Pakistan

Ok I have one thing to say about the media here in Spain...THEY HOW EVERYTHING!

I am not sure how to explain it but they are not afraid to show blood, gore or horror. I can only wonder what is being shown on American TV but they don´t pull punches here.

My first experence was when a police officer accidently fired a flare into a crowd and killed a little boy. The picture in the newspaper was powerful as it snapped as a father carried his son out of a car, his limp body dangling. Remembering the pictue, I cannot honestly remember if it was a photo or a video as the picture said so much. You could imagine the seconds before and the seconds after, like a small snippet of film reel laying on an editors floor.

My next few chances at realism were met with hungry and horrified eyes. I found myself silently thanking the american media for not have the guts to show me the realness of life. Still my virgin eyes beg for more and more despite my feeble heart not being able to stomach another knee jerk reacton as my head spins. Still I walk thru life with my eyes wide open.

Then it strikes again...Pakistan. I knew this was coming. Who didn´t? A leader exiled from her country, only to return to possibly take over and the sitting comander doing all he could do to stem the tidal wave of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto´s supporters. Was it Musharraf's call for martial law a few weeks ago that scared me? Or was it his decision to remove himself from the military and dress in plain clothing and act presidential. Ntohing he could do would stop this prodigal daughter from returning. Was it not him who led the way for her return only to see his political rival gunned down on the streets.

So my question to anyone in America...are they showing you the blood soaked car she rode in? are they now showing you the video of her being assasinated then followed by the suicide bomber? I know I can reach if from cnn.com here but are they allowing it in America? if not, you do not know what you are missing when you are shown a few dead bodies for breakfast.

Night in Sant Mateu...

So this weekend we decided to take a trip south of Cataluña to the province of Valencia. The reason for the trip was to see a little more of Spain as much as it was for Carme to escape the lovingly smothering from her mother. Maybe I will get into that story another day...

A little information about Spain and it´s provinces, of the major provinces, they are generally named after the largest and main city residing in that province. Catalonia is comprised of 4 sub regions (Tarragona, Barcelona, Girona and Lleida); Valencia is made up of 3 sub regions (Alicante, Valencia and Castellón). If the name Valencia sounds familiar, think of the fruit oranges. Driving down the main highway, A-7, reminds me of driving down I-95 in Florida. To your left and right, there are acres and acres of orange groves lining the hilly landscape. Now I have never driven thru Florida in the dead of winter but I know the temperature never seemingly dips below freezing and when it does, there is major damage to the citrus crops. Still I have spent time in this region and I know it can get near freezing at night but somehow the oranges seem to survive. And I mean big plump ripe oranges for the picking even a few days before the New Year. A year ago, Carme taught Chelsea K. the finer points of jumping out of the car and stealing a few baskets full before peeling off down the road in a cloud of dust.

We journeyed to a small town called Sant Mateu (Sant Mateo) first to shack up for the night. Sant Mateu, which is in the Castellón (or in Catalan Castelló) sub province, is the birth place of Carme´s father and summer hell for Carme growing up. Sant Mateu is a very small and old town situated in a somewhat mountainous region about 40km or more west of the coastal and larger town of Vinaros. We took off from Tossa and made the 3 hour journey to stay in the summer home of her sister there in Sant Mateu.

To me, Sant Mateu is known for 3 things...how freaking cold it gets at night, the flies in the summer and the foul smell in the air. I think the later of the two are related due to the smell of either fertilizer or cows I have yet to run into. I can imagine with a smell like that lingering, flies must make Sant Mateu a summer home also.

Natalia´s summer home is actually like a line of attached cookie cutter row homes. The funny story is about a year ago, the lady to the right killed herself by hanging. Every time I sleep there I have to talk myself out of the existence of ghosts. Besides, I am not sure of the woman´s nationality but if she was Spanish, I would not understand her anyhow so how could she haunt me? I am such a scaredy cat.

Also most houses don´t have central air and heat in this part of Spain. The weather is pretty mild in the winters and they houses stay surprisingly cool in the more than warm summers. When the summer comes around, I will try to figure out why. Well Natalia's little love shack is no different. But with near freezing temperatures looming the night of our arrival, we were warmer outside than inside the house. So I put my survival skills to the test and decided to build a fire (reminder, get updated on the fire starting badge from the boy scouts). Well actually I got a fire started, but the stacked wood in the back was a bit moist and old and smoke quickly filled the living room.

