Oros Waterfall

 While the weather is nice it's good to go out. Oros waterfall is a place we'd wanted to see for a while. It was worth the scramble along very broken paths to get to it!  

Although the "pathways" weren't actually taped off, it looked as if they had been; there were shreds of plastic tape all over the place, and the route was rocky scree most of the way.

A quick trip

 It's difficult, in these pandemic times, to know what to do: we've left Jaca very little in the past few months, and we don't mix much, but it's good to see our sons once in a while. We thought things were fairly safe, and went to Valencia to see Andrés, stopping off in Zaragoza for a few days with David. We are careful. Always wearing masks, and never touching people. My hands are cracked and dry from the amount of gel I use on them! 

So, after a few days in chilly Zaragoza, we changed season and drove to Alboraya, our usual stepping-stone to Valencia. As you approach along the coast you get tantalising glimpses of the sea over the crash barrier; Valencia isn't very good at showing off its lovely coastline - you have to make a concerted effort to go to the beach when you're there.

Well, we arrived, found a parking space and checked into the hotel we've used several times before. The only difference was that we couldn't share lifts with other guests!

And off to the city centre in the convenient metro train, being careful not to touch barriers and handrails, into the Valencian warmth and sunshine. We were lucky to find a restaurant with tables out in a square with no traffic and few pedestrians

and we had a delightful meal in the shade of an orange tree loaded with unripe fruit. We ate there again the next day; it was relaxing and the food was good.

Ok, the second day we visited the Silk Museum, which has only been open for a few years. It's in a big restored palace, and it was delightful! Valencia has a long history with silk. I particularly liked being able to get close to the dresses on show, the spectacular recreation of a painting called "the Silk Merchants in the Lonja of Valencia"

recreation and, behind it, the painting

In this photo you can also see the wonderful tiled floor. 

Here's a link for a little video about the restoration of the building:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T_MU5uM7XU  It's in Spanish!

When we bought the tickets for the Silk Museum we were offered, at only one euro more, entry to two churches, San Nicolás, called "Valencia's Sistine Chapel" for its frescoed vaults.

You could probably spend a long time gazing at these paintings; for my taste it's a bit too much, but it's very impressive.

The church of the Saint Johns was the other one.

..

Sourdough discard or what else can you do with sourdough starter?

 When I was looking into how to make a sourdough starter, one of the things which put me off was the instruction: "throw away 90% of your starter and add 100g flour and 100g water to feed the small quantity you have left." 

I didn't prepare my starter until I'd found some ideas for using the "discard". I've tried them and they can actually be more satisfying than sourdough bread!

Basically, anything you use flour for, you can substitute some of the flour and water for sourdough starter; for example, shortcrust pastry where you need 200g flour -100g butter and a little cold water, use 50g of starter (that means 25g flour and 25g of water) so you'll put 175g of flour and less water than you'd normally put. Leave the dough to rest for a while before rolling out. The pastry is fluffier than usual!        If I need a bechamel (flour) sauce nowadays I put a spoonful of starter in a glass, add the liquid; either milk or water rather than using dry flour. I made some naan bread and a few pizza bases too, but these need a bit more advance thinking and preparation time. I read that you could use sourdough starter for batter; I haven't tried it, but why not?

Sourdough

 Since the pandemic started, and quarantine has come and gone, our lives have, in some ways become more restricted. We don't go out as much or travel so far as in former times. We got used to staying at home and "entertaining" ourselves.

I did a lot of patchwork: here is a quilt I made.

I did some jigsaw puzzles.

AND I started to make sourdough. I've been making bread pretty well all my life, with bought yeast; either blocks of fresh or sachets of fast-proving. There was a shortage of yeast in the supermarkets during the quarantine but I had quite a few at home so a number of times I made a loaf. It's a very satisfying thing to do. I'd thought about trying sourdough, but it seemed to be too time-consuming. However, I had plenty of time to consume, so I did plenty of investigation online and found some instructions to follow. There is ever such a lot of stuff online about sourdough, especially in Youtube, where you can spend hours watching experts telling you how to do it. In the end I chose a page of River Cottage Sourdough, printed out three and a half pages of instructions on how to make first the sourdough culture and then using the culture to bake bread. 

It's actually quite easy. You take a big glass jar and put 50g of flour in it. Mix in 50g of water. I use filtered water, but it probably doesn't matter much. Cover the top of the jar but don't screw the lid down. Leave at room temperature.  In exactly 24 hours, add another 50g flour and water, mix thoroughly and leave. You repeat this for a total of 5 days, by the end of which you have 500g of starter, hopefully bubbly and "fermented" smelling. Apparently sometimes there's a smelly dark liquid known as "hooch" which can form and put you off completely by its stink of old socks but you just pour it off and carry on. It didn't happen to me; I may have given up if it had!

Then you leave it for another 24 hours and then we get to the part which initially put me off: the instructions tell you to throw 90% of your starter away! What a waste! Keep the 90%, the discard in a jar; it can be used in a number of ways. 

Back to the 10%. Now you prepare for baking, by feeding the starter, in exactly the same way as before, however much you need for your recipe: if the recipe calls for 100g of starter you put 50g flour, 50g water; if the recipe says 150 it will be 75g/75g etc.

