things are just different here...

As most of you know, I do the cooking for the family. Carme can make 2 dishes and order pizza. The nearest pizza delivery place is thru a winding road and about 15 miles away. we ordered there once, only once. Let´s just say it is not anywhere near your local Papa John´s. So Carme is now limited to 2 dishes.

Of the 2 dishes, (truita de potata, which is an omelet of eggs and cooked potatoes, and macarons, think of baked Ziti with meat sauce), in a 7 day week...Carme has 5 days off from cooking. But since we have visited many restaurants, Alex is growing accustomed to the local way of cooking them and Carme´s pale in comparison. So now she is down to one dish and 6 nights off. Lucky her.

So since I am back to being a full time cook, I must spend lots of time in the grocery stores. Like I said, things are just different here. There is no other way to explain it.

I love milk. I love milk by the gallons. Of course a gallon is an English measurement not a metric one. My first experience in the milk buying business scared the living creeps out of me. It´s not located in the refrigerated aisle of the grocery store. Actually I think I might have felt better if they had it under heat lamps. You see they come in these cartons they call "brics", square cartons with twist off tops. The milk comes at room temperature but completely cut off from light. No milk bottles or clear plastic here. These brics are opaque. The process that the milk is put under is called UHT processing (Ultra High Temperature) where the milk is subjected to high temperature to kill off spores but not for a very long time which saves a lot of the nutrients. Still I seemed a little reluctant and nervous but if it has not sickened millions of Europeans than I guess I could survive. Also the milk is sold in individual bottles of opaque plastic or in 6 packs of brics. Still I have grown to love love milk once again...along with an extra few toes.

Going along with the dairy theme, I also love cheese. Long gone are the days of American, Cheddar and Monterrey Jack. I am faced with choices of Emmental, Monchega, and Mozzarella. Don´t even try to get me to explain the difference. I am still waiting on the perfect grilled cheese type of cheese. They do have a pretty bland tasting cheese that rivals American cheese. they use it to make grilled cheese sandwiches called "bikini" in this area of Spain, Catalunya. So be careful what you order and where. I am used to buying cheese in slices despite the efforts of Ukrops trying to "culturize" my south Richmond mentality. Here, the cheese can be bought freshly sliced or in chunks from the original roung thingy...I guess saying a block of cheese brings back memories of government cheese that was soooooo good when making grilled cheese sandwiches but hell on a baking dish to make macaroni and cheese. speaking of mac and cheese, my life is near empty without it here. I can´t find a Velveeta box to save my life. I am so deprived.

Another thing I absolutely when nuts over is the juice. they sell juice like it´s bottled water here. People here are very much into bottle water as well as fruit juices. You can find whole rows in the grocery store. There are many kinds like what you would expect like apple, pineapple and orange. Grape juice is near impossible to fine as their need for grapes only seem to fan the fire of the wine industry. I do notice a lot of grape juice mixed with peaches. This mixture is a bit thick and hard to swallow. when I decide to buy a blender, I might get back into my smoothie phase and pick up a few thousand brics of uva and meloncoton (grape and peach juices combined). but I have to say my favorite is the pineapple juice. I drink that stuff as if this year´s harvest depends on it! I cannot seem to get enough of it. I sweat the stuff out on warm days and my clothes end up sticking to me. I swear it´s unnatural but I love it. And despite my love of apple juice, I had to let it go like a bad lover. I mean why have a bad lover when you can have a better one, right? Something about not seeing the juice until you pour it in a glass (which is to say I usually just drink from the bric) but if you leave an opened bric in the fridge too long, it´s like the juice starts to clot like your blood during a nose bleed. It´s like not juice but pulverized apple. If I left it long enough, I would be chewing first then swallowing. I am waiting for a apple core to choke on.

On weighing my decision to move to Spain, I was faced with a serious minus. Life without Coke Zero. Oh Coke is worldwide...the most popular brand in the World alongside Nike and Pepsi. So I knew I would find Coke here as it seems to be my choice of beverage while dining in some of the nicer restaurants. They even have Diet coke which is called Coke Light here. and if you ever wondered where glass bottles went and why you an only find plastic or cans in America...well they are here in Europe. Someone explain that to me. I remember the last glass bottle I drank a soda from was during my yearly summer vacations to Rocky Mount, NC, when you could return the bottle for a deposit. My cousin Darren and I would walk a few blokes, armed with all the change we could find around the house, practicing our math on how many bottles we could return to equal enough to get a good discount on a ice cold RC cola or something. Still any discount is a good one.

So I fell in love with Coke zero before I left. knowing in a few months I would run into decaffeinated Coke zero in America. but my move could not wait and I said goodbye to it and made my journey. I cried like a baby. But to my surprise, my wife and darling son had picked me up a 8 pack of cans and i cried again. Never had I been more in love with his woman. I think I will start saving for Alex´s college now and stop betting on horses.