Blog

Our good friend Harsh—the tech-crazy, food-crazy, world-traveling management consultant—was recently dragged from his posh assignments in London and Rome to work on a project in Dallas. He summarized his observations on life in the Lone Star State in his blog earlier today; which included this golden nugget:

I’ve often suspected that Spaniards are part-vampire. Why? Because they go out of their ways to avoid sunshine. And nowhere is this more true than in the home.

If you don’t believe me, then take a midday stroll down any residential street in Madrid or Barcelona and look up. You’ll notice that the windows of most people’s homes and apartments are hermetically-sealed with heavy curtains or aluminum persiana blinds. God forbid that a sliver of sunlight should be permitted foreplay with the long-suffering ficus in that fourth floor apartment on Calle Goya!

I must admit that this practice of compulsive sun-avoidance has puzzled me since the moment I arrived in Spain. After all, if you loathe the sun, then why live in a country that averages 364.67 cloudless days per year? I’m sure that an enthusiastic partner to a house-swap could be found by selecting any name at random from the Seattle or Edinburgh phone books.

But I don’t just find this behavior puzzling. It strikes me as a bit cheeky, as well. There is—you might be interested to know—a psychological illness called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) that strikes many people who live in countries with good beer. People suffering from SAD experience mild to severe depression during times of the year when the weather is especially dreary. The most common treatment for SAD is to sit in front of a “Lightbox”—i.e., a box emitting a bright light that boosts the spirits by acting as a surrogate sun.

How ironic, then, that Spain—a country that, for all intents and purposes, is a 1,000 kilometer-long Lightbox—has a population that maintains their living rooms under conditions suitable for film development. It’s a bit like the Wall Street business executive who rakes in millions, then moans about the amount of income taxes that he must pay. SAD. Very SAD indeed.

Anyway…after nearly six years of bewilderment, I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer. I thus decided to seek answers by undertaking a scientifically-rigorous survey of every Spaniard I know—or, at least, those who were still speaking to me at the time.

And after grilling those two Spaniards, a startling trend emerged. Their responses were nearly identical—and presumably not just because they were married. Here is the transcript of our interview:

Sal: “Why do keep your curtains closed during the day?”

Spaniard: “So that the house doesn’t get hot.”

Sal: “Why don’t you just open a window?”

Spaniard: “Because the curtains are closed.”

There you have it! The greatest puzzle since Fermat’s Last Theorem has been solved! Sure, I might’ve preferred a more scholarly conclusion—like, for example, that living in light-deprived dwellings is a carry-over from Spain’s agricultural era when midday siestas were a necessity rather than a luxury—but facts are facts. Besides, the simplest answers are often the most incisive…and such is the enormity of my finding that I’ve personally spoken with well-placed people in Oslo—but, regrettably, they inform that nobody has ever won a Nobel Prize through the use of circular reasoning.

Then what, you may ask, has become of my vampire theory? Well, I’ve discarded it due to a fundamental flaw that I discovered during last night’s dinner: Vampires can’t exist in country that uses so much garlic in its cooking.

Hi folks. Remember me?

I’ve just returned from two weeks’ vacation. Sorry for not providing advance notice, but—given that I’ve long-since disclosed my true name and home-town—it didn’t seem prudent to tell the Internet’s three zillion users that the material possessions in my vacant house would be available for an unobstructed fourteen day harvest.

Anyway…it was a good trip back to the new world. Best of all was the flight there. Admittedly, I had some concerns about taking a three year old on a nine-hour trans-Atlantic flight, but they quickly dissolved when the ticket agent uttered my three favorite words: “We’re upgrading you.”

But this wasn’t a mere upgrade to Business Class. No, no, no. Those bloody fools sent us all the way to First Class. First Class, dammit! That’s something I *never* thought I’d experience, because (amongst other reasons) I’m a first-class cheapskate.

My daughter, in particular, appreciated the experience. The photo above—which I’d be pleased to license to Iberia Airlines for a mutually-agreeable royalty—shows her enjoying an episode of Sesame Street at forty thousand feet on her own private video monitor. But her favorite perq was that little button that reclined her ample, well-cushioned seat into a fully-horizontal bed…thirty or forty times within a span of nine-hours.

My apologies to the infinitely patient woman sitting across the aisle. A nomination for her beatification has been sent to Pope Benedict in this morning’s post.

If there was a downside to receiving this upgrade, however, it was that we *didn’t* get one during the trip back to Spain. Of course, I didn’t expect that we would. Lightning rarely strikes twice in these matters.

But try explaining that to a three year old. Especially one who believes that airplanes can’t fly until all passengers have been given a glass of champagne and a steamed linen washcloth.

And now for another installment of this continuing series. This one’s for the guys.

Tip #2: *Always* where underwear when jogging in Lycra® shorts.

I say this not for reasons of public embarrassment, but rather for those of personal anguish. I can assure you that the line between Lycra® and sandpaper will be indistinguishable after the third kilometer.

Now…where did I put my daughter’s nappy cream?

Ace reporter Angie has finally published her “Top Five Childhood Food Memories.” Click here and you’ll learn why the combination of watermelons and leather boots might lead to a spanking.

