ProBiz Partners Blog

OK, I’ll admit it. I harbor a not-so-secret wish to become a tapas bar owner. I’ve left many a cocktail-party goer with their jaw on the floor with that little bit of news. TAPAS bar, not topless bar!

Tapas are the little bites of Spain — in case you’re not a foodie and haven’t heard about them in the past couple of years. Tapa means “cover,” which is where this tasty tradition came from. There are several stories about the origin of tapas but my favorite is that a king of Spain was out on a hunting trip on a windy day. When the hunting party stopped for a break, a servant brought the king a glass of wine, which was covered by a piece of bread with a slice of jamon (dried cured ham) on top. When the king asked “What’s this?” the servant replied, “Sire, it is to cover your cup to prevent the wind from blowing dirt into your wine.” The King liked it so much that he made it a regular part of the castle cuisine, and people all over the country soon adopted the custom.

Spaniards traditionally have 5 meals a day; a custom which is, sadly, disappearing. One of those meals is around 4 or 5pm when they often stop in at a neighborhood tapas bar and have a drink and a few small tapas, or appetizers. In some parts of Spain drinks are still served with free tapas, but that too is fading away.

Tapas have evolved into every type of appetizer you can imagine. Despite the enormous variety, you’ll still find certain staples in neighborhood tapas bars all over Spain. Those include jamon, tortilla española (see previous post for recipe) and a variety of dried sausages, Russian salad (don’t ask, I haven’t figured that out), potato chips (often homemade), cheeses, and a variety of fresh or preserved seafood. I also have to mention roasted piquillo peppers. These are roasted red peppers that are grown in Spain. Our red peppers are delicious when roasted, but piquillos are extra-special. You can find them at online stores.

One of my favorite neighborhood tapas bars

One of our favorite parties is to invite friends over for tapas and wine (and Sangria in the summer). A tapas party can be incredibly easy, or as fancy as you care to go. The options for available canned and prepared tapas are many; even in the U.S. And trust me, they’re good! You can order prepared foods for your tapas party from a number of online stores. Of course the prices are not what you’d pay in Spain, but the quality of the products and the ease of putting together a party with these canned goodies is well worth it. I use a number of online stores, but two of my favorites are AmigoFoods.com and Tienda.com.

I will share some of my favorite tapas recipes as we go along, but for today we’ll stick with the basics. Start with a good crusty bread, cut into thin slices and toasted on both sides. In the Barcelona region of Catalunya they rub the toast with a garlic clove and then with cut chunks of tomato, then drizzle it with good Spanish olive oil. You can top that with jamon (ham-OWN), sliced sausages, or any good Spanish cheese. Manchego cheese is one of the most popular, but don’t stop there. There are dozens of artesan cheeses that are rather pricey here, but again, very well worth it.

Artesan cheesemaker in a small local market

Any respectable tapas party needs olives. This is where I have to keep off my soapbox because the olives in Spain are, in my opinion, far superior to anything I’ve been able to buy locally in the US. I suggest buying them online unless you live in an area that has a good gourmet market. The olive bars that are featured in our high-end markets are very salty or so vinegar-y that I can barely eat them. Not so in Spain. Look for real Spanish olives and see what you think. Olives stuffed with anchovies are one of the most common. Don’t be afraid, they are not salty or fishy.

Small olive selection at a local market

Once again I find myself with a book’s worth of info and the nagging reminder that blog posts are supposed to be SHORT! Maybe someday I’ll master that skill. So I’ll leave you with this great summer suggestion: throw a tapas party…. just be careful how you tell people!

My stash of fast tapas ingredients

OK, I’m trying to get my head back around work and OFF of babies, but it’s not an easy task.

For me, one of the most challenging aspects of working from another country is figuring out the phone situation. I wanted to be sure that my clients had access to me, the same as they would if I were in my own office in the US, and at no additional cost to them. Before I left on my inaugural voyage of ProBiz Partners de España, I did extensive research to find out about the most cost-effective and least-difficult ways to stay in phone contact with the US.

I tried Vonage V-phone and Skype but both turned out to be worse-than-terrible connections. I think it had to do with being in a smaller town where the Internet connection wasn’t quite as fast as advertised. Vonage and Skype turned out to be unacceptable options, although if I were going to a larger city, I would give them a try again. Both offer options of having a “real” phone number that people can use to call you, at no cost to them, but the downside is that you have to be connected to your computer to receive the calls.

After trying and failing at several different things, I decided to simply accept phone calls on my cell phone (which I use as my primary business number), and if a client needed to have a longer conversation they were completely OK with me calling them back, using my MCI Global phone card, or my PINGO calling card. The good news is that my clients knew that they could call me during regular business hours, at the normal number they were accustomed to using. The bad news is that I had to pay $.99/min for incoming calls. Actually it wasn’t bad at all because my clients rarely call me without arranging it in advance, so I was able to schedule a time for me to call them, which helped me control the cost.

