The historic center between the old walls sure is a touristy area and you can't walk many meters before someone's offering you the "best exchange rate in the country", "finest emerald jewelry on the planet", fresh fruit, "purest cocaine" or chubby Fernando Botero souvenirs. But if you work your way through those obstacles, there's always something captivating and colourful that catches your attention. As much as there's at times ruthless sales going on, as much is there real human life ongoing in the very same barrios. We all have to make a living after all, in one way or the other.
Recently stumbled upon Nick Principe and his band Port St. Willow, another amazing multi-instrumentalist. Originally formed in Portland OR, Nick has recently moved back home to produce out of Brooklyn, NY.
His music lays in the sort of ambient atmospheric melancholy that takes a tight grip of your heart and leaves you floating in air, moving you into depth or darkness depending on the way you choose to interpret it.
The bands first album Even // Wasteland was self-released in Fall 2010, and the first full-length record Holiday was out a few months ago, also self-released. I too initially thought the songs carried the voice of a woman but Nick himself is behind all haunting falsetto vocals. Nevertheless, the whole album is a great chilling experience. You can find it here.
Despite the slight mess at some parts of the boat, one can tell that I'm more in peace at home now than in a very long time as all I currently want to do is to cook. To prevent any unpleasant surprise when dying for a good red meat, we purchased a whole 1,2 kilo/2,6 pounds Uruguayan lomo fino / beef tenderloin the other day.
First part went quickly when I invited ourselves over for a dinner to Göran and Quest, our Swedish neighbor with the huge steel boat if you remember. I don't normally invite us over to other people like that, but since there's not enough space for enjoying a pleasant dinner inside of our boat at the moment, and I still like to gather people for good food and wine, I figured why not cook the meal at home and bring it over to the neighbor. He didn't seem to complain much.
The rest of this gorgeous piece of meat has now been devoured for lunch as you can see in the image, and the final part will comfort Alex and I for dinner tonight. The craziest part? We paid only $23 USD for the whole exceptional piece of tenderloin. Believe me when I say its tenderness was out of this world.
For lunch today I served it with creamy mashed potatoes with spring onions and some sautéed cherry tomatoes. Let's see what I can come up with for tonight.
A great place to duck into and escape hot summers days in the city is Ábaco Libros y café. A well stocked book store carrying many great photo and coffee table books on local architecture and artisans. History, philosophy and psychology books crowd the shelves alongside the regular selection of classics and modern novels. If your Spanish isn't good enough to buy a book in the local language, get online on their wifi and enjoy an afternoon cocktail or a refreshing lemonade, all the while absorbing the comfortable ambiance with low jazz music sounding from around. My type of place. And a big plus always for their incredibly tasty and fresh carrot cakes and other homemade pastries.
I knew my deep-fried obsession wasn't over just yet.
Best on the fast food heaven right now according to us is Colombian "El Corral". An upscale burgeria, 50% higher priced than McD, BK and the other regulars. The quality of meat, freshness of vegetables, the fact that you can choose toppings, cheeses etc and their style of preparing the deep fried stuff like patatas fritas and onion rings were top notch. If one can use such a description for a restaurant that serves its meals on plastic trays brought to your table by yourself.
But for sure that was the best burgers we've had in a very long time.
The fries even had the wonderful french fries seasoning which I haven't
seen around since we left Europe behind. Pommesfriteskrydda mmmm....
Some of you asked how this bracelet looks from up front. This is a shot I snapped in the taxi going home from town today. It's basically small small gold brass and silver (white zink alloy) rocks tied up in lengths. I love the discreetly elegant touch it gives an everyday outfit. Did you know by the way that this WDIC bracelet is sold exclusively in our World Tour Market and won't be available elsewhere before later this spring.
Here's another one of our lovely neighbors. A Swedish couple from my hometown Gothenburg with their equally Swedish boat. Such a good cruising boat, the Hallberg Rassy 46. The Swedes are everywhere, and it always warms my heart to see Hallberg Rassy's sailing around the world. We started this journey with one as old readers might remember, but a 35 foot version. Great little boat that was.
Sitting at one of the beautiful boutique hotels in town with a delicious mint lemonade. Always good to escape the high humidity and heat of the boat every once in a while to a more reliable wifi connection and an ac-chilled space. Only way for me to get some work done during the days. I also just added some more beautiful stuff to the shop. Have a look if you'd like.
I've lately been slightly obsessed with oil and deep fried things in general. It all started with the French fries the other day. And since I had some oil left from that procedure, I figured why not continue deep frying things that comes in my way. Chicken for example. Chicken cooked and submerged in oil always gives a nice flavor, and here it was a confit type of taste I was looking for. Let's see how I proceeded.
For chicken I'm like most other people, rice suits the best. My favorite way of preparing rice is to first panfry red onion, salt and cumin in olive-oil before tossing in the rice to cook in the mixture. Gives such a great flavor to the otherwise dull taste of solid rice. I always use basmati rice, except for this time as I had run out of it and couldn't find it in the store. Bummer. Regular white rice will do too.
Prepare some veggies. Cut green and red paprika/bell pepper, tomatoes and garlic in whatever shape you fancy.
