Yogurt Is Not Dessert

I love yogurt as much as the next person. In fact, I'm probably above average in the yogurt affinity index. I eat at least one container a day for snack at work. But it doesn't matter how much honey or sugar or whatever you put with it, yogurt is not dessert. This is germane because I have been offered dessert for nearly every single meal since my arrival in Spain. I want Natillas, or Creme Brûlée, or something Chocolate will do in a pinch, but not yogurt. Even fruit is acceptable; I'd prefer it to be a melon of some kind. But not yogurt.

Today has been wonderful. Breakfast was included in our hotel last night, but when the lady running the Bar found out that we were leaving before they served breakfast, she offered to have us food ready to go when we checked out at 5:45 in the morning. Sure enough, when we got downstairs this morning, three big bags of food were waiting on us. What a wonderful, kind thing for her to do, so I fired off an email to the Parador corporate office letting them know that she was amazing.

Getting back into the groove of walking proved a bit difficult, but we eventually found our rhythm. I will say that it is hard to get up and moving in the morning without coffee, so when we rolled into the first town along the way with a bar open, we unceremoniously plopped ourselves down and ordered coffee.

The next few miles fairly flew by, because we fell in with a couple about my age from Castellon, near Valencia, named Roberto and Sofia. We chatted with them all the way to our destination, exchanging stories, and talking about why we were on the Camino. They are studying English (albeit British English), so we helped them practice a bit.

Here's a little taste of why English is so difficult a language to learn as a second language. Read out loud the sentence below in your normal talking voice:

I must heal my heel so I can walk up the hill.

No big deal right? Except that those three homonyms are killer when you are having a conversation with someone as a non-native speaker and are trying to understand what they are saying. Here's why. Let me translate the sentence into Spanish. The English homonyms are capitalized:

Tengo que CURAR mi TALON para poder subir LA COLINA.

They are, of course, completely different words, as they are in English, but when you hear someone say them, you don't know if the word you are hearing is "CURAR", "TALON", or "LA COLINA." As native speakers, we can of course use context pretty easily, but let me tell you, there are tons of contextual cues that come from culture, upbringing, education, locality that get read into verbal language. And even if you know the language, it takes a VERY long time to become "contextually fluent".

OK, I'll get off my soapbox.

We have left the wine region of La Rioja and moved into the old kingdom of Castilla-Leon. We are staying in the sticks tonight. I don't even have a cellphone signal, and I was prepared to walk the mile into the real town to post this entry until our hostess informed me there was Wifi. Thank you, Lord. Our hostess, Ana, is from Madrid. She and her daughter, also Ana (like that's not going to get confusing) bought this old country house five years ago, and have been running it as a Casa Rural for about four years. The house is beautiful, with the original exposed beams and thick stone walls. It's about 100 degrees outside at the moment, we're getting on toward the hottest part of the day, but it can't be more than 72 in the house - no air conditioning. It is very cool still at night, much like California, and this is sufficient to cool the house for the next day.

I've already mentioned the yogurt I was offered for dessert (I ended up with grapes instead). For lunch, we all shared a wonderful salad with chickpeas, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and raisins over cabbage, carrots, and lettuce, and had a local dish for our main course: Patatas de la Importancia - Important Potatoes. I'm not clear what made them important, but they were tasty, being lightly battered and fried (in accordance with Brian's Rules for Food #3: Fried is better) and served with bay shrimp sautéed in some kind of saffron sauce. Oh, and bread and local wine of course. We have been promised steak for dinner.

Since I've mentioned Brian's Rules For Food #2 in a previous post and #3 in this, I'll fill you in on the others, in order of importance.

1) No food or drinks are allowed in any of my moving vehicles. Not even water. Certainly nothing with sugar or bright colors.

4) Bacon makes everything better, because it is both pork and fried. If you can add gravy to it, you have the perfect food.

5) Vegetables are what dinner eats for dinner. They are acceptable as a first course, side, or snack, but vegetables are not a "meal".

6) Turkey is not a substitute for hamburger, tofu doesn't taste "just like" anything, except tofu. Call food what it is, I don't care what it's pretending to be, because I will invariably be disappointed in the impersonation.

The three of us were in agreement that our feet hurt more than we thought they would after a day of rest. Dad has developed a new blister, and if he is not improving by the time we get to Burgos on Thursday, another trip to the clinic will be in order. We cannot afford, with his diabetes, for the blisters to go South.

I had to tighten my belt a notch today. I could tell that I had been losing weight, mostly in my arms and legs, but I'm apparently losing a bit in my midsection as well, though not as much as I want, of course

We have been more contemplative the last few days. Having to regroup on the Camino has brought into focus priorities, and what is really important. Again, at this point, my musings are mostly subconscious, but I am nonetheless grateful for the opportunity to muse in a beautiful setting and amidst wonderful experiences.

I'm sitting on the patio as I type this, it looks like we may have a thunderstorm rolling in, so I believe I will wrap up here and and enjoy the storm. Attached are some pictures of today's walk.