-Washington Irving, Recollections of the Alhambra.

Me Voy A España
Traveling Light
El Irse

La Vuelta

a) Don’t live in Seattle.
b) Didn’t particularly want to go to Madrid.
c) Didn’t really have any vacation time.

The only part of Spain that I hadn’t visited was the south. With the exception of Sevilla, the region of Andalucia remained an exotic, sun drenched mystery to me. I looked out the window at a typical autumn day in Portland, cool and crisp, overcast but pleasant. Within weeks the clouds would open up and stay that way for four months. I suddenly imagined myself driving along the rugged southern coast of Spain, on my way from one one gorgeous medieval city to another.  For a moment I smelled the salty Mediterranean air and heard the tapping of my shoes on thousand year old cobblestones as I wandered narrow alleys in search of good wine and tapas.

As olive skinned flamenco dancers danced across a stage inside my head, I pulled a credit card out of my pocket and began booking tickets. I decided to leave on a Wednesday afternoon and return the following Tuesday. Like a true junkie, I was fully aware of how poorly I had considered this decision, as well as how little that mattered to me. The vision I’d had was just too strong, as was the prospect of a spontaneous European weekend, which is a fantasy that I suspect a lot of people have and very few ever actually fulfill.

Fifteen minutes after first coming across the tickets, they were purchased. Six weeks later, I was going to be in Spain.

Those six weeks passed quickly, and by the start of November I suddenly realized that, with the exception of a place to stay on my first night in Granada and a rental car the following afternoon, I had failed to do any research or make reservations of any kind. And just after that I thought to myself, so what? I’ve traveled extensively, speak a little Spanish, and love the country intensely.

Not only did I love Spain, I trusted that Spain was going to look out for me while I was there. In fact, I trusted that so much that I decided to see just how light I could travel: I decided go there without any luggage, maps, or guidebooks. Instead, I would arrive there with the clothes on my back, a camera, passport, wallet, toothbrush, and little else. And that’s what I did.

***

Rather than book a single ticket between my departure and destination cities, I courageously (some would say stupidly) worked out the itinerary myself and purchased the three legs of the journey separately: Portland to Seattle, Seattle to London to Madrid, and Madrid to Granada. I gave myself less than two hours of layover time at each stop, but everything went as smooth as I hoped it would.

How did they know?

The flight from Seattle to London was remarkably brief- the pilot capitalized on the geometry of spheres and, by plotting a course over northern Canada and Greenland, it ended up taking a little over nine hours.

There’s a line in the movie Punch Drunk Love when Adam Sandler’s character, having just arrived in Hawaii says, “Wow, it really looks like Hawaii.” It’s a silly line, but that’s exactly how I felt seeing London for the first time in my life- as though I was descending into my own preconceptions of the place as a gray, foggy, dour place, as though the settlers of London had simply sloshed through a muddy field until reaching the river Thames and then said, “Alright, here we are. Start bulding.”

My layover in London was short and sweet: a (imperial!) pint of Bass, a dish of chips with brown sauce, and then I was off again.

British meteorologists have the easiest job in the world.

My first glimpse of my second (really third, I spent a night in Pamplona once) time in Spain.

Upon arriving in Madrid, I was corralled through customs and spent the entire time giddily taking in a seemingly endless parade of idiosyncratic and beautiful Spanish faces. I felt like I was in an Pedro Almodovar film with a cast of thousands.

I had a two and a half hour layover in Madrid, but wasted no time tearing into manchego, jamon, and lomo bocadillos and quaffing three (or was it four?) copas of delicious Tempranillo.

Just like the hopper flight between Portland and Seattle, the flight from Madrid to Granada took less than an hour. Granada’s airport is tiny. I walked from the landing strip to the terminal and then directly outside to a waiting city bus.

Not having any maps or knowledge of the city forced me to rely almost entirely on the goodwill of strangers. I knew that my hotel was located on the “Plaza de Campos”, which I explained to the bus driver. He didn’t seem to know exactly where that was, but had an idea as to which part of town it was in. When we arrived there, he let me know. 

Once on the sidewalk, I followed his pointed finger across the street and down a dimly lit alley. Then I crossed a parklike pair of streets, took a right, then a left, then a right, down another dark alley that opened up on a small treed square. I looked to my side and suddenly realized that I was standing next to the hotel where I’d booked my first night. I smiled. That was almost too easy.

The room was modest but very clean, and had a beautiful view overlooking the city. As exhausted as I was from traveling for 24 hours straight, this was to be my only night in Granada and I didn’t feel right about not seeing at least a glimpse of it. And so, after taking a long shower and refamiliarizing myself with late night Spanish television (3 channels of music videos, 5 channels of live fortune tellers, 1 channel of a live lottery game that doesn’t make any sense, and 2 channels of hardcore pornography), I got dressed and set out again.

