Finca Fantasy: Part dos

Darn if that Finca inviation didn't evaporate when the margaritas wore off!  To read about how Delora and her husband were lured into thinking that they would be invited to a kajillion acre finca to shoot things, then weren't, click here:
http://debinspain.blogspot.com/search/label/Finca%20fantasy

So, fall has come and gone. Heck, winter has almost come and gone. Still, no finca invitation has materialized from the people we met casually at a cocktail party at 3AM who said, "You should come to our finca someday!"

Then some of our best Spanish friends -- we only have two due to our language impairments -- tried their best to let us down easily over lunch the other day.  First, they let it slip that their family had, not ONE, but TWO fincas!  Then, seeing our excitement, our friends told us as gently as possible, that their finca(s) are only for family!  Wouldn't you think that our best Spanish friends in the whole wide world would invite us to ONE of their TWO fincas?  I mean really, who has TWO fincas and doesn't need some friends to fill them up and help kill the deer that have overpopulated them?

Still, I can't help but think that we'll get lucky with someone and get a finca invitation before we move back to the States.  And it's with this optimistic view of the world that I begin my search for the perfect hostess gift.  What to bring to a finca?  As I walk through the charming streets of Barrio Salamanca, I keep my eye out for a statement gift, something to make the Spanish hostess feel she was right to invite Americans to her finca.  The kids suggest we bring a DVD of Bambi along with an orphaned baby deer, but this is too much of a political statement for me.  I'm thinking: what do you bring to a family that has to swallow mounds of deer meat every weekend?  Wouldn't something like gooseberry jam (is that a real thing, or something from a children's book I read once?) compliment venison? Maybe dress it up a little?  Perhaps I could bring some french crepes (venison crepes, how nice!) So my Google friend and I sit down to do some research on what would compliment venison and up pops a recipe finder with 91 recipes! Then I see this...

We have recipes for all the familiar game meats plus the slightly "wilder" animals like bear, turtle, moose, squirrel, and snake.


And with that, my Finca Fantasy comes to a screeching halt. I'm about to hurl just thinking about eatting a squirrel, so if you want to make alligator fingers, rattlesnake pasta or bear tonight, click here:

 http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Wild-about-Game/Detail.aspx.  
And if you can help me out with some ideas for what to bring to a finca, I'd really appreciate it.  Now if you'll excuse me...

Finca Fantasy

Recently, Chip and I were invited to a finca, a Spanish farm that is roughly the equivalent of a horse farm. In truth, we weren't fully invited, but there was promise of a future invitation, as in, some day you'll have to join us at our finca.   A nice Spanish couple -- FOFOF's (friends of friends of friends) -- described how, every fall, they spend weekends on their 4,000 hectares of land with a distant view of Madrid, enjoying the countryside while the autumn leaves change color.  At the time, I didn't speak hectare and didn't know whether it was half an acre or a cajillion acres. Later, I whip out my iphone iconvert application and find that 4,000 hectares actually equals 9,884.215 acres!!!  Now THAT is a finca, amigos!

The next morning we discuss our potential invitation with the kids, imagining hunting in the rugged plains surrounding Madrid.  They agree it sounds exotic.  We ladies wonder what we'll wear and decide on an imaginary tweed ensemble with custom leather riding boots.  But, as a person who once took up golf to justify buying a fetching pair of navy Ralph Lauren golf shoes, only to experience the agony of hacking a ball around a course for four plus hours while wearing them, I decide to dig deeper into my finca fantasy.  Will we walk to the hunt or ride vast distances on horseback? Will we dine at an antique oak table that seats 50 and enjoy trays of food delivered by Chicas?  Or, will we recline in the open air, fireside, with an exceptional Ribera del Duero and the finest pata negra, wrapped in monogrammed cashmere blankets while our wild boar crackles on the spit?

Maybe it'll look like this.

We're deeply excited, merry even!  While we're salivating and making little clapping sounds and practically packing, someone (and by someone, I mean one of our children) decides to put a damper on things. Here's the conversation:

"Does this mean we'll have to shoot an animal?"

"Man up!" another one says, "this is a weekend at a finca, bro!"

"Tio (Spanish for "Dude"), the three of us watched Bambi together."

The B word brings silence to the table as we try to forget the orphaned baby deer.  Slowly, we realize that although we love our fantasy finca, and as much as we think we like guns, we like animals even more.  There's no way we can shoot one and watch it die.  We're still gonna play paintball, eat meat, wear leather shoes, and one of us may even wear fur (but only when it's really cold or when we attend a dressy occasion -- sorry Alison), but we can't harm the animals.

I'm mentally unpacking when, luckily, someone has another great idea.

"What if we shoot our guns into the air and miss everything?"  And with that it's settled. We will, if ever invited, simply pretend to shoot things and miss, perhaps even scaring the animals away from the hunt, while we stay warm in our tweeds and leathers in the European countryside and let rip our cries of Bwaahaahaahaa!