Day 37 & 38 – Rest – now please now

17 – 18 January 2022

Monday –

Sleep in. Breakfast and head to Oficina35 to get Shell’s handlebars raised. Both bikes have a few squeaks they will also check out. The bikes are so light without the panniers. More sensitive to handle.

It is a 3.5 km ride to Oficna35. The guys there are great. They love our bikes. Take some photos and put us up on Instagram. Celebrities. The bikes, not us. We walk back. The day is moving fast and we still have to pick the bikes up this evening. Feels hectic for a day off.

Grab some groceries for lunch and dinner. Get home, have lunch and the bikes are ready to go. I have mentioned the cycling community. The team at Oficina35 talk us through what they looked at. Make us a coffee. They discuss our future rides, options, and best routes. These guys are great.

Head home. Prepare dinner. Mushrooms and meatballs in a tomato sauce with fettuccine. Delicious. There is a wine shop about 100 m up the road. Incredible range. Grab a bottle from Bairrada, Portugal. Made from the Baga grape variety. Excellent wine.

Read. Bed.

Tonight’s wine –

2018 Niepoort Bairrada Lagar de Baixo Quinta de Baixo

Tuesday –

Sleep in. Porridge for breakfast. Make some calls to family. Good to catch up with Tom. Hard to catch him with the time difference. Off to the markets while Shell recovers.

Too much of a good thing. I want to buy everything. The seafood is incredible. The beef, the lamb, the pork. All butchered and broken up in front of you. There is cooked suckling pig. Fruit and vegetables forever.

Lunch is sorted. Leftover pasta sauce. I find incredible king oysters, Pleurotus eryngii. I should have taken a picture. I will add these to the sauce for lunch. I grab rainbow chard, aubergines, the big purple ones. Some oversized zucchini. I will do layed vegetables, like a lasagna without pasta. I need something creamy. I can’t be bothered with béchamel.

A friendly store owner shows me to a fromagerie. Ewes milk requeijão. Made this morning. She talks me into a semi-hard ewes milk cheese from another producer. On the way out, baby brussel sprouts. I will fry them off with salami as a side dish. Done.

I take Shell to the wine shop while the room gets made up. They have port here dating back to 1795. For a lazy 15 000 euros, you can have it. They have double magnums of Bordeaux first growths. Magnums a Grand Cru Burgundy. I head up the stairs and look at the wine under 5 euros that I will buy tonight.

Lunch was good. I fried off the kings in some olive oil and just added them to the warmed pasta sauce.

Lay about for the rest of the afternoon. It is good to rest up. Shell seems to be better today.

The oven is a microwave. I am going to have to grill each thinly sliced vegetable in the tiny frying pan. Assemble and cook in the microwave. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. I have doubts. Time consuming and we have finished the wine.

I go and grab another bottle of wine. Shell takes over the cooking. I am losing patience with the process. Give up. I put it all in the dish and throw it in the oven which is a microwave. Shell opens the wine. It goes everywhere. I think I will order a pizza.

Shell got the microwave going. It might be OK.