Meigas

Galicia is a magical place. No really. So in honor of Halloween, my favorite holiday, I thought I´d do a couple of posts dedicated to the supernatural in Galicia.

There´s a famous Galician saying ¨Eu non creo nas meigas, mais habelas, hainas¨ or ¨I don´t believe in witches, but do they exist - they do.¨

What I didn´t realize was that it wasn´t just a belief in witches in general like the faeries, they´re quite specific, and have names.

From Celtiberia.net:

Galicia is a land both Celtic and magical. From ancient times mystery beats throughout its geography, populated with fantastic creatures arising from the unknown. And so in the villages where the wind whistles and rain lashes the pathways, in shadowed forests, we might happen upon these strange beings at crossroads and feel a chill at their presence.

From the inestimable Wikipedia :

* Meigas Chuchón (or sucking) are the most dangerous, they change faces or turn into vampires and insects such as bumblebees. They suck children´s blood and steal their body fat to be used in the preparation of ointments and potions.

* Asumcordas or street witches: Spy on people and watch who goes in and out of houses. (I think these are universal - C.)

* Marimanta: The meiga of the sack, they steal children and make them disappear.

* Feiticeira (Sorceress): They live near rivers and streams, although old, their appearance does not repel. She has such a beautiful voice that her songs hypnotize children who come to the river and cause them to enter it, where they drown.

* Lavandeira: This meiga surprises the traveler who passes a common laundry area

(these are all over Galicia - C), inviting him/her to help wring the wet clothes, stained with still warm blood, said to be from a miscarriage. The traveler must be careful to twist the clothes in the same direction as she does, because otherwise, a disgrace will fall on his/her household.

* Lobismuller (she-wolf): Must be born on Christmas Eve or Good Friday, or be the seventh or ninth in a family of all daughters.

* Vedoira: She is slim and pleasantly polite. She has powers of divination, and is expert in contact with the great beyond to tell if the deceased enjoy eternity in heaven or are still doing penance in Purgatory.

* Voladoira: Fly and do acrobatic stunts in the sky.

* Cartuxeira: witches who are fortune-tellers, who are always right in their predictions.

* Agoreira: These witches age prematurely, but live many years.

* Dama de castro: These witches live under ancient fortresses or underground in crystal castles, they are always dressed in a long white dress with a train and serve the people. Since they already enjoy a good life and fortune, no flattery or favor will induce them to give advice or gifts, on the contrary they tend to appear as people afflicted by a difficult situation, and grant their favors to those of humble status.

For Protection:

* Place a broom turned upside down behind the front door
* Carry a clove of garlic, dried chestnuts. Wear an higa (jet from Compostela is best) around the neck or horns of a vacaloura (stag beetle)

* Keep ¨blessed¨ earth from cemeteries or palm branches blessed on Palm Sunday at home
* Look for claws or wolf´s teeth
* Have pieces of jet, amber and other stones which protect against poisons and charms in forms such as wands, pendants, or brooches.
* Traditionally it is believed that jumping the bonfire at San Juan three times or a multiple of three frightens off the witches.



And - at least occasionally, one should perform a


Queimada

Hot Pickled Carrots

If you´ve ever eaten Mexican food in southern California, you´ll recognize these spicy pickled carrots which are put out as a free appetizer along with tortilla chips and salsa.

I had a craving for these the other day and found what tastes to me like a pretty good home-made version online. V agrees that these are pretty close.

Serves: 18
Ingredients:

* 2 lbs carrots, peeled and sliced on the diagonal (1/4 inch thick)
* 2 yellow onions, peeled and sliced
* 1 1/2 quarts warm water
* 7 ounces whole canned jalapeno peppers, with liquid
* 1 tablespoon dried oregano
* 6 whole garlic cloves
* 2 cups cider vinegar
* 1/4 cup vegetable oil
* 2 bay leaves
* 1 tablespoon salt

Directions:

Prep Time: 0 mins

Total Time: 30 mins

1. Place the carrots in a 3- or- 4 quart pot. Add the warm water, partially cover the pot, and bring to a boil over high heat.
2. Cook at a hard boil 5 minutes; remove from heat.
3. Add the peppers and their liquid, sliced onions, oregano, garlic, vinegar, oil, bay leaves, and salt.
4. Cover and let cool for several hours.
5. Taste the carrots.
6. If the flavor is hot enough for you transfer just the carrots, onions, and garlic to two clean quart jars.
7. If you prefer the pickles hotter, leave the peppers in.
8. Cover the contents with cooking liquid, and cap with clean lids.
9. Store the pickles in the refrigerator for three days before serving.
10. They keep for a week or so after opening.
11. 11 Makes about 9 cups.