It was a short walk down Calle Reyes Católicos to the Plaza Nueva, which I knew to be my best bet on a Thursday night for a taste of Granada. Once there, I ducked into the first bar that looked promising and ordered a glass of red wine. After it arrived I spent a moment trying to convince myself that I was really there, drinking Spanish wine not far from where it was made, and looking forward to… well, what was I looking forward to? The next four days were still a mystery, a mystery that could only be solved by experiencing whatever was in store.

After leaving that bar I became aware that all of the wine and tapas places were closing for the night, and that only nightclubs would be open. I went into one place called Gustav Klimt, which I took as a good sign until I realized what sort of place it was- loud, dark, and packed with an assortment of attractive young people, most of whom would be going home alone. In other words, it was a college bar. Rather than waste money on an overpriced, watered down drink, I snagged a chocolate covered fruit skewer and made a sneering exit.

No one noticed.

Granada is a college town, and the alleys around the Plaza Nueva were filled with groups of friends and students winding their way from one place to another. Since I had nothing else to do, I began walking with them. Rather than follow any one group I drifted between them like so many schools of interesting Spanish fish.

When I tired of that, I began to walk home. Along the way I came upon the ongoing drama of an accident involving a car and a scooter. A young woman was laying on the ground and howling with an intensity that did not appear to be appropriate given the fact that she wasn’t bleeding and the paramedics were not rushing to get her into the ambulance.

Maybe she was just imitating a Spanish soccer player.

Continuing on, I walked back the way I’d come and then realized I’d gone too far. Instead of turning around, I cut across the neighborhood where I thought I was staying in an attempt to repeat my earlier success of guessing my way back to the hotel. But this led me to another main street, and then another, and soon it was two a.m. and I had absolutely no idea where I was. Eventually I stopped into an all night convenience store, but the Turkish clerk there had only lived in Spain for a month and was little help. The Korean immigrants running the all night convenience store next to the first one didn’t know either. I thanked them both and continued on.

Eventually I ran into Peter, an exchange student from Boston who was heading towards the Plaza Nueva along with his friends. I figured that returning there was better than wandering aimlessly, and so I joined their group for a few minutes and chatted with them. As we walked it became apparent to me just how far I’d gone. My hotel was in the southeast part of the city, but I met up with the Americans far in the northwest. Still, I’d probably seen more of the city in one evening than many people see in a week, and never felt endangered by being lost, only confused. 

Peter didn’t know where I was trying to go, but he did point me in roughly the right direction, and finally, finally, I found myself at the Plaza de Campos and my hotel. Having been awake for the majority of the last two days I wanted nothing more than to sleep deep for as long as my body felt like sleeping, but that was not possible. At seven a.m. I’d need to rise and leave again, this time to explore the fortress palace of the Alhambra and the rest of Granada. At times like these, an old quote by Henry Rollins always comes to mind, and it certainly applied then:

“Sleep is for lightweights.”

• 1 well worn U.S. passport
• 1 wallet containing 2 credit cards
• 1 travel toothbrush and toothpaste
• 1 Sony HX-1 camera, case and charger
• 1 black moleskin notebook containing flight times and confirmation numbers
• 1 pair black boots, freshly polished
• 1 pair of SmartWool socks
• 1 pair of denim jeans
• 1 pair of blue and orange checked boxers (of Spanish origin, coincidentally)
• 1 white t-shirt
• 1 striped dress shirt
• 1 pair of silver cufflinks
• 1 purple necktie
• 1 grey sweater
• 1 black Marmot softshell jacket
• 1 copy of The Adventures of Augie Marsh by Saul Bellow
• 1 keen sense of adventure
• 1 poor sense of direction
• 1 lifetime that I’m doing my best to make extraordinary

My inspiration to travel to another country with nearly nothing goes like this:

A long time ago, my friend José and I were talking about traveling, and he said that the best way to go was with a jacket, a wallet, and a camera. He said that you could buy anything else that you needed while you were there, and that whatever you bought would immediately become a souvenir. For instance, say you went to France, needed some underwear, bought some. Then for months or years after, you might get up in the morning and put on those underwear and think, “I got these in France.” And you’d spend a moment reminiscing about that trip when you wouldn’t have otherwise.

It was with José’s idea in mind that I set off with only a wallet and a camera to San Francisco earlier this summer, and I ended up having one of the most rewarding trips of my life during the day and a half that I spent getting there and back. It not only verified that traveling so light is possible, but it made me want to do it again, and for longer.

