501 Spanish Verbs

I have a new bedside table book--the classic 501 Spanish Verbs.  I currently reside in a valley on the roller coaster that is the language learning process.  What I’ve realized in the last week is that I have focused on content in my reading and speaking, with little thought to verb tense.  There are roller coaster high point days, on which I feel as though the words come rushing out of my mouth in effortless paragraphs.  And then there are the low points, on which I stumble on simple requests, and question the correctness of the paragraphs I spouted the day before.

So my current trough prompted me to ask my Spanish teacher, Jorge, what I should do about my verb problem.  “Do I just need to memorize them?” I asked?  “Pretty much,” he responded, advising me to do conjugations in my head while cooking dinner, taking a shower, brushing my teeth. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun.

I have a good vocabulary, and know the meanings of many verbs.  But conjugate them in past, present, future, subjunctive?  Don’t hold your breath.  I have been barreling through conversations using any verb tense that comes to mind, and now I’m beginning to get some sense of what I must sound like.  It’s not pretty.  I don’t bother to discriminate between the two main past tenses.  I figure that as long as I am conveying that I am not talking about chowing down now, or in the future, I’m good.

I have heard a lot of Spanish spoken in the last eight years, and you can get pretty far this way.  It’s kind of like playing by ear, only it’s speaking by ear.  This is how children learn their mother tongue, after all.  The only difference between them and me is that they have supremely absorbent little sponges for brains, whereas mine has begun to resemble a dried up old walnut that is also likely premenopausal.  I can scarcely remember why I left one room to go to another, much less which verb to use.

Of the 501 verbs included in this new and improved edition—which also comes with a DVD and a CD—53 are labeled as the “essential 53 verbs.”  For each verb, there are 7 simple and 7 compound tenses.  I figure I can whittle that down to ten or maybe even 7 total.  And by the end of my time here, I can probably memorize those.  To my surprise, Alec said he’d like to join me.  Pretty romantic, no?  Even more than me, Alec has learned Spanish by ear.  Only his ear is better than mine.

The question of the night is—should I bring the enormous verb tome to Sicily?  Probably not.

P.S. I've decided to eliminate the Human Highlighter Suit Tally.  The shirt's kind of stained, and Milo doesn't wear it as much now that it's mucky.  He did get a Victor Valdez goalie jersey for Christmas, but let's see how it goes before we start another tally.

Photo of the Day

Oranges growing in Barcelona, on December 28!

The Vigo Routine

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 10

By Day 3, we have established our Vigo routine:

1.     Sleep as late as possible.

2.     Get up, eat some breakfast, and putter around for several hours.  I honestly cannot account for what happens between 10 am and 2 pm.

3.     Suddenly it’s 2 o’clock, so you go out with the kids to get some fresh air and a bite—just long enough to say you’ve been out.

4.     Return home in time to receive relatives, and eat some more.

5.     Stay up late talking and snacking.

6.     Go to bed and repeat.

Yesterday, I decided to make a chocolate mousse for dessert.  Raquel had all the ingredients, and I thought it would be a nice change from turron.  The only problem was that there was no electric mixer.  I enlisted Alec and Nick to beat the egg whites, but they still fell a little short of ideal.  Plus, since I had started so late, I wasn’t sure if it would have enough time in the fridge to set up.  Still, it was Julia Child’s recipe—which I highly recommend—so I crossed my fingers.

Our brief outing was to downtown Vigo.  Although the air had a real bite to it, flowers bloomed everywhere—pansies, cyclamen, birds of paradise, and the most amazing camellias.  We walked around, got some ice, and came home just as Raquel’s brother Suso (I’m sure I am spelling this wrong) and his family were arriving.  Raquel and Mila had cooked up a huge batch of giant prawns as an appetizer, and then we had fresh tagliatelle with a sauce of tomatoes, cheese, and more shrimp.  We were supposed to eat the scallops, but no one had remembered to defrost them, so they’re still there. The mousse had not set up completely, but Raquel insisted we serve it anyway, in bowls.  Every last drop got lapped up, even though our guests had also brought pastries from a local bakery—tiny tarts of cream, strawberries, apple, chocolate.  And a dessert wine that tasted like liquid raisins. 

