Soccer, Spanish and Stir Fry

So, I passed.  I PASSED!  In fact, I did really well. It’s funny how excited I am, considering that, in the grand scheme of things, there is nothing riding on this test.  I have officially moved from Intermediate 3 to Pre-Advanced, whatever that means.  I hardly think I’ve mastered Intermediate 3, so I am thinking of hiring one of the teachers for a couple of hours a week to grill me and give me homework in order to lock it in before I head back to class.  Which brings me to a crazy coincidence.  One day, as I was walking from the train at Plaza Catalunya to the language school, lost in my own little thought world, I heard someone calling my name.  I looked up and saw a woman I vaguely recognized.  It turns out she is my neighbor, Francesca—the one with whom I share clotheslines.  Why was she walking the same way as me at the same time?  Because she is a Spanish teacher at the school!  We live on the same floor of the same building.  So she seems like the natural choice to tutor me, although she doesn’t know it yet.

The Spanish class was pretty consuming, so was not up for any complex cooking projects.  It seemed like a good week to dip into the Minimalist archives, so I checked out Bittman’s list of his 25 all-time favorite Minimalist recipes and made… Chicken Stir Fried with Ketchup.  Suprisingly delicious, very easy, and you almost definitely have everything you need in your kitchen right now, except maybe the chicken.  I threw in some cashews near the end of the cooking, which added a nice crunch.

STIR-FRIED CHICKEN WITH KETCHUP

Time: 20 minutes

1 1/2 pounds boneless chicken, preferably dark meat, in 1/2- to 1-inch chunks

1/2 cup flour, more as needed

4 tablespoons neutral oil, like corn or canola

Salt and pepper

2 tablespoons slivered garlic

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste

1 cup ketchup.

1. Toss chicken with flour so that it is lightly dusted. Put 2 tablespoons oil in a large skillet, preferably nonstick, and turn heat to high. When oil smokes, add chicken in one layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

2. When chicken browns on one side, toss it and cook until just about done: smaller pieces will take 5 minutes total, larger pieces about 10. Remove to a plate. Turn off heat and let pan cool for a moment.

3. Add remaining oil to pan and turn heat to medium high. Add garlic and cayenne pepper and cook, stirring, about 2 minutes. Add ketchup and stir; cook until ketchup bubbles, then darkens slightly. Return chicken to pan and stir to coat with sauce. Taste and adjust seasoning, then serve.

Yield: 4 servings.

Milo had a Friday evening soccer game—they are usually Saturday mornings, and his coach—a very young guy—generally shows up looking rather hung over.  In fact, I’d be willing to guess that when he arrives for the Saturday morning game, he has not gone to bed yet.  “Coach” is also a generous word.  The kids run around in a little clump for the whole game, surrounding the ball, leaving no one to receive a pass.  I kind of wonder what they’ve been doing for five months.   But on Wednesday, a new coach suddenly appeared, and the kids actually played much better, even though they lost.  Again.  What’s cool is that at Milo’s age—6—he doesn’t care a whit.  Soccer is fun, and games are funner.

The game was at 6, and C.C. went home from school with her friend Emma for a play date, so Alec brought Milo and his two best friends and team mates, Jonas and Peter, home after school to hang out until the game.  Jonas and Peter are both Norwegian, and often speak Norwegian to each other even when Milo is around.  Milo has started saying “Iska” (pronounced “Eye-ska”) for “I” as in “Iska want to go swimming.”  This seems to be some kind of language adaptation that he has picked up from Jonas and Peter, neither of whom speaks English very well. 

After the game we picked C.C. up in Sant Cugat and then took the kids out to for pizza to celebrate their terrific report cards and my Spanish test success.   But Milo was so exhausted he could barely eat; we put him into bed still dressed in his soccer uniform.  Alec and I stayed up late, reading about the unbelievable situation in Egypt, where he has done a lot of work, and planning our summer travels.  Croatia anyone?

Photo of the Day

Milo, with his buddies Jonas and Peter close behind

Test Day

The Spanish curriculum my school uses tries to make the grammar interesting by using a theme for each chapter.  For example, the chapter on the passive voice has a media theme.  So we learned to say things like “In 2001 a new minimum wage law was passed…” and “In 2008 a serious financial crisis began…”.  Another chapter, on the conditional tense, is titled “I would never do that…” and one of its topics is tattoos and piercings.  The teacher went around the room and asked everyone if they had tattoos, and if they had any other piercings.  She asked everyone except me, that is.  When she started to move on, I said, “Hey, Marta—what about me?  Am I too old for the question?”  Marta, who is at least 15 years my junior, turned red and apologized.  I assured her that I was only joking.  Still, I do feel like the mother hen in the group.  Everyone else’s stories feature their boyfriends and roommates, while mine tend to be about my children.

As I sat down at my hard little chair with the built in desk today, I realized just how long it has been since I have taken a test.  It is a humbling experience. Although I did not feel 100% solid on all of the material—you learn A LOT in 40 hours over two weeks—I really did not want to repeat the level.  The idea of talking about tattoos and piercings again was enough to light a fire under my butt.  When I came home early yesterday and announced to Alec that I planned to study for a couple of hours before dinner instead of going to the gym, he said, “Don’t you think you either know it or you don’t at this point?  Do you really think cramming is going to help?” 

