Another nice surprise.

Way back in November 2009 I wrote a post called 'a nice surprise and other things' and mentioned a couple from Rye that we'd met who were in this area on a walking holiday.  They subsequently sent us some much appreciated oxo cubes and since then have sent shower caps which we use to cover the wine during fermentation and the bread dough while it's rising.

Over the past 18 months they have kept in touch with us via the blog and e-mail and are back again on another walking holiday.  Yesterday they walked down from Berchules to join us for lunch and brought with them some more oxos, 2 shower caps and - even nicer - a box of M & S chocolates!

We wined and tapas'd them during the afternoon - garlic and cumin  toasted almonds, salsa verde,  (green tomatoes, green chillis, coriander leaf, garlic and onions put through the liquidiser and dolloped onto slices of bread,)    fabada (a rich pork casserole with lots of onions and garlic,)  curried jabalí,  cheese and membrillo  (quince paste)  then finally orange sorbet to finish.  Plus of course, bread.  No meal is complete without a basket of bread.  Six tapas should have been six glasses of wine but I think we drank a few more than that.....The sun shone for us and although it clouded over later, it didn't rain.  They were collected by the hotel transport at the end of a very enjoyable afternoon and we went indoors to catch up with the the rugby.

Of course, we had to try the chocolates, after all they'd come a long way and they were delicious.  I say were delicious, we haven't eaten them all, only had a sample.  Still plenty left for tonight.