Biking & Baking in Las Alpujarras

I hope you are all having a very cheerful time tonight, having walked, run, biked, eaten, sung and slumped through the Christmas festivities!  It's a clear and starry night here and our roast lamb,chocolate cake, various alcoholic beverages and sweeties have all been long since digested.  I had another go at making Florentine biscuits (recipe by Delia is great) and can only say that you absolutely must get the ingredients right especially the weights/proportions.  Otherwise the biscuits flow all over the place!  Also, watch the oven like a hawk!  A perfectly cooked Florentine is a thing of joy; a burnt one is of no use at all!

We took the VFR out for  a run in the sunshine on Thursday (when was that? what day is it today?) and followed some lovely roads over the Contraviesa near Rubite and Murtas.  Spectacular views of the Sierra Nevada and its delicate covering of snow...more to come on Tuesday I believe, and of the Mediterranean to the south.

Our Kaki (Sharon) fruits are browning nicely in the winter sunshine and fresh air, so we should get some yummy dried fruit in a few more weeks; the winter lettuces (letti??) are doing well and a few beans are poking their heads up through the soil.  We have done a lot of soil turning and preparing, with a rotation plan so that we don't plant in the same place 2 years running.  The goat compost is dug in, the seed packets are rattling...all the usual Xmas expectation of greenery to come!  I expect many people are doing this with much greater expertise than us!

Tomorrow we are going for a long walk in the morning with friends, then there will be a musical 'event' in the plaza - bring your own plate of food - followed by a quiet evening by the fireside.  One or two evenings like that and then we will be ready for the Old Year/New Year fun to begin!