Author: Sal DeTraglia

Our good friend and VTB-VIP, Culinary Fool, has been blogging lately about her grandmother’s Christmas cookie recipes. That got me thinking about my own Nonnie’s holiday specialty—pusties!

I’m not sure if pusties (also known as “pasticcioti”) are an Italian or Italo-American invention…although I suspect the latter. And I’m not sure if they’re available in other parts of the US or only in the Utica, NY area…although again, I suspect the latter.

Pusties are little, baked pastry tarts filled with chocolate or vanilla custard, and capped with another layer of pastry dough that’s brushed with egg yolk. They look like a frilly meat pasty…but, of course, taste nothing like one.

In a rare moment of common sense, I had the foresight to ask Nonnie for her recipe several years ago. And it’s a good thing, because I don’t think that anyone else in the family had previously thought to do so.

And so, my friends…I include Nonnie’s recipe below. I like sharing family recipes, because it lessens the chance that they will be lost forever. And now that Nonnie’s pusty recipe is safely aloft in cyberspace, I can stop worrying that the original handwritten version will meet an untimely death at the hands of my finger-painting daughter.

Since our friend Angie raised the bar for Christmas-time blasphemy this year, I thought I’d contribute one to the cause.

Click here.

[Thanks to Henry at Potter’s Bar in Nerja, Malaga for sending me the link.]

Here’s one for those of you that can read Spanish: click here.

It’s the head-scratching story of a man who visited a circus near Madrid last week and decided to stick his arm into a tiger’s cage. I’m not sure what this guy was expecting, but what he got shouldn’t have been a surprize. The tiger tore-off his arm and devoured it.

But here’s the thing. In 2003, the same thing happened to *another guy* at *another* circus near Madrid.

Puzzling? Perhaps…but not from the legal perspective. There is, after all, nothing in Spain’s Constitution concerning the right to bear arms.

…Sal’s 2005 Christmas poem. Reserve your tickets now.

I’ve been suffering a bit of an energy crisis lately, in that I just haven’t had the energy to blog much. The days are, after all, growing shorter (yes, even in Spain!)–and wintertime has been an annual, creativity-draining albatross around my neck since I was a child growing up in the 1950’s.

But I desperately wanted to publish something–ANYTHING!–on my blog tonight, so I was forced to break-out the big guns.

Look up! See that photo? It’s from the 1963 movie, “King Kong vs. Godzilla.” I don’t think I’m exagerrating when I say that this movie was the reason that Thomas Edison invented cinema.

I saw KKvs.G no less than *seventeen times* before my tenth birthday. And no…that’s not an exagerration, either. I counted.

To briefly summarize the plot, Godzilla was being naughty…so a group of Japanese guys brought in King Kong to kick his ass.

But the movie was SO much more. There’s a drunken orgy featuring hallucinagenic berry juice. There’s a giant octopus that sounds like an obese man peeling his sweaty buttocks from a vinyl-covered chaise lounge. And of course…there’s incompetently-edited English dubbing; the likes of which the world had not seen since…well, since the previous Godzilla movie.

In case you’re wondering…I rooted for Godzilla. All seventeen times. It was nothing personal against King Kong. In fact, I had a splendid brunch with Mr. Kong at Tavern on the Green in 1973, and I found him utterly charming. But for reasons that I can’t articulate, my heart belonged to Godzilla–as did it also belong to Dick York, Mary Ann and Jan Brady.

During the movie’s final fight scene when Godzilla was playing Jerry Lawler to the King Kong’s Andy Kaufmann, the big ape got a quick boost of energy by chawin’ on a high-tension power line. I briefly considered this treatment as a tonic for my current meloncoly, but was forced to discard it after reading the fine print on my insurance deductible.

So…I think I’ll try to score some of that berry juice, instead.

Holidays (i.e., fiestas) in Spain are like vacations in Hawaii.  Why?  Because they seem so appealing beforehand, but once they begin….you find yourself sitting around with NOTHING to do.
 
The last quarter of the year is an especially fertile time for holidays—whether national, provincial or local.  October 12 is Virgin of Pilar Day.  November 1 is All Saints’ Day.  November 9 is La Alumdena (i.e., the patron saint of Madrid) Day.  December 6 is Constitution Day.  December 8 is Immaculate Conception Day.  The list goes on and on.
 
