JimenaPulse
About Jimena de la Frontera, the province of Cadiz and Spain as a whole, focused on this small village in the mountainsArchive for LANGUAGE
ROSCÓN DE REYES
Roscón de Reyes is a traditional Three Kings treat. Shaped like a large doughnut and usually tasting a little of lemon, it is decorated with dried fruits and contains a surprise or two for the lucky finder. The gift is usually a coin, though sometimes it also contains the traditional dried bean as a joke. Its origins go back to the round cakes that were offered to the god Janus during Roman Empire times. It is available at this time of year at bakeries and supermarkets.
OF OLDNIGHT AND GRAPES
Nochevieja (oldnight, altogetherlikethat) is how New Year’s Eve is called in Spanish. There is one tradition in Spain that differs from others: las uvas (the grapes).
The tradition is owed not to any deep religious or cultural leftover, but to the economy, money and an excellent grape harvest. It was started in 1909 by grape growers who, in a fever of imagination, managed to get people to believe that eating one grape at each strike of the clock at midnight would bring good luck for the coming year – and they managed to get rid of a lot of grapes.
The idea is as follows: Depending on the number of your guests, you peel and seed twelve for each – small ones are easier to stuff down the gullet but hell to peel and seed. You then place them in front of each guest on a saucer. As the clock strikes, you, and they, take one into your mouth for each strike. Easy, isn’t it? Except that when it seems the clock is striking twelve it is probably striking los cuartos, or quarters, just before the twelve strokes of midnight. Still, it is great fun and a lot of laughs.
And by the way, you can buy little tins of twelve grapes ready peeled and seeded. But hurry or they’ll be gone. Don’t know about these grape growers…
OF DUST AND LARD
One of the most traditional customs of Spanish Christmas festivities, which don’t forget go on through the New Year to Epiphany (or Twelfth Night or Three Kings Day) on January 6th, is the inclusion at almost every get-together of sweet dishes such as those pictured above and most, if not all, come down to us from the Arabs.
Polvorones come at the top of the list. Read the rest of this entry »
TIME TO CELEBRATE
It’s that time of year… drinks with friends, meeting people you haven’t seen for a long while, bosses giving parties. And they all want a photo. The top picture has the team at the chemist’s enjoying a sobremesa (‘over table’, i.e. post-prandial conversation) at Mesón Aragón; the bottom one is of a group of friends at La Bodeguita whom Prospero has known since they were rug rats. They’ve grown into men with careers and beers. Cheers!
OF BOXES AND BASKETS
Today is Boxing Day. Today is a holiday pretty much all over the English-speaking world (except the US) . The origins of the holiday go back to the Middle Ages, though not all opinions coincide. There are those who say that feudal lords and ladies gave boxes full of useful stuff like clothes and tools to their workmen’s families on the day after Christmas, while others put it the other way round: the work people gave the boxes full of small gifts to their lords and masters. Still others say that the day after Christmas was traditionally the day the ‘poor boxes’ were emptied in churches and the proceeds distributed among the poor.
Obviously, this time of year is one of gift giving, so there is no doubt a connection between the English-speaking world’s Boxing Day and the Spanish-speaking world’s cesta de navidad – or Christmas hamper. Even more obviously, there is a connection between these last two! If you’ve been lucky enough to get one or the other from your employer, we hope you are still enjoying it.
(Prospero comment: My employers, including JimenaPulse, are just plain mean…)
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