We have been gathering mulberries and making delicious smoothies and tarts! With two visitors in the house, it has been an ideal time to take an old bedcover and stand under the trees shaking branches and getting showered with the sweet black fruit. The end result is worth the mess so if you know of a local tree, get out there immediately! The locals also use a long hooked pole, but we haven’t found one yet on our walks…I am still looking.
Here’s my very simple mulberry smoothie recipe:
2 ripe bananas
1.5 cups of pure juice (orange, mango, apple)
1 cup of ripe mulberries
1 or 1.5 cups of natural yoghurt depending on thickness of the mix etc
Blend, chill, take out onto the terrace and drink out of your favourite tall glass. Sumptuous stuff!
On Friday we had some village friends over for wine and tapas, 10 of us in total with ages ranging from 13 to 60 and 5 nationalities: Spanish, English, French, Maltese and Australian. Interesting in that if I count some of my Italian blood, Steve’s Irish granny…we were almost fully International. I am pleased to say that we mainly conversed in Spanish. Our tapas included:
* ciabatta with olives & rosemary (Steve)
* olive & parmesan bread sticks “
* prunes wrapped in jamon & baked (me)
* grilled aubergine, jamon & cheese with oregano (me)
* toasted bruschetas with an aubergine, garlic & tomato tapenade (Steve)
* mulberry tart (Steve and a recipe off the internet)
By the time everyone left we had just a few scraps of ciabatta and tapenade - a successful evening then!
Today is MotoGP and Steve is organising his day to watch it. The ‘kids’ and I are off to the pool at Balcon de Pitres which offers a pleasant green orchard to loll in and is not usually too busy. About 5 euros per half-day. They go home again on Tuesday but have been great fun to have out here. Cam is full of wit and good humour while Jo adds sheer glamour (including her schoolmarm’s spectacles). The local young men just gawp as she passes by! They have both been keeping up with their exercise regimes and Cam has repeated last year’s test of running up the mountainside - and I mean UP - covering 1.2 miles in just over 10minutes. The gauntlet has been laid down!
We have some actual tomatoes and green peppers on our plants now, getting bigger, and the sweet corn is growing really well, about 50 in total. There are some impressive huertas in the valley and ours is just a little starter by comparison, but this is our ‘learning’ year so any success is worth having. A badger has got in and rooted about a bit but only the rocket has suffered. Pepe in the village has given us lots more lechuga plugs so our lettuce supply should last through August (people are very generous here, especially if you are growing anything).
This morning Jo spotted a huge Horn Beetle in the courtyard, slightly injured but crawling along. It must have been 2 inches long with its armoured body and long spiked ‘horn’. Does anyone know much about these? Are they common to this area? We have also seen spiders with green phosphorescent eyes, glo-worms, mountain goats and yesterday 2 golden orioles in the trees below Capileira. Exciting times.