In canola or vegetable oil, panfry veggies and garlic till soft and sweet. It should take a while. Season with salt, black pepper. Add dried or fresh basil, parsley, thyme and or whatever herbs you've got at home. And nutmeg of course. Don't be scared to use nutmeg, I add a lot to obtain the sweet and nutty flavor.
When vegetables are done, remove them from the heat and let them cool down on a plate. Now time to semi deep fry the chicken. Pour a generous amount of (canola or any vegetable) oil into the already hot pan. Toss in your separated pieces of chicken. They should almost be submerged but not completely. I've cut two large legs in smaller pieces and thus got a nice mixture of whitish meat, skin and some more greasier parts of the chicken. No bones in this one. Add salt and pepper. Make sure to mix often so the chicken pieces doesn't stick together or so that not only one side burns. If the pan is hot enough, it goes rather quickly to obtain a crispy golden hue which is what we're after. Taste in between and add more salt, pepper or why not some more herbs.
When chicken's done, lower the heat, throw in the vegetables, mix well and leave it all to simmer for a while.
Rice and stew done.
Go ahead and serve.
The mixture of deep fried chicken, the sweet peppers, tomatoes and garlic with nutmeg and herbs combined with the flavorful rice is absolutely divine. It might seem as there's a lot of grease and fat into this meal and yes it might be just so, but every once in a while it should be ok. My deep-fry obsession hasn't lessened as yet so perhaps I'll come up with another greasy dish before we go back to a more healthy sort of diet again.
Sailing from Bonaire and arriving to Curacao a couple months ago, we coincidentally had to sail right through a race to get into the narrow channel of Spanish Waters. I think it was the Heineken regatta? Last image is from when we had finally entered through the narrow and shallow entrance. At this point, our (Raymarine) GPS indicated that we were right on land, not exactly as accurate as one would wish the navigation aid to be in sketchy places like that but with good sunlight and careful eyeball navigation we made it safely into harbor. Gonna show you more photos from the lovely Curacao shortly.
This one's for you Reggie! Ha ha ha... found it while processing through the Bonaire pictures.
While we were still in St Martin/St Maarten working on Duende - sxm the island which we also love very very much (we love all the Dutch islands in fact) - our friend Reg gave Alex the nickname "Michelangelo". Why such a pompous name you might ask. Because it becomes very obvious when you get to know Alex that he is obsessed with perfecting things. His work seems never well done enough and he can spend hours and days adjusting the slightest details, to reach to a sort of perfection that not many bothers to work towards as it seems a mission impossible.
He really is a true perfectionist and puts very high pressure on himself to reach that utter perfection in anything he creates, be it music mastering, joinery, fiberglass or carbon design, boat building and anything else in between. Sometimes I try to tell him, baby, it's good enough now, much better than what anyone would expect for such work. And he mutters back: No, it's just not done yet, give me a few more days.. and there he continues, sweating away hour after hour, barely even allows himself to take a two minute break.
Another funny thing I got to think about when I saw this photo. After only knowing us previously through the blog, William said to Alex the other day: But you really smile a lot! Like it was a surprising discovery. In the blog, Alex might have a serious appearance most of the times, but that's only because he feels uncomfortable posing, and unfortunately I must be the evil partner who asks him to do just that for the blog from time to time.
Well well, all the things we put each other through, but at least I have my very own Michelangelo in the house.
And here's a few Michelangelo quotes that could as well be from Alex himself:
"The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection."
"Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish."
"It is well with me when only I have a chisel in my hand."
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
“Genius is eternal patience. ”
“Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.”
Seriously, I cannot stop laughing...
Reggie, we miss you, get your ass over here soon please!
Since the slip we've been in for a month now belongs to a local boat that just returned, we were asked to move to a slip in front of it. Doesn't matter to us, now we're right in front of the skyline of Cartagena and facing the bay rather than a bunch of other boats! No we haven't still gotten to the yard, there always seem to be so many other things to finalize but we're easy, as long as some sort of progress is being made every day, we're happy.
I celebrated our new view with a cold beer.
Hello bud.
And this is our lovely Swedish neighbor. He was in front of us before, now we're next to each other. Will tell you more about this guy and his boat very shortly. We've met so many friendly, interesting people here in this marina, Club Nautico, Cartagena. It goes without saying that we feel very much at home right here, it even reminds us a tad bit about Barcelona. Club Nautico is also the most affordable marina we've encountered since we left the Mediterranean 2,5 years ago, a huge plus now in times of refit and repairs.
I love this ceramic pan that we got from our dear friend Michael a while ago. Never made pancakes in a better pan, every single one of them turned out perfectly and this pan is such an easy thing to work with. Nothing ever sticks to it and it's super easy to clean afterwards. Of course it is as good for anything else that needs to get pan fried (though I prefer cooking meat in a heavier skillet) but for pancakes it is particularly amazing.
Our American/Irish friend Michael is always kind enough to bring down things that makes our life a little easier. Ergonomic potato peelers, books, bread knives with silicon handle, screws and tools that can't be found here and of course the most important, peanut butter cups! / Hereyou can find one of these pans, I promise you'll never again consider making your thin pancakes in anything but it.
