Crab salad on the spur of the moment.

When we got out of the pool today, we had no dinner plan. When we got home, Lisa pulled out a container of crab meat. Suddenly, it was on.

First, we tried to duplicate the crab salad that we ate at La Boca for my birthday. We mixed the crab with garlic, mayo, celery, onion and a large amount of pimentón dulce. We used it two ways. We made a montadito with crab salad topped with avocado, sprinkled with pimentón, with onions, pimiento, and pickle marinated in vinagre de Jerez and olive oil. We also used the crab to stuff pimientos, put it on a crostini and topped it with a guindilla pepper. We also had manchego cheese, olives stuffed with anchovies, berenjenas de Almagro, and asparagus topped with garlic mayo.

This is all worth remembering.

Cardona

One very fun thing to do in Spain is to visit the national system of luxury hotels called "paradores" (their website is here).  In most cases, a parador is a historic building that has been modernized into a very nice hotel.  You can stay in castles and convents and monasteries etc.  Having a castle fetish, this is just the ticket for me.  On each of our last two trips to Spain, we have splurged for a special night in a fancy parador.  A couple of years ago, we stayed in a former monastery on the Camino de Santiago in León.  This past year, we spent a night in a castle in Cardona, about 60 miles from Barcelona.

The interior of the castle:

More of the interior of the castle:

A guard outpost for the castle that hangs out over the valley:

In our sample of two paradores, we have learned that all paradores are likely to have some Alice in Wonderland Furniture:

The paradores are also famous for their restaurants,where they feature gourmet takes on the local cuisine.  This was our appetizer.  It was sausage on the left with almonds dipped in anchovy cream.  That's right!  I said anchovy cream.  And they were tasty!

Lisa had a tuna salad on heirloom tomatoes.

I had duck cannelloni.

I also had migas, which is toasted bread crumbs, a local specialty.  In this case, they were topped with a fried egg with various accourtrements on the side.  There was melon, sausage, tomato, sauteed veggies, etc.  The most interesting side was the hunks of pork fat in the upper left of the plate.  I ate them too.  It was good.

For dessert, we had an almond pastry with a glass of sherry.  Sadly, I cannot recall the variety of sherry.

Also, a pistachio tart and sherbet.

The interior of the restaurant:

A simple Spanish breakfast:

Here is the main plaza in downtown Cardona.  We missed the yearly fiesta by a day.  Each year, they set up bleachers in the plaza and have bullfights right in the square.

Here we are sitting on the temporary bleachers in the plaza.

Here is a poster for the bullfights that we missed in Cardona.  I'm not all that interested in seeing a bullfight, but if I were to see one, it might be more interesting, in a way, to see it in a place like Cardona rather than at massive bullfighting stadium.  Interestingly enough, despite this festival, the Catalan people of northeast Spain are currently in the midst of possibly banning bullfighting in that part of the country.

The other really interesting site in Cardona is the local "Mountain of Salt."  It is very literally an entire mountain made of salt, which has been mined since antiquity.  We were lucky to tour the interior of the salt mines.

Here is a particularly fetching salt miner.

The interior of the salt mines.

The interior of the salt mines.

U2 In Denver

6:00 p.m. 5/20/11. Near La Cueva, NM. We're driving to Taos on our way to tonight's destination, a Super 8 in Salida, CO. As long Lisa drives, I'll make regular updates all weekend. Supper tonight will be at the Guadalajara Grill in Taos.

7:43 p.m. 5/20/11 Taos, NM
Dinner at the Guadalajara Grill: Shrimp tacos, chicken chimichanga, and michelada. Not all for me.

8:50 a.m. 5/21/11. Salida, CO

Breakfast at the Patio Pancake Place.

9:15 a.m. 5/21/11. Salida, CO

Breakfast is served. Belgian waffle with pecans. Hash browns smothered with green chile, homemade German sausage, and egg over easy.

The green chile doesn't live up to NM standards--there are tomatoes and cumin. It's tasty enough, but all the extras overwhelm the delicate chile flavor. Also, no real maple syrup, nor real butter. Still, all in all, pretty good.

9:45 a.m. 5/21/11. Salida, CO

Downtown Salida.

10:11 a.m. 5/21/11. Near Salida, CO

The Collegiate Range.

10:53 a.m. 5/21/11. Near Leadville, CO

Naturally, I wanted to go closer.

11:29 a.m. 5/21/11. Leadville, CO

Plenty of snow here.