Luckily we had two space heaters. When I say "luckily" I mean the difference between life and death! Carme´s nose turned blue but I was shivering too much to focus. I did my best to cook that night in mittens and 3 pairs of socks. Then we decided to divide our resources and put one space heater in the master bedroom to preheat that oven! We tried to past time watching a movie but even the DVD player was icing up so we decided to move to bed. To possibly save Alex´s little toes, we had him sleep between us that night. Entering into the bed room, our faces flushed at the noticeable difference in temperature but still we were to sleep in double layers socks and knitted caps. We tried to bring in the second and smaller of the space heaters but due to the lack of space on the floor due to the layout of furniture, it might have been unsafe to do so.

So off to bed we went. Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up feeling like my throat was dry as a wool sweater. I tried to speak but inaudible words plagued me. What had brought about this parched feeling? The space heater was working just a bit too well. I remembered that there were 4 settings, off, one, two and three and I am sure it was on three. I decided to risk my family´s chances at frost bite and turn it down to two. I decided to go for a drink of water. We slept with the door closed so as soon as I opened it, I felt as though I somehow had walked into a walk-in freezer. I thought twice about venturing a few feet to the refrigerator as Carme might not awaken until morning and by then, hypothermia might have set in and I would be lost to building shelter only 4 feet away from the bedroom door. So I regress back to the warm sheets.

In what seemed like 2 seconds since I closed my eyes, I felt the unfamiliar kicking of Alex, the soccer player. Since he is only 6 years old and has little body control while sleeping (thank goodness for bladder control), he took out his dreams on me. He must have been dreaming that he was scoing the winning goal in the Wold Cup and my kidneys were the balls. I can't complain too much as I could have been facing the other direction. I figured he was just pushing and uncomfortable at having his mother and father´s body heat envelope him, so I decided to take one for the team. I will take the other heater and move to the spare bedrooms and slept on the lower bunk of the beds. I contemplated sleeping in my shoes as I put them on to assist with traction as I am sure the floors were icy from the coldness. Surprisingly, they weren´t but one can never be too safe.

As I take one last look at my sleeping family and pray that morning will come for all of us, I reminded myself not to cry as it might freeze on my face. I bravely set up the smaller space heater in the back room as I settled into my night´s slumber. Instead of a blanket or quilt on the bed, the covers were sort of like a sleeping bag. The zipper opened away from the wall, as opposed to closer to the wall, where the bunk beds were pushed against. No fear of falling off I suppose. So I slide in between the covers and fall into a sleep. My last thought was fear that I was drifting off to sleep or just passing out from the coldness.

Again, I am awakened in the middle of the morning to a weird sensation. No it was not my nose throbbing from being so cold but in fact, I had managed to kick off my socks and was about to kick off the covers. I shook my head to gain my bearings and realized...this little heater was kicking my ass. I was sweating!!! How was I to regulate this nuclear heat coming my way? Would I need to put aloe on my face in case I was burned in the night while I slept?

I heard stirring in the other room and I decided to make my way to the bedroom with my family. Carme greeted me with sleepy eyes and asked how I slept. I could only describe it as knowing how a grilled cheese sandwich felt.

The next morning, we got up and decided to make a trip down to Valencia. We did not go too deep into the city as there is just too much to do in a day. We did take a horse ride around the city and enjoyed ourselves looking like tourists. Here are some photos from the trip...Enjoy...

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.

I rock....

So it´s Christmas eve and a few weeks ago, Carme volunteered me for Christmas eve dinner. This dinner is to include her parents, sister, brother in law and daughter and of course Alex, Carme and myself. Afterall I cooked it so I guess I should be able to eat it. So I am cooking for 8. That is no big feat in itself but the obstacles were many and varied.

