My favorite holiday

As the end of November approached, I became more and more concerned about the best holiday of the year (ie: Thanksgiving).  Would we be able to find turkey? Cranberries?  And since we were inviting guests...a dinner table?  A couple weeks before T-Day, we started our mission to find the supplies.

Turkey: As is the case with many other things, the ovens are smaller here than in the US.  In fact, 3 of my baking pans are sitting in storage until I move out of, well, Europe.  So before leaving, I took note that the turkey could measure 42cm x 38cm x 24cm max.  And off I went!  Sadly, our normal meat market didn't carry whole turkeys.  I knew of a few other carnisserías so I still had hope.  As I walked by a meat market, I saw some whole chickens so I thought I'd give it a shot.  I asked if they carried whole turkeys and the butcher nodded and motioned to point them out.  Turned out that what I thought were chickens were turkeys!  They were only ~5.5kgs!  [Alright, it would've been a pretty big chicken but I don't think I've ever seen a turkey smaller than 16lbs (7.26kg)].  So I ordered one for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and I was all set.  Didn't even have to ask her to measure it for me.  Smooth.  

Although it was a European sized turkey, I didn't have a container big enough to brine the turkey.  So I wrapped the tail end in paper towels and hoped that capillary action would take care of it.

Dinner table: We found the dinner table relatively easily.  The table normally seats 4 but extends to fit 8 so it was perfect; however, we didn't like any of the chairs in the store.  We went to a few stores in search for chairs but ultimately decided to get a set from Ikea.  The ones we wanted were not in stock the first day we went, nor were they there when the website said they would arrive. On the bright side, we did indulge get some of those delicious swedish meatballs with lingonberry jam (seriously, don't skip on the jam...it totally makes the meatballs).  Yum.  On the 3rd try, they were finally there so we were able to get the chairs the weekend before T-Day.

Cranberries: This was, by far, the hardest thing to find.  Grocery stores, numerous produce markets, even the nicest market rumored to have everything didn't carry them.  Cranberry sauce, in my opinion, is the keystone to the dinner.  Combining the salty turkey and gravy with the sweet and tangy red sauce is my definition of heaven.  Thanksgiving without cranberries is like Ikea meatballs without lingonberries...depressing and without purpose.  We went to a store that specializes in foreign products and they were getting a case of the canned stuff a few days before Thanksgiving.  Canned cranberry sauce...I suppose it's better than having nothing, but yuck.  So I planned to get a can and jazz it up.  As the days went by, their shipment kept getting delayed and maybe they would get it Thanksgiving day.  Seriously?!?!  I'm feeding 5 Spaniards their first Thanksgiving dinner ever and you want me to wait until the last minute get the most essential component?!?!  I resumed my search and thought up a few backup plans.  After asking around, I eventually ended up at a Bio/organicky store that might have them.  Didn't see any in the produce or canned section...asked a clerk and he said that maybe they had some in the back of the store.  SUCCESS!!!!  Frozen cranberries!!!  I was clearly ecstatic.  (I know it was clear because the clerk was startled and then asked me if I needed them for something medicinal.)

Since we had decided to invite some of our coworkers, this meant we also had to clean the house.  The time finally came to complete the long standing list of chores, one of which was organizing and dusting the bookshelves.  So I pulled off all of my (cook)books to clean off the counter and that made me wonder...

Is it bad if your collection of cookbooks and recipes is almost as tall as you?

Onto the food!  I was doing the turkey, cornbread stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, rolls, biscuits, and pecan pies.  Jeff was taking care of the mashed potatoes.  Prepped the cornbread for the stuffing and the green beans ahead of time but, since I was taking Thursday off (cause Thanksgiving isn't a holiday in Spain, ya know), I planned to do the majority of work during the day.  Food prep was pretty much on schedule throughout the day.  The only thing that was running behind schedule was...the guests.  I forgot to account for the traditional Spanish tardiness...but with a few changes, everything was back on track.  

The turkey was ready around when the guests arrived.  They were quite excited to see a whole turkey in the oven.  

And then began the Thanksgiving traditions!

Sitting at the table with friends

Lots of food

Final products: cornbread stuffing, rolls (turned out so cute!!!), buttermilk drop biscuits, turkey, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes (2 ways...way to go Jeff!), cranberry sauce, 2 pecan pies (with and without chocolate)

And, of course, no Thanksgiving would be complete without...

Hand Turkeys!!!

Happy Thanksgiving =)

The Digs

It's been a while since I posted, and it's been even longer since I was supposed to send out pictures of J and my apartment, so I figured I would finally get around to it. First you will have to sit through a 7 month old story of finding an apartment (because, you know... scrolling down to the pictures just wont work online).

As part of my relocation package, I received 2 months of temporary housing, and HP helped ship all our stuff from San Diego to Spain. That meant that I really didnt want to move in anywhere until a few months after I arrived. Apartments here are not really listed until they are empty and ready to be rented, so it gives a small window of having no furniture to put into an apartment and having no place to put the furniture that arrives where I was hoping to find our place to live.

We had 3 main requirements: 1) a nice enough kitchen that J could do all her cooking 2) a good amount of natural light, living in the dark just seems depressing and 3) within 10 minutes of a train station that would take us to work. Of course it also had to be big enough for us not to trip over each other, and hopefully have a place to put all of my things, but we were pretty negotiable other than those 3 things... little did I know just how tough that would be!

