When I say dumpster diving with Donna I don’t mean I actually climbed into a dumpster. I stood next to a dumpster and tried to maintain quality control. Donna found the hydraulic tiles she’d been dreaming about. Any tile worth saving was going to be saved!

Hydraulic tiles were first created in Spain during the mid-1800s. They are produced by hand using cement-based raw materials. It is a decorative tile made by compressing these materials in a hydraulic tiling press. They are durable and colorful. Spanish building contractors think the old stuff is junk. Newer modern versions are popular. That’s why our tiles were in a dumpster.

My initial thinking was to fill up our little rolling grocery cart with one load of the ’best’ tiles we could find. Good tiles were put in the cart. Cracked, chipped, filthy, solid color, and questionable tiles were set aside. That process lasted until the first cart made it up to the terrace of our tiny Valencia apartment.

When we took the first load of tiles up we set off the overweight signal in the elevator. It’s a two person elevator. The tiles weren’t going to take the stairs. One of us had to get off the lift.

As the process progressed we got faster and less discerning. Tiles were unceremoniously stuffed into our cart and some heavy duty shopping bags. On the terrace we placed tiles in rows of six, swept them off, and hosed them down. Eventually there were ninety-nine tiles lined up. Donna said, “We just need three more.” She paused for a second and added, ”Or…nine!” At this point in the process my answer was, ”Three! Only three! Three!”

We had started attracting some polite notice. There was one wry grin and several averted eyes. A kid driving his Vespa nearly crashed when Donna popped up from the depths of the dumpster. Dropping your jaw and doing a double take at the same time is a tough maneuver on a scooter that’s going too fast on wet pavement.

Of course we brought back nine tiles! As we lay in bed figuring out which muscles were going to ache in the morning the last thing I remember saying was, ”If you decide to make another dumpster run at 6 AM, I’m not going.”

If you expected 2022 to bring anything back to normal, I expect you have been disappointed. It’s been a strange year to write about. From our privileged perch in Spain the humorous complaints we have compiled seem petty. Sharing wonderful experiences while bombs fall in Ukraine feels like crowing. Writing about good deeds large or small feels like joining the virtue signaling competition. My typing finger has been idle.

We met with some fellow expats in Valencia to rearrange a garage that will become a makeshift distribution stop for Ukrainian refugees. Lots of hands made quick work of it. Afterwards the organizer, Graham, shared a few stories. One of them stuck with me.

Graham was visited by a woman who came to Spain as a refugee from Kazakhstan. When she met with Graham she brought a wad of cash, military grade night vision binoculars, and two pounds of rolling tobacco. It wasn’t a combination he expected.

The woman was a voice of experience. She found when a person has been displaced, is cold, hungry, and somewhat disoriented, rolling and lighting a smoke is a greatly appreciated pleasure. Graham added that kicking a tobacco habit during an armed invasion of your country probably doesn’t make much sense.

Thinking about those two pounds of tobacco reminded me that simple pleasures are often the best. El Cafe de l’abad is right around the corner from our bolt hole apartment in Valencia. They serve the best cortado I’ve ever had. In Central Market we bought clams that reminded us of the ones we gathered in Washington State. They made an incredible Bucatini Alle Vongole. That was washed down with a bottle of Merseguera wine.

The Merseguera was an unexpected pleasure. Plantings of this grape are few, and centered in the vineyards of Alicante, Valencia, and Jumilla. It was a grape we’d never heard of. One sip had Donna exclaiming Merseguera could turn her into a white wine fan. Two bottles are chilling in the fridge. Luxuries of course, even at 5 euros a bottle. The memory of that first sip will linger. Lingering memories are the point here.

The woman from Kazakhstan’s story reminded me that so many are denied simple pleasures. Necessities are denied as well. It seems that when a person is displaced, cold, hungry, and somewhat disoriented a simple pleasure would be a sweet reminder of better days. Not hope, but perhaps it would provide a moment of respite.

Simple pleasures…coffee, tobacco, chocolate, familiar foodstuffs. When the bus leaves El Carmen and heads to Poland with supplies for Ukrainians we’re going to ensure a few simple pleasures make the ride.

The first item on Uncle Brewer’s list of collected wisdom was to avoid making top ten lists. He proceeded anyway. There is family tradition to uphold here.

Some things are difficult or impossible to get in Spain. Our friend Ron misses chunky canned soups. Everyone who travels to the U.S. brings back a stash of goodies. Before stepping on the plane they know which restaurants they are going to visit. Their order has been visualized. Their list is prepared. They are ready to go!