Mila got struck by an awful flu, which caused her to have to lie down as soon as the meal was served—she used her last ounce of strength to feed us.  It turns out that Gena, who had not planned to come that day, got the very same illness.  We did a quick rejiggering of the sleeping arrangements because Mila—who had given up her apartment for all of us and had been staying with a friend—was too sick to go home.  Mila slept with Raquel, C.C. slept with me, Myron slept in C.C.’s bed, and Nick took up his customary post on the couch.  We managed.  C.C. is bigger than Milo, but a much less active sleeper.

I will have to run around the block a few times before we embark for Sicily and start eating pasta and cannolis.

Photos of the Day

Fora in Vigo, the pastry tray, and.... Uncle Suso with the kids

Christmas

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 10

Mercifully, the kids slept until 8:30 on Christmas morning, then had to endure the adults’ sluggishness and coffee-making while they (the kids) sniffed anxiously around the “stockings” and piles of gifts.  I say “stockings” because we did not bring ours from New York (you’d think that there would have been room in one of those 21 boxes, no?) and I never thought about getting any here.  So Raquel—in between cooking an enormous meal for nine—whipped one up for Milo, and C.C. used her boots.  Pretty soon we were surrounded by a sea of gift wrap, ripped up boxes and small plastic parts.  The adults were quickly enlisted to install batteries and assemble various toys, and the kids seemed happy with their haul.

Christmas morning is always a little overwhelming for the kids—not that they get SO much stuff, but still they don’t quite know what to play with first.  It takes awhile for everything to sink in.

The kitchen is pretty much off limits when Raquel and her sisters are cooking.  First off, it’s smoky and freezing.  Gena and Mila smoke, but they courteously confine themselves to the kitchen, and open a window so that most of the smoke escapes.  But really they have their work all planned, and extra sets of hands just muck up the works.  Christmas dinner in Galicia means cocido.  Everyone makes it, and everyone eats it at home.  Then they go visiting.  Gena had brought an enormous pot for the dish—it reminded me of my father’s clam chowder pot.  It takes several hours to cook the cocido, so you have to start pretty early.

To make cocido, you start with a big pot of water that you boil, and then add a lot of meat—ribs, a whole chicken, slabs of beef, various unidentifiable pieces of pig, and chorizo.  After this cooks for awhile, you add a whole bunch of whole, peeled potatoes—big ones.  Then you add the grelos.  There is no English translation for grelos—they are some kind of dark, leafy green, earthy and slightly bitter.  Some recipes call for garbanzos also, but Raquel says they are undigestable, so she leaves them out. 

When it’s all done, you scoop out all of the porky meat and put it on one plate.  On another you put the beef and chicken.  You put the grelos in one bowl and the potatoes in another.  The broth that’s left in the pot is saved for making caldo, or soup, another day.

Everyone sits around the table and takes some potatoes and grelos, and whatever meat they want.  Everything has been spiced up a bit with the paprika that has seeped out of the chorizo.  Milo showed me that they tend to put some chorizo between chunks of bread and eat it that way.  It was hearty, filling, delicious.  Not so different from something my Polish relatives would have eaten.  Every culture has its boiled meat, I guess. Barlow says that it is when a Galician is eating cocido that he is most likely to experience morriña.  I think everyone was simply too stuffed after the meal to burst into song; no one could move for awhile after Christmas dinner.

Later, at about 6, two of Raquel’s nieces and their families came to visit; they had already had their own cocido at home.  The apartment is very comfortable even with 7 of us living in it, but at our peak on Christmas Day we were 18, plus a beagle puppy.  Cramped, but still fun.  The kids played in one room, and small groups clustered in the kitchen, in the living area, around the dining table.  It’s not all my family, but it felt like Christmas all the same.

