Ode to the Feast:

Picnic day in the National Park in the Alpujarras

Another lovely Alpujarran village seen on a morning hike

Our Andalucían cooking adventure group

Villages seen while hiking one of the regional footpaths

Morning in Pampaneira: Karen and I at the colorful playground-gym near the town center

Figs stuffed w/ pistachio & chocolate

Farm house of an artist/builder in the Alpujarras ... walked by it on our last hike up there.

Peggy in old olive oil container

Alpujarran village seen from inter-village foot-path

Drying laundry in the Alpujarras

To begin with, I know how many tiny little violins must be playing for me as I write this, because I am melancholic about leaving behind the pure air and special healing waters (the drinking kind) of the Alpujarras for the bustling and striking city of Granada. However, if your heart has ever felt at ease in, and just taken to, a place pretty immediately, then you will understand these Leaving-Ferreirola-Blues smoldering in my heart today. Granada is clearly a pretty rich and juicy city, with the elegant, luminous, and proud Alhambra gracing this slope above Granada. The Arab baths are handsome, magnetizing, and relaxing. There is a noticeable hum and liveliness to the city, with a variety of colorful influences, beginning with the profound stamp left on this place by the Moors and Jews who once populated this region, and currently including the Spaniards, Gypsy (Roma), African, and other peoples currently inhabit Granada now. All this is amazing, and it just takes me a bit to change gears. So, while cities can be amazing centers of culture, food, arts, and diverse peoples, my heart is happiest near the mountains or water, in quieter surroundings.

Still, a special dinner with the group -- Kim, Anne, Peggy, Ashley, Elena, Karen, Paul, Rose, Judy, snd Deb (Zoe left us when we arrived to Granada) -- at Francisco Lillo's Bodega, La Oliva, is definitely a very warm and tasty welcome to Granada. Paired with various wines we are served bread with 3 different Spanish olive oils, a beautiful salad of "little gems" with a sherry vinaigrette (& shrimps??), cheeses and hams, a gorgeous chorizo dish that is savory and rich (sorry, didn't get all the ingredients!), beautiful soup of garbanzos in a tomato broth with some ham, and more dishes I cannot begin to remember, because now it is a couple of days later, and I have forgotten. Besides, there is this incredible soundscape happening outside right now: church bells ringing (perhaps as if announcing the Second Coming .... sorry if that's offensive to anyone ... or as if it was the end of a war ...), the sound of crowds of people roaring, dogs barking, and something like fire crackers or guns shots ... I don't know. I suppose this may be why so many tourists showed up this weekend in Granada. Is this a pre-Halloween thing? I am sitting here more or less in the dark. Will have to ask my dinner companion, as I get to have tapas with Franciso tonight. I'm sure he will know!

More later ....

A perfect morning of group cooking at Casa Ana, for which we split into several small groups to prepare dishes for our lunch: a nice tapa of chorizo and homemade garlic croutons; a hearty and flavorful North African chickpea and bread soup with poached egg; a lovely salad topped with slices of goat cheese covered with pistachio crumbles; and local sherry-soaked dried figs stuffed with chocolate, walnuts, and pistachios. I join the crew that prepares our delectable fig dessert. Dried figs are first "plumped" in a sherry and red wine sauce; it will later be reduced to make the sauce that we'll drizzle over the dessert as we serve it. Peggy gives Zoe a personalized lesson in professional chopping and slicing methods, while Deb and I mince up the soft meat of the walnuts. Listening in, I learn a few new aspects to rocking and placement of a knife blade over the material to be reckoned with; these details thrill my cooking sensibilities ... what can I say? I'm a eager sponge for learning and re-learning the simple elegance of cooking-made-easy and done with finesse. When the figs are softened to the desired degree, we push a finger into the bottom of the warm fruits and stuff them. My pinky is just the right size for creating the perfect stuffing-cavern, and, as Francisco Lillo of paella fame would say, "I have to tell you ..." that gently pushing my littlest finger into a softened warm fig is one of the most sensual moments I've lived in the kitchen. My knees were definitely getting a little weak ....

We finish our morning project by placing the stuffed fruits on a fig leaf covered ... no, not the private bits of Adam or Eve ... just a tray, and finding a lovely sunny calendula flower from the garden for garnish.

