Trip Report! Day 1: Madrid

As everyone who reads this blog probably already knows, we have just gotten back from a week and a half on Spain! It was a wonderful trip, definitely right up there with Scotland on the McClure's Top Vacations list. We saw so many things and ate so much delicious food and, while I was definitely ready to see my kitties again, we both felt like we could have stayed longer in many of the places we visited. Everyone we met was so friendly and helpful and completely unannoyed (at least visibly) at our basically horrible attempts to communicate in Spanish.

The real focus of the trip was Andalucia, the southernmost part of Spain, the part the guidebooks call "the most quintessentially Spanish" region of the country. It's the area where bullfighting began, and where flamenco and tapas and siesta are all still integral parts of the society. I had never really considered going to Spain before I read a comment by someone online about that region, and after looking into it for a couple of days I was hooked. 

Nevertheless, we decided to fly into Madrid to avoid having to change planes twice. Most people seem to not think much of Madrid - there are great art museums there, but the consensus seems to be that there isn't a lot to see there otherwise. I figured having a couple of days there bookending the Andalucian part of the trip would be a good way to catch the highlights.

We arrived, as usual, at the crack of dawn, on no sleep, and took the subway into town. 

Madrid is 6 hours ahead of Raleigh, so by the time we reached our hotel at around 8:00 a.m., it was two in the morning in our heads. We stayed at the Petit Plaza Santa Barbara, which was perfect for our needs - near a metro stop but in a quieter area outside the very center of the city. 

I had emailed requesting early check-in, but they couldn't accommodate us until 11:00 a.m., so we went out to explore the city a little bit in a semi-delirious state.

It was Sunday morning, so the streets of Madrid were very quiet. We walked through Puerta del Sol, which is sort of the heart of the city and is usually very busy, but there was almost no one around. 

A short distance away is the picturesque Plaza Mayor, also very quiet at that time. We are definitely not a fan of crowds so this whole scenario was working out pretty well for us.

We then wandered over to the area near Madrid's Almudena Cathedral and the Palacios Real. The king and queen don't live in the palace, but still use it for ceremonies and special occasions.  It is huge. You can go inside but it wasn't open yet while we were passing by.

We continued along to see the Temple of Debod, an Egyptian temple built in the 2nd century BC that was moved to Madrid and reassembled there in 1968. It was pretty weird but neat to see - the inside was full of heiroglyphics.

Finally it was time to check into the hotel, so we did that and ended up sleeping for a few hours before heading back out to the Reina Sofia Museum, which is free on Sunday afternoons. 

The Reina Sofia is Madrid's major museum that focuses primarily on modern art; its best known work is Picasso's Guernica, which is the main reason I wanted to go. We were pretty excited to be able to walk in and see Guernica for free without feeling like we had to spend money and therefore a lot of time perusing everything else. In the last couple years I've realized I'm not too big on visiting museums unless I particularly like or know a lot about the specific art.

After the museum we wandered up into a little neighborhood to find some food. The Spanish lunchtime is mainly between 2:00 and 4:00, and in Madrid we had our first of what was to be many experiences of just missing the 4:00 cutoff. We eventually found a place called La Dolores that was open and sat down to try to decipher the menu, which was a bit beyond us in our still-exhausted state. 

Fortunately they had an option of 6 tapas for 13 euros, so we did that and let the bartender pick. We were pretty impressed by what we got - but this would be a theme of the whole trip, unbelievable value and quality for hardly any money at all. One of these was squid, which I just could not bring myself to eat. I had a little bite and it did just taste like fish but the mental hurdle was too much. I have no issue with fried calamari, though, so I realize that makes no sense. Anyway, all of these things were fantastic, and made me pretty excited for the days to come.

On the way back to the hotel we passed by Madrid's city hall.

And this building, which was a couple blocks from our hotel. Madrid has a pretty bad graffiti problem, so I guess the owners of this place decided to take the bull by the horns rather than risking vandalism like so many nearby.

At this point we were ready for real sleep, and it was finally a semi-acceptable time for bed. I fell asleep at 8:00pm and slept straight through until 8:30am! 