I will only be in Spain for four days, but I can imagine a time in the near future when I’ll leave again with pretty much the same list as above, except without any return flights to think about. In a way, by taking trips like this I am providing myself with a very real glimpse of that longed-for day.

Depite having neither the funds nor vacation time for such a trip (and Colombia to look forward to in February), I simply couldn’t resist returning to one of my favorite places for a few days of Andalusian sun, moorish architecture, sherry, tapas, and adventure.

And it will be an adventure. I’m making sure of that by traveling there without luggage, maps or a fixed itinerary of any kind- I will arrive there only with the clothes on my back, my passport, wallet, camera, and my muy malo Spanish skills, content to let the country herself decide my fate. The only things I’ve arranged in advance are a visit to the Alhambra (because it’s difficult to get entry otherwise) and a rental car for three days of touring around by myself.

With the exception of Seville, I haven’t seen any of the part of Spain where I’ll be. At a minimum, I hope to see Granada, Malaga, Jerez, Jabugo, and Cordoba. But due to the fact that I haven’t actually planned anything, I can’t even imagine what I actually am going to see. And it’s thrilling. Below is a potential loop through those destinations and the places where it might make sense to spend the night.

I would say I can’t wait, but I can, and only have to for two more days. Ciao!

During the last few weeks of summer, my friends Heather and Bill and I began planning the only suitable ending to such an amazing summer: hosting a gigantic food and friend focused southern picnic. The inspiration for it came in part by Heather’s idea to have a chicken fry, and things just spiraled completely out of control from there.

For me, the end of summer southern picnic was to be more than just a great way to say farewell to summer. It was also the culmination something that began a year and a half ago when I found myself back in Portland after fourteen months of traveling, recently divorced, and with no real social circle to speak of. Food and Friendships soon became the twin priorities of my new life, and though it took some real effort when I was starting out, I have learned how to make them both, and to make them both well.

***

The Prep:

Not long after I slaughtered a rooster a few months ago, Heather floated the idea of having a foodie field trip to to the Blaine Broilers farm to see them in action. We would each buy a couple of birds, and then fry the all up the following afternoon. One thing or another prevented the field trip from happening, but the week before the southern picnic we got ten (ten!) of their birds to fry up, all of which just barely fit in my freezer.

At this point I still had no idea what I was going to make for the picnic. Then I remembered that a coworker had given me an electric smoker a few months ago and that it had been sitting outside since I brought it home. I’d never smoked meat before, why not give it a try? But what to smoke? This was my very first attempt, so why not start with one of the most challenging cuts of meat to smoke: a huge beef brisket? My internal debate about whether or not to smoke a brisket ended when I mentioned the idea to Heather and she said, “Oh, well I have an eight pound, grass fed, hormone-free brisket in my freezer, if you want it.” Amazing. 

A brisket is essentially a connective tissue filled pad of chest muscle, and is extremely tough due to the fact that when the cow lays down it carries about 60% of its body weight in that area. By contrast, the muscle that filet mignon is cut from carries no weight at all, which is why it those are so tender from the start. But here’s the thing: cooked long enough at a low enough temperature, all of that collagen melts and leaves behind a huge slab of meat so tender that it can literally be cut with a fork. Actually making that happen was the challenge I set for myself.

On Wednesday afternoon while riding my bike across the Burnside bridge after a visit to a finish carpentry shop for scrap pieces of oak for the smoker, I had what could only be described as a vision: the picnic needed a mascot, something memorable, and one image in particular came to mind. I’ll get to what it was in a minute.

Prepping the brisket for the picnic on Saturday began that night. The meat needed to be thawed. This would take some time. I decided to unwrap the cut, place it in a garbage bag, and then submerge that in my sink while regularly changing the water to keep the thawing process going.

While the brisket thawed, I began to paint the vision I’d had earlier in the day. It went pretty well. 

 
 

Saint Sanders, acrylic on canvas, Summer 2009.

I can’t explain why the image of Colonel Sanders as a religious icon popped into my head fully formed, but this turned out surprisingly close to what I envisioned. I hung Saint Sanders at the top of my stairs, and he served as a sentry, alerting me to people coming up the stairs by making them laugh every time they saw him.

***

After a good amount of time in the sink the brisket had thawed enough to unfold, but it was still very solid in the center. I left it covered in my fridge overnight and all the next day.

On Thursday night it was time to dry rub the brisket. After laying it out on a large baking sheet I suddenly grew intimidated by the possibility of ruining such a large, beautiful, expensive cut of meat.

