The Pewter Chef Will Not Die!

 Have I unleashed Vesuvius? Just a week after the Pewter Chef resurrection, we did another one!

The back story is we've been trying to get a Rotary friend and colleague of Wife and the colleague's husband over for dinner for months. Finally we had our date for last Saturday. I was having a hard time coming up with an idea that was going to kill me, I being a bit overwhelmed at the moment. But as fate would have it, Wife mentioned our last meal at her Rotary Club meeting and friend C said she was jealous. Well I jumped all over this as I was bereft of ideas for the meal. I offered it to C as an option and she snapped it up. 

Once again I was way too busy cooking to take any pictures so you will have to make do with verbal descriptions. C and her husband F brought us:

• Zucchini
• Mushrooms
• Tomatoes
• Arborio Rice
• Boneless Ribeye Steaks 

When I saw the mushrooms and the rice, I knew instantly I was going to make true Italian risotto. I took some of the mushrooms, roasted them, added them to some chicken broth, blended it up to create the fluid for the risotto. 

While this was going on, I focused on getting something to the table quickly. That is something I always do in these meals, assuage the hunger by producing at least one fairly quick dish. In this case, I made SE Asia curry with the zucchini. I will come clean and state that making a 'from scratch' SE Asia curry paste is one of those things that comes across as very 'showy and difficult' but which in fact is not all that difficult once you know how.  But it looks like this big production with the grating of all the roots (ginger, galanghal, tumeric, shallots, garlic) and pounding the shit out it with your big ass mortar and pestle. Once you have the curry paste, the dish comes together really quickly.

I told them I was giving them a deconstructed meal. The vegetable, meat, and rice all as separate courses.

Next I did the steaks. I decided to do mini kebabs with different flavorings. I cut the meat into small cubes. I flavored half with a combination of the curry paste and Thai fish sauce. The other I did a combination of chopped fresh rosemary and garlic with salt, pepper and olive oil. I cooked the meat quickly over a high heat. You could very definitely taste the difference!

Having everyone now off the edge of hunger, I could focus on my finale, the risotto. It is another of these dishes that comes across as very complicated when, in fact, it is rather simple. However, simple is not easy. Running a marathon is not complicated. It's just hard. With risotto, you have to gradually add the liquid, stirring constantly, and let it be absorbed over and over until the rice gets to the right consistency. This can take a good 20-30 minutes. Then you add butter and grated cheese to finish. If you have a good flavor base with your stock, it comes out incredible. My mushroom stock did the job.

Happily F and C were happy imbiber of wine as well. I started out with a nice St. Emillion Grand Cru and them moved on with a Barolo.  Both were consumed in their entirety.

We had a lot of great conversation and I proudly kept my kitchen mess down to mere large proportions as compared to the weekend before when I had messed up to epic proportions.
 

The Pewter Chef - Resurrection

I cannot even remember how long it has been since I undertook a Pewter Chef Challenge. I don't think I've done one since we started traveling in earnest in 2014. So maybe close to a decade? But, we were looking for something to do with our new friends, R and K. 

As a review, R is a classmate of Wife from her high school days. They barely knew each other at the time. But decades later, when Wife got on Facebook, she reconnected with him. And she discovered someone who shared a passion for travel as we did, and who was traveling the world even more than we were. 

They kept track of each other, seeing that one or the other had been or were going to be in a place where the other had visited. Then, suddenly, they were going to be in Albuquerque! And we were going to be home too. She arranged a lunch. Who knew if we would hit it off? That lunch turned into 6 hours of conversation covering a wide swath of topics related to past, present, travels, backgrounds, etc. We wanted to get together again. As we had treated to lunch, R & K wanted to return the kindness. But Wife and I find restaurants not the most relaxing places to have genuine conversation. So I threw out the idea of a Pewter Chef meal. They would buy the food and I would whip up something.

I told them this idea was based on the old Iron Chef TV show from Japan. R in his professional days spent a lot of time in Japan. He'd never heard of the show, but evidently went online and checked out old episodes. Yesterday, Saturday, they arrived at 4pm with bags of food. There were:

• Bell Peppers
• Serrano Chiles
• Salmon
• Cod
• Sweet Potatoes
• Blackberries
• Raspberries
  
• Green Onions
• Romaine Lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Portobello Mushrooms
• Chives
• Tomatillos

 One of the things I've learned in doing these Pewter Chef meals (even if the knowledge was rusty to say the least) is the importance of developing a game plan from the beginning. In this case, the two things that dominated my thinking was how to use the two fish in different preparations, and how to optimize the use of the vegetables in an efficient (meaning using them together) fashion. 

