (an 800 mile pilgrimage across the north of spain). He has called a few times to chat, and the last time he called, he said he was coming to Madrid for a night to surprise his Spanish girlfriend and needed a place to shower (boy did he need a shower!) and chill for the afternoon. Perks of an apartment, he could come here. Of course I fed him! I great Mediterranean meal of things he can't eat on the pilgrimage road...home made chummus, italian pasta salad with mushrooms, green beans, peppers, and red onions, and israeli salad. YUMMM. He also got a cookie that I had extra from the batch I made for Pilar and Sergey.
#4: The other day I decided to change up my daily salad and shred some carrots into it. YUM!!! And it gave me the inspiration to make carrot salad. So I did it, today. Yupp folks, I invented my very first recipe from 100% scratch!
Ingredients:
Shredded carrots
Tahini
Soy sauce
Peas
Chopped green onions
Peanuts, shelled
Minced ginger
Mix tahini and soy sauce and a little water in a separate bowl until creamy.
Shred carrots and combine with ginger, peas, and green onions.
Add tahini and soy sauce mixture.
Stir.
Enjoy.
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| Asian Carrot Salad |
#5: So I decided to make datebars. E-maield my good buddy Carly for the recipe. I just had the urge to make date bars... dates are everywhere here, and i wanted to bring something to the staff at my study abroad office, so a date with the date bars! Well, I had all the ingredients ready to go: extra brown sugar from the cookies, oats, the UNOPENED flour in the cabinet, that i didn't buy, so who knows how long its been in there, but it was whole wheat. perfect. butter, dates, vanilla, blah blah blah. I pour out the flour and notice there are little seeds in it. I've never seen whole wheat flour with seeds, but hell, this is spain. So I make the whole thing up, mixing with my hands since there is no mixer, obvy having a great time!
Unfortunately (or fortunately if you continue reading...) I only have a pan big enough for half a batch. I'm all about to put it in the oven and i see a bug crawling on top. oops how did that get in there? Then I look. and there are more bugs. Bugs on Bugs on bugs. Crawling in my date bars!!!!!! THOSE WERENT SEEDS IN THE FLOUR DUMMY, THEY WERE BUGS!!!!!! GROSSSSSSSS. So i dump it out, the flour, and the rest of the extra crust into a garbage back and tie it tight. Completely grossed out (because of course I already ate some of the dough...) Thank you sweet baby infant Jesus (Jews, no cringing, I AM in Spain...) that I had half the batch of filling and enough ingredients, including NOT buggy flour (I double, triple, quadruple, checked.) So i made another one and it is in the oven baking now. Damn bugs.
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