Contrary to life in the US, life in Spain consists of personally knowing your own butcher (mine is my neighbor, Bruno), seeing – and often choosing – the cut of meat that is fed into the meat grinder to produce the exact quantity of ground meat that you desire, or asking your butcher to slice the chicken breast actually off the chicken and then into fillets for you.

Today, my butcher and his family were proud to be planning to feast on some piglets this weekend. With no provocation whatsoever, he brought the little piggies out of the walk-in fridge to show my daughter and me how adorable they were, even in death.

Morally, my view is that I would rather exist than not, which opens me up to eating a wide variety of animals, as long as they are killed humanely. If you wish to not see dead animals, look away now.

Oink! They look a bit like a barbershop quartet.

Little piggy bottoms.

Five snouts.

They looked awfully cute draped over the counter like this, as if they were awaiting drinks at a bar.

Nora liked them.

This is only the second time she has allowed herself to be picked up by Bruno, our neighbor and butcher.

Cute little oinkers.

While familiar with the phrase “not by the hair of my chinny chin chin”, I never knew that piglets actually have little whiskers on their chins!

If Nora hadn’t demanded my phone to snap pictures, I would never have noticed how interesting they look from her angle down at the ground.

I wish my supermarket friends a marvelous spit-roasted porcine feast this weekend. ¡Que aprovechen!

On a toasted sesame seed bun!

Homemade french fries!

And some faux-german beer from Barcelona to round out a healthy American meal.

Because of Saint Joseph’s status as surrogate father, today is also when Spaniards celebrate Father’s Day. At daycare, my daughter made me a little paper necktie that says, “¡Te quiero, Papá!” and a card that reads, “De tu mano voy a aprender lo que mañana voy a ser.” (From your hand, I will learn what tomorrow I will be). Both are scribbled on in a variety of crayon colors. Silly, but doggone it if a tear didn’t well up.

A proud father.

I got berated for taking a shot of the messy kitchen mid-cook, but I liked it. You can see the already-made, but not yet fried spring rolls.

Frying the vegetables and almonds. Spaniards fry their onions and peppers until they are very soft, yet Chinese cuisine calls for a bit of crunchiness to be left.

The rice had carrots, onions, ham, peas, and egg. I’m not sure which of these are considered the “three delights”.

Nora loved the rice.

Spanish culture has almost no racism filters, so making “Chinese eyes” to celebrate the occasion was acceptable.

Spring rolls!

Almond chicken!

Yummy spring roll!

Almond chicken on a bed of rice.

The meal was a big success. I suspect we will be making these recipes again sometime soon. The food was delicious!

A street vendor was selling freshly grilled chorizo and morcilla (blood sausage).

My wife and I shared a piece of chorizo.

Looking for the next bar.

This bar was tiny and absolutely packed. And for good reason.

The skewing of these tapas photos was a complete accident, but I like it.

Our choice. Serrano ham with goat cheese with Modena vinegar, and a meat and tomato stew with a pheasant egg on top. With a beer and a wine, of course.

Apparently this bear drew some chalk art on the street. The sardine escaping its can to eat a dangling worm was the official logo of the 2012 festival.

Ice cream with my girls.

Eating ice cream down by the water.

Just as we can see Santoña from Colindres, you can see Colindres from Santoña. My house is over there somewhere.

One of my favorite things about Santoña is that they have several monuments to canines, I assume to the dogs that keep fishermen company on long fishing voyages.

A monument to Juan de la Cosa, a native of Santoña who was the captain of the Santa Maria and sailed with Columbus on that infamous 1492 voyage.

The sunset was lovely, over Santoña’s little beach.

Bollard and boats.

Nora’s Spanish grandparents showed up late in the day.

Nora had fun climbing these granite benches.

And jumping off them. See all those benches vanishing off into the distance? She climbed up and jumped off every single one. That’ll burn off a scoop of ice cream in no time.

A lone sailboat.

The same boat, coming into harbor, with Colindres in the background.

The giant sardine that initiated the costume parade. It got pretty cold, and I was underdressed, and the music was too loud, so I didn’t enjoy the actual parade all that much. I much preferred seeing all the people dressed up walking around the street earlier in the day.

