We harvested our olives We were told that the beginning of december is the best time to harvest our olives. The fact that they began dropping off the trees reminded us of that fact. So we set out to harvest what we thought would yield a good return. Only 3 of the 41 olives trees we have qualified or had any fruit in the first place. We are told that good years and bad years alternate. I think this was a bad year. Anyway, we spread out our nets on the floor and… well, look for yourself:
A few days later we went to the industrial olive press that we see every time we go into town. We had no idea how it all worked but managed to get our harvest of 43kg pressed and 30 minutes later we had 8 liters of olive oil. We were so excited.
A few days later, we had a little tasing. We compared 4 olive oils: The one Mark and Jacky gave us, one that was store bought, one our neighbor Angel gave us and our own. Needles to say, ours won with flying colors. Mark & Jacky’s was good, but we had to scrape the bottom of the bottle they gave us, because we had used almost all of it already. The store bought one was smooth, but tasteless and Angel’s was nice, but not as nice as ours. 🙂
Spot the (3 main) differences
Click here for the solution
The odd things we have We realize we have quite a few things that are quite unique to us, or our house or both. For instance:
A mis en place cabinet Mis en place is a french culinary term for preparing and organizing ingredients so they are ready to be used in the dishes that are being cooked that day. Mirjam is very good at creating the mis en place every day to make preparing dinner easier. We have a cabinet where we store the mis en place, because we want to keep it out of reach of the cats.
A remote control drawer In the summer, when we spend a lot of time on our porch, we have a drawer in the coffee table, that holds 5 remote controls, for lights, the tv, the sound bar and the Apple TV. I think many people have a place for the scores of remotes everyone has nowadays, but what makes our drawer different is that to make sure all remotes stay in place, we created a foam plastic mould that they fit in perfectly.
Remote control box In the winter, when we don’t use the porch as much, we move the remotes indoors, so we don’t have to go outside to turn on the lights. I made a special box to hold these remotes controls.
A sharp knives drawer. Typically, people have a wooden block which holds their sharpest knives. We have a drawer… I know, we’re weird.
We got married, again…. OK, we love each other and all that 🙂 and that was a good reason to get married back in 2019, but another reason was to make sure we would be each other’s heir in case something would happen. Once we got to Spain, we found out that things are a little different here and that even when you are married you are not automatically each other’s heir and we will each need a will to specify what we want to happen with our estate after our deaths. Being married here does have influence on the amount of estate tax you pay. In 2019, we registered as partners (almost the same as married) and we wanted to make sure that that was noted correctly in the Andalusian register. To get that done, we filed some papers and were invited to come to the Social Services office in town. When we went there we were asked all sorts of questions, such as if we were married at that moment (???) and needed to sign a good many documents. When we left the office of the kind lady, her “congratulations!” made us realize that we just went through what we had already done in Holland in 2019, but now for Spain. Do we need to get more wedding bands now?
Next steps: Get registered as Spanish residents and then get our wills sorted.
Our fields got plowed Our neighbor, the farmer, has been using the two fields in front of our house to grow food for his sheep, with permission of the previous owners of course. We gave him permission too, because having those fields cultivated looks nicer than having them bare or worse, grown over with weeds and it helps him out. As long as we are not using them, he can use them. So, his son came to plow them in the beginning of December:
And then there was light Now that it is proper winter again and the days are shorter, we decided that the hallway upstairs needed a better light. There is a ceiling light, but that is too bright. Good for some of the time, but not all of the time. We felt we needed something that could just be on all evening, helping us get up the stairs without blinding us on the way up. We think we found an elegant solution:
Click on the image for a larger view
On top of the mountain I took a hike on the mountain behind our house. It gave me spectacular views of our valley and our house. Here are some of the images:
Satellite view The Google satellites noticed the changes we did to our place and updated Google Maps and Good Earth. You can now see the petanque court under construction behind the pool and the roofless carport with our car in it, which means the new picture was taken mid May 2021.
When you spot the clock at the right time It will be more fun in 100 years when it will show 21/12/2121 21:21:21 but I fear I might not get to see that.
Our first Christmas in Spain Our neighbor Ingrid and her daughter came over for lunch. Mirjam outdid herself with three lovely courses. The first one was 1970s style crab cocktail. The lunch was great and fun was had by all.
Breakfast outside Between Christmas and New Year we had very good weather with temperatures in the low 20s C and sun. It was so pleasant that we had breakfast outside that week.
Happy New year! And then 2022 started. We celebrated the end of a great year for us and the beginning of what is likely to be another great year for us with a nice Cava. The next day Ingrid and Romy asked us over to ring in the new year with them. We sat outside and enjoyed more Cava and each other’s company.
More of Mirjam’s culinary delights.
Fluffy lemon cake
Hazelnut Christmas cookies
(my mom’s secret recipe)
New Year’s eve yummies
Oliebollen & appel beignets
A Dutch tradition for New Year’s eve.
Churros
A Spanish tradition for any time.
A delicious vegetable lasagne, made with home made pasta
Limburgse vlaai. A traditional pie made in the Dutch and Belgian provinces of Limburg. Mirjam made hers with a homemade apricot jam filling. Absolutely scrumptious.
Dutch oven bread. Douwe was showing me over WhatsApp how he was making bread in a Dutch oven – a cast iron pan with lid that you put in the oven at a very high temperature. That bread looked (and sounded!) so good, that Mirjam wanted to try it too. The result was wonderful:
Flora & Fauna
Even though it is still very much winter, we see quite a few of the migrating birds come back already. We saw a few hoopoes and quite a few eagles as well. New to us was sighting partridges (near our pear tree!).
The almond trees are back in bloom (a little early). That brings me to the next subject:
We have been here 1 year! It has been a great year. You have been able to read about much of what happened to us in these blogs. To avoid repeating myself, this will be my last blog for now. We will continue to post pictures and videos though.
Thank you for spending your time with us.
Congratulations 🎉 on the Spanish wedding! 🥂. A great update. What fun!!!
Great read. Thanks Erik! Looking forward to seeing you and Mirjam in September.
Cheers Wilma
Heejjj, ik heb het gevonden! Wát een goed en heerlijk plan! En wat ziet het er prachtig uit!
Leuke verhalen ook, maar die had je altijd al.
Ik ga ze eens op mijn gemakje lezen,
Lieve groet,
Xandra
Wat leuk, Xandra. Veel leesplezier!