On the Camino de Santiago: Food for Body and Soul

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After three hours on the trail in ever-increasing heat, I came across the Restaurante Nossa Senhora da Cabeça (Our Lady of the Head (?)) and dinner never tasted so good! Roast loin of pork in a delicious sauce (I’m usually quite good at reverse-engineering recipes, but Portuguese sauces somehow defy me), served with a twist of orange, with homemade fries, salad and ubiquitous collard greens, and a mound of rice cooked to perfection – none of your al dente nonsense! I decided to reward myself with a small bottle of local white, but the waiter brought out a full sized bottle, and when I protested he explained that if I drank just half, that’s all I’d pay for. I poured a third deliciously cold glass of vinho as I mopped up the last of that sauce, then looked at the bottle with a suspicion I’d slightly overshot the halfway point. Well, I couldn’t pour it back, and who can say exactly where the 37.5 cl point is on a wine bottle anyway?! brambles and morning glories share the hedgerows — languorous lunch ~ food for body and for soul wine and coffee each doing their own thing in my head hidden city gate… I continue my postprandial extramural circumambulation — in Valença, Portugal.