This was the very last of 24 groups dressed up for the costume competition, and it was the only one that inspired me to take a photograph. It was men carrying faux bullfighters on their shoulders like what happens after a successful bullfight.

And the bulls followed after. Ha!

Overall, it was a very successful day out. Nora wore high heels (willingly!) for six hours and several ambulatory kilometers. She took them off for a couple hours after a bit of an ankle twist, but then demanded to put them back on.

My little Sevillana. ¡Olé!

Desayuno

The first meal of the day. i.e. breakfast. It’s even a compound word, like “breakfast”, since ayuno means “fast” (as in not eating), and des- is a negating prefix, so you’re literally “un-fasting”. Unlike the US or the UK, the typical Spanish breakfast is very light and completely devoid of protein. The most common breakfast is a café con leche with some type of pastry or cookies.

I always assumed that Spanish farmers or other people that do long hours of manual labor in the mornings probably eat a heartier breakfast, but I know a few of them and they don’t.

A typical Spanish breakfast: coffee with milk and a pastry.

Almuerzo

This one is complicated. The dictionary says it’s “food eaten in the morning or midday”. Spanish-to-English dictionaries always translate it to “lunch” and there are those who use it synonymously with comida, but I think the best English translation would be “brunch”. The few times I’ve had one, it was more substantial than a simple snack or tapa, and left me with no desire to have lunch afterwards. It’s normally served at around noon, or just before.

Interestingly, almuerzo breaks the etymological rule of thumb that most Spanish words starting with al- came from Arabic. This word comes from the Latin word for “bite”.

A typical Spanish almuerzo: a concoction of fried eggs, bacon in a tomato sauce, served at noon with plenty of wine.

Comida

Translating best to “lunch”, this is the primary, and largest, meal of the day, eaten at midday. However, what the Spanish call “midday” is not what an American would call “midday”. In Spain, they eat their lunch between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM. Most shops are closed during this time and reopen at 5:00 PM until about 8:00 PM. While the noun comida and verb comer mean “lunch” and “to have lunch”, they are also more generally used to mean “food” and “to eat”, and there is rarely any confusion.

Traditionally the midday meal consists of two courses, one of which normally requires a spoon to eat, like a soup or legume stew, the other is usually rice (e.g. paella), pasta or a small serving of meat. All restaurants assume that you will be having two courses. In daily home cooked practice, however, one course is all we ever eat.

Last time I checked, nutritionists and dietitians agree that it’s healthiest to have your biggest meal in the middle of the day like the Spaniards, rather than at the end as the Americans do. It may be healthier, but it can make it difficult to become productive again in the afternoon, especially if there was any wine involved.

A typical Spanish lunch: beans with wild boar, followed by…

…a steak with fried potatoes.

Merienda

This is another in-between meal – like the almuerzo – and best translates to “afternoon snack”. I never really heard it used until I became a parent and saw that every Spanish child has an afternoon snack of some sort, be it a piece of fruit or a small sandwich. From what I can tell, most adults don’t eat the merienda, but I suppose the word could be used for some British-style tea and cookies.

A typical Spanish merienda: a small serrano ham sandwich.

Cena

The final meal of the day is strangely similar to the US or UK breakfast: high in protein. Eggs are a common ingredient, often in a tortilla de patata (Spanish omelet). Meats and cheeses are often included. If you go out to a restaurant, sandwiches and hamburgers are a common supper.

A typical Spanish dinner: tortilla de patata.

If there’s one thing Spaniards love, it’s food, and I think it shows in their language. Of course no one ever eats all five meals, but no matter what time of the day you get hungry, you’ve got a Spanish noun and verb to use.

The full brochure.

The first pincho we tried was at La Marina Company. It was by far the most elaborate and special in a “you’re not going to ever make this at home” sort of way.

La Marina Company: Panacota de frambuesa con anchoas – That’s a cooked cream of raspberries with anchovies.

The presentation was gorgeous, but the combination of flavors was a little too bizarre for our philistine tastes. It came with a little dropper of Modena olive oil. There were too many flavors for my wife’s expertise in anchovy quality to gain any purchase.

A close-up of La Marina Company’s pincho. In general we were pretty displeased not only with the pincho, but also by the service. It took about ten minutes for the pincho to make its way down from the upstairs kitchen. By that time, we’d almost finished our wines.