I halved the recipe - given that they only keep for a week and there´s just the 2 of us. I also didn´t boil the carrots for the full 5 minutes - more like 3 1/2 and they´re perfect. We are not fans of intense heat in spicy foods so I removed the jalapeños after the batch had cooled and put them back in their original jar along with some of the pickling liquid that was left over.

We ate some of these immediately with chicken fajitas for dinner - very good.

San Froilán

Last week Lugo held its major festival of the year - San Froilán.

Historically a harvest/market festival, it lasts all week. According to an interview I saw on TVGallego, since the adolescents had to stay home and watch the farm on the Stock Fair day, they all attended on Sunday - now known as Domingo das Mozas - Girls Sunday

So who the heck was San Froilán? From wikipedia:

Luckily, we have a short biography, in minuscule elegant Visigothic, copied by the deacon John, a contemporary. The copy is from the year 920, fifteen years after his death. Its author is unknown. Despite the laconic style, we can reconstruct the basic features of his life and character, stripped of the common adherences of legendary tales of the lives of medieval saints.

Born in the city of Lugo in Regueiro Dos Horta, in the year 833, and he chooses life as a student until he was about 18, in preparation for the priesthood according to the custom of the time.

Froilan, the Hermit

His spiritual life in crisis, he becomes a hermit, retiring to a cave in Vega de Valcarce, El Bierzo (now chapel). Meanwhile, rebellions break out in Mozarabic Muslim Spain. . . the young Hermit doubts whether he should stay longer in the wilderness.

The decision to end his reclusion was subjected to a test. If God suspended natural laws, it would be an obvious sign of his divine will:

Froilan introduced some hot coals in his mouth. The fire did not cause the slightest burn. God had spoken. From the mountains to the villages he was launched to spread among men the other fire that was burning inside him.

Froilán becomes so famous that he founds a monestary with over 300 monks in Vepe.
Alfonso III in Oviedo chooses him to create a chain of monestaries throughout the borders of Asturias and Leon to rehabilitate the devastated area after the reconquest.

Froilan employs his great initiative once again and takes it upon himself to travel throughout the kingdom´s lands. His indomitable attitude led him to found two monasteries near the border, a few kilometers from Zamora.

The first was that of San Salvador de Tabara, which gathered 600 monks and nuns. It was a double monastery, where the nuns, though strictly separated, had the advantage of priestly assistance and defense in case of invasion. . .

The second monastery, according to that biographer, was raised in a pleasant spot along the river Esla, apparently near Moreruela (Zamora). One laconic sentence added: .. 200 monks gathered there in devotion to the asceticism of regular life.

Frolán was subsequently appointed Bishop of León in 900. He died 5 years later in Leon and was buried in the Cathedral of León in a magnificent tomb built by Alfonso III.

He is often depicted in the company of a wolf, encountered on one of his many pilgrimages. A hungry wolf appeared one morning while the saint was deep in prayer. The wolf leapt on his donkey, planning to devour him, but was reduced to complete submission simply through the gaze of the Saint and his words of love and peace.

And so San Froilán removed the fear of both man and fire from the wolf and brought him into his service.


Retablo

He is Patron Saint of both Leon and Lugo. Festivities in Lugo Oct. 4 - 12



Complete schedule for San Froilán 2010 Lugo

San Froilan in Leon

Another Translation Project

The LOLCat Bible Translation Project is a wiki-based website set up in July 2007 by Martin Grondin, where editors aim to adapt the entire Bible into "LOLspeak", the pidgin popularized by the LOLcat Internet phenomenon.[1]

In the process of adaptation, various changes are being made to the source material, for example, changing the main characters to cats, Jesus Christ as "Happy Cat," God as the "Ceiling Cat," and Satan as the "Basement Cat," while the "gifts" and "blessings" of God have become "cheezburgerz".[2][3] General people have become "kittehs."

Galician Sheep (Ovella Galega)

Isn´t he handsome?

Galician Sheep are a typical multi-purpose heritage breed. First, they produce excellent meat. Second, they have quite high quality wool. Third, they do this from locally available rough forage, in relatively inaccessible areas, and are highly prolific and disease resistant. They also produce quite a lot of milk, but given the frequency of multiple births, the supply generally goes to raising lambs.

From what I read - every village household had a few sheep. They were taken to pasture in one communal flock, with the role of shepherd passing serially from one family to the next each day. One of the sheepdogs would stop by the correct house every morning.

