Just an update...

So, our HSKS prompt this week was in the spirit of funny. That's really funny, because the jokes have been bouncing around in the House Cup lately too. This was my favorite that someone else posted:

How many Slytherins does it take to light a wand?


Six. One to light it, one to gloat over it, one to steal it, and three to look impressive.

How many Ravenclaws does it take to light a wand?

Just one, because she stayed up all night studying on how to do it properly.

How many Hufflepuffs does it take to light a wand?

Only one, but they’re so loyal she’ll probably tell you it took the whole house.

How many Gryffindors does it take to light a wand?

None. Gryffindors? We do not fear the dark!


hehehehe.... :)

We were also prompted to show some photos of ourselves that reflect the funny, so I dug around, and couldn't really find all that much. This is what I've got. They're not all of me. (obviously)

Spanish Civil War via Magnum Photos

I really don't spend enough time posting about things I'm passionate about. Some of you might know I spent 3 months in Spain last year, and came back with a great appreciation for a lot of the culture and history there, particularly some of the art and literature born of the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) and the time after during the reign of Franco. Also my recent subscription to American Photo has really gotten me into looking at the work of others.

Anyway, I made my way to this because I saw Robert Capa's brother Cornell listed in the current issue of AP, and remembered that Robert had taken some photos during the war, so I set off to find them on Magnum Photos . These photos aren't all his, and also include work from others from the same time. I'll be sharing more soon!

Click on each photo to be taken to them on the website where there's a bit more of a description that what I'm giving here, as well as around 1000 more photos from this time.

David Seymour: Children seeking shelter from bombings in Minorca

David Seymour: Pablo Picasso w/ painting Guernica, Spanish Pavilion of Int. Worlds Fair (France, 1937)

Robert Capa: 1939, With Barcelona fallen, people evaculate for France for political asylum from Franco's regime.

Adventures in Cooking: Tortilla Espanola!

As most of the people who read this blog (all two of you!) know, this time last year I was in Spain. In honor of that fact, I've been really trying to incorporate some of my favorite things from Spain into my real life here. The 1 year anniversary of all things Spain reminded me that I loved certain things there and can have them here too...like Maria Cookies and chorizo...

One of my favorite foods in Spain was tortilla espanola or Spanish omelet. Don't let the word omelet fool you, this is different than your average breakfast egg. Made with eggs, potatoes, and onions, this food shows up in a variety of ways: wedges several inches thick on lunch menus, thin pieces on chunks of bread like a sandwich, or on the Tapas scene in small, toothpick adorned pieces ready to be served the beverage of your choice (and in a lot of places, included with the price of your drink!)

I haven't really explored many actual areas of Spanish cooking yet, though there are several recipes on the list of things to try, this is the first thing I really wanted to make. I didn't try at all until a few weeks ago, and was sad to report that the attempt failed miserably, largely in part to a bad recipe and the fact that I didn't really know what I was doing.

For anyone who knows how to handle an egg, the concept of a tortilla espanola is simple enough: it's basically finely sliced potatoed cooked in an egg. But this little tortilla is tricky! My first attempt worked well enough until a bit past the midpoint, the dastardly flip. This is accomplished using a plate, and you actually have to turn the tortilla out of the pan and put it back in again (in Spain there's a plate especially made for tortillas!) My first time through there wasn't enough egg on the bottom of the tortilla, and it crumbled when I flipped it out of the pan. So we pretty much had scrambled eggs with potatoes, which wasn't good at all! (I mean, it tasted fine, but it wasn't a tortilla...) The reason I said this attempt was with a bad recipe was because it called for the potatoes to be fried, and then for the egg to be poured over them in the pan. This doesn't cut it. Period.

The second time around I was a bit nervous, so I followed a recipe from Latina.com that showed up in my inbox a bit after the first attempt, only I made it half the size! The idea was the same as the first but there were some key differences: make sure to use enough oil when frying the potatoes to cover them, mix the eggs with the potatoes outside of the pan, and the option (which I chose) to let the fried potatoes and egg mixture sit together in a bowl for like 10 minutes before putting them in the pan to fry. The difference was so incredible, and the end result was an actual (mostly) intact tortilla!!!

1. potatoes frying, 2. Waiting in the bowl, 3. tortilla frying, 4. flip 1, 5. flip 2, 6. tortilla!

Want to try your own? Here's the best resources I've found so far!

Food Network
Fine Cooking
Gothamist

Spain has made my day, for real....

