The Green Christmas of El Granado - 2012

A year ago I wrote about a small town in the south of Spain, El Granado, and their recycled Christmas tree tradition.  They are at it again, and for the fourth year in a row, El Granado citizens have decorated their town for Christmas in a very original and eco-friendly manner. In the center square, this year's 26-ft tall Christmas tree was made with 1,200 flowers made from plastic bottles

 The main flower chosen for the tree was the brown-eyed rockrose (Cistus ladanifer), a native species of the region. These flowers were made from the bottoms of 5-L water bottles

Among the rock roses you can also find other colorful flowers, made from plastic soda bottles

This project has been a true collective effort. The citizens of El Granado helped with the gathering, cutting, painting and installation of the flowers.

I am looking forward to seeing what they come up for Christmas 2013! I wish more towns and cities had the initiative to do something similar. With a little bit of ingenuity, it is amazing the beauty that can be created. Projects like these bring people together, and raise the collective awareness of how precious and how finite our resources are.

My sincere thanks to Maite Barroso, spokesperson for the town of El Granado, for her help and her wonderful photographs.

Bitter Oranges in Sevilla

The streets of Sevilla are lined with Bitter Orange trees, some 45,000 of them.   These trees are so emblematic of the city that they are also known as Seville Oranges.

In late winter the city begins to pick the oranges.  We happened to be in Sevilla when a crew worked on the trees behind my mother's house.

They worked pretty fast.  The trees were cleaned up in a matter of minutes.

Probably more time was spent looking for stranded oranges under cars than pulling them from the tree!

These oranges are too bitter to be eaten fresh.  Instead, they will be shipped to the UK and France, where they will become marmalade.  Their bitterness plays well against the sweetness of jam.  They also happen to have a higher pectin content than regular oranges, so it all works out in the end.

The peel is very fragrant, and it also gets used to make essential oils for the perfume and food industries.

When I was little, I remember boys rolling oranges into the path of incoming vehicles, timing their throws so that the oranges became road kill.  I didn't see any of those games this time.  Maybe there is a PlayStation version already?

I don't know how heavy this bag may be, but poking around in the net I saw that in 2010 about six million kilos were picked in the city (that's over 13 million pounds, or 6,600 US tons).  That's a lot of marmalade!

Note the row of orange trees on the left side of the street.  Pretty soon these trees will be covered in orange blossoms, shrouding the city in one of the most exquisite perfumes ever found in nature. 

My mom and some handsome dude wanted to pose in this picture.  I want to take this opportunity to introduce him to the world.  His name is Ron.  He will be making an occasional appearance in this blog, and I want to call him by his name, not by "my husband", "the husband", "husband", or God forbid, "the mister" (yes, I saw that in a blog once...)

Do you like marmalade?  How do you eat it?  One of my easy go-to appetizers is a crostini with Manchego cheese topped with a dollop of marmalade.  This is a variation of the classic Manchego-quince paste combo, which one of these days we should explore.

Traveling on alpargatas

Things have been pretty quiet around here because we were out of town.  We went to visit our mothers.  First, to Florida.  Then, to Seville, Spain.  It was a tough trip, in many regards.  It was cold everywhere.  We were sick with the flu.  The airlines, as usual, did not cooperate, and we had to endure long waits in different time zones.  Traveling is already an unpleasant chore when you are in perfect health, so to do it when sick is something I do not recommend to anyone.

While we were in Seville we didn't do a whole lot, compared to other trips, but one day I managed to snap a picture of some very colorful espadrilles, or alpargatas, the traveling footwear of my countrymen for so many centuries. The evolution of the alpargata is amazing, in an Ugly Duckling sort of way.  From its humble beginnings as a peasant shoe, it has been reinterpreted by luxury icons like Prada and Jimmy Choo.  If the first alpargatero could raise his head!

I am slowly getting back to my routine, and in the next few days I hope to tell you a few stories about our vacation.  It is nice to be back, but it is also a bit sad.  I miss everybody.

Happy Monday.

