ZUMO, ZOTE & ZANAHORIA - the end of the A-Z Challenge.

ZUMO in Spanish means juice.  I begin every day with a walk, a shower, and then breakfast, which always has to start with fruit juice. Oranges are around a euro a kilo and make the perfect base for whatever other fruits are in season.

Bananas - we bought some of these this morning at the local market -

mangoes,
strawberries,
or papayas.
This papaya tree is just up the road from where we live - I didn't know before I saw it on one of my morning walks that the fruit grows directly from the trunk.

Continuing my Spanish words theme - here's another one.

ZOTE is a Spanish word meaning dimwit, though whether that is a strong enough word to describe the people who deliberately set fires. Every summer our bomberos – most of whom are volunteers - have to fight to save homes, livestock and crops from total destruction. The fact that they eventually succeed, despite the difficult terrain of steep barrancos and inaccessible cliffs, is a tribute to their courage and training.

                

I love the way words can still surprise me, and here’sanother Z word I found.

ZURCIR = to darn. I presume this means mending socks but, like the expletive “Darn it!” in English, another version is used colloquially – “¡las zurcan!” means “to blazes with them!” which ties in nicely with the previous paragraph.

ZANAHORIAS  are carrots - this was one of the words it took me a long time to learn when we first arrived. 

This road sign in Las Galletas amuses me. The road is about ten metres long, one step from the beach, and the rest of the alphabet is nowhere to be seen - every other road in this small village is named for some dignitary with three names. Calles A to Z would have made life much easier!

AND FINALLY

Until a few years ago all cars registered in Tenerife had the prefix TF followed by four numbers and then letters indicating the year. 

This one is about 20 years old, but bang on target for my final A-Z post.

If you've stayed with me throughout the A-Z Challenge, thank you - your encouragement has kept me going - and if this is your first visit, welcome and feel free to browse.

 My experience of this year's blog-fest has been like the curate's egg, but thank you to the A-Z Team for their sterling work. I shall continue to visit as many blogs as I can, but I am flying to England on Friday for a fortnight with family and friends, so forgive me if I fail to respond immediately to any comments left on my blog. 

BANANAS!

This is the fruit and veg we bought for the weekend, all locally grown. Potatoes, batata yema huevo, oranges, lemons, mangas - I have yet to discover the difference between mangoes and mangas - and bananas.
That's real bananas off a banana tree, still warm from the sun and possibly with a few insects adhering to the sticky bit at the join. Delicious.
So why would anyone buy these that I saw later, lurking in the freezer of our village supermarket? Frozen peeled bananas in Tenerife?
Please! Do me a favour!




My morning walk was particularly fragrant today - after yesterday's severe gusts of wind there were so many peppercorns littering the pavement that I couldn't help but walk on them.

Imagine inhaling the scent of crushed fresh peppercorns at every step.

And then to top it all the yucca was in flower, reminding me that on my next visit to the Venezualan greengrocer I must buy some yucca - nothing thickens a stew better.

What veg and fruit did you buy for the weekend?

OMNISCIENT ORANGES?

OMNISCIENT PERSPECTIVE.

When an agent said I “handled the omniscient perspective well”, my early grounding in Latin popped its head up: Omni = all, and Scient = thinking was my guess, which didn’t get me very far, so I looked it up.

According to my dictionary, omniscient means “having infinite knowledge or understanding” and perspective means “a way of regarding situations”.
Um – still no wiser – so back to her email where, by putting OP into the context of her subsequent remarks, I worked out that I think she means “telling the story from more than one character’s viewpoint."

It’s nice to know I’m doing it right, whatever it is, but I could use a Dictionary of OBSCURE LITERARY TERMS.
<sigh>

ORANGES AND LEMONS

No, I am not going to embroil you in a childish game, so don't run away!

I eat an orange every morning, and the local ones are just the right size to cut into six wedges and eat from the skin – leaning over the sink because there is a bit of inelegant slurping in the process.
Distilled sunshine - dleicious!

And the lemons? We were given a bag of lemons straight off the tree this week, so I made lemon curd. The best and easiest recipe I have ever seen is from a handwritten recipe book we found when the OH’s mother died.

See my recipe page on the right if you want to try it for yourself, but if you use shop-bought lemons, wash them well first to get rid of the wax the importers coat them with.