Leaving home tomorrow!

We are very excited about leaving tomorrow.  We had a farewell breakfast with Julian, Jordan and Zac this morning; Zac and Jordan, who live with us, are realizing that we won't be home for quite a long time and they might have to get out of bed and do things to stay alive. Here is a bad picture of us.

I will be regularly including a sub-heading in this blog  called "Vicarious Consumption."  One of my friends has requested that I chronicle in delicious detail all the food associated with our trip. I will do anything she wants, since because of her I get to eat four  Maine lobsters at a time and all the freshly picked mussels I can eat every summer. However, I am only intermittently interested in gastronomie, and exhaust my interest in food preparation quickly. I  can't sustain making many great meals in a row, though I think I have produced a few along the way. I will have to take a bit of a different tack from other food blogs as a result. Here is the first installment.

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Vicarious Consumption (I didn't know there was a Pepto-bismol font)
 
I'm not really in Spain yet, but I have to say our farewell breakfast was pretty tasty: Monte Cristo sandwiches, cantaloupe and Swiss chard from the garden, very strong coffee, and in a surprise improvisational beverage coup, homemade wild grape juice. I am far more into plants than I am into cooking, but the two do go marvelously hand in hand, like estimable Bob and me. I was out taking a practice hike in the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge (ARNWR--it's across the street from my house) with my fully loaded backpack (approx. 25 lbs.) when I spied a vine with ripe purple grapes hanging father inconveniently above some poison ivy. Throwing caution (but not cliches) to the wind, I picked them, and juiced them when I got back home.  To my surprise, since I loathe bottled grape juice, the stuff is GREAT.  Like fresh squeezed lime or lemonade, it is tart and refreshing, and I am sure bursting with anti-oxidants. On the do-not-be-too-jealous-of-us side, notice the bottle of faux syrup which is on the breakfast table ("Log Cabin.") Since we had to buy so many things for our trip like real hiking pants and fancy quick-dry everything, I decided to forfeit the far superior real maple syrup at $22 a bottle, though everyone was upset. Also notice the pants hanging to dry on the deck in the background. Some say that is very white-trash, and is certainly not allowed if you live in a condo complex with rules. And the deck chairs are plastic.

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I include this picture of my eggplant because I am going to miss my garden.  I am highly enthusiastic about growing just about anything, and fall in New England is prime time for transplanting and harvesting. I hope to find some oportunidades to engage in some garden activities while I'm in Spain to ease my botanical withdrawal symptoms.

Introduction and Disclaimer!

Two months in Spain. Whose brain would not rejoice at that thought! I and my husband of nearly four years, the estimable (es-tee-MAH-blay) Rev. Robert W. Brown, and I fly this Sunday through Paris to Madrid, thence take the Renfe train to the town of Irun where we begin to walk the ancient pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela.  Bob has a sabbatical (or, as my Jewish readership may prefer to think of it, a Shabbatical) of three months. I am following in the degenerate footsteps of semi-and-self-employed artists everywhere by seizing the opportunity to put pleasure before business, and thus I'm off to Spain with him.

As this is the beginning of my blog, I feel compelled to include a brief disclaimer about the value of its future contents.  Like  E.B. White's dog Daisy,  the  Scottish terrier who "suffered from a chronic perplexity", my point of view is questionable.
Still, I hope my readership will be as entertained by my efforts as I usually am myself. Like Daisy, I hope to die "sniffing life, and enjoying it."

Estimable Roberto will also be telling our tale, mostly in pictures, as he is accustomed to do so by his many years of storytelling through the camera lens.  (For those of you who don't know, Robert was a television and film director for 30 years prior to becoming a UCC minister in Concord, MA.) His blog address is bobencamino.com and there will be lots of pictures of me there.

                              :-)  Natalie/Natalia