La Casona: Suprema de buey – This “Ox Supreme” was described in the brochure as “Hamburger of ox meat with onion, egg and cheese”. After La Marina Company, our eyes were immensely disappointed when the tiny little burger rolls were plopped down before us. But wow, had hour eyes deceived us! The first bite had us both moaning with pleasure. The grainy bread, the tender meat, the sweet caramelized onions and the cheese made an excellent combination. Supreme, indeed!

It’s really not much to look at, but I could happily eat a dozen of these little treats.

Cafetería Colón: Hamburguesa de potro a la barbacoa – “What’s potro?”, I asked my wife. “Baby horse”, she replied. Whoa! Well, this is the place that had kangaroo meat in 2009. The ingredients listed were: sweet roll, colt meat, tomato, onion, garlic, pepper, parsley and barbecue sauce.

Like most foods with barbecue sauce, the sauce completely overwhelmed any other flavors, making this a very boring pincho to eat. The potato chips on the side did little to make it any more special. I’d certainly never have guessed that it was foal meat. It was a big let down after the previous hamburger in La Casona.

La Abadía: Destinos Pejinos – Apparently pejino is a local word meaning “a humble resident of coastal Cantabria”, so the title translates to “humble Cantabrian destinations”. Indeed, the primary ingredient was respigos, a local winter delicacy. The ingredients were listed as: pastry toast with cumin and respigos.

Visually, it looks like something your sick cat might leave on the carpet, but it was quite tasty in a humble, healthy sort of way. I didn’t care much for the “pastry toast” on the bottom; it reminded me of a bland granola bar.

The second night, we went to El Concept, but they were out of pinchos, and had enough business so that they didn’t really give a damn. Boo!

El Somera: Guiso de jabalí al chocolate – The name means “wild boar stew with chocolate”, and sure enough, that’s what it was. Unfortunately, for cost saving motives, there were a lot of potatoes, and very few chunks of boar meat. I must say, however, that I was impressed.

The little bowls were lovely. It definitely took second place away from La Albadía’s respigos.

A bore eating boar.

El Guti: Hamburguesita de ternera con salsa de queso y su guarnición – The title means “Little beef hamburger with cheese sauce and garnish”. The meat was fantastic, and the potatoes were fresh out of the frying pan.

The little burger looks insignificant, but the taste was powerful. I think it just barely edged out El Somera for second place.

Conclusion

Of the six pinchos we tried, I would rank them as follows:

1. La Casona – Definitely the best tasting pincho of all, despite presentation.
2. El Guti – Excellent flavor, though simple presentation.
3. El Somera – Wonderfully warm stew, with a slightly sweet chocolate tone.
4. La Albadía – Very hearty and healthy, but nothing spectacular.
5. Cafetería Colón – Too much sauce, but a decent snack.
6. La Marina Company – A lot of work put into preparation, but a very eccentric taste.

So concludes this year’s Pincho Week. I hope to do much better than a 33.3% sample size next year. ¡Hasta entonces! Until then!

We started the morning with Erik’s Homemade Thanksgiving Apple Harvest™ scones.

Castro Urdiales is the eastern most town of any interest in Cantabria, close to the border with the Basque Country. The town dates back to Roman times, mainly as a port and fishing village. The French destroyed the town in 1813, but many of the residents were able to escape to sea with English ships.

My parents and daughter in Castro Urdiales.

The town is nothing if not photogenic. The fact that I accidentally left my good camera at home was very painful.

See that taller white building on the left? That’s where we had lunch.

The medieval Santa Maria church is a gorgeous bit of gothic architecture.

In the shade of an olive tree.

I loved these stairs that go nowhere.

Yes, I was in short sleeves. It was chilly, but more comfortable than with my sweater on.

Enough walking, let’s have some tapas!!

Goat cheese on ham and a tomato, sprinkled with balsamic vinegar.

Bacon and quail eggs.

This place, La Marinera, was quite nice.

My mother switched to coffee for a few of the wine rounds. Nora was happy to finish the last bit for her.

My parents love going bar to bar almost as much as their granddaughter does. Those are glasses of vegetable broth they gave us with our wines.

God, I love Spain!

Oh, yeah!

After lunch we continued our long walk back to the car, having fun along the way, of course.

And resting some.