I started by char-roasting Mexican style, the tomatoes, peppers and chiles, along with onions and garlic I had on hand. This gave me base ingredients to work with. Then I prepped the tomatillos with a quick boiling. 

With as much food as I had, I wanted to spread the eating over a long period of time. That meant getting a first dish on the table quickly. With my veggies char-roasted, I could make a quick Mexican style salsa with the tomatoes, chiles, garlic, and onions. Then I did a quick pan fry of the salmon (it was really high quality salmon!). Salmon, salsa on top, with some chives for a green counterpoint to all the red colors.

Voila! First Course

 

 While this was going on, I was struggling with what to do with the tomatillos, not to mention the sweet potato. Then I came up with an idea. Tomatillo are very sour. Why not use them as a vinegar replacement in a vinaigrette? I went down the salad path. I could use the roasted peppers. And what if I created little batons of sweet potato and roasted them so they became crisp? Add a sweet component. Berries for color. And a nice shaving of Parmigiano Reggiano?

Tomatillo Vinaigrette

 Saucing the peppers

Plated Salad

 

 Final Presentation with Wife's Fresh Made Rolls from This Morning and a Nice Rose

 I had decided before they had arrived that I wanted to make some homemade pasta. It is such a crowd pleaser, is such a great palate for so many ingredients, and is really nowhere as difficult as it looks. It was an inspired choice for the finale making use of the cod. 

I made a quick pasta sauce sauteing some of the roasted onion, tomatoes, garlic, and the portobello mushrooms. Then I added some lobster stock base and milk. I cooked the cod in the pasta sauce. Fresh pasta cooks in just minutes. So into the sauce. Cook the pasta in the sauce for a minute so it absorbs the flavor. Add a big ass quantity of Pecarino Romano cheese which melts nicely into the sauce to give it a creamy thickness. Garnish with fresh basil from the garden.

 Our wonderful guests R and K (sorry that is not a good picture of you K! ☹️)

 

 It was a lot of food. It was about 5 hours from when they arrived until they left. The conversation never faltered the whole time. We're not sure when fate and travels will allow us to reconnect. I hope it is not too long. 

If you'd like to see all that R and K have done in their travels, go to R's website here.

 

Doldrums

 This happens every time after we return from a big trip. I've been blogging like a maniac. Posting pictures. Telling the story of our travel. Then I get home and it is this big ... BLAH. Life is just going on in its sort of mundane mode and it is so hard to come up with something to post about. 

But this time has been a bit worse because of the let down associated with putting off any decision as to how or whether we will be seeking any longer term staying in Europe. I think if we hadn't felt so close when we were in El Campello it would not have been so bad. But being in the realtor's office and talking about the actual prospects made the idea so real. Then the deflation of our last three and a half weeks. So coming home, I have been bummed. 

There's also a lot going with Theodora Project. A lot is very positive. But other aspects are very stressful. We are are at a critical point. I will write more about this in a separate post. It is adding quite a bit of additional stress though. 

On the positive side, we met an old school mate of Wife's. The back story is they really hardly knew each other in high school. But they connected on Facebook years ago. And they discovered they were both on this mutual adventure and journey of travel. Turns out they are in Albuquerque for a month. We made a date to have lunch. That turned into coming to our house and 6-hours of non-stop conversation. They are scheduled to come over for dinner this Saturday. Hopefully, I will have the foresight and energy to take some pictures and have a good story to tell. 

For now, at least I got a post up.

Mostly Spain 2023 - Finale - Reflections (aka Great Navel Gazing Post)

We are home at last. The last part of our trip really wore us out as I will relate below. But we are back home in our routine of sleeping, daily time use, and eating. It is allowing a lot of the pain that developed over the last three and half weeks to dissipate. And as these travel adventures have been part and parcel of our life transformation related to aging, there is the big reflection at the end. This was particularly true for this trip.

Review of the Purpose of the Trip

This trip was initiated to continue our exploration and analysis concerning moving out of the United States or living a major part of life out of the United States. It was a logical continuation of trip last fall to Cefalú Sicily. That trip had established a clear set of parameters related to what we enjoyed and didn't enjoy. Further we chose a locale this time that was clearly an area that we wanted research as a possible destination.

