ask and you shall receive...

I found this online that looks exactly like what I am talking about :)

A Recipe for Spanish Tortilla
by Santiago G.H. (santigh@correo.uniovi.es)


A few facts about tortilla to start:

- There aren't two tortillas that taste the same.
- Two people with the same ingredients do different tortillas
- Tortilla is best if you don't expect it
- Tortilla is best if you did it yesterday
- Tortilla is best as a midday plate and not as a main dish. I don’t know if this makes sense out of Spain.
- Tortilla can be a dream or a horrible dish.
- The key is in the inside. I prefer them in the liquid side :-)
- The person that makes a tortilla could be called "tortillera" but you don't want to ask for the "tortillera"
while in Spain, even if you just want to thank her for the tortilla.

Some of this facts lead me to a disclaimer:
This is not but the way I make tortilla. I do not claim this recipe as mine in the sense that I learnt from my
mother, and she learnt from her mother, and so on. Also, I don’t claim this as the only way to make a
tortilla.


Ingredients (4 serves):

4 medium sized potatoes of a good variety for frying.
4 eggs, preferably if they are from free grain-fed hens
half an onion (medium size), finely chopped
ExtraVirgin Olive Oil (EVOO) of a soft variety such as
Hojiblanca
salt (about a teaspoon, but it would depend on your
taste and the amount of onion you use)



1. Preparing your ingredients
Peel the potatoes, wash and dry with a cloth.
Cut them in halves through the long axis
Cut them in slices, about 2mm thick
Put in a bowl, add the chopped onion and salt, stir.





2. The first Frying
Fry them in EVOO in a pan, with not much oil. If you
put a lot of oil you'd get crusty french fries and you
want them to be soft and tender, so you have to be
very careful with the oil temperature and the amount
of oil. I usually set my vitro ceramic at about 6/12. It
is quite possible that they get stuck amongst them.
After all, they don't have so much space in the pan.
Cook for about 15-20 minutes, depending on the
variety of the potato.

A Recipe for Spanish Tortilla
by Santiago G.H. (santigh@correo.uniovi.es)


3. The Mixing
Put the eggs on a bowl and give them a few strokes with a fork. A key for
success is not to get them perfectly beaten.
Take the potatoes out of the pan, trying to avoid an EVOO excess. I usually put
them directly in the bowl with the eggs.
Let the potatoes rest with the eggs for a while, perhaps 5 minutes will do. This
way, fried potatoes will absorb part of the lightly beaten eggs, making it even
more yummy.



4. The Shaping (or Second Frying)
Now put a small pan (smaller than the one you used for frying the
potatoes) and a very small amount of EVOO. Let it gain temperature, drop
the mix from the bowl and stir a bit.
Now let it sit for a while, because you want the external part to fry while
the internal remains tender and wet.
As soon as you feel you can put it upside down... do it.
I usually turn it with a plastic apparel I bought specially for that matter,
sort of a plate with a handle in the center, but you could do it with a plate
and a bit of training.
Also, I usually turn it about 4 times.


5. Tortilla Española as a result

mirror, mirror

I am back and it is fall already...wow.

The summer was full of beach walks, friends, and lots of lots time for beagle training and treats. This is one very food motivated puppy...lol
Saffi has been part of our family for 3 months now and we have done much learning together.

Saffron is a blossoming flower that reveals more of herself everyday and under the guidance of Michele Jarvis-Wonnacott at Connective Training, we are learning new ways to communicate with the furries we live with.
Saffi is working very hard on recall training and I am happy to report we had our first off leash at the beach day this past week.
Two dogs, running along the shore, ears up, tails in the air together. Joy is the only word that describes their state of being. How can one not feel joyful in response to that.

The idea that animals come into our lives for a reason is never more present than in our Saffron. I am seeing what a difference it makes in all our lives if I take 2 minutes to shake off the crazy energy I sometimes come home with before I walk in the door, breathe, and simply allow calm to take over.

She is the mirror that reminds me daily to choose joy each and everyday.

Such a beautiful sensitive soul.

We all should have such a responsive mirror to help us see ourselves more clearly.

Day 5- Pic of something you love

Sooo..something, not someone......something I love.

 Well there is a pretty broad field to choose from but I have loved Crows for as long as I remember.
 I have been lucky to  know several crows  over the years.

There was a crow named Toby who would hang, hippity hoppying along the windowsill beside me in grade 5.
He would wait for recess and lunch to get leftovers...or steal your paper bag if you weren't watching.
Such a comedian and such an integral part of the school's landscape  for years.

There was an albino crow named "Snowball" we got to know at our local bird store....a very cool and funny creature who could not be in the wild as he was different. Different is not welcome in Crow Murders.

There was also our crow " Indigo".
 I saved  Indigo when just a baby after it had been kicked out of its nest and was being attacked by its "murder" once on the ground.

Daiv and I raised her by hand feeding cat food, worms and bugs all mushed up, with an eye dropper  for three months, every 90 minutes til she learned to eat on her own.
That was a good day :)

A friend helped to build a huge aviary for Indigo to live in outside. She would never have made it in the larger world as we had originally intended due to some genetic twisty feet and beak issues, but 'different' was welcome in our house, so she stayed.

Indigo was friends with all our menagerie, riding on the back of Sage's neck, sitting beside Abby on the floor and  hopping up to strangers with her special hop/walk/flap dance.
 She spent every evening indoors sitting on one of us and playing with shiny sparkly things or turning off the television with her beak on the remote, especially David Letterman.
Indigo was a great spirit teacher for all of us.

Something I love...Crows....

Social Media, is it simply old fashioned correspondence?

I recently began a wonderful book " The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society".
It has me musing over the past.

We often hear talk about the onslaught of social media- the texting, the private messages on FB , our status updates, group invites et al, as if this is somehow new and bad. The degneration of human to human contact, the faceless intimacies. " He broke up with me in a text"

The book I am currently reading (  I still can NOT get on the reading books online, bandwagon. I like  to smell  the paper and feel the book in my hands. Books are friends to be revisited over and over, not transiently fleeting across a screen to soon disappear  - but I digress ... :) )

The book I am currently reading has rekindled a nostalgia in me.
It has occurred to me that we have been here before.
I shift my thoughts to calling cards being delivered to its intended by black and white clad butlers with white linens hanging off one arm.
Daily notes back and forth between BFF in stark white envelopes atop silver plates and crisp folds sharing the little details of a life.
 Gentlemen  declaring their undying love to their betrothed with delicately structured prose dancing across parchment.
Appointment cards marking the advances in a day, dance cards filled with potential partners.
A time when we spoke  through the written word more eloquently than we did face to face.

I think on these things and I wonder if we have come a sort of full circle.
Is texting the new calling or appointment card?
Do our status updates compare to those lengthy letters of the trivial details of our daily lives we find so fascinating from jane Austen's world?
Has the telephone been replaced by the written word and if it has, what does that mean for language in the future?
Will it be filled with OMG, LOL ad nauseum in the place 'cordially yours' ?
Will texting become the dance of the prose of intimacy?

I do not profess to understand all this and I can not even begin to imagine what comes next, I simply pose the subject to be pondered and discussed.

 I think I will start paying closer attention to my texts and, iphone spelling allowing, re adopt the ' cordially yours' of yesteryear.

Cordially Yours;
Kimmee