Category Archives: Spanish Lifestyle

Salsa verde

Preparing “Salsa verde” is very easy and it is always a convenient sauce to have in your fridge as you can add it to your fish or meat and make it much more interested.

When I was little we used to pick the parsley from a big flower pot that we had at the terrace and, with the beautiful strong garlic from the market and oilve oil we were making it.

All you need to make it is:

PEREJIL – Parley

AJO – Garlic

ACEITE DE OLIVA – Olive oil

UN MORTERO -A mortar

UNA MAZA DE MADERA – A wooden pestle

Take some fresh parley and put the leaves inside the mortar.

Peel some garlic cloves and add them too. If you don’y want it very strong, just add one or two.

Start to mask everything the the wooden pestle until it is in very tiny bits. Be careful when you start because the garlic might go flighing from the mortar.

Once everything is very in tiny bits, start adding olive oil slowly while you stir the mix with your pestle. Keep adding olive oil until it covers the mix and after add a bit more. Some people like to add some drops of lemon juice.

Now take a little spoon and try it. If it is very strong, add some more olive oil.

If you have a little glass jar, you can keep it in it and put it in the frigde to use whenever you feel like adding it to your meals.

This time I have used it with some chesnut mushrooms. Yummy, yummy!

Welcome A levels!

Hola a todos!

It´s the end of September and maybe some of you have already started getting your AS or A2 level Spanish year. If it is your case, be ready for a challenging course: new topics, so of them very hard to talk about, even in English, plus grammar, listening…. Don’t worry! It looks hard, it is hard but it is possible to make it and get good marks at the end of the year.

Which has to be your key word?

WORK. If you don’t work for it, you won’t get it. Try to do grammar exercises every day, listening to online resources ( there are many: www.rtve.es) and take advance of your school teachers. Ask them questions, use your Spanish, speak in Spanish because your examiners will want to see how fluent you are using it so…

DON’T BE SHY!!!

If you need any advice, help, extra activities… please let me know by my contact for. I’ll be very happy to help you!

Why learn Spanish?

It is useful to have Spanish lessons for the following reasons:

  1. Spanish is often the foreign language of choice after English
  2. There are an estimated 548 million Spanish speakers as a first or second language, including speakers with limited competence and 20 million students of Spanish as a foreign language.
  3. Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and it is used as an official language by the European Union, the Organization of American States, and the Union of South American Nations, among many other international organizations. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language)
  4. Learn spanish to prepare for study abroad
  5. Learn spanish for business opportunities

Improve your listening!

Learning Spanish can be very challenging at times  and, for many of you, getting the opportunity to develop your listening might seem very complicated and frustrating. DON’T WORRY!  IT’S COMPLETELY NORMAL!

From my own experience learning languages, the best advice I can give you it’s:

Face the challenge , give it time and be patient because slowly, slowly you will be able to achieve all what you wanted.

Nowadays we have so many resources online it would be a pity no to take advance of them.  A good option for practicing your listening it would be to check  

www.rtve.es

You’ll find there lots of interesting programs.

Just enter  the site  and click on “a la carta” (on the left hand side of the screen) where  you’ll get the option of watching live channels “TV en directo” or recorded programs.

If you don’t have much time I recommend  you to watch the morning news every day. The program is about  25 minutes long and they talk a little about everything so it might be easier to know what they are talking about.

To get to the news, just go to “Categorias” and click on “Informativos” choose “Telediario”, you’ll get to the full list of news available from the last days.

Listening to the news was a good option for me to learn English, I’m almost sure it will work for you as well if you want to improve your Spanish. Good luck! 🙂

 

 

Eurocopa 2012

It is the Europe Cup 2012  and from Manchester we are supporting the Spanish team, although we are also keeping an eye on the English team and we hope they do  well.  We are Spanish – United if that makes any sense.

Vamos España! 

Madalenas Caseras

Ingredientes ( Ingredients)

3 Huevos ( 3 eggs)

250 gramos de azúcar (250 grams of sugar)

1 vaso de leche ( a glass of milk)

1 vaso de aceite de semillas ( a glass of sunflower oil)

3 cucharitas de baking power ( 3 teaspoons of baking power)

300 gramos de harina (300grams of flour)

Rayadura de un limón (one lemon zest)

Preheat the oven at 180.

Mixed all the ingredients in a cooking bowl using a mixer or a wood spoon.

Bake them in the oven for about 20 minutes.

 

 

Las Fallas de Valencia.

One of the craziest, noisiest and most entertaining celebrations you could witness in Spain is “Las Fallas”. This Valencian celebration that praises Saint Joseph is very popular for its big street monuments made out of paper, wax, wood and styrofoam. The height of the falla statues might vary, some can be up to five stories high but  they all try to make fun of our society recreating all sorts of popular figures like politicians, actors, footballers… A falla is just a parody of our everyday reality.


Each city neighbourhood has its own “club” called “Casal Faller” and its members work hard during the whole year to create la falla that eventually is burnt on a bonfire on the 19th of March, St. Joseph day.


The Fallas usually last for 5 days and during those days Valencia is an enormous street party.

From very early in the morning, the falleros, those are the members of the “casal faller”, and their local wind band go on the street throwing firecrackers and playing popular songs to wake up all the neighbours. After they all go to the “casal” for a popular breakfast made out of hot chocolate, buñuelos and other traditional food.

Around lunch time, at the main square, takes place “la mascleta”. This is the noisiest and craziest part of the whole celebration. At the mascleta an unbelievable amount of fireworks are fired and the noise and the smoke is just incredible. It feels like you are in the middle of a war fire but everybody is there in expectation, enjoying it , waiting for the big cheer at the end of the mascleta.

On the afternoon of the  16th and 17th of March the “falleros and fallelas” wearing their popular costumes walk on a music parade to bring flowers to the cathedral where a big Virgin momument is build up out on the street.

And if you thought the party was over wait for the evening, there are more firework displays, more music festivals…. the party goes on until very late hours.


On the night of the 19th the fallas are burnt and after a few days the normality comes back to the city. It’s time to relax from the big celebration days but it’s also time  to get ready for the next year. The falleros don’t waste anytime and soon after the fallas they get on again.