After a couple of bites of our starter chorizo with garlic-fried toast, someone has the idea to cut the white wine a bit with the beautiful natural fizzy water from the rural fuente (fountain), thinking not to get too tipsy at lunchtime. So, next, a quick jaunt over to -- and along -- the GR 142 to collect a bottle of the slightly frizzante mineral water pouring from La Gasiola, the fuente along a bend in the footpath, as well as a few chestnuts from the local public grandmother chestnut tree towering over the path. Deb and Karen already have the water, as they had left without me, so we do the job of dislodging the brown-skinned nuts from their prickly armored casings together. The way to do this without maiming one's hands is by rolling the fallen or knocked down spiky balls under one's shoe, which splits open the thick skin and allows the nuts to pop out or be exposed enough for manually removing. After I fill one pocket with about 10 chestnuts, we start to head back into town, to the casa. This is where "the bell and the baa" come in, because just as we turn to head back along the GR 142, we hear the soft clanking of the bells worn by the local sheep around their necks, a daily aural occurence, only this time the herd is close enough for us to hear their bleating, as well, and even the shepherd's whistling to their flock. Down the steep mountainside they come, lightly hoofing over the dirt and rocks ... close enough to see, but not so close that we can see their faces. This is a daily activity that has been going on for hundreds of years in this region. There we arrive to the tasty aforementioned lunch, the white wine, and one of the more god-realm-like desserts I've ever had the pleasure of eating (or making) ... The famous stuffed figs, which are anointed with the reduced sherry sauce and paired with a sweet dollop of yummy whipped cream.

Next installment devoted to the herb walk we took with Julio Donat, herbalist extraordinaire, an utterly wealthy prince of information about local plants of the Alpujarras, medicinal, culinary, and toxic.

"Give up on catching up," I tell myself. With a very spotty Internet connection up here in Las Alpujarras, getting booted off the Internet is a much more common occurrence than the falling of ripe chestnuts from a local tree in October ... which happens several times a day now.

All these moments here are infused with such a vivid liveliness -- even the restful ones -- that there seems not to be time in a day to both live them and share them on the "page." This is what it's like to arrive in a new environment, to have every step be on a part of the earth my feet have never met, to be with new friends, to be learning the how to's of new dishes to cook. Hard to say whether the Ajo Blanco, a creamy almond-garlic-bread soup (not a drop of dairy in it) or the almond cake (flourless), or the paella cooked over an open fire has been my favorite. Those three are tied for first place.

More on the recipes and hikes in this beautiful rustic environment later ... Want to get something posted while the connection is on! See the few photos I've been able to post so far.....

Here is a quote pulled from a website on Las Alpujarras (I use it, because it describes so well the experience of meeting "drala" in this special region of Spain): "To the Spanish, 'Las Alpujarras' rings of magic, and there is a natural power which these mountains have and which everybody who comes here feels. Perhaps it is in the quality of the light, the brilliance of the stars at night, the purity of the mountain air or the crystal clear spring water?" I would say it is all of the qualities and elements mentioned in those few sentences -- and even more -- that is the embodied principle of drala inhabited by these mountains and their villages. These Alpujarran villages were, I believe, originally built by the Muslim populations that once populated Andalucía, particularly when they were retreating from their last strongholds of Berber (or Moorish) settlement in and around Granada, as the Reconquest of Spain was forcing them into the the mountains of Las Alpujarras. (See La Reconquista entry in Wikipedia for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquesta ... and also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus). (I could spend all day reading about the history of Andalucía, it is so rich and fascinating ....) (If you want to use these links, you may have to copy and paste them into your browser window. Sorry if you can't simply click on them and go.)

These people were the descendants of the various Muslim tribes of North Africa (Berbers and Moors) who had conquered the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th C. and then settled here for seven centuries, engaging in a lively and lucrative silk trade (among other occupations), a fertile agricultural life in various areas, as well as an artistically magnificent and rich cultural and philosophical history. Their influence on the architecture of Andalucía is inescapable and, in many instances, exquisite, having also built advanced waterworks systems (perhaps influenced by the Roman aqueducts found throughout parts of Europe?).