“I’m not cramming, I’m studying.  I’m consolidating all of this knowledge,” I announced, pointing to my notebook.  Still, I realized he had a point.  Why had I not reviewed the previous material every night during the course?  Easy.  Because I barely had enough time to get the homework done, while also trying to work, stay healthy, and be with my family.

The test consisted of 40 multiple choice questions—most of them offering options for verbs, which was enough to make my head swim—a reading comprehension passage, and a writing assignment.  I was to pretend I was living with a Spanish roommate who had habits I did not like, and other positive qualities.  I had to write an email to a friend about the situation with this roommate and ask for advice.  The whole assignment was designed to get me to say things like:  “I hate it when she leaves dirty dishes in the sink.  It bothers me that her boyfriend practically lives with us.  But she is a lot of fun.  I should probably talk to her…”  Basically, I had to showcase my new facility with the subjunctive, the tricky, awful verb tense that is used much more in Spanish than it is in English.

I think I did okay, but I won’t know for sure until tomorrow.  And, even though C.C. got better quickly, I still feel like I have not made up for that sleepless night.  Which is why I’m headed to bed at 9:30 pm. 

El Corte Ingles

El Corté Ingles is the biggest department store in Barcelona.  Based in Madrid, it has several branches here, the main one sitting right at Plaza Catalunya.  The Corté Ingles is where you go for anything you cannot find anywhere else.  It has been my store of last resort for:  good sheets at a reasonable price (during the summer sales); a connector to hook my laptop to the printer; thermoses for the kids’ lunchboxes; cocoa powder; horseradish; crème fraiche; and pretzels.  I find myself there at least once weekly to search out or stock up on some elusive product.  What brought me there today?  Ginger ale—the good stuff, made with real ginger.  C.C. woke up at 2 am with a stomach virus, probably the same one Milo had last week.  Alec stayed up with her until 4 am, at which point he asked me to switch.  She was up all night vomiting.  We thought some real ginger ale might help.  She kept down most of a bottle—thank you, Corte Ingles.

I had Spanish today, and my parenting class, and Alec had only one meeting on the books, so he stayed home.  Four hours of Spanish on four hours’s sleep was excruciating; I felt like the walking dead.  I still do, which is why I am headed for a hot bath and then straight to bed.  Keep your fingers crossed for us—we could use an uneventful night.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever!

I do feel that, after six months, I live here in Barcelona.  I don’t feel like a tourist.  And this has created some tension in me, because I still don’t know the city inside and out the way I want to.  And I need that “tourist energy” in order to motivate me to get out and about.  But because we do live here, there is laundry and homework and exercise.  There are bedtimes to be met, taxes to be filed, papers to write.  And so when the weekend comes, Saturday usually means shopping and errands, and on Sundays I often want to do nothing more ambitious than read the newspaper, do a little cooking, maybe go to the park.  The last thing I feel like doing is taking an excursion to some new place that’s on our list of things to do before we leave.

This weekend, for example, felt a lot like a weekend we could have spent in Brooklyn.  My one agenda item was to weed out and organize our office/art room.  I thought about taking before and after photos to post, but I was too embarrassed to show you the before shots, so I didn’t. On Friday night we toodled around on the internet researching where we want to go in Greece this summer.  On Saturday Alec shopped and I took the kids to the pool.  I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookie batter (see below). Then Alec watched a movie with the kids while I tackled the dreaded office.  Andrea, our sitter, came, and Alec and I went to see The Fighter and then out for (really good) Thai food. 

Today, we slept in, and I got a big pot of Frankies’ red sauce simmering on the stove, C.C. finished her book, and Milo and Alec watched the Barca game.  We went out to the park with the kids and their bikes, and then came home at which point I returned to the office to finish up.  I made some banana bread and baked the cookies.  A perfectly normal, relaxed, enjoyable weekend.  Should we have walked the barceloneta?  Gone to the botanical gardens?  Seen the latest planetarium show at the science museum?  Nope.  Tomorrow is another day. 

But for today, you need to know more about these cookies.  A couple of years ago, the New York Times published Jaques Torres’ recipe for chocolate chip cookies.  The key piece of the process is letting the batter rest, and the key ingredient is chocolate feves, oval disks of very good quality chocolate.  Vahlrona makes them, for example.  Well, last week at the market I noticed that the spice lady had feves.  I had never seen them before.  So this week, I put them on the list for Alec to get.  I’ve been hoarding regular old chocolate chips that my mules from the US have brought.  I thought it might be too much to ask them to go hunt for feves.  But now I have a local supplier.  So yesterday, I made the cookie batter and then let it rest overnight in the fridge.  I baked them today.  They are delicious, as always, although a little different.  I can’t really explain how, it’s just that the butter, sugar and flours are different.  The eggs are different.  So it all adds up to a different product somehow.  But not an inferior product.  I made them with only all-purpose flour, for example, because I cannot find bread flour here.  So use whatever you have, but just make them.  Okay?

Photo of the Day