The beach was very finely raked, but also had these bizarre footprints walking in parallel lines away from the water. WTF?

Nora, Poppy and Grandma.

Cool tiles!

We had a good time in Castro Urdiales. This is a very rare well-framed photo by a stranger.

In the evening, after yet more walking around Colindres, I did make my famous turkey pizza to celebrate the American holiday of being thankful for what we have.

My Thanksgiving was far from typical, but I ate too much and had a wonderful time with my family, so I guess I did pretty well.

How Spaniards Fry Eggs

There are quite a few expat blog posts and YouTube videos about the unique way eggs are fried in Spain. A frying pan is filled with a considerable amount of oil. The egg is cracked into the oil, and then a spatula or spoon is used to splash hot oil over the top of the egg until a white film forms over the egg yolk. Then the egg is removed and served on the plate, maintaining an oozing liquid yolk – great for bread mopping! – when the yolk sack is broken. The egg is never turned.

Like most odd quirks you find living in a foreign land, it’s not necessarily better or worse…just different.

Other Spain Egg Trivia

In Spanish, the term huevo, for egg, is also used as slang for testicles. Clearly the term was not coined by anyone with any knowledge of reproductive biology. Here are a few interesting phrases using the slang:

One time I was at the supermarket checkout and the cashier asked me how much of the stuff on the conveyor belt was mine, and I replied, not thinking about the double meaning, “Hasta los huevos“. We both laughed.

I hope you enjoy the video.

At twelve noon, a firecracker sounded, just like in Pamplona, to notify everyone that the gate to the bullpen was open, then another to signify that all the bulls were out. Unlike in Pamplona, the Ampuero bull run is a circuit rather than a straight run, so they run out of the bullring, run through town, and then back into the bullring. I wasn’t prepared for the rush of people, including one quintagenarian, trying to scoot under the foot-high gate clearance. This is a problem in San Fermin as well, where people will “safely” enter the bull run area just to get into the bullring without paying the entrance fee. Just before the bulls returned, a noticeable tension rose in the crowd, I ducked low on my now aching knees, my camera in rapid fire mode, and held down the shutter. Click-click-click-click! And then it was over…faster than a bicycle race.

Marga and Nora stayed back, able to see over the gate to the bulls running on the slightly elevated street behind it.

Yikes!

It turns out that these aren’t even “real bulls”. Well, they are called novillos, not toros, because they are less than three years old. Bull calves. Either way, I was happy to be on my side of the steal barrier.

They used to use full grown bulls, but then five years ago, the year before we first went, one of them escaped the barriers and killed three people. It’s one thing if a runner gets hurt, but spectators have a higher expectation of safety. Truly tragic.

After the firecracker sounds letting everyone know that all the bulls are safely back in their pen, the people flood the streets. There was one goring; a 44-year-old veteran runner got a horn to the bum (photo here). It was on the outgoing run, and he got pulled under a barrier before the bulls came back. He was treated at the scene and then taken to the ICU. In the four bull runs during the festival this year, six people got ambulance rides.

Nora had a great time seeing all the people and dancing to the music.

She particularly loved these dancing giants, which she improperly calls cabezudos (this is a real cabezudo). They are really well done, made of very lightweight materials, and controlled by an operator between their legs. If you stop thinking “This is really a puppet!” for a second or two, you really do start to perceive them as enormous dancing giants, making eye contact with them, etc. Nora enjoys them at a distance of between five and twenty meters. If they’re too far, she begs to “Go see the cabezudos!” and if they get too close, she cries and buries her head in a parent’s chest.

At one point, I went into a bar to order some drinks, and this group of gentlemen came in and one of them asked the bartender for a Bordón, an excellent crianza red wine from Rioja. The bartender said he didn’t have any, so the customer begrudgingly settled for an Añares. The barkeep pulled out a glass, and the customer said, “No, we want the whole bottle.” I smiled. They did have six or seven men in their group, and a bottle of wine falls fast with six glasses. We went outside to the street to drink our drinks. A few minutes later, the singing began.

What a glorious way to spend your time, entertaining yourself and others in bars drinking wine. From what I can tell, these are traditional Cantabrian songs. The lyrics to the last bit are:

No sueño ricos tesoros,
ni sueño barcos guerreros,
sueño con las velas blancas,
sueño con ser marinero.
Tener en noche de calma,
la luna por compañera,
una guitarra en los brazos
y en mi boca una habanera.