This hasn't hit the American news yet in any scope other than through Talking Points Memo but in Spain today there's a lot of news coverage on McCain. In an interview done for a Spanish radio station (I think), McCain talked at length about various Latin American countries and how he wanted to try to establish relationships with countries that could be our allies. In the ending part of the interview, the reporter asks McCain if he were elected president, would he want to establish relations with Zapatero (the current leader of Spain). McCain then reiterates the fact that he wants to establish relationships with countries that are deserving of our allegiance. The reporter goes back and forth like four times with him, and he continues to talk about Spain as if it were a Latin American country. Finally, the reporter is actually like, I'm talking about Spain, in EUROPE.

omg.

As of this point, the only audio available is a Spanish recording of the interview. I listened to it and can, even with my Spanish being what it is, understand the parts at the end where he seems to seriously not know where Spain is. There is a English version of the interview, because you can hear English in parts of it, like McCain talking in the background behind the voice over translation.

I really hope this hits our news, it's making waves in Spanish news today. I don't know when the interview was done, but the coverage is today's, so I'm hopeful it's worth picking up on. And knowing the way some news coverage LOVES McCain, I'm really hopeful.

feeling reflective...and sad :(

There's been a lot of sad things happening, on various scales of sadness. I've been really freaked out by the Spanair plane crash in Madrid , which rattles me somewhat because I've flown that airline and been in that airport, more than once. That's probably really silly, to be freaked out by that, but I am. It could've happened months ago and I could have been there...

I don't know.

Closer to home, there was a shooting at a school in Knoxville, apparently for once NOT a random act of violence but an intended act of violence, one kid against another... and not too long after a guy stormed into a church there and shot a bunch of people. Knoxville's still very fragile, for obvious reasons...

These last two are nowhere near the scale of the first two, but still hit my mind as highly annoying. The first one is a sad day on the Harry Potter front, as they are pushing back the release of the Half Blood Prince to stinking July 17th, 2009. I just don't get it, because they have already released previews and already got us all excited, and the pulled it right out from in under us. I'm really angry, and if it were anything else I'd be pissed off enough to boycott the movie alltogether, except, who boycotts a Potter film?? Well, I guess these people do, oh, these people too... way to piss off a massive Fandom, Warner Bros. Seriously.

The last bit of icing lately is the fact that they are making a reality show just a county over from where I live. Called Outsider's Inn, it's about a bed and breakfast ran out in the sticks and it supposedly is really, really stereotypical of Southern people. As someone who lives right next door, I'm pretty angry about the portrayal of such a stereotype. But, also, I know that in some ways some of those stereotypes ARE true...lol. But it really upsets me that Tennessee's hit the television in such a bad way.

Okay. I guess that's the end of the rant.

Life

I don't think there's anyone reading this, but....sorry I haven't posted in a while. A long while. I did a semi-decent job of keeping up the Jamie's in Spain blog, which can be seen here but it wasn't really filled with many personal details. So, yeah. Sorry about the absence. I want to try to be more bloggy, so we'll work on that.

As for my current life, I'm really just working, holding now a retail job that I enjoy (the same one I've had for a few years now) and living just a little. No school to worry about is nice, and strange. It's the first time I've been out of school in a long time, college took me 5 years to finish, including most summers (though I do have an associates, a BA, and a semester in Spain up my sleeve now) and it just seems like it took forever. Then there's the two years in-between high school and college that I'd rather erase from my life, for the most part, as I did absolutely nothing and was kind of in a wasteland of self-moping for a while. So, I guess I'm saying all of that to say that I've never really been in this place before, just working and that's all, and I like it. It might not really settle in until the fall that I'm just not in school anymore, but I'll deal with that when it comes. For anyone who doesn't know, the 'official' plan is to take the rest of this year off, and just live, and then figure out the rest of it at that point.

So that's what I'm doing, although I am already considering grad schools. If I do start a program, it'll probably be something low-residency, which equals mostly online. I'm looking at Prescott College , who seems to offer almost completely adaptable Masters programs, so I could make it anything I wanted it to be. I haven't contacted them yet, because I'm still cooking on the process, but I'm seriously thinking about studying something like 'social movements in Appalachia', looking at the past, present, and future of them, and why they are what they are. This would lump together everything I love in one little program: Appalachia, sociology, environmental issues, social justice work, non-profit organizations, spanish--or more specifically, the immigration movement *which could include some work in spanish...and this list can just keep growing. Based on what I've read, it seems like it would be possible with them. Very possible. So, I'm contemplating that for a while.

Guess that's it.