Photo of the Day

A Word About Laundry...

Human Highlighter Suit Tally:  4

And now on to the more mundane aspects of life in Barcelona (as if grocery shopping was not mundane).  First, a confession:  it has been many, many years since I was the primary person responsible for doing my laundry, much less that of my husband and children.  I know what many of you are thinking:  “Cry me a river, Lisa.” But that’s just the way it’s been, and I’ve grown accustomed to it. When we first moved to our place on the upper west side, washers and dryers were not allowed, nor was there a communal laundry room, so we dropped our dirty clothes off at a laundry. Twenty four hours later our clothing would be returned to us—clean, folded, and packed into an impossibly small bag to form a perfect rectangular solid.  What do they do to compress the clothing that way?  The laundry closest to our home once lost my favorite pair of jeans, my black t-shirts often came back gray, and the life span of most items ended up being considerably shorter at the hands of these laundresses, but I did not complain.  I could live with the tradeoff.

We won the fight to legalize washers and dryers—no small feat in a New York City co-op—right around the time Blanca (and C.C.) joined our household, and Blanca took over doing not only the baby’s laundry, but all of it, including sheets, towels, folding, putting away, and ironing.  That was nearly 8 years ago.

Fast forward to the present, or at least to last April, when I came to Barcelona to look for suitable places for us to live.  I saw several really nice apartments, and not one of them had a clothes dryer.  Nor did I see a single Laundromat or drop off place (still haven’t, and the dry cleaning costs a bloody fortune). Instead, it seems that most people here have only a washer, and they hang their clothes out to dry.  Sure, I have been to a few homes that not only have a washer and dryer, they have entire laundry rooms, with sinks and space for an ironing board to be set up all the time.  Even in New York City, where I have a massive set of machines, this is my dream.  But as far as I can tell, these people seem to be Americans, and also in another income bracket.

So I was delighted to find, as we settled in to our place, that our machine was not only a washer but also a dryer—a clever, compact, European 2-in-1.  I had heard about such things in New York.  I have friends I will not name who have smuggled them into their co-ops in refrigerator boxes and installed them behind locked doors when the super is not looking.  But despite my delight, I have always been suspicious of machines that claim to do double duty.  I will not buy a TV with a built-in VCR, or a coffee maker that also grinds beans.  Research shows that it’s not effective for people to multi-task; it certainly can’t be good for machines.  Something, I believe, is being compromised.  And what happens when one part breaks and it’s too expensive to fix? What a waste to throw the whole thing in the garbage.

It took me a good long while to figure out how to set the various dials and buttons so that our cute little 2-in-1 machine would wash and then dry.  But I did figure it out.  I know I did.  And yet, and yet…  This machine does not dry clothes—it simply makes them hot!  There are three settings on the dryer dial, and as far as I can tell they correspond to hot, roasting, and burn-your-fingers-off-if you-touch-the-clothing.  So that was a bummer.

Luckily, our lovely flat came equipped with both a drying rack AND two sets of clotheslines—one that you get to out the guest room window, and the other which runs across the airspace between our apartment and the other people who live on our floor (see photo below; the lines on the right, with white clothes pins, are mine, and the ones on the left are Francesca’s).  I met our neighbor Francesca one day across the clothesline, and once when I dropped a towel, it caught on the line of the people who live below us, so it got me to meet them, too.  It seems that the clothesline is not only a utilitarian object but also serves a community-building function.  I have met more people in the building hanging my laundry than I have in six weeks of riding the elevator.

One of my goals in taking this year-long sabbatical to a place that is significantly slower-paced than New York is to remember how to appreciate the simple things—shopping in the market, picking my kids up from school, sitting down while I eat breakfast.  Doing my own laundry—and hanging it dry—fit right into that plan, or so I try to convince myself.

