Location: Logroño, La Rioja, España
Soul Site: Concatedral de Santa María de la Redonda (+ my school, and Logroño's other historical churches)
Alimentos: Un poco de todo (a little bit of everything)
Highlight: These memories (I will hold them dear forever)
La disculpa
19 July 2023
Dear Logroño,
You gave me the wildest and most wonderful year of my life.
I am sorry I have avoided putting into writing the final chapters of this story you've written me, but I hope you understand how deeply you've affected me and how it's taken me some time to even begin to process the storyline as it is, as it will remain.
Please accept my apology in the form of a few notes of thanks to the people and places that fed my soul during the final few weeks I got to call you my home. A month has passed and I am ready to send them.
Ellie
Las notas de agradecimiento
1 May 2023
Dear Andi,
Thank you for the labor you put into cooking homemade taquitos and agua fresca for me, Carlos, Irene, and Dani. We were all very hungry that night and you were right: we did need some real Mexican food. They were delicious. I'm glad you made five for each of us; I wish my stomach was bottomless. And thank you for being my adviser, companion, and friend this year, and for encouraging me to keep dreaming and speak Spanish even when I stumbled over my words.
Siempre,
Your Co-Jefe de Easter
23 May 2023
Mercadona,
I admit that I cheated on my Carrefour membership with you (repeatedly, and with abandon). But thank you for always having bananas and baby arugula, protein yogurt and the good 50/50 muesli, and those unexpectedly delicious croissants for 0,35€ each. The yogurt fueled me and Cheryl for our teaching days.
In particular, I need to thank you for the potatoes, laurel leaves and chorizo you had available that Tuesday I had the urge to try my hand at Patatas a la riojana... they were a slam dunk and I ate them for dinner every day that week. I also just made them for my family here in the U.S. Positively received, so thanks again for the inspiration.
Missing your green carts already,
American Who Came Around 19.15 Every Monday
26 May 2023
Dear Isabel,
From Alcala to Seville to Morocco to La Palma to Pamplona to Barcelona to La Rioja (trust me when I admit we managed to take so many trips together, I forgot one or two in that list)...talk about a real adventure buddy. Oh, how grateful I am to have had such a wonderful friend by my side (well, off in the middle of an ocean on a volcanic island most of the time, but still closer than just about everyone else) since the very beginning in Iberian Frontiers, to explore with and to keep that Go Irish!!! blood running strong even when Notre Dame felt so far away in both space and time. I so look up to you. No one else I have encountered could take the multitude of setbacks big and small this year in stride with so much nonchalance and grace. Thanks for inspiring me this year. (Oh, and I hope Annie's raving about Calle Laurel lived up to its great expectations!)
See you somewhere in between DC and London soon,
Elizabeth con Zeta
31 May 2023
Dear Tastavin and My Friends,
For some reason, the tapa I really wanted on my 23rd birthday was your tuna tataki. Thank you for having plenty of those in stock and for acting as the night's antecedent for foie, jam and cheese zapatillas, and an abstract birthday cake shared among friends.
Wistfully,
Girl with Obnoxious Birthday Crown
4 June 2023
Robert,
Thank you for the random Monday text telling me to come try your mother's homemade croquetas. At first I didn't realize your text meant right now, but I was ecstatic to re-route my walk home from tutoring and finally show up at your door to taste these legendary croquettes. I was taken aback by your mum's insistence to serve me dinner even though it was, by principle, too early by at least an hour for you and her to join me. However, I absolutely loved getting the chance to meet her at last and I am honored that she liked me enough to send me home with a zip lock bag full of those little pillows of happiness to make with the girls when it struck our fancy.
I must at this point apologize for the atrocity that was our first attempt at making them at home, that afternoon after Cheryl and I woke up to run the 11k around town and needed to re-fuel. We seem to have used only 20% of the olive oil necessary to make croquetas ... croquetas and I realize now that sending that photo for your approval was by itself a dishonor to your mother's handiwork. Thus, I am forever indebted to her for giving us another small bag so we could try again. That time, following her urging, we filled the pan at least halfway with oil and, though we still dealt with a few small explosions, ended up with a much more appetizing result.
