Marty Kaplan's Blog

At 5:00 AM this morning the skies opened up and because we had neglected to close the kitchen window Susan had to get up and mop up the substantial puddle of water that had accumulated.  I slept blissfully through the entire event.

After breakfast we head to the Central Market and pick up some fruit and vegetables, as well as some jamón York and some jamón Serrano.  Susan will be making lunch today so we pick up a loaf of bread, also.  While Susan gets things ready for lunch, I strike out in search of a place where I can develop some photos that we took in restaurants and at the market so that I can give those people a copy of their photo.  I decide to try El Corte Inglés and I am successful.  The first machine I try is out of order, but on my second attempt I find one that works.  However, this machine seems to have trouble finding the delivery chute and sprays pictures on the floor.  A clerk comes by and opens the machine and there are the six missing prints.  Mission accomplished.

When I return home, I discover that Susan has made a lovely salad with lettuce, goat cheese, apples and white grapes.  She has also prepared a chicken milanesa, having pounded the chicken fillets flat, then dipped them in egg, salt, pepper and assorted herbs and then dipped them in breadcrumb.  We slice the bread and open a bottle of Gran Feudo Rosado and we make short work of lunch.  After lunch we work on the computer and Susan catches up on her reading.

At 7:30, Pepe comes by and we head off to a magicians’ get together. There are five of us and we chat, watch a couple of video performances and then each of us proceeds to do a trick or two that we are currently working on.  At 9:30 we leave Paco de Andres’s house and we make the twenty minute walk to El Asador de Leandro.  We will be meeting Sara and a friend of hers there.  We order a couple of appetizers – a tomato salad and some grilled mushrooms – and four members of our party order the cod and Gioco and I order the mixed grill plate.  Everything is delicious.  I am then asked to do some magic and I end up doing four or five effects.  It is close to 1:00 AM when we leave and make our way back to our side of town.  At the halfway point the rain starts in again and when I walk into the house at 1:30 I am, to say the least, a bit damp.  I am still pumping adrenalin for my magic performance and I have difficulty falling asleep, but eventually I drift off into dreamland.

The face of Frutería Ros

The face of Charcutería Solaz

It’s another sunny day in Valencia and there are a number of errands that need to be tended to today before we have lunch.  A brief shopping trip to the supermarket at El Corte Inglés is followed by a search for a book that we are trying to but as a gift for a friend of us.  We are looking for the Spanish version of THREE CUPS OF TEA and have been remarkably unsuccessful both in Madrid and here in Valencia.  I have been told that the Corte Inglés near the bust station might have a copy.  We head out and on the way we pass the FNAC.  We decide to take a look there and we discover the only copy that they have.  Success!

We return to Aries for lunch and we select an outdoor table and have a very pleasant lunch.  We return home and rest up a bit before we start our exercise session.  We spend the rest of the afternoon reading and working on the computer.  At 8:00 PM we head to the fountain in the small plaza near our place to meet with Zahaba and Klaus, a couple that Susan met at Yom Kippur services.  They see us and wave to us and after exchanging pleasantries, we head for a terraza near la Plaza de la Reina.

Zahaba and Klaus have recently arrived in Valencia with the intent to live here and practice here for the foreseeable future.  They are both herbalists.  Klaus is originally from Germany and Zahaba from Canada.  They met at a conference in Barcelona, married soon thereafter and Klaus then moved to Toronto.  In Toronto they both set up a successful practice.  They both knew that someday that wanted to move to Spain and spent time seeking out the perfect spot.  Last year when they ended up in Valencia, as soon as they left the confines of the train station, they both instinctively knew that Valencia was the place they had been seeking.  They sold their house in Toronto and moved here in late August.

We spent a pleasant two hours catching up on each others’ life story and a little after 10:00 we each headed our separate ways.  We gave some thought to having a bit at some café, but we opted to return home and cook up the albóndigas we had purchased the other day and to devour the jamón de bellota that we had purchased the other day, also.  We stayed up another hour allowing our meal to digest and to catch up on our reading.  The sky was beginning to seriously cloud up as we turned out the lights and went to bed.

A few shops on the route to El Corte Inglés

The menu board at Aries

Here's to you, our faithful blog followers!

It has rained overnight and we wake to an overcast sky.  With breakfast eaten and the dishes washed, we schlep an incredible amount of dark clothes to the laundromat.  They tell us to return at 6:00 and they will have all our clothes washed, dried and folded.  They will also iron my shirts.  Our next destination is the Central Market.

