Blast from the Past

Sadly, since the whole getting married business, TOH and I have not had much time together - he's been gallivanting here there and everywhere for conferences, and I have been working rather a lot. Last night we attempted to remedy that a little. We had another swing dancing lesson (we have FIVE WHOLE MOVES now), and then wandered to the Highline for, shamefully, my first jaunt up there. Although admittedly, we mostly just sat down. That dancing business is tiring.

Then we got to the real business of the evening: Tia Pol, a glorious Spanish restaurant near the Highline, was doing a calçotada. Admittedly, it's a little late in the year, but that's a by-product of the tremendously late spring we have here in New York.* Calçots are big sort of spring onion things that you roast and eat with a thick garlicky tomatoey paste called romesco sauce. Calçot season is usually over by mid-April in Barcelona, so it was an unexpected bonus to be able at the end of May to drink cava, eat calçots dipped in romesco sauce - and then stuff our faces with txipirones (baby squid), jamon serrano, pa amb tomaquet (bread with tomato), pork belly, pimientos de padron (fire-blasted serrano peppers with salt), accompanied by a lovely rosado Txakolina - the slightly effervescent Basque wine with which I am currently obsessed.

Sadly, the iPhone I have cannot possibly do justice to the hilariously bong-like vessel from which we drank our cava, but here are a couple of very dark photos from the evening. I ended up with cava all down me, frankly, but a fun way to attempt to drink, if not desperately efficient.

* If it even deserves the title of "spring" this year. It essentially has been two weeks of vaguely pleasant temperatures, five weeks of torrential rain and cold, and suddenly it's 85 and sweaty. Ah, New York.