With Gusto,
Croqueta Chef #1
9 June 2023
Dear Romanian Salam de Biscuiti,
(And Robert, and your mother, again)—thank you for the invitation over for lunch this summer Friday afternoon. It was a pleasure to taste the homemade lentils and properly cooked croquetas Robert's mom cooked for us all, and I am sorry that I was so skeptical of Robert's strange winking and smirking (Robbie, you need to stop winking so much, it's disconcerting) about the salami he was going to serve us for dessert. I am sorry I really thought you were going to be salami—you know, the meat—not chocolate, Turkish delight and biscuit cookies just rolled up to look like it.
I'm glad you were how you were in the end. I've never seen or tasted anything like you, but now I believe.
Faithfully,
Salamie
10 June 2023
Dear Ikaro Waitstaff,
Thank you for taking my ragtag group of friends and me seriously even though we were clearly out of place, spinning in for dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant without any parental guardians to explain to us how to behave ourselves. I can assure you that you did a phenomenal job, and promise you that we are all in our mid-twenties and that two of us are self-proclaimed foodies who knew what we were getting ourselves into. I think I can confidently speak for the other four that they were left speechless. After a year of tasting the most beloved flavors of La Rioja in bite-size pincho form on Calle Laurel and its neighbors, it was a dream to experience your theatrical, avant-garde re-imagination of the same dishes along some vibrant odes to Ecuador on the side. I hadn't thought the humble matrimonio could look or taste so...whimsical. Thank you for providing the table and food for our final big hoorah of a cena together after a year well spent.
Regards,
Not Secretly a Michelin Inspector (But Hopeful)
P.S. I do not know why it feels necessary to add here that we went dancing at Sala Suite after we left, but it felt right. I hope you will understand.
11 June 2023
Chef,
Mil gracias for making another one of your esteemed tiramisus for me and for patiently showing me how it's done. I apologize for my initial hesitation about including this tutorial in the blog due to the fact that tiramisu is actually an Italian dessert. To your point, it was made by an amateur Spanish chef with all Spanish ingredients, so it should be allowed. You win.
Thank you also for letting me bring almost my entire kitchen to your house to make my grandma's Cowboy Cookies in a little recipe exchange. I can't tell you how much that meant to me. I do wish they hadn't come out more like a cookie cake because of the Spanish summer heat and my very room-temp butter, but I'm sure she was laughing with us from up there. Thankfully, after a year with no oven (so, no baking), I was just ecstatic to be back in a real kitchen, my happy place. I hope you have since had better luck with the frozen dough I left you. I really would love to sous-chef again for you someday soon.
Un beso,
Cake Winslet
June 16, 2023
Dear Chandler,
It was fitting that our farewell happened by accident when we both walked into Correos at the same time; even more fitting with me returning a big box of clothes and you stopping by to write and send a pile of heartfelt postcards to friends around the world. Don't you agree?
Thank you for being my confidant this year. I knew we were kindred spirits when you invited me to get real croissants from the French bakery and read the newspaper at the café. Good Lord, we never ended up reading anything because we were always talking, no matter what escape from Spanish food you had suggested: pizza on a weeknight, Sol Veggie, or lemon Italian ices sipped while I frantically shopped for espadrilles and you looked for an additional large suitcase today (seriously bizarre coping mechanisms, #yikes). I am grateful to have had a fellow writer/creative/past and future corporate woman as my neighbor and friend with whom I could work through some of the hardest and most hilarious moments of this year.
See you in Texas,
Ellie
June 16, 2023
Dear Mónica, Mónica and Marta,
I cannot fully express my gratitude for your mentorship, guidance, and love this year. Gaining co-teachers who also seamlessly stepped in as mothers when I most needed it, big sisters when I needed a laugh, Spanish tutors during the occasional recreo, and great friends in the in-between? It was a blessing. I absolutely loved the chance to sit back and reflect on the year for lunch with you three with a glass of wine, a good burger, and, in the truest Spanish fashion, a hop to a third café for a drink to sip on while we continued chatting long afterwards. Thank you for inviting me then and for supporting me always.