La Frutería Ros has become our favorite stand for fruits and vegetables.  The quality of their product is outstanding.  Also they know their product well, so if you ask for salad tomatoes to be used today they will select the appropriate ones for you.  We pay for our purchase and move on to Solaz, which is our vendor of choice for ham, Serrano and otherwise.  I decide to splurge and ask for 100 grams of pata negra, the best and most expensive cured ham.  It is produced from pigs that are lovingly cared for and fed acorns as their feed.  The ham melts in your mouth and the taste of acorns is apparent.  My 100 grams cost me the equivalent of $25.00, but I figure I’m worth it.  Susan wants to prepare lunch at home today, so we ask the people at Solaz to recommend the best place to buy chicken.  Their pollería of choice is diagonally opposite their stand, so we make our way over there.

They pick out two plump chicken breasts for us and process to slice then into fillets.  We also pick up a dozen albóndigas to be used another day.  Our last stop at the market is a panadería where we buy a baguette and we head home to put away our purchases.  We quickly head out in search of fresh flowers for our table.  There are a whole series of floristerías a short walk from our place. We look carefully at all of their wares and then settle on a half dozen orange roses.  The florist carefully arranges them for us with appropriate greens and baby’s breath.  She then wraps them in cellophane and ribbon and they would make a wonderful gift if we were visiting at a friend’s house.  Their destination is our small dining table and when we place them in their vase, they brighten up the entire room.

Susan is busily at work peeling, slicing, cutting, chopping and stirring.  She prepares a beautiful salad for us using lettuce, freshly sliced tomatoes, red peppers, olives and slices of Gruyere cheese.  Our main dish is pollo al Albariño.  Diced chicken fillets are browned in extra virgin olive oil along with salt, garlic and basil.  After the chicken is fully cooked, diced fresh tomatoes are added along with the wine.  The chicken is removed and the wine and the tomato are reduced resulting in a delicious sauce.  We slice the baguette, open another bottle of wine and dine like royalty.  We wash the dishes and busy ourselves for the rest of the afternoon.

Pepe comes by at 7:30 and the three of us head off to the magic club meeting at the CIVAC.  We sit around for about an hour with a number of magicians, myself included, doing “stuff.”  At 9:30 we make our way to Amadeus and we have a light dinner consisting of salad, a bit of sepia with grilled vegetables, a small helping of fideua and some unbelievably tender beef cheeks.  We are too full to have dessert, so we settle for coffee.  We then make our way home through the mostly empty streets.  We are well into dreamland by midnight.

The cupboard is not bare.

Un ramo de 6 rosas anaranjadas

The Happy Cooker herself!

The Happy Cooker II

Una ensalada para dos

Pollo a la Susana

Today is a holiday in all of Spain.  It is El Día de la Hispanidad and it celebrates Columbus’ discovery of America.  That means that all shops, banks and government offices are closed.  The Central Market is closed, also.  Many restaurants are open and just as many are not.  We have breakfast and spend a little time on the computer.  We then clear the deck and do our exercises using our rubber resistance.  We then do the world a favor and take a shower.

We leave the house at 2:00 PM in search of a restaurant.  We end up walking a good hour and we settle on a restaurant located close to home.  We have the menu of the day and the food is rather unremarkable.  While we are having our entrée the alley way is invaded by a clown and he proceeds to do his shtick for a good fifteen minutes.  He then goes on his way and so do we.  We spend the rest of the afternoon reading and relaxing.

We arise from our state of almost complete torpor and decide to take in a movie.  There is an Argentinean movie playing close by and we decide that we will go see it.  It is called EL SECRETO DE SUS OJOS and it deals with a retired official of the Justice department who has decided to write a novel about a case that has occupied his mind for the past 25 years.  Through a series of flashbacks we discover the details of the case and we then follow him as he finds out all the answers that had previously evaded him.  It takes a few minutes to adjust to the Argentinean accents, but once we make that accommodation the film is easy to both understand and follow.  If the movie makes it to the States, it is well worth watching.  Here is a link to the trailer. http://www.elsecretodesusojos.com/

It is 11:00 PM when we leave the theater and make our way home.  The streets are mostly empty because everyone returns to work tomorrow.  We debate entering a restaurant and having a late supper, but we opt for returning home and raiding the refrigerator.  We dine on leftovers and read until 1:00 AM to allow our food to digest.  Then we turn off the lights and call it a day.

My long lost son?