Nochebuena - The Countdown

In Spain, Christmas Eve is known as Nochebuena (The Good Night). One day, when I have more time, I'll research the reason for the name. Perhaps it came about from the delicious foods that are eaten. Maybe because it is a night of good wishes and warm feelings. Whatever the reason, it is a special night for a Spaniard, in a sense similar to what Thanksgiving is for Americans: the family gets together, turkey is usually involved, lots of cooking...

We are hosting a small dinner party for Nochebuena. A group of friends will come over and we will drink, eat and exchange gifts. We wanted the menu to be primarily Spanish. On Friday I prepared this red cabbage soup, fried the bread stars (mine look far less professional than the ones on the photo: I cut mine freehand), and even practiced the feathered cream touches on top. Lombarda, or red cabbage, is something that I associate with the holidays, perhaps because I don't remember seeing it at home at any other time of the year. This is the first time I make this soup. This recipe is a keeper.

My husband is in charge of the main course, leg of lamb. I am not sure how he will make it, but as a lover of all things Spanish he will probably stick to rosemary and garlic. I believe he is planning on serving it with Brussel sprouts and this delicious sweet potato puree with braised leeks, which has been already made. One less thing to worry about tomorrow.

For the dessert, I will make warm chocolate pudding cakes with caramel sauce again, because they were such a smashing hit last time. I cheated somewhat, though, in that I bought some Mexican cajeta in one of the multiple supermarket forays we did today. Making caramel, one less thing to do.

No Nochebuena would be complete without some turrón. In the same supermarket where I got the cajeta, I found Turrón El Almendro, which is such a quintessential brand. What a surprise!

I took care of a few last-minute details, like decorating the windows with junkmail snowflakes. From the street, at night, they look magical. During the day they give interesting shadows. It gives me such pleasure to create something so pretty out of something so humble. I learned how to make them here.

I also made some Epsom salt luminaries out of empty jam and olive jars. On Friday I ran around like crazy, and by the time the lighting outside was good for a photo, I was on my third supermarket trip, so this is all I got of the process. Luckily, this tutorial will show you how to make them. My luminaries will light our dinner table.

I still have to make a mushroom compound butter, wrap a couple more gifts, sweep the floors, load a Christmas playlist on the iPod... I better go to bed.

I hope you have a wonderful Nochebuena!

The Green Christmas of El Granado

My sister posted a link on her Facebook page about a small town in Andalucía that goes green for Christmas. Because anything that has to do with recycled art interests me, I decided to learn more.

El Granado is just near the border with Portugal. To say that it is a small town is quite the understatement. Last year’s census has it at less than 600 people. There may not be many, but they are certainly conscientious about our planet.

For the third year in a row, El Granado citizens have decorated their town for Christmas in a very original and eco-friendly manner. In the center square, the 30-ft tall Christmas tree was made with more than 25,000 bottle caps.

If that wasn't enough, they also created this whimsical nativity scene

This project has been a true collective effort. The citizens of El Granado helped with the gathering, drilling and installation of the caps.

In these days of global financial crisis, this town has given everyone a great example on how to save money while doing it in an environmentally and financially sustainable manner.

In 2009 the Christmas tree chosen was a dead oak. The tree was decorated with old shoes, worn out circular saw blades, empty containers wrapped in aluminum foil, painted pine cones, and many other items. Perhaps because this was the first year the town didn’t choose a conventional Christmas tree, the citizens were very divided. Some loved it, some didn’t.

The nativity scene in 2009 was created out of rebar left over from the construction of the town hall. The rebar was welded into different silhouettes, which were then wrapped with lights.

Even though opinions were very divided, that didn’t stop El Granado, and in 2010 the Christmas tree was made with 580 empty wine bottles. The tree topper was a very large whiskey bottle. It stood over 25 feet high. This tree was so popular that a neighboring town, Villanueva de los Castillejos, asked to borrow it to display in its main square this very Christmas season! A tree made of recycled materials gets recycled itself. Could this be any more perfect?

I am looking forward to seeing what they come up for Christmas 2012! I wish more towns and cities had the initiative to do something similar. With a little bit of ingenuity, it is amazing the beauty that can be created.

My sincere thanks to Maite Barroso, spokesperson for the town of El Granado, for her help and her wonderful photographs.

¡Feliz Navidad!

ps: these guys throw a mean crafts fair! Nicely done!