La Pescaderia aka The Fish Market

We try to conduct our daily lives in Spanish as much as possible, including trips to restaurants, bars, theaters, grocery markets and other types of stores. Because everything is generally so fresh here, and our refrigerator is not full size, we tend to shop more than once a week. This is typical in Europe. We enjoy the local farmer’s markets and various specialty stores, including cheese shops, bakeries, and butchers. But there is one place with a high intimidation factor due to our less than perfect Spanish – la pescaderia.

It is much easier to tell the butcher what you want than the fishmonger, for a few reasons. First, the butcher already has done a lot of the work before you order and generally you only need to tell them how much you want. Second, you can tell what kind of meat you are seeing. However, because we are most familiar with fish from the Pacific Ocean as opposed to the Cantabrian Sea (part of the Atlantic), and the names of fish in either Spanish or Basque are not familiar to us, and fish is generally displayed whole, these principles don’t apply at la pescaderia. You need to be able to do more than point and count, especially if you don’t want the fish head, tail, and entrails going home with you.

We’ve written about our wonderful and very helpful Spanish teachers before. They really want us to succeed and enjoy Spain. This past Saturday, our newest teacher, Begona, who also happens to be a neighbor, went above and beyond the call of duty and took me to Pescaderia Isabel, our local fish market. She was kind enough to walk me through the process, introduce me to the fishmonger, explain which fish are sold whole and those in portions, help me select from the various offerings, and even provided cooking suggestions. The only thing I had to do was pay for my fish!

I selected two kinds of fish to make on Saturday and Sunday nights – Txitxarro, a blue fish, and gallos, which we know as John Dory. I had never made either before. I did some internet recipe research to help me decide how to prepare each type of fish. My Spanish is good enough to read recipes in Spanish, if I want to do so. In this case I found recipes in both English and Spanish.

On Saturday night I made the blue fish in the oven over a bed of crispy potatoes. http://www.onthewater.com/worlds-best-bluefish-recipe/ It turned out well enough, but blue fish is never going to be a favorite, in part because it is filled with tiny bones and therefore hard to eat. The potatoes were fabulous though!

On Sunday night I made the John Dory, sautéed in olive oil, white wine, garlic and lemon https://cookpad.com/es/recetas/2534777-gallo-a-la-plancha-con-limon , with a side of pineapple salsa, and Jeremy Fox’s spring pea salad. Fox is the chef at Rustic Canon in Santa Monica, a favorite of ours:  http://www.lamag.com/digestblog/jeremy-fox-recipe/ The fish didn’t need much of the pineapple salsa, so we recycled that for Tuesday night’s chicken. I will definitely be making gallos again!

Now I know how to shop for fresh fish at la pescaderia and can stop in any morning to buy fish for dinner. Fish is brain food. And we need it as we continue our Spanish studies!

Just keep swimming,

Shana

I'll take Potpourri for $100, Alex

We do miss Jeopardy, even though we weren’t regular watchers like Shana’s Dad was. If you watch the show, you know that every so often they include a category titled Potpourri – it’s a mish-mash of topics. This post will be a mish-mash of observations about life in Spain, Spaniards, etc.

1. Spaniards love game shows. There are several of them on each night. Our Spanish is not good enough to keep up with the quick pace of game shows, so no more details about them here.

2. Spaniards really like to eat potato chips, especially when they are walking in the city. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen this in the streets. If we ate chips, we would adopt this practice.

3. In Spain, and other parts of Europe, cats only have 7 lives instead of the 9 that US cats have.

4. Friday the 13th in Spain is a normal day; if the 13th is a Tuesday though, watch out for those black cats who only have 7 lives.

5. Father’s Day is this Monday, March 19th, in Spain. It is celebrated on Saint Joseph’s day – in honor of Jesus’s father. Wishing all of our readers who are fathers a Feliz Día del Padre from San Sebastian.

6. Spaniards, upon getting married and having children, record these life events in a book, el Libro de la Familia, which is an official record.

7. There are several phrases we use in English that are not quite the same in Spanish, but the point is the same. Spaniards say, for example, “A bird in the hand is worth more than 100 flying.”

8. There are at least 26 ways to order a beer in Spain. We haven’t committed these to memory. We prefer to order wine instead.

9. The McDonald’s and Burger King here are sadly (to us) quite popular. More popular than the Starbucks.

We just finished week 24 of Spanish school. We’re looking forward to our next break in one more week . . . in Paris.

Hasta la vista,

Shana & Jeff

The Tasmanian Devil Dental Hygienist

Since we have been gone from the US for over 7 months now, it was time for us to go to the dentist. So, we made appointments on-line to have our teeth cleaned at the local dental clinic for our health insurer. It was easier to do it online because despite our much improved Spanish, doing things on the telephone is still difficult for us.

When we arrived at the clinic, it was just like any other dental office - they took our insurance card and gave us a medical-history form to fill out, which we were able to do fairly easily with a little bit of help from favorite on-line dictionaries (free WIFI in the clinic was a nice bonus).

After filling out the form, we each saw the hygienist for our cleaning. The exam room itself was very modern and had all of the latest equipment you would see in any dental office in the US, but that is where the similarities kind of ended. The process of cleaning your teeth while the same as in the US happens at what can only be called break-neck speed. The hygienist uses an ultrasonic cleaner to remove tartar (no hand scaling) and then polishes your teeth. After going first, Shana said she felt as if her teeth had been cleaned by the Tasmanian Devil. And I agreed.

After the cleaning, we realized that we were not actually going to see a dentist -- that is a different type of appointment, so we are going back in a few weeks to have our teeth checked. Ah, well, sometimes the language barrier still gets us. But the good news is the dentist apparently speaks very good English -- so, if we need it, we'll have a safety net.

Probably the best part of the whole experience was when we were done and got the bill. Ha, ha, ha, just kidding. There was no bill. The cost of our insurance premium includes twice-yearly teeth cleanings. So, we will be back in September or so for another visit with the Taz. Interestingly, despite being covered for bi-annual cleanings, we learned that in Spain the general practice is only once-a-year cleanings. Most of the time we are happy to adopt the local customs, but in this case, we'll stick to twice a year. Clean teeth are a good thing.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana

Snow Day in San Sebastian

Perhaps you read this past week about the “Beast from the East” that brought extreme cold and a snow to most of Europe. Here in San Sebastian we had our share of cold and snow as well.

On February 28 we woke up to a snow storm that had coated the city and region in 2-4 inches of snow during the early morning hours. It was the biggest storm since 1996.

Here’s what our walk to school looked like on Wednesday morning in -2 degrees Celsius (28.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

Our building courtyard:

The main street:

The bridge over the river:

Another view of the river/city:

The bridge over the train tracks:

The park we walk through:

It reminded us of Shana’s only true “snow day,” in Seattle: February 6, 2017. Snow is so pretty when it’s fresh and clean. Most everyone in San Sebastian seemed to agree as they were out taking photos and playing in the snow.

The best part was that the snow did not even last 24 hours. The temperatures were up well above zero by the afternoon and the snow quickly melted. We did not have to experience the typical day after, when the snow is no longer white and it’s icy and dangerous.

On March 1 we had what felt like our first day of spring. You would never have known that the city was covered in snow the day before unless you have photos!

Spring is almost here and we are ready for it,

Shana & Jeff