Old Shoes - New Trip

While I was waiting for my cookie dough to chill, I decided to bottle my rose liqueur and get a batch of kiwi started. The jars in the background are (left to right)
Kiwi: made with crystalized kiwi slices and just started today. I've never tried to make kiwi before, so I don't know yet how long to soak or if it will be worth drinking or not.
Toyko Rose: About my 4th or 5th batch. I use crystalized ginger, then a tiny dash of rose syrup added before bottling to give it that pale pinkish pickled ginger color.
Pistachio: These nuts were really dark green and the infusion is much darker than any of my other batches. It's been soaking for about 7 days and when I open the lid the pistachio smell is heavenly. I'll probably filter and bottle it soon. Which also means I'll get to make some pistachio bark with the left over nuts. I dry them in the oven and put them between a layer of butterscotch and semisweet chocolate that has been spiced up with a bit of cayenne.

I had just a shot glass full of rose left over and didn't want it to go to waste, so I stuck in in the freezer.

After the cookies had cooled, I decided to try one with the liqueur.

Yummy. I know some people don't like florals for their liqueurs, but I love them. The combination of roses and lemons made me feel like I was sitting in some exotic little cafe in a country like Greece, or India, or Turkey.

Our grandsons are spending the weekend with us. Their parents will be here tomorrow for Mother's Day BBQ. So, I needed to do my Sunday Slow Baking project today.

My oldest grandson, Sage, has always loved to help in the kitchen, and cookies are the perfect project for him to help with.

This week, Jerry picked Biscotti di Limone e Semolino - page 50 in Gina's Dolce Italiano.

Assembling all of the ingredients:

I like to measure all the ingredients in advance.

He waited and waited and waited - then after mixing, and chilling, It was finally time for Sage to help. We cut the chilled dough into even squares to make it easier for him.

It didn't take long for him to get the hang of gently rolling the dough into small balls and then rolling the balls in the sugar.

Setting the timer was fun, but waiting for the cookies to bake was a little bit boring.

My oven is much slower than most, so we actually baked the cookies for about 20 minutes in order to get them to brown. The final product was beautiful.

Sage had to wait until I took some final pictures of the plate. It was torture. But he finally got to taste the fruit of his labor.

After we left Mike Tyson at the cafe, we decided to drive over to Cabo Vilan to the lighthouse.

After braving the strong winds to climb up to the base of the light we got back in the car and followed the coast road to Praia de Traba before turning back south toward Ponte do Porto before heading home for dinner.

This entire drive was completely deserted. We didn't see a single car. What we did see was some beautiful coast line.

This beach is called La Playa de los Ingleses. It takes its name from the 1980 wreck of the Serpent during a violent storm. A wreck in which 172 English sailors were drowned. There were only three survivors. They managed to find their way to Camarinas to tell the villagers what happened.

The villagers went to the beach, recovered the bodies and buried them on the beach, creating what is now know as The English Cemetary.

It is a windy and lonely place. Dan and I commented that if there was any place that would be haunted, it would be here.

In Camarinas we found a nice little patio cafe.

The only other occupants of the outdoor tables were a friendly lady, her elderly Gallecian father and Panamanian mother -- plus an adorable, lovable, and quite obviously misnamed dog.

Look at him. Does he look like he would want to throw a knockout punch? Even if he could?

The woman lives and works in Madrid. But every year for holiday, she flies her Dad and Mom home from Panama for a month so that her Dad can reconnect with his hometown of Noia. It seems he left Noia as a young sailor in the early 1950s, traveled to Panama, met and fell in love with her mother, and never came back.

bar na cle (barn'ne kel) n. a saltwater shellfish that attaches itself to rocks, ship bottoms, etc. {Webster's New World Dictionary} In Spanish -- percebes.

For a quick, easy read on gooseneck barnacles here is a link to the Chow.com website.

One of our "must-dos" in Galicia was to witness a percebes harvest. And then taste the delicacy for ourselves.

Our strategy for this particular day was to drive up the coast from Fisterra until we found a place where a harvest was in progress. We probably should have planned more carefully, and researched towns and times of day.

As it happened, we were very, very lucky to stumble upon the town of Muxie (pronounced MOO shah) at the perfect time of day.

We spent several hours marveling at the men who were harvesting percebes on the rocky coast below the church. (Although traditionally harvesting is a male job, we did see several women braving the waves as well.)

Can you see two of them in their orange safety vests on the side of the rock?

A harvester takes advantage of the seconds he has between waves to swoop down and pry the barnacles off the sides of the rocks. Then he jumps back as the next wave hits, and stows them in a net bag hanging from his waist.

When his bag is full he runs up the rocks to a dry spot, where a woman is kneeling on the rocks with nothing but a small pocket knife. He dumps the bag in front of her and heads back to the edge.

We reluctantly got back in the car and headed up the coast to Camarinas to find a spot for lunch.