O Meu Diário de Coimbra

The Atomic Weight of Cobalt

I’ll explain about the above in a moment.

Portugal has a little more 10 million people — 10,355,493 to be exactly — and covers approximately 36,000 square miles. It’s about the same size as Maine. It’s the oldest country in Europe. The continent’s oldest bookstore is here, as is one of its oldest universities, and there’s great surfing. Ferdinand Magellan was Portuguese, it’s the largest cork producer in the world, and on New Year’s Eve, there’s a tradition of eating 12 raisins. How then, with all those accomplishments, great and small and quirky, can you not get a piece of fucking licorice in this country?

I have been to four cities: Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, and Figueira da Foz.

Not a strand, not a piece.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

That photo above? That’s my attempt to make some.

I saw this recipe on online and then one of my writing students in a workshop I lead back in America —a good student, a good cook — sent me this recipe.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

• Wash and clean fresh strawberries.

• Peel off the leafy part.

• Cut away the stem and white top of the fruit.

• Cut strawberries in half.

• Lay fleshy side up on oven tray leaving space between them in case juice leaks out.

• Sprinkle with salt.

• Turn oven down to keep warm setting.

• Place trays of strawberries in oven.

• Set timer for 30 minutes. When timer goes off open oven to check on the strawberries. (You want to allow air into the oven to circulate the heat.) unless you have a convection oven then you can just turn on the fan and set your timer for the full amount.)

• After an hour and a half flip strawberries over and cook for another hour and a half opening the oven every half hour.

• Once the strawberries are dried take them out of the oven and place on a cooling rack.

I did everything I was told to do, but somewhere between steps 9 and 10, things went terribly askew.