This usually causes consternation amongst my co-workers in places like Finland and South Africa.  And year after year, the script remains the same.
 
SAL’S EMAIL TO CO-WORKERS:  “Please be advised that [insert date] is a holiday in Spain, and I will be out of the office and unavailable.  If you need assistance during my absence, then please contact one of my colleagues based in a non-Catholic country.”
 
CO-WORKER’S EMAIL TO SAL:   “What?!  Another holiday?!!!  Which is it this week?”
 
SAL’S EMAIL:  “I’m not sure, but I think it has something to do with the Patron Saint of Peanut Brittle.”
 
CO-WORKER’S EMAIL:  “Unbelievable!  I’m heading straight to Human Resources and demanding a transfer to Spain.”
 
Their envy is understandable, but they fail to grasp the important point: a holiday means twenty-four catatonic hours with NOTHING to do.  

Yes, yes, yes…I know that I’m being churlish.  But look at it from my perspective.  I was raised in the US—a country in which the word “holiday” doesn’t mean a day of rest.  It means a day of shopping.  A *glorious* day of shopping!
 
But in Spain, the only retail establishments that open on holidays are bread stores and bars.  But that’s it!  As soon as I’ve bought a baguette and drunk a café con leche, I find myself pondering the same recurring question:  What the hell am I going to do for the next fifteen hours?
 
The answer is always the same:  NOTHING!
 
Now…before my editors start receiving angry letters, let me make one thing clear.  I’m not knocking Spain for any of this.  To the contrary, I believe that Spain has gotten it right.  A holiday *should* involve staying at home and spending a relaxing, rejuvenating day with one’s family and/or satellite dish.  But for me, this scenario is the third ring of hell.  Yes, I admit it.  *I’m* the one with the problem.
 
That’s not to say that haven’t tried to overcome the problem.  Quite the contrary.  During my first years in Spain, I made diligent attempts to embrace—and yes, even to enjoy—the opportunity for reflection and meditation that each holiday brought. 

And it worked! It worked beautifully! But, unfortunately, it only worked until I had bought a baguette and drunk a café con leche–after which point, my lower lip would begin sagging to floor until it finally came to rest within an expanding puddle of drool.

But with age comes acceptance—and I’ve now accepted the fact that the Spanish concept of holidays is…well…is unacceptable.  So I’ve adopted a different approach. Whenever there’s a holiday, I wake up early…put on a tie…sit at my desk…and write threatening letters to imaginary customers demanding that they pay imaginary invoices or else I’ll be forced to contact my imaginary Legal Department.

I know it’s silly. I know it’s pathetic. But it’s the only way I can cope with the tedium. That’s me. That’s the way I am. And there’s NOTHING that I can do about it.

No, I’m not talking about “chat” as in Indian street snacks (although I’d love a bag of ’em right now). I’m talking about video chat.

If you are a Mac user and have an iChat account, or are a Windows user and have an AIM account, then feel free to “invite” me for a video chat. If I’m on-line, not fighting a crisis and my hair looks reasonably OK, then I’ll “accept.”

My address for chat purposes is the following: saldetraglia@mac.com

Flower pots be damned!

Christmas arrived early in Spain this year (Thanks Mom and Dad!), and the result is pictured above. It’s…it’s…it’s a Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker. Here! In Spain! In my own living room!

I still can’t believe. I feel so emotional right now. I…I just can’t write anymore at this moment. I need to be alone. I need to compose myself. I need…I need…I need a BIG hunka pork butt and a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon!

I lived in Pennsylvania from 1977 till 1983. So when I stumbled across this article earlier today, I thought to myself, “Only in Pennsylvania!”

Honestly! If you’re so anxious to prove that you’re tougher than the average modern man, then go into the woods and try killing a deer with your bare hands.

For those of you who haven’t visited the WALTnow! blog (see sidebar) this week, you must…absolutely MUST…check out this.

Just be sure that you’re not sipping a Diet Coke, or it’s liable to squirt out your nose.

Trivia Tidbit: WALTnow! is the spiritual godfather of this Virtual Tapas Bar. Way back in June 2004, I was perusing WALTnow! (which, at the time, was called “My Life as a Walt”) and thought to myself, “So THAT’S a blog, eh? Hmm…that kinda looks like fun.”