In general my first impression of Madrid was not great, although in retrospect it seems unfair to base an impression of a city on a one-day exploration done in a state of exhaustion. It's big, and has that Big City feeling that sort of overrides much individual character. London is like that for me, too. Anyway, it was a good place to start and the next morning we were picking up our car and heading out for Andalucia!

The Path Toward Darkness

Tribeca Tavern is about three miles from our house. I drive by there every day but had never been until my new book club met there last month. I expected a boring bar & grill type place, but the menu was really interesting and everyone's food looked (and, they said, tasted) terrific. So last week I made Ben go there.

Now we are hooked. And it's all the pulled pork nachos' fault.

Last week we were starving so we ordered the small nachos to start.

I got the fried green tomato BLT for my entree but could only eat half. Fortunately Ben finished it off for me.

After he ate his fish & chips.

Okay. That was last Thursday. Then we had to go there again last night for more nachos. This time we ordered the large and then split a salad afterward. (We also sat at a table with much better lighting.)

So the issue now is that we are obsessed with pulled pork nachos, to the point where right now I have pulled pork in the crockpot at my house. You guys!! This is crossing a serious line. I feel sad. But also hungry for nachos.

The only perplexing thing about Tribeca Tavern is that the music is absolutely hideous and very loud. Last week it was 80s power ballads and soft rock a la Michael Bolton and Richard Marx, and last night it was the same sort of songs, except focusing on the mid 90s. It is very, very bad. I might write them a letter. Nevertheless, I'm pretty certain this is going to become our new neighborhood spot since our previous favorite closed last winter. Nachoooooooos!

Babylon

Since for some reason we have both become comfortable with eating whatever we want lately, we've been able to try out a lot more restaurants that have been off limits the last several years due to avoiding animal products. Sorry, animals!  I am trying not too be too hard on myself because I am 36 and have so far gone through 3 extended periods of vegetarianism in my adult life, so I know I'll probably be back there someday. Right now, for whatever reason, I just don't feel like dealing with it.

So last week we went to Babylon. I had been there once with book club but Ben had never been. It's on the northern outskirts of downtown and has an amazing outdoor patio area.

Look at Benjamin's complicated shirt.

He ordered this salad to start with cucumbers and tomatoes and stuff.

I opted to just eat this free bread with herb butter.

For my entree I ordered the bison burger. I have never had bison that I can recall. It tasted pretty much like beef to me (although, it should be said, it's been years since I've had a beef burger so I can't be 100% sure). The bun was pita-esque, and the whole thing was smothered with cumin-scented onions and peppers. It was REALLY good.

Ben is a high roller and ordered the petite filet mignon, which he also very much enjoyed.

Here is the patio after dark.

This is really a great spot and we will be back for sure. It's amazing that it's right off Capital Blvd but really quiet and secluded, and has a huge free parking lot, a definite plus for downtown Raleigh.

Stuff

Nothing too exciting here, but I made Guatita again last week (recipe: Viva Vegan), a peanut butter stew with chickpeas & potatoes, but this time topped it with avocado, cilantro, and pickled red onions. It was a good call.  Pickled red onions are one of my top discoveries of 2013 and they are so easy - I just marinate onions in red wine vinegar and a little sugar and they are ready in an hour but keep for weeks.

Ben and Todd also had a photoshoot at an old school Raleigh restaurant downtown, Mecca, for their band. The whole thing was pretty awesome. This photo makes me wish Ben was on facebook, because this would be a perfect cover photo!

Little Hen

To celebrate our 11th anniversary last weekend, we went out to dinner at Little Hen, a farm-to-table restaurant in Holly Springs that has been getting a lot of attention over the past year. It was an awesome meal!

Ben started with the grilled peach.

and I got the charred beets, which were served with goat cheese, bacon, jalapenos & a chile puree.  It was spicy!  I thought the round ball was a hush puppy but it is actually a perfectly breaded and fried ball of goat cheese.