Things I Miss…

#1. Burgers: Pork and breakfast sausage spices don’t belong in burgers. Flaccid disks of meat don’t cut it. Ian swears by the horse meat burger at the local burger bar. That’s never going to happen. I want a charbroiled Angus burger with all the trimmings. The one I want is at the steakhouse five minutes from our West Seattle house.

#2. PNW Salmon: You can get salmon in Spain. It’s usually farm raised Atlantic salmon. It’s pink and mushy. We are spoiled. We have experienced Pacific Northwest salmon. I find myself dreaming about salmon smoked by Tulalip Reservation’s finest artisans. When Dean Pablo posts photos of his smoked fish I know exactly how good it is!

#3. Vegetarian Pizza: We make a monthly run to Beacon Hill’s Bar del Corso for pizza. Their vegetarian pizza might include fiddlehead ferns and chanterelle mushrooms. In Spain they throw frozen corn on their veggie pizzas. It’s downhill from there. We know what we like, and we are picky.

#4. Zyrtec: I thought Spain would cure my hay fever. My itchy eyes and runny nose say otherwise. Zrytec is the only allergy medicine I tolerate. It’s probably available if you ask for cetirizine, but who can remember that? I’m going to stock up on the name brand stuff.

#5. Absorbant Bath Towels: Spanish towels squeegee the water off your body. They aren’t soft. They do the job…sort of. Sandpaper would do just as well.

#6. High Thread Count Sheets: We found bamboo fiber sheets that Donna almost approves of. We bring sheets back from the U.S. every time we come to Spain.

#7. Liquid Smoke: A bottle of liquid smoke lasts forever. Adding a couple of drops to your baked beans, stew, or chili recipes is sufficient. Half a drop in your Bloody Mary is probably too much. You have to mix up a batch. I haven’t found liquid smoke in Spain. I’ve looked!

#8. BBQ Sauce: We are used to having a couple dozen brands of BBQ sauce on the grocery store shelves. In Oliva there’s a store brand that tastes like a store brand. I’d make my own if I could find liquid smoke.

#9. Canned Green Chiles and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup: These are my lazy cook staples. They don’t make anything that’s actually good. They turn leftovers into some sort of twisted comfort food.

#10. Pants/Trousers: I’ve got thick stumpy legs, no butt, and a variable waist size. The immediate challenge in Spain is finding pants I can get my feet through. If I can pull the pants up, it looks like I’m wearing tights. Even then the butt is saggy, and the waist is too loose. I wind up looking like I’m made out of spare parts. (Brits call their underwear “pants”. They wear trousers on the outside…most of the time.”)

Of course when we are back in the U.S.A. we’ll miss things about Spain. The beach, 2 euro bottles of wine, and sitting in the sun enjoying a 4 euro breakfast for two will top that list.

Valencia’s Fallas is said to be the biggest celebration in Spain. It has art, music, pageantry, politics, religion, fireworks, and fires. From an expat’s point of view there are also contradictions. That’s what makes it a human endeavor.

To wrap my head around Fallas I have to look back to the grand community celebrations of my youth. In Seattle the biggest celebration was Seafair. It was an all stops pulled out citywide party!

Seattle’s neighborhoods built floats, crowned royalty, participated in parades, had backyard feasts, and watched the hydroplane races. At night after the races were over we walked down to Lake Washington’s Andrew’s Bay and watched fireworks.

Fallas is a little like that. Neighborhoods build impressive monuments instead of floats. Instead of watching boat races people watch polystyrene monuments go up in flames. The neighborhood parties feel familiar. Fireworks are a constant instead of a grand finale. That’s where the similarities end.

We have been told Fallas was started in the Middle Ages. Artisans and carpenters burned items that were no longer useful to prepare for a new season. At some point that evolved into building monuments to express the outrage politicians inspired. Setting the monuments on fire was a way of saying, “We’d rather burn something big, beautiful, and expensive than pay you another cent in taxes.” That’s a sentiment I can get behind.

Getting this outrage past censors during the Franco era meant being slyly creative and using common archetypes. Politicians who fit neatly into stereotypes are still fair game. It’s a celebrity roast made out of polystyrene. The burns aren’t punchlines. They are incendiary torches and kerosene.

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There is a religious component to Fallas as well. It’s where unity is built. In addition to building monuments to burn, a Flower Virgin is created. Thousands of celebrants in traditional regalia make their way to Valencia’s Plaza de la Virgen. They are accompanied by hundreds of marching bands. In the plaza the Flower Virgin is built one bouquet at a time. She is several stories high and magnificent. The Virgin doesn’t get burned.

