A new addition to our Catalan-American kitchen is the escalivada cheeseburger. We liked it, and we think you will too.

Burger Ingredients:
Ground meat (pork and beef mixture is good)
Bread crumbs
Egg
Ketchup
Garlic
Salt and Pepper
Cheese for topping

Escalivada Ingredients:
Eggplant
Red Pepper
Onion
Olive Oil

Preparation:
Cook the burgers on a grill or, if you are losers like us who don’t have a grill, in a frying pan. Slice the veggies and place on an oven tray covered in aluminum foil. Drizzle with olive oil and roast on high heat until they smell like escalivada.

Slice ciabatta bread and place burger in the center. Pile vegetables on top of burger. At salt, pepper, ketchup to taste. Devour. Repeat.

I hope everyone had a chance to enjoy the beautiful weather this Thursday for Sant Jordi. I’m sure all the booksellers and rose peddlers were glad to see blue skies all day and big crowds mobbing their stalls. Here’s a look at some of what was going on around the city.

Showing our stripes

The city gets dressed up to celebrate its patron, Saint George (aka, Sant Jordi).

Open house at city hall

The city hall (ajuntament) is open to the public all day, so I got to see everything from the mayor’s desk (suspiciously neat) to the ancient council chamber. All of this is usually closed to everyone but city officials, so it was a rare treat to explore the place.

More treats

Everywhere I went it seemed there was something special to snack on. Sant Jordi cakes, Sant Jordi bread…Sant Jordi on a stick! Feast your eyes, or if you are in Barcelona, grab some Sant Jordi doughnuts on clearance!

Here is a useful bit of design from the Street Vendor Project and the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP). Created by Candy Chang, this neat little two page pamphlet is part instruction manual, part historical guide, and part propaganda. It was created to help New York City’s pushcart vendors learn about their rights and how to navigate the confusing regulations that constrain their craft.

I like this guide because it is concise and fun. It is also loaded with graphics and icons that will make it easy to use for the many street vendors for whom English is not a first (or second, or even third) language. Sure to be a great help to the many native English speakers who find the regulations hard to follow as well!

For anyone who is interested in learning more about the business of street vending, this pamphlet is a great place to start. It makes for some fascinating trivia you can use to impress your friends at parties.

Possible side effects of reading this pamphlet include a sudden, urgent desire for a hot dog.

Read the pamphlet here (for some reason they are two separate links):

• Page 1
• Page 2