The typical stereotype in Europe is small apartments, with small rooms, and small appliances. I can safely vouch that that is generally true. I would rather say that apartments here try to fit too many people in, and have too many walls. Over the course of a month, I saw probably 40 apartments in person, and hundreds more online. Some general themes were very apparent. At least in Spain, there are some hideous floor tiling. Carpet is non-existent, but some of the tiles were more like casino floor patterns. There are too many rooms. They put 3 small bedrooms, instead of 2 medium ones. Kitchens are in their own 10 ft x 10 ft rooms. You might have 2 bathrooms, but one of those bathrooms is so small the toilet is right underneath the shower. We were ready for some culture shock, but the general quality of apartments was startlingly bad. There seemed to be 2 types of apartments, the low cost places that I might have considered when I lived in college, and "luxury" apartments that had pretty hefty price tags, even by our California adjusted standards.

2 Weeks into the search, I found it, the "Princess place". 1 block away from the train, in a pretty hopping neighborhood with bookstore/cafe next door, facing east, and a relatively big kitchen, though modestly decorated. Of course, I wanted to check with J, but I was pretty excited for it. Got the confirmation that she was excited by the pictures I sent, and I called the rental people to say we wanted it. Bad news, another rental agency had put down the deposit that morning, so even as I was fawning over it, it was not meant to be. No matter, there was an apartment the week before that did not get good morning light, but got great afternoon light, and was a decent compromise... ok, we'll take that. Not to be, apparently that place had been reserved the day before as well.

3 weeks into the search I found a place that I really liked as well. The kitchen was small, but there were no walls, so we could expand the kitchen as far as we wanted, it had a nice storage area for all my camping/Scuba equipment. It was a little pricier than we had hoped for, but I starting to get a little worried about finding a good place, so I put down a "non-refundable" deposit of half a month's rent. Imagine my surprise when my rental contact calls me the morning of the lease signing and tells me not to sign anything, that I am backing out. She explains that apparently this company has a very sketchy lease, where I would have to sign for 3 years minimum (compared to a normal 1 year minimum lease), and they wont budge on that, but they would give me my money back. I agree with this idea, 3 years is a long time to commit to an apartment. Happy to get my money back, I still faced the small problem of not having a place to live. To add to the fun, J would be moving to BCN in about a week and a half, and I was leaving for a business trip to the US in a week, so I needed an apartment and fast.

4 weeks in, the rental contact Claire (a very cool french girl that really put in a lot of work to help set up visits to places that I found, and did a lot of research to find other places) and I were starting to wonder about our options. There was 1 nagging place, it had a really old looking kitchen, but it was gigantic by Spanish standards (roughly 1200 sq ft compared to the 700-800 that most places were), and the price was in range. Pessimistically, I decided to give it a shot. I walked in, and in the entryway, you can see pretty much the whole apartment. A loft above (similar to the loft in my parents house where I grew up), windows on both sides to let in light, and a kitchen that has a countertop separating it from the rest, so it felt very connected. The floors were scuffed, and it was obvious the place was going to need some elbow grease to fix up, but another person came to view the apartment right after me, so I knew I had to act fast, and put down a deposit.

The Beginning: Acting fast has its downsides. Turns out, the lights in the bathroom didnt work, the light in the hallway was burnt out, the hot water heater that controlled the kitchen was broken (but apparently there is a 2nd hot water heater in the bathroom, so fortunately I could wash dishes and shower in there). Also, a few lights in the kitchen were burnt out, and worst of all, the oven did not get above 200... Farenheit. We found that little doozy out trying to make bread, cooking for 3 hrs, then trying to finish on the stove. Thus began the battle of the oven. After multiple calls to the landlord, and broken spanish trying to understand what was happening, they finally came to fix the oven. Turns out they were able to get the oven to go from 200 F to 500 F, but pretty much nothing in between, so 2nd round of bread ended up burnt on the outside, raw on the inside... not pretty. In the end, we were able to convince them to replace the oven completely, and from that day on, we have been very happy with the apartment.

The tour: Family room/Dining Room/Loft. This is where most of our time is spent, a huge open space with vaulted ceilings that we've separated a bit by the couches. The rug in the photo is a place holder for the dining room table we plan to buy, any day now :) You can see that our plants sit out in the middle of the room, where they get better sunlight during the day. There is basil and mint there, hoping to add more.

Dining Room/Kitchen: We eat most of our meals at the barstools on the kitchen counter, pending said dining room table. There was no space for the fridge inside the kitchen, so we went the easy route, and put it outside! It has worked surprisingly well.

Other notes, coat rack that took 2 months to find, and super sweet storage space up the ladder on the far right, where we store all the things we dont need often, like luggage, camping gear, boxes, etc. Very underrated part of the apartment...

A very important part of any good apartment:

We found a bulk liquor store where we have bought things like habanero rum, blood orange and lime liquor, tiramisu and vanilla, as well as others... very good find, to go along with our wines.

The Bedroom: An obscenely large space for how much time we spend, we actually have plenty of closet/dresser space, a welcome surprise. It is nice waking up to sunlight, and having a big vaulted ceiling above your head, very open feeling. Well done whoever found the apartment :)

One downside is that we have a washer dryer combo, which, unfortunately, leaves clothes pretty wrinkly, so you can see the pile of my clothes ready to be ironed...

And finally, the bathroom. No European bathroom would be complete without a bidet!!! Other than that, a pretty normal bathroom.

One odd note: We have looked for and been unable to find the $2.99 clear plastic liners. Opaque liners for 10 euros, yeah, but a few euro clear liner... doesn't exist. Weird.

To those that made it this far, hope you enjoyed the tour of the apartment, we have plenty of space for visitors, so come on by. I dont know know how me managed to find a place that is such a nice space, is on the top floor of our building (so no noisy neighbors), and is only 10 minute walk from the center of town. Next on my list of topics... the neighborhood. Hopefully it will be sooner than 2 months from now :P