I dream not of rich treasures,
nor of war ships,
I dream of white sails,
I dream of being a sailor.
To have a calm night,
the moon as my companion,
a guitar in my arms
and, in my mouth, a habanera.

This lovely lady was cooking a paella to serve in small rations to partygoers.

I opted to try eating goose barnacles for the second time. They were very good, but impossible to eat standing up while holding a beer, and the shells were too bulky to feel comfortable dumping on the street like sunflower seed husks, so I found a bar to eat them at.

They were so fresh, they still had seaweed and tiny baby mussels on them.

Nora demonstrates the proper way to wear your red scarf. We bought three. They are pricy, but good for many years.

We had a great time.

¡Viva Ampuero!

Oh yeah! This looks like the kind of place I’d like to spend my Sunday! We put on a little sunscreen, grabbed a bottle of water and hopped in the car for a ninety-minute drive west to The Oldest Town In Cantabria.

On the way there, we passed all these gorgeous quaint little villages, some clearly having festivals, with people sitting out on the terraces of bars and restaurants soaking in the August sun. It was really hard not to stop and just enjoy one of those towns, but we persevered through the windy mountain roads up to Bárcena Mayor. Just when my GPS navigation unit told me we were 200 meters away from our destination, we saw a sign into the Bárcena Mayor parking lot. No village was in sight. We parked among the 60 other cars and walked up a little path. What was the first sight we saw?

Hey! That looks familiar!

By this time it was 2:00 PM, i.e. approaching Spanish lunch time, and we thought was should find an eating establishment. Google only listed one place, and there were a couple dozen tourists around to compete with, so I suggested urgency.

Ooh! I see a restaurante! Plus, they’re advertising “typical cuisine”!

We ate at La Franca.

For the first course, I had beans with wild boar. It was delicious! Spaniards eat quite a bit of wild boar. I’ve never seen it on offer anywhere in the United States.

Continuing the “not everyday meat” trend, I had a fillet of venison for my second course. Doe, a deer, a tasty, tasty deer.

Bellies full of meat and red wine, we wandered around town in a contented stupor. All the buildings were very old. I pointed out the wires running along the wooden beams of the restaurant, commenting, “Hey, check it out. This building was built before they had electricity!” My wife shrugged and reminded me that her parents grew up in a house without electricity or running water. Oh yeah. I often forget how far Spain has come in just fifty years.

The cobblestone streets and combination of wood and stone house construction made it feel like we’d been transported back in time several centuries…until we turned the corner and saw a Prius.

That every house was decorated with blooming flowers definitely added to the general pleasantness of the town.

Another restaurant we might have preferred for the view if we hadn’t just chosen the first one we saw.

We crossed a bridge and discovered a hiking trail. If we’d had better shoes on, we might’ve walked a few kilometers of it, but we hadn’t come prepared for that. Sounds like a good excuse to go back!

Looking down from the bridge. I’ve been wanting to do one of these long exposure water flow shots for some time. I was surprised that just a half second is long enough to get the nice blurring effect.

Looking up the staircase inside the church bell tower.

It became clear that the town’s only industry was tourism. Why anyone would want to buy a wooden pitchfork is beyond me. We did end up buying some Cabrales cheese. The guy at the orujo (liqueur) stand was so generous with his little tasting cups and we ended up buying some yogurt liqueur. It’s really quite tasty. We even ran into some Americans at that shop and helped translate a few things for them.

There were just the right number of tourists around: enough to give you the feeling that the town was alive, but not so many where you couldn’t avoid hearing their conversations. I can’t imagine what the town must be like in the middle of winter. Perhaps we’ll have to book a room at one of their quaint little posadas and see.

To answer the question I raised at the beginning, according to the information plaque, Bárcena Mayor dates back to the ninth century (CE), and was the site of various monasteries over the centuries. Of course claiming that your little 1200-year-old mountain valley town is the oldest in a region that was part of the Roman Empire is pure nonsense, but you’ve got to admit, it makes for some really excellent tourism marketing! If you’re in Cantabria looking for a well-preserved historic village to visit, I highly recommend Bárcena Mayor.