Un abrazo,
La Más Agradecida
June 17, 2023
Dear Adolfo and Otto the Dog,
Thank you for hosting my friends and me for the pool party at your family's house, even though the entire day was a torrential downpour and we ended up playing cards and cooking burgers in the basement. Shopping for burger buns, lettuce and tomato, patties, mayo, potato chips and drinks at the big Alcampo while all dressed in bathing suits and soggy flip flops was quite possibly the most endearingly American thing I could have ended up doing on my second-to-last day in Logroño, so I thank you for the invitation.
To Otto, the sweetest pup: you were the first dog I truly pet in Spain. I didn't understand the etiquette that you should only pet a dog once you've learned its name, but now I did, and I was honored to learn yours and give you lots of good ear rubs. You reminded me of my sweet Wrigley, though you are much more well-behaved.
Sinceramente,
Ellie On Behalf of Robert's American Friends
June 18, 2023
Dear DellaSera,
It was a privilege to conclude almost all of my weeks with a scoop of your helado glory. I looked forward to my Thursday afternoon scoop of whatever outlandish flavor you whipped up, sombra de higuera, vaina de guisante lágrima con piel de limón verde, coco calabaza canela, all sorts of wine-infused flavors... I got an inside taste of the imagination of two undisputed culinary geniuses. My final few hours pre-bus to Madrid looked like me taking a dramatic final walk around the Río Ebro, grabbing one last café con leche con hielo, gobbling down a croissant, and savoring one last bowl of DellaSera. Staring up at the Cathedral and grinning at these little memories that were about to become all I had left of this time and place, I thanked you then, and I miss you already.
Bittersweetly,
Arguably Your #1 Fan
La carta de amor
Querida Logroño,
Me diste la Catedral de Santa María de la Redonda con tres propósitos: para ser mi parroquia, vecino de al lado, y despertador por hora. Gracias.
I loved flinging open our French doors to watch the birds fly by and hear the bells ring. I found comfort in knowing if I were ever lonely, the Cathedral was still there right beside me, and it wasn't going anywhere. I loved hearing the choir practice on weekday nights when I went home panting after a run, voices like wisps soaring through the pipework. I loved most finding a home at Mass on Sundays. It was hard to understand at first and I found it briefer and bleaker here than the one I knew so well, but over the months I found I didn't need my little book to sing along. I was penciling parables into my brain just as I would before. I wish I had gotten more involved, and earlier on, but at last, how wonderful to realize the essence was the same, and to celebrate Easter with a newfound family, Corpus Christi, San Bernabé with the wine and the bread and the little bone-in fish that saved the Logroñeses during the Siege in 1521; to look forward to the children's choir and be seen and recognized by the man at the front doors...esto fue para mi un refugio, una familia y el sostento que yo necesité para superar todo lo que se trató este año.
Por primera vez he entendido la necesidad de la Eucaristía como alimento para sostener el alma y el cuerpo también.
Además me regalaste mi colegio, con los sagrados susurros de los niños y sus pequeñas oraciones de agradecimiento e intercesion y alabanza cada mañana. El amor que mostraron los profesores a sus alumnos cada día, individually and without fail. Me recordaron del bien y de la verdad que sí existen; siempre han existido, and they will continue, a pesar de todo lo que diga lo contrario.
Farewell to the fireworks by the Río Ebro, whose explosions we skipped across town to see five nights in a row that first week, San Mateo; I think they introduced us best to this little city and its people. I loved them. I loved that I got to see them again, the winning show, San Bernabé's Sunday night before I left. This time I was just another girl in the stream skipping to find a spot before the boom signaled their silence and attention; I was one of those people, skipping along. They were my people.
I close now from (my new) home but remembering, always, the love from Logrono.
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