Ben also insisted on ordering griddle bread with herb butter. I always feel like this sort of thing is kind of lost on me, as I really am not a bread person at all, but this was amazing. Maybe the best part of the meal!

I ordered the gnocchi with beans and tomatoes for my entree. This dish was totally made by the tomatoes, which bear absolutely no resemblance to what you find in a grocery store. They were so flavorful! 

Ben's entree was the hanger steak, which was (surprise!) also amazing. I had a couple of bites and the flavor was just incredible. You can really tell that this place puts a lot of work into choosing the freshest, highest quality products from local sources.

And here is a picture of our desserts - peanut butter cake with banana ice cream for me, peach crisp for Ben.

Little Hen was a great choice for our anniversary dinner! I will be highly recommending this place to a lot of people. It's kind of a hike for us, about 30 minutes away, but definitely worth the drive.

Warm Cabbage Salad with Yuca and Tofu Chicharones

We had a really good experience last week trying a new recipe from Viva Vegan, and as a result I tried to pick a few more from that book for this week's meals.  This one is a salad I've paged past a hundred times, which necessitates a trip to the Mexican grocery for frozen yuca (as the fresh stuff is a huge pain to deal with). However, the Mexican grocery is extremely convenient and there is no reason not to go there. We stopped by this morning and, for our reward, saw a car there in the parking lot with a homemade wooden spoiler, painted the same color as the car but all splintery and peeling. It was pretty awesome.

So anyway!  Here is this salad. The dressing was awesome, a mostly lime juice and olive oil with a touch of paprika.

After dinner Ben said, "Molly, that was SO GOOD."  YES.  It was. That Terry Hope Romero knows her food.

Corn & Chipotle Bread Pudding

The last time I bought french bread for something, I actually remembered to freeze the leftovers to use later in bread pudding.  Last night I made this recipe, found via googling.

It was good! You should make it!

Bike Commute!

I am very, very lucky in that I can ride my bike on greenway trails to work, almost door to door. I do drive about a mile to the greenway entrance nearest my house, because otherwise I'd have to ride on a very busy (45 mph) road, which is still a little much for me at this point. The area is safe to park my car, though, and then from that point it is a gorgeous, easy ride the entire 9 miles to my office.

I usually only ride in the spring & fall, because summers are too hot and winters are too dark, but as a result of having the most weirdly cool summer I can remember in my life, I was able to ride one day last week and I took some pictures of the trip.

Bike! I had to pump up the tires before I left, since it's been in storage for a few months.

This is the beginning of the trail near my house, a little messy from recent rains.

Chipper, thanks to iced coffee and the prospect of not sitting in traffic.

This long wooden bridge is one of my favorite parts.

Most of the trail is paved, though, like this part at Shelley Lake.

The last bit near my work is a long series (maybe a half mile or so) of wooden paths that go up and down and around corners - very fun! Except there are a lot of bees here in the spring. I have nearly killed myself trying to avoid running into them before.

By the time I got back to Shelley Lake (about 2 miles from home) in the afternoon I was decidedly NOT chipper. The only flaw in this whole bike commute plan is that the last few miles are steadily uphill going home. It's not terrible, but after 3 months of being off a bike I was hurting for miles 16-18.

Still, it only takes a time or two to get used to it again! I'm glad summer is starting to wrap up so I can get some more bike commuting in before the time changes.

Navajo Tacos

We made a new thing last night! I had almost talked myself out of going to the trouble, but once I said, "Do you think we really need to deep fry bread?" out loud to Ben I knew the deal was sealed. He will NEVER say no to deep frying anything.

You were supposed to roll the dough into 6 inch circles.  Haha.

but, you know, ugly still tastes good so who cares.  We used a stock pot to fry because our deep fryer is not big enough to handle 6 inch roughly circle shaped items.

Here is Ben being fake cheery about having his picture taken while he fried things.

Yummmmm.

So this recipe is in Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day, and is essentially fried bread with taco fillings piled on top. The protein is "chickpea chorizo," according to the book, but I am sort of over this vegan/vegetarian thing of calling non-meats by meaty names when they do not even come close to resembling the real thing (example: eggplant bacon. Just no).  The chickpeas were delicious in their own right, without being compared to meat. They were spicy and tomatoey and good. I did un-veganize it by adding some Mexican queso fresco, but that's okay.

