Mejillones

... from Galicia, not from the mussel beds in yesterday's blip. Prepared by S, in his special mouclade sauce (albeit lacking in curry powder).

I was just thinking how much it has enriched my life to learn so many languages. Since the age of 11, I've learned French, German, Latin, Russian and Spanish. Sadly, I can now converse only in French and Spanish, but the exercise for my brain over the years has been invaluable, and I enjoy making connections between languages (a surprising number of Russian words have French roots, for example). I am grateful every day for having learned Latin at school; I still credit it with preparing me to write computer programs, as well as helping with every Romance language, including ones I haven't formally learnt, like Catalan, Occitan, and Italian. I have a lot of food words in every language I know; they stick when other words are gone, and make reading menus a breeze :) So,

English: mussels
French: moules
Spanish: mejillones
Catalan: musclos

And delicious in any language :)

In other news, I found that being brave enough to work with very wet dough makes for better bread; we had my latest sourdough loaf with the mussels, and it was excellent, even if the appearance suffered from it sticking to my hand while I was transferring it to the oven.