Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving definitely has a different vibe in Spain.

First of all, nobody knows what Thanksgiving is.  It's a distinctly "New World" holiday, and once the Protestants fled Europe I think most of the folks over here kind of checked out on their status (this was, after all, some time before Facebook).  Everything is open, its a workday, and people are going about their business with no excitement over 4-day weekends or special meals or anything.

 

 Secondly, there's the weather.  Not that I'm complaining (whatsoever), but it just doesn't feel quite like Thanksgiving when this is the morning view out your window.  It touched upper-60s yesterday, with full sun, and we ate lunch with the balcony door open.  I will take this over New York Thanksgiving weather for the rest of my life, but like I said, totally different vibe.


 Then, there is the food.  I'm not naive enough to believe that Thanksgiving dinner in most households is anything like what the Pilgrims ate hundreds of years ago (whenever you take stuffing out of a box something is amiss), but at its heart the meal that is the center of the holiday remains a celebration of (generally) American indigenous, seasonal, and homemade food.  In that way, it's a little tricky planning the meal when you are living in a different continent, within a country with a different climate and in a part of which where imported and/or out-of-season foods are rare, hard to find, and often very expensive.  Generally, though, I'm very pleased and excited about the meal we are expecting to eat today.

First and most important for Thanksgiving dinner, there is the turkey: turkey is rare in Spain (particularly whole turkeys), but fortunately we were able to specially order one from the local supermarket, which came fresh yesterday--and I mean FRESH.  It still had some stray feathers all around the feet!  The turkeys here (like everything in Spain) are smaller than the ones in the United States (ours was just over 6 kilos, around 13.5 pounds), and a bit more expensive (ours was somewhere around $3.69 per kilo, more or less $1.67 per pound...if memory serves, that's about twice what the standard bird costs back home).  Even at its small size, it still barely fit into our tiny oven.  I'm hoping the cooking conditions are suitable for a bird this size, because I have very high hopes for this turkey: judging by how fresh it appears to be, it's small (read: normal & healthy) size, and it's (for Spain's standards) very high cost, I'm thinking this is a free-range, organic bird that probably bears a lot of similarities to so-called "heritage turkeys" that go for around $150 in the States.  At least, that's what I'm convincing myself.

For sides, we'll be preparing mashed potatoes, broccoli au gratin, homemade chorizo stuffing, and corn.  Cranberry and such are harder to find, but since neither Emily nor I are big fans, we didn't search very hard and decided to leave it off the menu.  For my part, I most miss in-season apple cider.

For desserts we've prepared homemade macaroons with chocolate ganache, and Emily's homemade apple pie a la mode.  

Giving Thanks

It's been a little while since I posted, so I thought Thanksgiving would be a nice occasion to get back on here.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I love the simple perfection of (tons of) great food, family, and remembering the things you are thankful for.  Even though this year I am abroad for this most-American of holidays, Emily and I are very happy to still be able to celebrate Thanksgiving this year.


Emily and I are happy to welcome some new family to celebrate Thanksgiving with us: Chelo, Gonzalo, Amelia, Manolo, and Margarita will all be coming to join us.  It will be their first Thanksgiving--they're a little unfamiliar with the idea, but it didn't take much explanation to get them excited for it.  More to come on the dinner, with pictures and all, after it's done.

For my part, I have a lot to be thankful for this year.  For starters, it is another year of health and general well-being for my family; I am tremendously blessed to have this time in Spain with my incredible wife; and absolutely fortunate to have a net of family to care about us here while we are away from the rest.  Lastly, it's still a few days before application deadlines, so no schools have rejected me yet, haha.

I hope you and yours all have a tremendous Thanksgiving today.  Remember to consider the things that you are thankful for--most us are luckier than we ever really stop to realize.

Call It, Cerdo (Part 3)

All the videos from the slaughtering process are now up, all in full HD.  ***Graphic Images***

The Execution of Chirrichin

Hair Removal, Part 1

Hair Removal, Part 2

Washing & Scrubbing

Removing Chirricin's Manhood

Emily "Tiene un poco de miedo"

"Este puede comer un Arabe."

Call It, Cerdo (Part 2)

 Fernando proudly showing off his handiwork (I think this is a gall bladder...but I never went to med school, and cheated on my pig lab in high school)

 The whole cardiopulmonary system...from the tongue all the way down to the lungs.  (Note Gonzalo smiling in the background...he always gets a kick out of Emily and I photographing/filming things.)

 Cleaning out some excess blood

 One of my favorite shots: cleaning out the snout and head...notice the blood dripping through the hole in the skull from the cattle gun.

...and from the mouth.

 Group effort to prepare it for hanging.

 Final product...that's a dead pig.

 Blood dripping from the tail.

 The head wound.

And, finally, Gonzalo disposing of all the viscera/unusable parts into the field.

Call it, Cerdo (Part 1)

I really dislike the food industry in the United States, pretty much from top--the White House decides what gets planted every year on a huge portion of American farmland, and offers subsidies to encourage/discourage the growth of certain crops on the rest of America's land--to the bottom (the way animals are raised, fed, killed, packaged, et cetera).  For this reason Emily and I have for a few years now been very invested in the food we eat: where we get it from, who is producing it (and how), and how we cook it.  We are big advocates of farmers' markets, and were proud member-owners of the Lexington Co-op in Buffalo, and also jumped at the opportunity to get any of Larry's (Emily's father) venison to use in lieu of beef.  Such habits have always made us feel healthier and closer to the food we eat; also, it happens to taste a whole lot better.