They were good.  Really, really good.  I could only eat one and a half of them.

The Fiction Kitchen!

Raleigh finally got a true vegetarian restaurant last winter when The Fiction Kitchen opened up. It is super small and they don't take reservations, and I kept hearing you had to wait forever for a table, so we kept putting it off. Finally, though, I decided we just needed to suck it up, and then coincidentally Ben and I both got off work early on Friday, so we went straight down there in hopes of beating the crowd.  We arrived a little before 6:00 and got the last two seats at the bar. It really is popular! And small. We really like to sit at the bar at local restaurants (it is our New Thing of the past year) so this worked out great for us anyway.

We ordered corn & onion fritters to start, served with agave vegan butter. I would love to know what kind of vegan butter they're using because it was amazing. And this huge portion was $6.

For my entree I ordered the "chicken" and waffles, also vegan. (Not everything on their menu is vegan, but most things are and everything can be made vegan upon request, I'm pretty sure.)  The "chicken" they use is a locally made product called Delight Soy, which I hope someday will be available everywhere because it's delicious.

They do a daily special that is always made from local farmers' produce - Friday it was house-made falafel with tomatoes, eggplant, and rice. Ben ordered it and he said it was great.

We did not get dessert (I know! Who are we?) but I'm pretty sure we will be back here soon. We don't mind eating early and it really exceeded my expectations by quite a lot. It is miles better than The Remedy Diner, Raleigh's other decent downtown option for vegetarians.

Miscellaneous

Benjamin said I need to start updating the blog more frequently again.  I don't have any pictures to post but I can write some stuff so here goes.

After most of the summer being bored with food and the idea of cooking dinners, I seem to have turned a corner and am getting back into it.  Not coincidentally, I have finally gotten interested in Star Trek: The Next Generation and am finding myself genuinely wanting to know what happens next instead of thinking, "this is the dumbest show in history," every time I watch it. I think maybe having a show to watch is key to my whole cooking methodology. Fortunately, if I run out of new things I can just watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the first three seasons of Alias over and over for the rest of my life.

So far this week I have made two things I remembered fondly but had only made once, the Manzana Chili Verde from Veganomicon (I thought for sure I had posted about this, but apparently not - it isn't very photogenic) and the Yassa Lemon-Mustard Tofu from Vegan Eats World, which even though I said in this post was "the best tofu ever in history" still exceeded my expectations. One bonus of making that dish is seeing Ben's unenthused expression when he learns we are having baked tofu and carrots for dinner. But he was blown away, too! The sauce is amazing.

I have also gotten into making iced coffee at home, using The Pioneer Woman's method. I halve her recipe, because who has a 2-gallon container that fits in their refrigerator? A half batch keeps us both in iced coffee for an entire week and costs about $7, including the sugar and almond milk. This has basically changed my life. It takes about 20 minutes to strain out on the first day, but that's a lot less time and hassle than stopping at Dunkin Donuts every morning on the way to work.

One other thing going on over here is that Ben is on the quest to develop the perfect key lime recipe. He has made (and singlehandedly eaten) three entire pies in the past 9 days and has learned a few things, but still has a ways to go before perfection is reached. He tries to explain it to me and ask my opinion all the time but I do not especially like key lime pie and have nothing to contribute. He's going to make a blog post about it once he's figured it all out, though, don't worry.

Finally, we have at last reached August, which is the month before it's time to go to Spain. I had originally tried to be low-stress by booking modern hotels in Granada and Cordoba that were easy to get to by car, but last weekend I decided to throw caution to the wind and find more interesting places to stay. Ben agreed this was a good idea (and I made him promise to remember that when we want to kill each other as a result of driving around on narrow, poorly-marked, one-way cobblestone streets in ancient city centers trying to find our hotels) and now I am super pumped about our accommodations throughout the entire trip. Now I just want it to be time to leave!