But here is the less romantic side of things.  Like many things European (refrigerators, cars, shower stalls) the washer/dryer that is really only a washer is quite small.  On the one hand, I like the way these size restrictions change my behavior for the better.  My food is fresher, because I have to buy it more often.   Our car goes forever without a fill-up.

However, there is a downside. I have taken to inspecting the kids’ clothes to see if they can get one more wear out of them before tossing them into the hamper. I am not proud to admit this but, more than once, I have sniffed at the underarm of my own t-shirt to see if I can prolong the time before it needs to be washed.  I clean only the chocolate milk spill on my shorts rather than laundering the parts that are not obviously dirty.  I think I now understand why getting caught on a crowded train in some parts of the world can be an unpleasantly odiferous experience—the washers are too small!  Which means that even with all of my sniffing and inspecting, I feel as though I am doing laundry ALL THE TIME!

And, although I’ve had some experience hanging laundry out to dry in less urban environments, it loses some of its romanticism, as well as that fresh, breezy scent, here in the middle of the second largest city in Spain.  There is also the texture issue—without all of that fabric softener, dryer sheets, and high temperature fluffing, the clothes come off the line sandpapery and stiff.  Milo, getting dressed one morning, asked me: “Mama, why are my socks so gravelly?”

I can’t really tell you how, in the largely unspoken shifts in the division of household labor in our new era of Life Without Blanca, I ended up with the laundry.  But since Alec does most of the cooking, packs the kids’ lunches, and is 100% responsible for changing the lightbulbs, I don’t really mind.  As housework goes, I’ll take laundry over almost any other chore.

And just a couple of weeks ago, I read this piece in The Economist that shows that clothes dryers are one of the worst offenders when it comes to energy consumption.  You think you are saving the planet by switching to those funny-looking lightbulbs, but it’s really me who is greener-than-thou.  So when I am finding it difficult to channel the romanticism of the simple life, at least I can feel virtuous.

NOTE:  I have so much passion for this subject, that I felt the need to include 2 photos of the day—one of our clothes lines, and the other of me hanging out the laundry during our vacation in the Pyrenees.

Photo of the Day #2

Photo of the Day #1

Foraging

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 4

TWO NEW FEATURES:  By popular demand (well, perhaps not popular, but at least a few close family members) C.C. will be producing a “video of the week.”  Here’s the first of a possibly-regular series.  AND, I’ve added a “human highlighter suit tally” to document the number of times Milo wears his Day-Glo FC Barcelona uniform.

The quest for food with which to cook the dinner we planned before we knew it would be impossible to shop this weekend continued today.  The tension increased because we were invited for brunch at exactly the time the OpenCor opened—10 am.  Which meant we wouldn’t be able to shop until 12:30 or 1 pm.

Alec drops me and the roller cart off at the OpenCor on the way home from brunch.  The centerpiece of our menu is Rosa’s Roast Chicken with Wild Mushroom Casserole and Red Wine (from The New Spanish Table, of course).  I quickly learn that, while the OpenCor is perfectly fine for a quick emergency shop on Sunday, it falls short if you need to buy all of the ingredients for a somewhat ambitious dinner.   It’s a bit like a really big, Spanish 7-11.

The recipe calls for a 6 – 7 pound chicken.  There are only two whole chickens left, each about 3 pounds.  I put them both in my cart before someone else realizes they want to serve chicken tonight.  There is not enough spinach for the sautéed spinach with pine nuts and raisins we had planned, so I change the plan to a spinach salad; I’ll use the leftover cabrales and dressing from the other night.  Although this is beginning of wild mushroom season, there are none.  So I get some regular button mushroom and a package of dried.  And no fresh herbs.  I know we have dried thyme at home, and I remember seeing rosemary and bay leaves in the park behind our house.  It’ll have to do.  You may wonder why we didn’t simply decide to cook something else; I don’t really have an answer to that question.  And forget the watermelon granita with gingered strawberries.  At this hour, it’s too late for that anyway what with all of the freezing and scraping required, never mind the absence of strawberries and ginger.  I get three pints of Haagen Dazs instead.