One of the things I really love about the lifestyle in Spain is that people as a whole have a much more intimate relationship with the food they eat.  Emily has written about this more extensively on her blog, but suffice it to say it's something we are both very enthusiastic about.  Today we witnessed the slaughtering of Chelo & Gonzalo's pig (cerdo), Chirrichin.  I've never watched an animal get butchered in person before, so I relished the opportunity to have a more intimate experience with the food that I will be eating.  I'll post several pictures and links to videos below...***WARNING - Many of these images are graphic***  If you are squeamish and/or offended by images of conventional, humane animal butchery, you should probably turn away (I would recommend checking out Disney's website, perhaps, or else here is a link to the classic meat industry propaganda film from The Simpsons--the joke from The Simpsons really kills me, because it exposes the hypocrisy of people who love to eat meat, but who are upset by the reality of how it all arrives so neatly packaged at the supermarket, opting instead to pretend it's something other than dead animal flesh [I'm looking at you, Mom]).

Chelo and Gonzalo used to slaughter the pig themselves, but it was recently made illegal to slaughter and bleed it with a knife, so they pay a friend with a cattle gun 40 Euro (about $55) to come and kill and dress it (remove the innards).  They also had a few neighbors come by and help, whose children were towed along for good measure; the group atmosphere really added a kind of charmed sentiment to it in my eyes, taking the grotesquerie out of it and really normalizing the idea that, hey, I'm going to eat this food so I ought to have a hand in it's life & death.

It's a pretty simple process: first, the cattle gun shoots a small bullet (not a piston-action bolt as in "No Country For Old Men") into the pig's brain, then, while the pig is stunned and seizing, the slaughterer slits the carotid artery to bleed it out; then the hair is removed, it is dressed, and hung until tomorrow, at which point it is properly butchered (I forgot to ask why they hang it for a day, but I will be sure to ask when I return tomorrow for the butchering).

 Fernando, the slaughterer, suiting up for the job.

 Gonzalo happily showing off the cattle gun (hence the inevitable "No Country For Old Men" references...sorry, couldn't help myself)

 Immediately post death

Using a makeshift flamethrower to singe all the hair off the pig's body.  I had never seen or heard of this step, but it's quite a sensory overload: loud, hot, bright, and produces an interesting burnt hair/skin smell.

 Group spectator shot.  Emily is not sure how she feels about the flamethrower...

 Then the pig is placed on the table, washed, and scrubbed clean of burns/charring.

 Initial incision.

Kill the Pig

Chirrichin, Gonzalo and Chelo's pig, is going down today..."No Country For Old Men" style.

I'm off to watch it.  Report later.

Super lluvia

It was an incredibly rainy weekend here, which was fun to watch from the comfort of our balcony with a tall glass of wine.  Here are some photos:

I like the way the water forms tiny streams in the sand here.

"In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country."

The quote that serves as the title to this post is from Federico Garcia Lorca, the famous Spanish poet & playwright who was assassinated by agents of Francisco Franco in the first half of the 20th century.  It is a quote I reflect on often, one that in my experience is true, one which seems to have shaped a large aspect of how I view life and death.  Or I could have just as well named this post in honor of an equally appropriate quote, a favorite of my brother, by Antonin Artaud: "Those who live, live off the dead."  (Those who were at my wedding may remember Jamerson fit that very beautifully into his best man speech; also, if we are friends on Facebook, you can check the "Notes" section of my profile to see a textual version of Jamerson's speech [which still makes me cry whenever I read it].)

Both quotes were on my mind these last few days, as Emily and I observed one of the most important holidays in Spain..  Today (technically) ends the celebration of El Dia de los Muertos here in Spain, a very important, sacred holiday that coincides with All Saints Day.  The holiday serves, as I mentioned in the last post, as a formal way for families to gather and mourn their deceased loved ones, paying both emotional grief, but also physical gesture (in the way of the cleaning, maintaining, and adornment of resting places) to their family both old and recent.

I don't have a lot more to add to the reflections I posted Saturday, other than to say I was left with a warm feeling by the touching, solemn observance, which I think, ultimately, is a beautiful way (if not the only, or necessarily, best way) to mourn the dead.  The mass was ultimately very anticlimactic, both difficult to hear (the microphone did not work, so the priest simply spoke in a low voice that hardly reached us in the back) and understand (he spoke mainly in Galego, which I don't understand as well as Spanish).  What I did understand was, to me, a bit trite, and did not speak to me personally (he spoke about how this life is short, this world in small, and that on this day we should remember Christ's death, as he died so that we can be reunited with our loved ones in heaven).

It was a cold, rainy few days, which seemed fitting for the mood.  Here are a few last pictures, taken by Emily, that show some of the turnout at the cemetery and awaiting mass.

The couple facing the camera are the Castros, close family friends of my grandparents.

 Waiting for mass to begin.

 With family

Once again, my grandfather's grave.

And here is a link to a video  of the candle being lit.