After a long and luxurious weekend of visiting touristy sites around Barcelona, I was a little awe-stricken this morning when I opened my inbox to a deluge of Spanish and Portuguese wine links. Normally, we would let this wait for Friday, but with the amount of fun facts, recipes, instigating articles and events happening right now, we felt it would be best to mix it up a bit and bring you the information now! Enjoy.

Warm Spanish Cocktail
Erin Hartigan at usaweekend.com published a whole slew of suggestions on how to use those remaining bottles of liquor sitting idly on the counter into some delicious belly warming drinks. One suggestion in particular that obviously caught our eye used Spanish wine as your base for a funky sounding warm sangria.

Mull more than just wine. Scott Beattie, bar manager of Cyrus Restaurant in Healdsburg, Calif., uses mulling spices to seasonalize sangria: “I take cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, toast them, add orange and pineapple juices, and cook that mixture down.” He adds it to a strong red Spanish wine and equal parts cognac and dark rum. Freeman likes Glhwein, Germany’s hot, spiced red wine. “Add juniper, cinnamon and allspice, or even rosemary, to red wine,” he says, and to sweeten, use elderberry syrup, cassis or Cointreau.

Portuguese Stone Soup
I admit that I’ve heard of stone soup in my past, but I wasn’t familiar with the etymology of its name until now. One version in the Times Colonist speaks of a beggar who was so desperate for food that he pleaded for ingredients to add to his pebble-filled broth. So touched were the townspeople that they eagerly gave to the beggar in hopes of thickening his soup. By the end of his rounds, he had gathered enough potatoes, …