1:45 p.m. 5/21/11. Golden, CO

We're at The Yard House in some massive mall. Their claim to fame is that they have 130 beers on tap. I ordered a Belhaven Scottish Ale. Lisa ordered a Tripel Karmeliet. We also ordered some hummus.

4:30-6:10 p.m. Steuban's Food Service. Denver, CO

Chipotle fried corn with habañero butter and lime. Skirt steak with chimichuri butter and chile lime. Lobster roll. And Albert.  The lobster roll, totally hyped on the Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives," was tough and salty.  It was a huge disapointment.  But the steak rocked.  And the corn was decent even though it is out of season and not fresh out the field in Iowa.

6:58 p.m. Invesco Field. Denver, CO.
U2 Concert. The stage before the show.

7:00 p.m? Invesco Field. Denver, CO.
U2 Concert. With Adrian and Concha.  I'm sorry that they're out-of-focus, since they look way better than we do.  We were working with very limited photo equipment.

10:30 p.m? Invesco Field. Denver, CO.
U2 Concert.

11:02 a.m. Interstate Kitchen and Bar. Denver, CO
Brunch.

Sweet potato tamale, with candied bacon,and roasted tomato/onion.
Bloody Mary with candied bacon.
Shrimp and grits with basted onion and poached egg.
Avocado Benedict with smoked mushroom, arugula, soft poached eggs.
Flapjacks with candied bacon,, honey molasses syrup, and berry preserves.

An excellent brunch choice, all in all, thanks entirely to Alberto excellent taste. Score!

11:02 a.m. Argonaut Wine and Liquor Store. Denver, CO.

$150.00 down the drain. Yes, that is bacon-infused vodka.

4:10 p.m. Conway's Redtop. Colorado Springs, CO.

The Chicago-style hotdog joint is closed. The sub shop is closed. So we're stuck with our third choice. The burger is the size of a large pancake, so we each got half of a burger.

4:55 p.m. On I-25 en route to Las Vegas.
Concert recap.

The concert was the expected multimedia, pyrotechnic, socially-conscious football stadium show that we've come to expect from U2. No disappointments on that score. I've seen U2 four times now.  At last night's show, Bono's singing was the best I've heard from him in person. The guys in the band played their parts perfectly. One complaint was the sound when the full ensemble playing really loud. At those times, Bono's vocals were overwhelmed. With him singing that good, his vocals should've been way out in front. My other complaint was the super-fantastic "claw" stage setup. As bad luck would have it, one of the four legs of the claw was directly between us and center stage (see the photos above), meaning that we had to rely on the video screens to see a lot of the action during the show. Having bought our tix seconds after they went on sale as members of the U2 fan club presale, we should've had an unobstructed sight-line to that critical part of the stage. We should've been closer to the stage, too, quite frankly. But overall, it was a great concert.

I made a small attempt to capture some video during the show with the iPad, but the quality was too low to share here. To get a feel for a 360 Tour show, you might look here (there might be a commercial, but it is well worth it):



The only other thing we did in Denver was search for a yellow ostrich-skin belt to match the boots I already own. The search did not produce the right belt for me, but we foundsome near-misses. Maybe we'll find the right belt in a few weeks if we are able to return to Denver to see Vicente Fernandez, the King of the Ranchera.

Lisa's Birthday

Today is Lisa's birthday.  To celebrate, I made a quick recording of myself singing an Eliades Ochoa song, "Entre Flores." 



In English, the lyrics go something like this:

Among the flowers that you received on your birthday
There is a flower that I dedicated, me to you
Written upon a petal there is a phrase
That I wrote with my own hand
Written upon a petal there is a phrase
That I wrote with my own hand


Among the flowers, look well for the one I'm telling you about!
It's in the bouquet of violets that I sent
When you find the flower I'm telling you about
You'll be able to read what I dedicated to you
When you find the flower I'm telling you about
You'll be able to read what I dedicated to you

(If you're reading this post from an email subscription, you'll probably need to visit the blog to hear the song).

Mother's Day Dinner

We smoked a filet of salmon.  It is pictured here with capers, onion, dill, and lemon juice on a crostini.

Lisa made her famous wine-braised beef short ribs.

Marcos and Jourdan came up to celebrate Mother's Day with us.  Among other things, they announced that I am going to become a grandfather (sic).  I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this.  Not coincidentally, they will simultaneously become parents themselves.

The mothers, grandmothers, and aunts all got choked up at the new baby news.

A lovely Mother's Day flower.