I haven’t missed that much from home by moving to Valencia. Everything here is new and it’s harder to do even small things. But over time, that will fade. I even asked the guy at the grocery store yesterday where the tea was, all in Spanish. So I’m getting there. What won’t fade is the difference in food. We like spicier, more varied food, and finding that in a restaurant here, with a range of deep fried to deeper fried bland food can be hard. We are done with Bocadillos, pizza and the other pub fare. We aren’t big desert or pastry people either. And Indian or Thai food isn’t near by in our neighborhood.
We are baffled by the actual times restaurants serve food (not tapas or just drinks) and it has proved challenging. We were hungry today at 11:30 am. We tried to go to several places to get lunch but they don’t open until 12:30. One after another – no go. Finally, we just went home. And don’t get me started on the exceptions with bank holidays that pop up when you can’t imagine why it’s going on. I know it’s a cultural thing but I swear it takes a matrix in excel, and some sort of complex algorithm to determine when there will be an intersection between our hunger, biological clocks, Spanish restaurants opening times/food serving times, and bank holidays. There’s gotta be an app for that!
So, I’m finding I’m cooking more at home. I’ve made fajitas, which I thought weren’t half bad. Jeff wasn’t as impressed but I certainly tried my best. I’ve made Chicken Tikka Masala – but again, it needed more spices and finding those here requires a trip to a specialty store in the Central Market. So no last minute culinary whip-ups out of what they have at the Mercadona.
Last week, I made Beef with Broccoli and Basmati rice. That was pretty good, too. But there are foods from home that just, well, feel like home. And today we made the trek to find them. Comfort foods – foods that ground you in times of stress. It’s the fall back stuff, when you put on your jammies, get a blanket on the couch, snack and watch a favorite movie or binge watch a tv show. Wrapping yourself in the familiar.
Just off of Gran Via is a place called ‘Taste of America.’ Walking in, the first thing that strikes you is that the shelves are filled with things you would NEVER want to buy in a grocery store in the US, if you cared about your children living past high school. Sure they’re American as apple pie but, seriously, Kellogg’s Fruit Loops, or Capt’n Crunch cereal? They have American beer and lots of US candy. And real ranch dressing (honestly, whatever that is) and Jack Daniels bar-b-que sauce. Name brand peanut butter is there too, and the same artisinal jam from Maine that I bought my Mom the last time we were there. It’s kind of a weird thing. I always bring back jam, from where ever we travel, for my Mom. I don’t really know why I do this, but when I go to their house I get to eat it and remember where I bought it. I never bring back jam for myself.
But today at ToA, I mostly just looked at all. It was nice to see familiar brands and logos. But I wasn’t going to buy alot of that crap, whether I was missing US food or not. It was a reminder how terribly we eat as Americans. I didn’t drink Dr. Pepper in the US, and I’m not starting now. But then I went to the baking section. Different story. They had vanilla, semi-sweet chocolate chips. Baking soda and brown sugar. All the things to make real chocolate chip cookies from home. I snapped it all up, not for me, but because I need to start thinking about Emilie’s arrival. She’ll be here in 6 weeks for the summer break, and the first thing she’ll want to do it make chocolate chip cookies.
Then I saw that they had pancake mix and real maple syrup. Homemade pancakes and waffles are in our future. And boxes of Mac and Cheese that will get Em through her first meal. And they had Campbell’s tomato soup. Emilie hates tomatoes but she likes Campbell’s tomato soup. I don’t try to riddle it out, I just buy it. At the end, the guy threw in a free bag of Sea Salt and Vinegar potato chips, so our streak of gift with purchase continues.
And 56 euros later, we made the 8 km round trip back on foot. Jeff carried our bounty in his back pack and we stopped on the way home and signed up for Spanish classes. So we ‘killed two birds with one stone’, as they say back home. Kind of gruesome, when I think about it.
I’m now looking at the things I bought stacked in our pantry cupboard and I was thinking. When I was a kid, my Mom would let me play ‘Store’ with some of the boxes and cans from the kitchen. And an ancient adding machine with a hand crank that made it seem like a cash register. It’s a bit ironic, because my parents owned an actual grocery store but it seemed I couldn’t get enough of it and played it at home with my friends. Maybe as we use this stuff from ToA, I’ll keep the boxes and just put them back in the cupboard, like when I was a kid. Sure, I won’t have the actual contents anymore, but when I open the door, it will feel like home.
Viva Espana 