Hmm.

The dry rub that I used was a mixture of smoked paprika, cayenne, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, sugar, and black and white peppercorns. It tasted fantastic.

As I began to apply the dry rub the meat took on a velvety texture. I massaged the mixture deep into the fat and muscle before wrapping it back up and putting it back in my fridge for another 36 hours.

Oh yes.

On Friday night Bill and Heather came over to disassemble their birds. It was a lot of work and it may have left every surface of my kitchen coated in a think layer of Salmonella, but things turned out great in the end. Heather generously left one of the chickens whole for me to do what I wanted with.

Before going to bed, I set up the smoker in the back yard and left a bunch of oak chunks and hickory chips soaking in water in my bathtub. Then I set my alarm for 4 a.m. and went to sleep.

The Big Day:

4 a.m. came too soon. Around 4:30 I finally crawled out of bed, put some clothes on, and stumbled out the door. It was raining lightly, but the weather report said it would end in the early afternoon, before the picnic began. I hoped so.

After arranging the oak blocks close to the heating element and placing two aluminum bowls full of hickory chips on top, I assembled the rest of the smoker. Above the heating element sat a deep metal pan that I filled with apple cider and beer. The pan is important because it helps regulate the smoker temperature and keep the meat moist. 

Next came the brisket. It looked amazing, and just barely fit on the upper grill of the smoker. The design of the smoker is such that the wood will get hot enough to smolder, but with no source of oxygen to burn, it can not catch fire.

In tests conducted earlier in the week, my smoker tended to reach 275 degrees and then stay there. 225 would have been ideal, but there was no way to adjust the temperature- if I cracked the lid slightly fresh air would get sucked in and light the wood on fire. I decided that the most important thing was to check the internal temperature of the brisket regularly and just hope for the best.

The reason that I started so rediculously early in the morning was that I’d been reading about how to smoke a brisket all week and the general consensus was that it needed about 1.5 hours per pound. Mine was just under 8 pounds, so I figured I would need about 12 hours on the smoker. 4:30 a.m. + 12 hours = 4:30 p.m. + resting time = 5:00 p.m., just in time for the picnic.

After laying a bunch of slab bacon over the brisket, I went back to bed for a few hours. Around 7:30 a.m., I came out to check on it. The internal temperature was already 180 degrees, which shocked me because I was planning to take it off once it reached 190. Even so, the brisket had shrunk dramatically, and things seemed to be going well.

And then… after I putting the top back on I tapped it a few times to make a tight seal with the base, which cause the pan filled with liquid to slip off its hooks and fall onto the wood and element. A massive plume of cider steam erupted from the top of the smoker, hissing the whole time. Within a minute, I had transferred the brisket to my grill, disassembled the smoker, refilled the pan, and reassembled the whole thing. Disaster had just barely been averted.

After conferring with the meat counter guy at my local grocery store I decided to take the brisket off the smoker after only 5 hours. It turns out that most of the smoke flavor that the meat will absorb happens in the first few hours, anyway, and it made more sense to keep it wrapped and warm in my oven for the rest of the day than risk drying it out. At 9:30 in the morning, 7 hours earlier than I expected, my brisket was pretty much done.

Heather and Bill arrived in the afternoon to begin the chicken fry. They had decided to fry some of the chickens in advance so that we’d have some to set out right away, but there was still a lot of work to be done.

Heather had bathed all of the chicken pieces overnight in buttermilk, and somehow procured several gallons of high quality, snow-white, mildly porky lard in which Bill fried them. Before frying the chicken in the bubbling lard, they first fried some slab pork in it for some additional flavor. Then they removed the pork, sliced it up, and set it out as hors d’oeuvres. They went very quickly. 

The thing that I love about those two, the thing that makes us such good friends in food, is that they always take things much further than they need to. Because I am the same way, when we join forces it just gets rediculous.  

While Bill and Heather toiled away in my smoky, greasy kitchen, I went outside to greet our first guests and prepare a large bowl of boozy southern punch.

5 p.m

Earlier in the day I had made a frozen fruit ring out of fresh fruit and juice, which went into the punch and kept it cold without watering it down.

The punch was made with 2 bottles of cava, pineapple juice, orange juice, 7-up, fresh fruit, and a healthy dose of bourbon whisky.

 
It was all I drank for most of the night.

Running back upstairs, I found that the first batch of chicken was ready to be set out.

A few days before the picnic I bought 60 ears of corn on Sauvie Island. The morning of the picnic I shucked and stacked them in my steamer, and then completely forgot about them until much later in the evening.

7 p.m.