Mark where the starter reaches in the jar and leave it until it's twice as high. (dont screw the lid on because it could explode; we've got breathing organisms in there!)  I marked it in red pen, and you can see how it's bubbling and rising. While that's going on, there's a step which I've found useful; it's not in the River Cottage instructions, but many websites recommend the "autolyse". This means you mix your flour and water and leave them to stand. The River Cottage ingredients are:

 400g strong white bread flour

100g wholemeal bread flour

350ml water, (I measure mine in grammes)

150g active sourdough starter

7.5-10g fine salt

For my first tries I halved the recipe and more recently I've been making 75% of this. They say "organic" and "stoneground", but this is Spain and pandemic and I can't be bothered! I use strong white, spelt, rye and a nice multicereals mix I can only buy in Eroski. Then comes the fun bit, developing the gluten network. I've always enjoyed kneading my bread dough, and you don't really do it with sourdough. You stretch it and fold. Once the starter is added, you begin a series of pulling the glob of dough out of the bowl and letting it stretch; as you have to use both your hand to do this I can't take photos too! Put the salt in. Stretch and fold. Give the bowl a quarter turn. Repeat, a total of four times. Cover and leave for 30 minutes. do this a total of four times, then put your ball of dough tidily into a floured banneton (basket) 

Cover and leave overnight in the fridge. The basket gives support to the dough; sourdough is quite floppy!

The next morning get it out and let it stand for a while, then turn on the oven-as hot as possible. I don't have a Dutch oven (casserole) so I need to follow plan B which means when you put the bread in the oven you put a tray of boiling water in to make steam.

Turn out the dough, cut a slice on the top and bake for 30 ins with some steam, then 15 less hot and no steam.

It looks nice, doesn't it?

By the way, the grapes are from our own vine; it's been the best harvest ever!

 

A very short break

Jaca is a nice place to live. During the weeks of what they called "Lockdown" in the UK it was only locals here, so it was comfortable to go to supermarkets (as infrequently as possible, of course) only one person went shopping for a household, in contrast to what I've seen recently; whole families clustered round the shopping trolley in Carrefour-mum, dad, all the children and maybe the grandparents too!

We are still not out of the pandemic-won't be until there is an effective vaccine-but it's summertime and people are having holidays. Who can blame them? It's hot and we all need a bit of a change.

We decided to stay in our area, more of less. Escalona is a tiny village just beyond Ainsa, and it's a good place to stay between two places we wanted to visit; Pineta and Plan.

Pineta is a national park. You get there by going to the tiny village of Bielsa, where you do a U turn and climb up to the route to Pineta. You and a thousand or so other cars. There's plenty of parking space. Four euros for the day.

It's worth it, even if you only spend a couple of hours, as we did. 

A short walk took us to this lovely waterfall. My goodness the water was cold!In the afternoon we took a rather long and tortuous drive to the Añísclo canyon. 

There were some amazing cliffs but we couldn't see most of them for the trees! I think you have to spend more time and climb up and down. Oh well.Our hotel was quite comfortable and the breakfast was good. (Hotel Cinca)The second day the plan was Plan. It's a village which is rather remote. It made itself famous in 1985 when depopulation was such that there weren't enough women, maybe they'd gone away to work. Anyway, following the idea of the Western film Westward the Women, there was an invitation for women to come and see if they could find their man there: "The caravan of Love". It was on national and international news! From a small ad in the newspaper: "Women between 20 and 40 wanted, for matrimony" 80 went to the village. Apparently from that 40 couples were formed, of which 17 were in Plan. We thought it was a pleasant place, but rather remote; you have to drive through various tunnels to get there.

Lovely bignonias

Medical centreWe stopped at a place called Puen Pecador on the way to Chisten. There's a little walk along an easy path which takes you over the river Zinqueta on a 17th century stone bridge-hold onto your glasses! The drop from the parapet is 50 metres! All along the path are signs giving information about the different species of trees you can see there. And I found some lovely wild pinks

Then the last village along, Chistau. Small and remote, but with some pretty features.

A disused rural school

Four of these square towersLast village, San Juan de Plan. Very steep streets!

One of those traditional knockers.We had a good, but heavy meal in Bielsa and after a rest in the hotel spent the afternoon in Ainsa, where we've been many times before. It's an amazing place, but I have to say the crossroad in the lower town is awful for the amount of traffic. Chaos.

 

Mountains

My last post was in March, just before the government declared the State of Alarm. Nobody could really imagine what was to come. We came to Jaca for the weekend in mid-March, and nearly the end of May we haven't been able to return to Zaragoza. We are very glad to have been able to stay in our home here; we have more space and plenty to keep us busy, a little garden to sit in and far fewer people than there are here usually.
Until last week when we made some hospital trips to Huesca, we hadn't left Jaca at all, but now the quarantine has been eased a little, we took ourselves to Formigal in the Tena valley to see daffodils. Too late! They had finished; but what we saw instead was wonderful!

Not our dog!

orchids

lots of asphodels

viola cornuta, horned pansy

The asphodel is opening.

The Midi d'Ossau, just over the (closed) border in France.

Tractors and sunset

Here in Zaragoza, and in spain as a whole we are living the crisis provoked by the coronavirus, the covid 19. I've had one set of classes cancelled for 15 days and we really don't know how things will go. Are we going to need house arrest like they have in Italy? Will they cancel classes here like they have in Madrid? Who knows?
meanwhile, there has been a massive demonstration of tractors in Zaragoza, to protest against the low prices they receive for their produce-does the rest go to the retailers? The farmers say they don't get it.

Zaragoza was gridlocked. The big streets were packed with tractors. When I saw them at 13.45 they were all empty. By 16.00 they had gone. 

After the bitter cold and snow in Jaca last weekend it was nice to enjoy the comparative warmth in the Zaragoza evening.

Zaragoza Central Market

Last month, Zaragoza's great central market was re-opened after a big restoration project. It was stripped back to its metal framework, cleaned and redome on the inside in the style of the lovely, much bigger one in Valencia.
We finally got round to visiting it yesterday evening.

It's a long building, originally opened in 1903.

Until they started the restoration I'd never noticed the charming thematic tiles.

There are butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers, as well as four central bars with food and drink.