Did you see what I sawed?

Sawing a lady in half the hard way!

Friday, October 9, 2009

We beat the alarm clock by a good hour and we are up and dressed by 9:30.  We pay our hotel bill and head for the train station. We grab a quick breakfast in the Club Lounge and then we wander towards the area from which our train will leave.  We board at 11:20 and are in Valencia a little before 3:00.  We unpack and separate the dirty clothes into lights and darks and head for the Laundromat, which is closed.  We discover that today is a holiday – Moros y Cristianos.  Moros y Cristianos celebrates the reconquest of what was then Moorish Spain by the Christians.  Since Spain’s national hero – Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the Cid – was from Valencia, the celebration is all the more meaningful for me.

As we are returning to the house the parade begins and we stay and watch for an hour or so.  We see a bevy of interesting costumes, acrobats, jugglers, fire twirlers, floats and marching bands.  We are back in the house at 6:30 when Pepe calls and invites us to have a drink with him and Sara at 8:00.  We volunteer to meet him at his place.

It’s 7:55 and the parade is still going strong.  We attempt to cross the street, but it is not possible.  I speak with a police officer and ask how we can cross the street.  He replies that we have to wait until the parade is over…in an hour.  I call Pepe and say we can’t get to his place.  He says to wait where we are and that he will find a way to cross.  He and Sara show up across the street and we wave at each other.  He signals us to head down the street in search of a crossing point.  Nothing.  I then see someone open one of the barrier gates and scurry across to the other side.  Susan and I follow his lead.  The stranger, Susan and I are pressed up against the barrier gate and I ask a woman comfortably seated on a chair if she would move and let us pass.  She looks at me with an “over my dead body” look and tells me to find a different path.  A gentleman to my right takes pity on our plight and helps clear a path so that we can reach the sidewalk.  The four of us are finally reunited.

As we walk looking for a place to have a drink, Pepe looks at me and tells me that, in sneaking across the street, I looked like someone trying to illegally cross the border into the States.  We find a place to perch and we chat for a while.  Sara gets up to leave because she needs to change for a dinner engagement that she and Pepe have later that evening.  I ask Pepe to recommend a place for dinner and he takes to El Molinón, which is located in El Barrio de Carmen and he introduces us to Quique, who I believe is the owner, and Quique tells us he will seat us in ten minutes.  As we move towards our table, Pepe moves to the exit.

We dine on a variety of tapas that include pimientos de Padrón, croquetas, pulpo a la gallega, berberechos al vapor and queso cabrales.  We wash it down with a bottle of Condes de Alberei Albariño.  A little coffee and dessert and we are good to go.  We make our way back to the apartment and hang it up for the day.

Saturday – October 10, 2009

Today will be devoted to rest and recovery after we make a quick visit to the Central Market and pick up a few necessities.  We return to Aries, a restaurant where we had dined previously and treat ourselves to arroz con bogavante, a rice and lobster dish.  It is a dish I first discovered in Asturias and have frequently sampled in Madrid.  This version is a bit different in that the Asturian version is more garlic and olive oil based.  Today’s version has the rice cooked in a rich fish stock and the taste and aroma of shellfish permeates the dish.  I make quick work of it and, to my surprise, I am asked if I would like seconds.  I say yes and in two minutes I am looking at a half serving of arroz con bogavante.  We have dessert and coffee and then we are offered a chupito, which we graciously accept.

We head back to the apartment where we spend the rest of the day working on the computer and reading.  We take a break at 10:00 PM for supper, which includes jamón serrano, queso manchego, salchichón, a salad and a crispy loaf of bread.  We open a bottle of Torres’ Coronas and chow down.  We are in bed by midnight.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

We putter around the house most of the morning and we finally hit the streets around 2:00 PM.  We are headed for El Molinón again.  We walk in and they remember us from the other evening.  We are quickly escorted to a table and we proceed to order several dishes from the menu.  We choose albóndigas, mejillones, patatas con cabrales and a revuelto de morcilla.  For dessert we share a leche frita con helado and we finish up with a coffee and a chupito.  I make a number of napkin roses for the waitresses and I do a little magic for the young woman who was our waitress Friday night.  We make our way home and once again we work on the computer and get comfortable with our Kindle.  We read until 11:45 and then we shut off the lights and shut off our brains and sleep quickly overtakes us.

Quique and me

Cariño and me

Our Sunday waitressalbóndigas y patatas

One of the many wine lists that occupy the walls