My Spanish is, to say the least, rusty. At one time in my life I could do literary analysis in Spanish and probably knew more technical poetry terms in Spanish than in English. These days it’s pretty much limited to “Hi, how are you?” (“Hola, como estás?” for those who didn’t just translate that in their heads.) Okay, not really, I can still say a variety of things and read and write pretty fluently, but my vocabulary and fluency has really dropped off because it’s not refreshed regularly.

So when I saw Isa’s post on vegan food blogs in Spanish, I was like, awesome! Vegan food from other cuisines, plus the opportunity to refresh my Spanish with language that people actually use, rather than arcane items like sinécdoque (a word I learned first in Spanish V AP and only later in English). And the linguistics geek in me (who am I kidding, the linguistics geek that IS me) jumped for joy at the chance to learn about recipe register in another language.

I like CreatiVegan particularly because the recipes are given in English and Spanish. The English translations are a little rough but all the more charming and linguistically interesting for it (also much better than I could do translating my recipes into Spanish). I love the look of the Rollitos de berenjena con verduras [Little Eggplant rolls with vegetables] in Gastronomia Vegana — very creative, I’ve never thought of using eggplant as a tortilla replacement. And El Delantal Verde [The Green Apron] is just pretty!

By the way, Google Translate thinks that the Tarta fria de yogur (which looks lovely) should be called “Tartan cold yogurt”. I think Google might be confused about what country we’re in…