As his time with us and in Spain is coming to a close, Kyle reflects on what his favorite foods have been. Some of them might surprise you!
Read MoreAs our intern Kyle’s time abroad is creeping to a close, he is coming to understand some fundamental differences. This week he reflects on mealtimes in Spain, and comes to a conclusion which is close to the heart and motive of what we do here at Sobremesa.
Read MoreThis week our intern Kyle went on an edible excursion to discover the essence of Catalan cuisine. Get ready for some scrumptiously tempting narrative, which might just make you want to go ahead and buy that ticket over here!
Read MoreThe past year’s dreams of long-lost travel, little by little, can start to mutate back into real plans.
Read MoreI met my friend Dídac Valera of L’Hort d’en Dídac over a decade ago, although it feels like a lifetime.
Read MoreI thrive on ritual. I wake up at 5am every day so that I can have a good hour or two before my family wakes up, for my personal morning rituals : a brief meditation, a long sitting with countless steepings of tea, some yoga.
Read MoreOn a culinary front, this post could also be called: What you do when you’re sick of waiting for your container to arrive from the other side of the world, you’ve been living in an empty house for 8 weeks, you really want to bake something for your kids (and maybe yourself too) on the last lazy Saturday afternoon of the summer, but you have no kitchen utensils to work with.
Read MoreJacko is a farmer. He lives and farms in a village at the foothills of the Montseny mountain called Arbúcies, about an hour north of Barcelona. Jacko is a permaculturist avant la lettre; but he doesn’t like to call himself that. He has been practicing farming in this way long before the term permaculture because popular, but he also makes a point to draw a line between himself and a movement, which he casually scoffs as trendy. Jacko is a man of firm values and opinions. He just farms. I like that.
Sorry for the long silence here. In case you hadn’t noticed from my recent Instagram posts, we have moved back to Barcelona. It’s been exactly three weeks now, enough time to realize how freakin’ intense the past seven months have been, trying to live in two places at once. Coordinating the many moving parts of a whole family’s move across the world left me depleted, but landing in one place has renewed my energy and enthusiasm.
Read MoreI recently got back from a 5-week trip to Spain. It was an intense time, spent teaching (mostly here but also here), doing research (for this and this) and, in between, squeezing in as much time as possible with my dear friends in Spain.
As soon as I landed in Barcelona, it felt like home. And yet when I returned to the Bay area a few weeks ago, I was so happy to be home! It's funny how that works; once you have lived a long time in different places, home is a moveable feast, and yet you can never truly go home again. These thoughts were on my mind all the time as I walked the streets of Barcelona, streets I know so well and yet, there have been changes (both external and internal ones) in the 3 years I've been gone.
Read MoreI am about to leave for Barcelona, to teach the second yearly round of the Mediterranean Food & Culture program for University of California EAP.
The upcoming weeks will be quite busy; the followers of Desayuno con guisantes, the company I ran when I lived in Spain, want to hear from me as well -and learn about some of my California cuisine tricks. I have been invited, while in Barcelona, to teach a series of hands-on cooking classes and nutrition talks for Obbio and Still Cooking. It's a good thing I absolutely love what I do!
Read MoreRead about my 5 weeks of food adventures abroad!
Read MoreToday is St. Jordi, my favorite Catalan holiday. Today I miss Barcelona. Some say it's the equivalent of Valentine's Day. Maybe so, only it has a cultural addition, which makes it much more interesting. Roses and books, books and roses.
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