As the wool industry declined from artificial fibers and competition from Australia/NewZealand and China, the native sheep also lost out to breeds more adapted to the production of meat.

By the 1990´s the population of purebred Galician sheep was under 500 total.

To my eye they are ¨unimproved¨ rustic sheep in the celtic model, much like the shetland, icelandic, ouessant, and xalda (Asturias).

Physical characteristics, from Serga

Morphology:
Live weight adult males (average in kilos): mountain 35, coastal 55
Live weight adult females (average in kilos): mountain 27, coastal 42
Height at the withers adult male (average in centimeters): mountain 60, coastal 73
Height at the withers adult female (average in cms): mountain 51, coastal 64
Color: White, black color is rare
Visible Characteristics: small frame, straight nose profile or concave, forehead wool, fine boned extremities and long tail.

For scale:





It also looks to me like there are various types of fleece occurring, much like the Shetlands: double coated, kindly (shorter crimped), and long and wavey. And I´m glad to say there appear to be more colored sheep than this description would indicate. I love black sheep.



And spotted lambs


I follow a lot of blogs of people who have small ¨Spinners¨ flocks or ¨Fibre¨ farms (Spered Breizh Ouessants, Boulderneigh, Devon Fine Fibres, and Juniper Moon Farm, just to start) and I have to say I´m very intrigued. From what I read on Ravelry and Etsy, the knitting/spinning population in Spain is very limited and virtually everyone purchases fibres brought in from abroad. Wool is a nuisance expense at the moment, it costs more to shear than the farmer gets for the wool, so the focus is entirely on meat or milk production. There are no custom wool mills/processing that I can find, although there is one place in Navarra that has wool insulation. I believe that the UK´s domestic wool production is struggling too - but the recent Savile Row wool event looks promising. And they strike me has having much more of an ongoing fibre handcraft tradition and more infrastructure. I think the Spanish rejected handmade garments during the 70s as proof of poverty.

The economics of a micro-fibre farm will need much more investigation - but it´s fun to think about. What´s the minimum number of animals to make it viable, how much pasture do they require, how much could you get for the fleece, local agricultural regulations, etc. I´d also need to figure out a way to learn about fleeces and the basics of breeding. But I wonder if there isn´t a market for 100% Galician wool from happy ovellas galegas. . .


From La Region

The following are 2 translations from articles found online:

From the Instituto do Campo

From Autóctonas Galegas Magazine

Additional Sources:
http://www.fleire.com/
http://www.grupocordobes.com/clientes/juanvi/general.phtml?libro=1&cte=6&codigo=522
http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/pdf/495/49509939.pdf

Contact Juggling

Beer

V and I brewed beer on Sunday!

We have fabulous friends who actually mounted their own brewery in Chicago. (Madly waving at Tracy and Doug) They were nice enough to have us over for an evening´s brewing before we left and then a few weeks later brought the resulting red ale over for a night of bbq and billiards. Good times.

My brother has become quite a homebrew savant, as well. While I was visiting in July, he was kind enough to schedule a brew/bottling session for me. And I did my share of sampling of his efforts while I was there.

There´s much more of a brewing culture in the rest of Europe than Spain, which is dominated by a few huge market players and little or nothing in the way of micro-breweries that we can find. And Estrella Galicia is the only Spanish beer we´ve seen outside Spain.

Last Christmas, after some searching online, I bought a kit thinking that it was something V would enjoy trying. He´s really the beer drinker in the house, I usually prefer wine. But between one thing and another, it has remained in its box in a closet. He insisted that I shouldn´t just go ahead and do it myself, that he wanted to participate. So finally Sunday we went ahead.

The kit came with 2 plastic buckets and taps, 2 cans of malt/hops, a packet of yeast, a packet of hops, and a packet of ¨cleanser¨.


Cleanliness is godliness in brewing - you don´t want any wild bacteria screwing up your results. A thermometer and a gizmo that measures density (densometer?) some tubing, bottle caps, etc., finished out the kit.

So after soaking the instruments in the bleach solution we started off proofing the yeast in 27 C water.


Mixed the malt mixture with boiled water, carefully stirring so it wouldn´t stick and burn.


Took the mixture to the bathtub to cool it down before adding the yeast.


Topped up the batch to 23 liters.


Fitted the lid and air valve. And left it to repose and ferment back in its space in the closet.



This morning we had bubbling!

So now we´ve gotten our feet wet with the kit, I´m hoping we can venture a little further and actually use some combinations of grains/hops/malt of our own choosing.

Most exciting. I may have to plant hops.