The contradictions? This year’s Fallas featured monuments addressing the environmental crisis. Seeing them go up in big plumes of black smoke was jarring. Donna hit the internet while they were still burning. Torching polystyrene is not environmentally friendly. Thinking about 2021’s close to 800 burning Fallas monuments had us contemplating environmental impacts very seriously.

Of course Seattle’s hydroplanes and the beloved Blue Angels’ airborne maneuvers are hardly environmentally friendly either. We gasp and point with glee. Then we write it off as a once in a year event…a drop in the bucket. High horses are only great if we see things more clearly from our perch. Environmental concerns require all of us to rethink our habits and rituals.

Fallas 2022?

Fallas is usually held in March to celebrate the coming of Spring. Covid pushed it to September this year. Valencia deserves a lot of credit for demonstrating how a massive citywide celebration can observe covid protocols. Streets were closed to automobile traffic. Barricades and close monitoring kept plazas from being overwhelmed by celebrants. Masks were worn and the Civil Guard was quick to remind those whose masks had slipped. None of this felt forced. It was a point of civic pride.

The question remains, “Will we return in March 2022 to experience Fallas again?” My thinking is to see if there is a way to experience Fallas in a smaller way. I enjoyed the Seafair celebrations of my youth. Hydroplane fever was a given, but watching family members and friends participate in Seafair events developed civic pride. Backyard BBQ’s, potlucks, and beach parties were where community bonds were formed. Part of me is saying, “Go small, or stay home.”

Spain’s healthcare usually winds up being ranked as some of the best in the world. The US healthcare system has Norway calling the US underdeveloped. Access and expense are generally cited as the US’s downfalls. I’ve had enough medical adventures in the states to be grateful for very good, although expensive, medical insurance. I remember laying the bills from a single medical misadventure on our harvest table. Every surface was covered. I counted twelve billing entities from one Seattle hospital. Fortunately, access has never been a problem for me, but I shudder when I think about the numbers on all the bills I have received.

The morning we headed off on our Spain by Train tour I discovered a cyst on my back had become inflamed. I figured it was sunburned. Maybe a spider bit me. As is my family’s predilection, I ignored it. It hurt, but I don’t talk about things like that. If I mention feeling sick, I’ve crossed over into sick as a dog territory. I still won’t talk about it.

I blame this on my mother’s Christian Science beliefs. Amateur medical remedies that made things worse and hurt like hell probably has something to do with it too. My kids inherited this unreasonable stoicism. I don’t know why. Watching me be stupid should have persuaded them to take a different course of action.

The inflammation on my back kept growing until it looked like I was growing a breast on my right shoulder blade. Donna hit the dreaded internet for medical answers. You never know what’s going to pop up. Did some hairy Mediterranean spider lay eggs in my back? Could we expect baby spiders to burst forth and scramble towards the nooks and crannies of the room? Donna raised an eyebrow and said, “It’s a carbuncle.”

The medical treatment prescribed by Dr. Google was simple. Applying warm compresses four times a day and slathering the area with antiseptic cream would either cause the inflammation to subside, or bring things to a head. The inflammation didn’t subside. Donna watched for red streaks and counseled medical treatment. I didn’t want to spend time in COVID tainted waiting rooms, or search the internet for physicians in the next town. Besides…it was getting better wasn’t it?

Donna tentatively agreed that whatever was happening on my back was getting almost imperceptibly better. She began photographing it to reassure herself. Gradually the lump shrank down to the size of a golf ball. Medical treatment was advised again. My response? “Not until we are back in Oliva.”

In the meantime correspondence with my daughter, Alyssa, revealed one of gardeners she supervises had an allergic reaction to a bee sting. He made a short visit to a Seattle area hospital for observation. It wound up being a $4,000 bee sting. That is outrageously normal.

Donna didn’t wait for me to make a doctor’s appointment when we got back. Thirty minutes after dragging our suitcases through the door she was on the phone. I was going to see a doctor at a local clinic.

I had no worries about getting substandard care in Spain. That’s just something we’ve been taught to think. When Donna had a dental emergency a few years back she visited a specialist in Barcelona. The care was expert, successful, and inexpensive. I’m still blown away by the dentist’s office. It was a BMW compared to the ‘53 Ford station wagon our West Seattle dentist worked out of.