Now that all four of my “taggees” have fulfilled their obligations and passed the meme baton to future generations (like Kimberly, who tells us how Buddhists celebrate Thanksgiving), we can close the book on this matter.

Thanks to Harsh, Mausi, Kick Shoe Kooy and Angie for being good sports!

For the past several weeks, readers have tolerated my relentless whining about barbeque—or rather, the lack thereof here in Spain.

“Boo hoo hoo…I can’t find a Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker® in Spain!”

“Boo hoo hoo…I don’t want to pay $150 to ship one from the US!”

“Boo hoo hoo…why can’t my biceps be as large and bulbous as my calves!” Oh, wait…that was last year’s rant.

So, after spending several sleepless nights obsessing over the matter…and even considering such ludicrous options as taking welding lessons so that I could build my own “Sally Mountain Cooker” out of an oil drum (a plan that was as hilarious to my family as it was terrifying to my local Fire Department), a sensible reader named “Ironporer” stepped in with the solution that my meager brain couldn’t formulate on its own: “Hey Sal, why don’t you build a smoker out of terra cotta flower pots.” Then he pointed me to a website.

Well…it turns out that there’s a show called “Good Eats” on US television’s Food Network that recently showed how to build such a BBQ smoker. It looked idiot-proof and inexpensive. And—most importantly—it would keep dangerous tools out of my hands. I therefore rushed to my local home improvement store and returned with 75€ worth of components. Here’s how the smoker is constructed:

COMPONENTS:

1 large terra cotta flower pot (approx. 17-20” tall with a 17” diameter).

1 rounded terra cotta flower pot with a diameter that’s a little larger or smaller than that of the other pot.

1 electric hotplate

1 metal pie plate or other shallow pan.

Hardwood chunks or chips

1 round grate with a diameter that’s a little less than that of the first flower pot.

1 thermometer

A base on which to rest the smoker (I used a wrought iron tri-pod; alternatively, you can use bricks or 2×4’s)

ASSEMBLY:

Step 1: Place the “normal” flower pot on the base so that it’s elevated off the ground.

Step 2: Plate the hotplate at the bottom of the pot, and drop its electrical cord through the pot’s bottom hole.

Step 3: Place the pie plate with wood chunks on the hotplate.

Step 4: Wedge the round grate into the pot and place the meat on top of it.

Step 5: Invert the rounded flower pot and place it over the bottom pot. This will be the smoker’s lid.

Step 6: Drop the thermometer into the top pot’s hole (Duh! Be sure that the thermometer’s diameter is greater than that of the hole).

COOKING METHOD:

Fire-up the hotplate so that the wood chunks smoke and the internal temperature hovers between 210º and 220ºF. Then twiddle your thumbs for the next 7-10 hours.

That’s the theory. Now, here’s the reality.

During the first hour, I neither saw nor smelled any bloody smoke! Worse yet, the internal temperature of this ill-conceived contraption was frozen at 150ºF. Now, 150ºF is the perfect temperature for cooking a piece of meat if, and only if, you like your BBQ with a side-order of salmonella. I found this obstacle especially irksome, given that I had paid a premium for the most powerful hotplate that Boulanger had in stock—a 1500 watt German-built model that should’ve generated enough heat to smelt pig-iron.

Immediately reverting to my natural tendency to panic when faced with adversity, my initial reaction was to launch the entire overgrown, earthenware piece of crap over the wall surrounding my house. But thanks, perhaps, to my prior three months of intensive yoga practice, I discarded violence as a cooking technique and calmly hypothesized that the source of the problem was, in fact, the wood chunks. They must be too large. So I removed those chunks from the pan and replaced them with a heaping handful of much smaller grapevine clippings. These, I was confident, would soon have the pot awash in a dense cloud of fragrant 210ºF smoke.

I returned an hour later to find that the temperature in my still-smokeless smoker had indeed risen— but only an additional 10ºF. After two frustrating hours, it was still 50ºF lower than my target. Fortunately, I faced this latest set-back with a much cooler head than I had an hour earlier. Unfortunately, however, “much cooler head” is a relative concept—as I soon found myself scouring the garage for a can of gasoline with which to inundate this maddening piece of fantasy cookery.

Finding no arson-worthy accelerant on the premises, I had an idea that was—far and away—my most brilliant of the day. I would smoke the brisket on my trusty Weber gas grill, and use the flower-pot smoker for a task which, perhaps, it could handle (i.e., growing flowers!).

So…I fired up the Weber and placed the pan of woodchips on the burner. Within fifteen minutes, I had enough smoke to barbeque Dom DeLouise. I then turned off one burner, set the other to low, dropped the temperature down to 250ºF, and slapped the brisket onto the grill. Ninety minutes later, I wrapped the brisket tightly in heavy-duty foil and popped it into a 300ºF oven for another two hours.

And at the end of the day, I had my friggin’ barbequed brisket. Perhaps a bona-fide pit-master from the back-woods of Alabama wouldn’t be impressed, but then again…I’m a helluva long way from Alabama.

Besides, why should I care about what a pit-master thinks. As of tomorrow, I am a vegetarian.