At some point after everyone left, we hauled out the cheeses and jamon again, some cava, and a big salad that had been made two days before but never eaten.  I realized as I drifted off to sleep that I had not left the house for at least 30 hours.  It felt good.

Photos of the Day

C.C.'s "stockings," and the cocido

Noche Buena

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 10

When I told people in Barcelona that we were going to Galicia for Christmas, they replied—to a person—“Galicia is beautiful, and the food is spectacular.  But it’s cold!”  They are right.  After a lazy morning of hanging around in our pajamas, we went for a late lunch across the street—croquettes, asparagus baked with cheese and jamon, mushrooms in shrimp sauce, and jamon with manchego—then to Castro Park, which provides an amazing view of the sea and has a terrific playground.  By the time we got there, the sun had begun to set and, even with gloves and a hat, I had to keep moving.  I suppose I’ve adapted a little too easily to Barcelona’s mild climate.

As for the food, where do I start?  Galicia is well-known for the quality and variety of its local seafood.  There are four kinds of lobsters, for example.  Lubina, a lovely white fish, starred in the feast.  Raquel and Mila left the house around noon to go to the Corte Ingles for the freshest fish and other provisions.  The apartment was already so full of food that the unheated laundry room had been converted into an extra cold room.  If you opened the door, you would trip over bowls of salad, bags of fruit, and lord knows what else.  Still, they asked us several times before leaving:  “Tell us now what else you want, because the stores will not be open until Monday!”  Two whole days!?!  We have enough provisions for 10 people for a week, easy.

Gena, another of Raquel’s six sisters, had arrived at the house by the time we returned from the park, and the three sisters were busy in the kitchen. The two lubinas were prepped for cooking, in a pan, covered in kosher salt (see below).  I do not know what “lubina” is in English, but it’s delicious.  One would never start Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) dinner before 9:30 pm; it’s simply not done.  Raquel was worried that we’d be done before the 10 o’clock news, and that would be scandalous.  Still, she did allow us to begin with appetizers at about 9 pm.  We started with fried calamari, served simply with lemon and salt, more cheeses from France, and from Spain, and—of course—jamon.  Then we moved to the table for thick slabs of fresh foie gras, apples sautéed in butter, and a lovely sauterne.  The lubina followed, so simple and so delicious, accompanied by roasted vegetables.  For dessert, a fresh fruit salad, and platters of turron,—xixona, Alicante, and yemado—figs stuffed with walnuts, marzipan, and polverones (powdery cookies made from almonds).  All of the Christmas pastries have almonds as their base.

We finally got the kids to bed around midnight, threatening that Santa passes by the  houses where the children are still awake.  And then Raquel, Mila, and Gena began to sing Galician folk songs, beautiful old melodies fuelled by nostalgia and wine.  They tried to explain the concept of morriña to us which, apparently, is the feeling these songs evoke.  From what I could tell, it’s something like homesickness.  In a strange coincidental twist, when I went to bed, I read a little, as I always do.  As it happens, one of the books I am currently reading is called Everything but the squeal: Eating the whole hog in northern Spain, by John Barlow.  I bought it because of my jamon obsession and, even though it’s set in northern Spain as opposed to the south, where Barcelona sits, I thought it would give me some insight.  I did not know when I ordered it that it takes place in Galicia.  And when I opened the book to the page where I had left off and started reading, I soon came to a passage about the exact same word—morriña.  Barlow defines it as “a feeling that is said to be stronger and more complex than mere homesickness; ‘home-yearning,’ perhaps, although many Galicians insist that there is simply no adequate translation of morriña.”

This is the first time in many years that Raquel and Myron have spent Christmas in Spain; they usually come in January, and we are usually with them at their house in Pawling on Christmas Eve.  Invariably, at some late hour, which means it is 6 hours later in Spain, the phone rings in Pawling and it’s Raquel’s sisters on the line, whooping it up.  Well, this year we are all together for the whooping, and at 2 am I finally said “uncle” and went to bed.  Apparently Gena and Mila were up talking in the kitchen until 5.  I think there are siestas in all of our futures.