No, I don’t speak Spanish, or Ladino either, I’m sad to say, and so I must rely on those who write in my native tongue. They’ve been known to take great liberties with the culinary traditions that they’ve written about, blathering on about how the dishes needed to be “updated” to keep them “in the tempo of contemporary living”, which seemed to be the 20th century’s way of saying “dumbed down for the sake of being dumbed down”. So, I might very well end up revising somebody’s revision or even outright fabrication, but I’ll try to avoid that.

This is a side journal. There is no significance to the candle you see in the favicon, aside from it being the favicon for the main blog, which is, in broad terms, written about the night. The Spanish have long been known for the late hours at which they’ve dined – “so that explains it, it’s in his DNA”, an old roommate would say after I mentioned this – and their food rests quite nicely at that hour. Truly, nothing better, even if one isn’t fortunate enough to live in a place with a mild climate, which I am not. I live in Chicago, a city with all of the subtropical charm of Moscow, and our nights are usually far colder than those in Madrid and yet, much that works there, works here.

I will be posting small items – brief, simple recipes – to some of the social networks centered on food, maybe, saving my greater efforts for here, linking between this blog and those networks. I have little faith in the social networks, and shouldn’t have any more than that, but they do serve a purpose, the one their title would suggest. They help us find each other, and maybe having found each other, we’ll link to each others’ sites.

One can always hope.