First of all, as I said before, things are just different here as one would expect. Those normal food items one would expect at your local Ukrops just aren´t readily available here due to culture and tastes. The first obstacle was to find a whole turkey. sure I could have found all the octopus you can shake a stick at (would someone please explain this phrase to me) but I could not bring myself to basting it for 15 minutes. Here, one has to order a turkey and I guess some United Nations peace keeping force airdrops it to you. You must go to your local butcher (yes they still have real live full time run of the mill butchers here) which you can find at a butcher shop or a grocery store. You order it and in a few days they have a fresh turkey for you. And when I say fresh I mean with a few quills still attached to it. I spent a good hour inspecting and pulling feathers off of this naked bird. The bird weighed 6 kilos(15 lbs roughly) so I knew I had at least 4 hours of basting and rotating.

Next, I had to plan my menu. The turkey was taken care of and side vegetables would not be an issue. Now I had to decide on what to make for dessert. Dessert is a bit trickier as the desserts here are...well how can I put this...not sweet. The desserts here are beautiful and works of art. Rather than your typical cake in a 9" round pan with multiple layers and icing (or frosting, I get them confused ...wait...icing is cold right?) that seem to make your teeth ache after one bite. Here they are flaky, crusty, full of cream, and laking in flavor. Pretty much every dessert tastes the same but are different in the way they are arranged. More like the different in a Picaso and a Renoir.

So I went browsing thru my local grocery stores. There are 3 here in Tossa all within a 2 minute walk of one another. Caprabo is right outside of our balcony and is pretty large..considering I am used to WalMart Super stores. When you walk into most stores with shopping carts, they have solved the problem of disappearing shopping carts,...YOU PAY TO USE ONE. Of course you get this money back and it varies from 50 cents to 1 €. All the carts are daisy chained together so you won´t get it free until you deposit a coin into a special slot on the cart to release the chain. You walk around the store hoping you won´t come up an Euro short in the check out line.

Another funny thing about the carts, all four wheels move independently. In America the front two wheels move so you can just push and steer. Here, you have to sign up for liability insurance just to maneuver thru the narrow food aisles. Yes, the aisles are just as narrow as the Medieval streets. So before grocery shopping, I get a physical for my knees ever since I saw this old lady blow a ACL in the frozen foods aisle. How can this happen? Well imagine trying to round a curb with a basket full of food and your back wheels go out on you. So your tail in comes around and you try to brace yourself for the shift in weight and you hear an unfamiliar snap but still somehow you know what the noise if from.

So I head to the baking aisle, when I realize, there is no baking aisle. There is no row of baking powder, different types of flour, instant cake mixes and jars of Duncan Hines icing...or frosting. Actually it´s one thing to look for familiar food items, it´s another to try to translate them. for the love of god, what does baking soda translate to? Oh I can find baking powder. It says in English right on the can. But baking soda...that´s a no go. So I guess cakes are out of the questions. I can´t imagine why they would need leavening, most of the bread is just hard and crusty baguettes. So I move on to other ideas. I do make a mean apple pie. I will even make my own crust!

So back to the crib to begin my holiday cook-o-thon. Another thing here, well all the appliances are small. I mean small as in I an dry one one pair of jeans at a time. The oven is bit larger than a Betty Crocker Easy Bake, and the turkey had an ass bigger than my 3rd grade teacher Mr. Roundbottom. So I become a bit more McGyver-ish and lube the bird down with some KY Jelly and go to peeling apples.

By the end of the day, we sat to have dinner at 9pm. Not because it took me all day to cook these items, ONE AT A FREAKING TIME...but because normally here in Spain, dinner is not until then! It was a feat keeping things warm and moist as I was finished cooking by 7pm. The reason for the wait: Papa Noel was coming.

the parents here find ingenious ways to figure out how to present these gifts to children while they are awake and anxious for his arrival. I will get into this tomorrow with another blog in itself because it is classic. So stay tuned.

So all in all, the turkey came out perfect, mashed potatoes were awed over by Johnny (due to the fact they were real potatoes and not instant), the cornbread stuffing was a hit, too. I added bacon and chilies to the mix and made it nice and tasty. I made two different types of gravy. One was a pan gravy flavored with a pinch of nutmeg and the other was made of homemade turkey stock and garlic. For dessert, I made a crust flavored with cream cheese filled with 3 different types of apples and a crumb topping. actually i made one with raisins for my own benefit. I was hoping no one would like the raisins and I would have it all to myself but no such luck.

In the end, everyone was pleased with an American holiday meal and I was pleased that I did not have to scrape a plate before doing dishes. I guess I can bring a little bit of my culture to this non baking soda having place.