What to say? I don’t want to write too much. At the end of the day, as much as we would like, who really wants to read a long blog. Nobody. So a quick update/ anecdote will suffice.
To our readers, we are terribly sorry for such a hiatus. Quite a lot of activity has gone on since our last post. Normally, Charlie and I trade off entries. He writes one, I write the next, etc. However, it has been so long since our last post, I sadly forget what treasure I begged Charlie to write about. It was amazingly delicious, whatever it was. Thus, I will continue on with a post, the first of several to be written overseas.
I am writing to you, dear followers, from the hills of Andalucía. I moved to southern Spain to complete a diploma program in design and what an experience it has been. It has been a mere 2 weeks, and I am happy to say, I have experienced local vegetarian-friendly food in the land supersaturated with jamón. The bar down the street has an amazing bocadillo catalana, which is a Spanish baguette sliced in half, rubbed with a tomato (so the juice seeps into the bread), drizzled with olive oil, and stuffed with chunks of queso Manchego. That’s right people. What, do you ask, can be wrong with this?
Recently, on a day trip to Ronda, I tasted my first real Spanish gazpacho (not-chunky to my surprise). I have also had pimentos (a tapa of roasted red peppers with very thin slices of onion), and papas con aioli (potato chunks coated in a garlic mayonnaise).
Last week I went to a festival in the evening and had the honor of having my first churro. Before you think of the popular South American cinnamon stick let me preface that Spanish churros are wildly different. This dessert is a long spiral of fried dough (not a stick). It can be sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon, or both. It is to be dipped in chocolate. I am fine without the chocolate part… Charlie would disagree. Also, the dough is not dense like the ones I had in Mexico, or even New York. It is light, airy, and resembles an American funnel cake. This is eaten for breakfast (I found out) in Ronda. After getting off the bus, I had a café con leche in a churroscuria, a café entirely devoted to churros of which I never knew existed. What a fabulous surprise. The “menu” consists of 3 items: Churros (obviously the product of a churroscuria), coffee (taken as a cortado [a Spanish version of the Italian espresso] or a café con leche), and pan tostado (toasted bread topped with olive oil and salt).
Other local joys include cooking with real Spanish ingredients. Olives, rices (please note the plural. I had no idea there were so many…), saffron, olive oil, tomatoes, pimentón picante (spicy paprika, my addiction), and artichokes.
Cooking is still a joy, and lets me save money while eating vegetarian. I am lucky that village life equates itself to cheaper prices. My café con leche, for example, is a whopping 1 euro. And I have yet to have a bad one. They are all amazing. Even at school! So look out for future posts on adventures in and out of the kitchen.
