PULPO AND THE PERCEBES OF GALICIA

A slap in the face by an octopus while diving can be a sensual experience. I admire their amorous and sociable demeanor and have faced these fabulous creatures several times under water in Cozumel.

The second slap was gastronomic.

We met again, also in the wet, though this time in a very large and howling rain-driven storm on the Galician northwestern-most tip of Spain that sticks out into the gray and crashing Atlantic.

Now that Portugal has become chic and more expensive, think of
Galicia, Atlantic part of northwestern Spain. Home of the fabulous percebes or goose barnacles.

You might need to know and enjoy saying the way it is pronounced which is ‘per-theb-ess,’ even if you spent the first ten years of your life trying to get rid of a lisp as I did, along with my soft German ‘r’ which was the pride of my step-grandmother.  She admired everything German and thought I had promise, until I turned out to be a cook instead of a Harvard-educated architect, and then gave up speaking to me for…