MCI is by far the better option of the 2 calling cards that I have. I always get a stable, very clear connection with MCI, and the rates are reasonable — $.07/min either from or to the US. PINGO is my choice for long international conversations, with a rate of $.02/min to call to Spain (for land lines — note that calling cell phones in Europe has a steep surcharge) and $.05/min to call from Spain to the US. Unfortunately, PINGO sometimes has poor connections, so I typically don’t rely on it for business calls.

I also researched back-up options to connect to the Internet in case the connection in my apartment should go down (which is always a distinct possibility). One of the coolest tech toys I’ve found in a long time is my Blackberry Pearl, which I use with my T-Mobile cell phone account. T-Mobile provides the best international options for me, and the Pearl gives me access to the Internet, email, a built-in MP3 player, and a camera. As I type this post, I am at my favorite bookstore / coffee shop, with my Pearl tethered to my laptop, to provide me with a high speed Internet connection. I love the fact that I can get Internet service anywhere that I have phone reception. The speed is acceptable, although not the same as in my office. One precaution here, though. Using a device like the Pearl as an Internet connection in another country redefines expensive. Don’t try it unless you know exactly what you’re paying for. T-Mobile does provide a Hot Spot plan that allows you to pay a monthly fee to access their Hot Spots, which are all over Europe and many other countries. That might prove to be a good back-up plan, although I was lucky and my Internet connection in the apartment was stable for the entire trip.

I completely expect that as things evolve there will be less-expensive, and more widely available options for both international phone calls and Internet access. If you’ve heard of anything exciting and new, please let me know. I have to keep up my reputation as having the coolest tech tools.

We interrupt this important (planned) tech tools blog post to bring you the much-more-important announcement of a new arrival in our family. Mr. Hudson Sailor Milligan was born on Friday morning, May 11th, at 12:13am. Numerologists would have a field day with that one. 11 - 12 - 13. Anyway, he is, like all Milligan children, a Gerber baby. He was gorgeous at birth, and just gets cuter every day. I’ll stop gushing now and share a couple of pictures. You can call me Granny! (gulp)

Tech tips coming this week. If I can focus…

Beside my desk there is a little piece of paper that says “Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you’ve never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.” Judith Thurman

The life of a dreamer brings unexpected pleasures — no, JOYS — that are so rich and amazing that you sometimes have to wonder how you got here, and why in the world you are so incredibly, amazingly, lucky. Today was one of those days. Today my life touched the lives of people from 6 different countries. And not just in a trivial way. I got to spend hours with people who are artists, engineers, architects, and composers. And they all have incredibly different cultures and different stories to tell.

I first met my great friend, Beatriz Gomez, who is a wonderful artist, when I was teaching English as a Second Language. Beatriz and I became good friends and, through her, I have had the privilege of meeting amazing people from all over the world. Beatriz’ husband, Ugljesa, is Serbian. Ugljesa is a wonderful architect and artist, and an amazing person. Today, for his family, is their saint’s day. Saint George, to be precise. Uglesza explained that in Serbia each family has a traditional saint’s day, and it is celebrated with friends and family. There are traditional foods and everyone simply enjoys each others’ company. Ugljesa and Beatriz invited Al (my husband) and me to join them with other friends and family to celebrate their saint’s day. We had no idea what was in store for us.

When we arrived, Ugljesa explained the tradition of saint’s day, and described some of the food for us. Then he served us wine and turned us loose to get to know each other. By the end of the entirely-too-short four hours, we had visited with people from Serbia, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Argentina, and the US. Al and I spent quite a long time listening to the fascinating stories of Luis Jorge Gonzalez, who turns out to be a “celebrated Argentine composer.” He even had me singing and clapping along with him as he tried to help me understand just how EASY it is to compose music. Umm… sure….

The food! Oh, MAN, the FOOD! The large dining room table was so heavily loaded with food that you couldn’t see the beautiful Venezuelan wood. We had handmade traditional Serbian bread, a dish much like baklava made with spinach and nuts, and there were a number of non-traditional treats as well. Crepes with an amazing turkey dish, a mushroom dish that melted in your mouth…. I could go on and on. A spread fit for Julia Childs. I looked around me and saw these rooms filled with incredible, interesting people enjoying amazing food and communicating in 3 different languages. I still have goose bumps.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in Spearman, Texas, a little spot in the road where nobody ever did anything more exciting than run their tractor off into a ditch. Or maybe it’s because I always dreamed of learning another language and experiencing other cultures. I don’t know what it is, but I know that I love my life. I love the people that are in it. I love the work that I do, and I love love LOVE the opportunities that I have to experience the world outside my little town and to feel homesick for places that I have never been. You don’t have to be a traveler to experience the world. As the Muppets sing “… with an open mind and a grateful heart…”