By 7 a number of guests had arrived and they had all brought something to share. On the picnic invite we admonshed our guests to pull out all the culinary stops for this thing, and they did- there we an endless array of salads, sides, southern specialties, and drinks. Soon, two tables were completely packed with food, and the thing weren’t even in full swing yet.

My brisket turned out as perfect as I could have hoped. It was smoky, with a kick of heat from the dry rub, but tender and moist and delicious. Heather and Bill’s buttermilk fried chicken was the best I’ve ever had.

It would have been nice to sit down and mingle with guests then, but I still wasn’t done cooking. There was one more dish I wanted to make: an apple cinnamon and honey glazed roasted chicken, which I stuffed with fresh apples and an aluminum bag stuffed with hickory chips. That’s right- there was wood steaming and smoking inside the bird.

In addition to the massive amounts of fried chicken, Heather and Bill also contributed 120 (120!) fresh, delicious oysters. Most of them were eaten raw with a delicate mignonette, but some were grilled over mesquite.

That’s the apple cinnamon honey chicken roasting alongside the oysters.

Evening at the C.J. corral.

By 9 the party was going in earnest. I finally made a plate for myself and sat down to eat. I wanted to try a little bit of everything on it, but in order to do that I would have had to fill four plates. The food was amazing.

As countless different conversations swirled around us, Heather dutifully manned the oyster station, tutoring newbies on proper schucking technique and trying to keep anyone from stabbing themself in the hand. We didn’t have any major mishaps that night, and a lot of people had the first oyster of their lives at our picnic, which was cool.

It was interesting to me that a number of people who absolutely refused to try a raw oyster spent so much time near the oyster station. It was clear that they really wanted to try one but were too afraid to take the plunge. I ate about 9 of them myself. 

The food just kept on coming. With each succesive wave of guest the table was stacked higher and higher with treats. Strawberry rhubarb pie, cornbread, bacon sliders, arroz con leche, pulled pork on bourbon butter toast… our friends understood exactly what we had been going for with this and they did not disappoint.

At 11 things were still going strong, as new guests kept arriving to replace the ones who were leaving.

11 p.m.

Around the time I realized that I was still almost completely sober, my friend Dan arrived with a bottle of sweet tea infused vodka. A dash of that in a glass of lemonade became my drink of choice for the rest of the evening.

Sometime after midnight I disassembled the smoker and dragged the bottom part of it into the center of my yard. Resting it on several bricks, we built an ad hoc firepit and gathered around for a couple more hours of conversation, music, and southern hospitality.

Shortly after 2:30 a.m., everyone called it a night. Everyone agreed that it had been a huge success, and one attendee even said it was the greatest potluck she’d ever been to, which meant a lot to me since she was an older woman and had presumably attended numerous potlucks over the course of her life.

The Morning After:

7 a.m.

Cleanup wasn’t as much of a hassle as I expected it would be. Marissa helped out cleaning up the backyard and Heather came by and washed dishes for a couple of hours.

I take a perverse pleasure in my kitchen being this messy.

 
What was left of the oysters and brisket

 
What was left of the booze. Note bottle opener with cork still in it.

While we cleaned, the three of us marveled at how well the picnic had gone. We traded our favorite anecdotes from the previous nice and then pulled out a paper and pen to tally how many people had actually showed up. After a lot of consideration, we put the grand total of guests at seventy six. Seventy six people who we’d fed and entertained and be fed and entertained by. Seventy six guests who we cared enough about to invite and who cared enough about us to come. Seventy six guests, most of whom arrived as strangers, and many of whom left as friends. Perfect.

Because we had left all the food outside when the epic picnic had finally ended, I suspect my compost pile was among the most delicious in the world that morning. While walking over to toss something in it, I came across an unshucked oyster in my yard and picked it up. A tiny striped slug was exploring its cratered surface with great interest.

The seventy seventh guest.

At the end of August I spent five days in Oahu visiting family and exploring the island with my friend Marissa. My second cousin Tori lives near Honolulu with her family and Marissa’s mother Florence and brother Jake live on the north shore.

I feel like I saw a lot of the island for how chill the trip was- I mean, it was really just an excuse to go somewhere beautiful and different and eat fresh fruit, shave ice, seafood and Hawaiian specialties every day. And that’s exactly what I did.

Getting there:

Day One:

(more…)

I bought a small canvas as soon as I got home, but it was not until a month later, hours before they arrived in Portland for a friend’s wedding that I actually painted it. The original had only taken a couple of hours, so I knew there was no reason the miniature version to take any longer. I actually used the exact same tubes of paint for both paintings. And the same love.