The Area - The Spanish Costa Blanca Around Alicante and Did We Like It?

We stayed in two different areas in this region and visited many others. By pure chance, the town we stayed in during the first month, El Campello, was clearly our favorite for a number of reasons. It had all the things we liked about Cefalú without most of the negatives. It was a town where you could walk to just about everything you needed. We found ourselves using the car we rented only rarely. The touristy part was limited to the seacoast. As soon as you moved inland, you were in a real community. It was not as isolated as Cefalú or Sicily in general. There were a lot of expats but not so many that they changed the character of the town. Wife was able to find a community of expats through Facebook that she connected with immediately. After our first two weeks, we were interested enough that we started to have conversations with realtors and health insurance providers. 

It was here that we ran into a serious problem, the lack of available apartments for long-term rent in the areas we were interested. Spain, during the pandemic, passed a number of laws to protect renters. This had the effect of making it highly unattractive for property owners to rent. This is especially true in high tourist areas where a landlord can make as much in three months at short-term rent rates as they could make renting long-term. 

Other Challenges 

There are a number of other factors that seem to conspire to make a long stay very difficult. I am going to present these a fashion so you can see how one factor plays off another to create a great conundrum.

Get a long-term visa? - If you want really want to move and make this your home, you should really get a long-term stay visa. It is a sort of painful process but not impossible by any means. Then you can stay as long as you want and travel all over the Schengen area of Europe. 

Oh, then you have to deal with this - Taxes for one. You are now subject to Spanish taxes which are based on the total assets you own no matter where you own them. And insurance. You have to get Spanish health insurance. This isn't too expensive. But, if you want to keep your U.S. options open, you are now paying twice for insurance. Then there are things like getting a Spanish drivers license and other factors associated with establishing a long-term residency. If one were really intent on cutting ties with the U.S. and had a long time to live, it makes sense. But being in our mid-70's and dealing with declining physical capabilities, that seems like a big leap.

If you don't get a long-term visa then you deal with this - The Schengen area 90 day restriction. A non-Schengen area citizen is limited to a 90 day stay in the area after which they must be out of the area for 90 days. We considered this. We could be in Spain for half the year. If we could have rented our own place for a year at the going rates, we would have saved money even if we were only there for half the year. Except as noted above, there are practically no long-term rents available. There are people who will rent an apartment for the 10 months of non-vacation period at long-term rates. That would work. 

Except for Insurance and it 'not being home' - We have travel insurance that is good for 70 days. That leaves us uncovered for 20 days unless we buy Spanish insurance. Plus we would be dealing with a rental where we have no control over the mattresses or chairs. This might not seem like a big deal but it is. These are the two major factors that determine our older body's ability to live without pain. Generally speaking, it is exceedingly rare for rentals to have these as we would want them. 

As you can see it is not a simple equation. 

The Last Part of the Trip - Exposing Our Limits

It has been coming more and more apparent to us our diminishing physical capabilities. Both Wife and I have an assortment of nagging ailments dealing with our bodies. The last part of the trip which sort of evolved through a series of incremental decisions, as I've related before, truly brought these to our consciousness like being hit between the eyes with a metal pole. Over the last 3.5 weeks we had 4 air trips, 3 long driving trips, and 7 stay changes. Each of these required, the transporting of luggage. Think multiple suitcases, backpacks, camera bag in and out of cars, into and out of airports, into and out of various residences. This was a huge toll and a lot of wear and tear on our bodies Then there were the constant changing of sleeping arrangements and virtual lack of any place to sit and rest comfortably. By the end we were totally beat up and exhausted. 

So Where Does That Leave Us?

I'm not sure. I still have this desire to live outside the U.S. I just don't know how we can make all the other factors work. For the moment, we will have a mandatory hiatus as I have to apply for a new passport right after a trip to Ghana in August. Given the delay in getting new passports, I suspect it will be 2024 before we will do any international travel again. And despite all the moaning, groaning, gnashing of teeth, and sitting in ashes, rending sack cloth, Wife and I are planning a major trip to the Far East the Spring of 2024 to take advantage of going to China while #2 and family are still there. So there you go. For the moment, we just keep doing what we've been doing.