After hiking a mile to the clinic in Oliva we found their sign, but no door. We took a trip around the block and finally asked for directions. A locked door with no signage was the not very promising entrance. We had passed it several times. I was buzzed in and walked up an even less promising staircase. At the end of a dim corridor I found the clinic. It was tiny. The waiting room only had room for two plastic lawn chairs.

While waiting I determined this was a four person operation. There was the receptionist, a lab technician, a physical therapist, and a general practitioner. Everyone who came out of a doctor’s appointment made their way to the receptionist and settled their bill. The receptionist was the cashier, and the office’s entire billing department.

Without filling out any forms, showing identification, or providing proof of insurance I was ushered in to see the doctor. She looked at my back and asked, “Is it painful?” I shrugged my shoulders. Without further discussion the doctor went for it. I was standing in the middle of the room with my shirt around my neck. Then the doctor asked, “Again?” I nodded my head. Yeah, that hurt!

“I am going to give you antibiotics. It’s usually seven days. I am going to give you ten because…”

“Es mejor.”

The doctor smiled and off I went. I stopped at the reception desk and pulled out a credit card. The appointment and the procedure cost thirty euros. Eight days later the lump on my back had gone from convex to concave. There were no signs of infection. I wasn’t expecting a harvest table full of medical bills. There would be no $4,000 bee sting sticker shock. Taking a cat to the vet in the US will set you back more than 30 euros.

What I paid for was medical care stripped back to the basics. I wasn’t paying for several billing offices. I didn’t use my Spanish insurance. So I wasn’t supporting claims departments, managers, or a CEO. I wasn’t paying for a fleet of lawyers, or liability insurance. My antibiotics cost two euros. I am healing, and I don’t feel like I got robbed. It wasn’t the leather seats, wool carpet, and wood steering wheel experience, but I am not complaining.

There is an old saying that assures us we get what we pay for. It has convinced us that paying more surely must be better. When it comes to medical care in the US a new saying is needed. Something like, “They’ll take everything they can get, and a whole lot more!”

A translator will tell you ‘ajo blanco’ means white garlic. Ajo blanco is not really white garlic soup though. The recipe calls for a single clove of garlic with the green germ removed. The key ingredient is blanched almonds.

The version we had at L’lamber in Barcelona was what you might call a refined version. That is if you consider adding water a refinement. The traditional version of ajo blanco has the consistency of a smoothie.

I read at least a dozen recipes before attempting my own version. What I found is that ajo blanco pre-dates the introduction of tomatoes in Europe. The recipe has had several tweaks over the centuries. I would add a few of my own.

The restaurant version we tried included smoked anchovies as well as the traditional addition of green grapes. I ditched the smoked fish and the grapes. ( I would have loved to use fresh Dungeness crab like Danny Hook suggested. It’s not available in Spain.) I used clams instead. Then I added Pink Lady apple cubes to the recipe. I used threads of dried mango as a garnish.

What I made was too thick. I thinned it out by adding small amounts of water and splashes of apple cider vinegar. The vinegar cut the sweetness of the apple and brought out the apple flavor.

I chose to cut the recommended amount of bread in half. Some recipes eliminate the bread altogether. That turns ajo blanco into a gluten free option.

I subscribe to the ‘Taste as you go Improvisational School of Cooking’. In this case Donna enthusiastically approved of the results. Nothing beats a cold soup on one of Spain’s simmering summer days.

Ingredients:

1 cup Marcona almonds pre-soaked overnight and strained

1 1/2 slices of stale white bread, crusts removed and cubed

1 clove of garlic with the green germ in the middle removed

3-4 tsp sherry vinegar

1/2 Pink Lady apple peeled and diced

1 cup of cold water

1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil

Apple cider vinegar to taste (1 tsp at a time)

Salt to taste (a pinch at a time)

Garnishes: smoked anchovies, Dungeness crab, mussels, clams, dried mango threads, muscat grapes, cubed apples soaked in Cava…

Directions:

Add 1 1/2 slices of cubed stale bread (crusts removed) to the blender.

Pour the cold water and sherry vinegar over the bread and let it sit for a minute.

Add the almonds, olive oil, cubed apple, and garlic to the blender. Blend until the mixture is milky and smooth.

Chill for an hour before serving.

Add seafood, and garnishes. Drizzle the soup with olive oil.

Tweaking the Recipe: Add salt a pinch at a time. Add sherry vinegar 1 tsp at a time. Add apple cider vinegar 1 tsp at a time. Add water a little at a time to thin. ( I have a heavy hand when it comes to vinegar. I add it one splash at a time to taste. 1 splash = 1 Tbs )