Alec, unpacking the bags, asks me where the fresh herbs are.

“There were none—I’m going to go out to the park and pick them.”

“Don’t you think that’s probably illegal?”

“I don’t know.  I’ll bring my cell phone in case they put me in the slammer and I get one call.  Make sure yours is on.”

The kids overhear this conversation and become genuinely concerned that I won’t be returning.  An extreme reaction, perhaps, but they are so whacked from all of the change that it seems entirely plausible to them that I will end up in a Spanish prison.

I tuck the kitchen shears into my pocket and head out.  Fortunately, the park is pretty deserted.  I know Borg (a horticulturist) told us he had spotted bay leaves in our park, and I am confident that I will recognize them. I lived in Northern California after all, and they were everywhere. But as I make my way up the hill, everything looks like a bay leaf.  So there I am, furtively tearing off leaves and sniffing them.  Nothing smells like bay.  Finally I pluck a few branches of something I think smells kind of like it, and figure I can fool Alec, who is a stickler for ingredients.

I’m pretty sure I remember where the rosemary is—at the top of the hill across from the playground.  Sure enough, there are bushes of it.  Also lavender and sage growing like weeds.  I see no inviting signs, saying: “Dear Neighbor, Please help yourself!”  Nor do I see any prohibiting me from taking a snip or two. So I look around to make sure no one is near, snip a couple of branches, and stuff the contraband herbs into my pockets.  Of course, my fragrant hands are a dead giveaway.

When I return home, Alec is not fooled by my bay leaf impostors and decides to go out himself, sure that he will locate the tree.   He returns with yet another impostor, and so the dish lacks yet another ingredient.

In this recipe, you mix the mushrooms with diced red peppers and onions, whole garlic cloves, the herbs, chicken stock and red wine (the herbs are supposed to be in cheesecloth, which makes it much easier to remove them later—I searched in vain for cheesecloth at several well-appointed kitchen stores during the week, but am not entirely certain that I made myself understood.  I tried to translate an English description and asked for “the white fabric for making cheese that is full of small holes”; people invariably returned my request with a look of concern and perplexity).   Anyway, you sit the chickens on top of this mixture and roast them. 

But before I get any farther, I also need to tell you that these lovely supermarket chickens still had several feathers on them.  Which is still several steps removed from the market chickens that come with both head and feet attached.  I know there is this whole movement now that you should not eat anything that you couldn’t kill yourself, but this is an area in which I become completely American.  I do not want my food to look like the animal from which it came.  Please do not serve me fish with the head on; even shrimp head kind of give me the willies.  It pains me to admit this, because I’d like to think of myself as a tougher person, one who could whack the chicken in the morning and serve it for dinner.  But I’m not.

Back to the recipe.  You roast the chickens for an hour and a half, and then take them out while you doctor up the sauce from what remains in the pan.  First you are supposed to skim off the fat.  There is so much fat in our pan that it’s more like bailing out a boat than skimming.  I come into the kitchen to find Alec surrounded by fat-filled bowls as he skims and skims and skims.  Then you need to remove the solids if, like us, you were unable to find cheesecloth.  And then you cook it down a bit.  Alec is muttering, convinced that the sauce is bad and that the dish will be a disaster.  I’ve found that, at these times, it’s best to leave him be, so I go back out to the living room to be with our guests.

Soon Alec emerges, chicken carved and displayed on a platter.  We pass the meat, the sauce, the rice.  And it’s good.  Really good, I think. We’ll have to make it again, next time with the right stuff.

NOTE:  In regaling our friends with the story of our shopping scavenger hunt, they tell us that the OpenCor used to be open on September 11.  But three years in a row, angry Catalans protested that decision by setting several of them on fire!  Folks take this holiday pretty seriously.

Photo of the Day

C.C.'s Video of the Week