a blog confession. and a cheeseburger.

So first off, during the hectic whirlwind that was my mom having surgery/my dad moving/my best friend getting married all in the week that I was back in the States, I did make sure to get my hands on the sorts of food you can't get here in Iberia. This included Mexican food, American Chinese food (as opposed to Spanish Chinese food, and believe me, there's a world of difference), and a Five Guys bacon cheeseburger.

Three words: no regrets there.

And now, the confession: I really didn't want to write this blog post. Ever go through phases where you just. don't. want. to. write in your blog? I sure am right now. I mean, the school year and my time in Bilbao are both drawing to a close, my mind's off in North Carolina at least half the time and seriously, what am I going to write about? "Students frustrating again today"? "Flowers bloom in springtime"? "Pollen worse in Raleigh"?

Full disclosure: blogging regularly is not the easiest thing. Especially when I don't feel I have much to say. Anyone relate? Other bloggers: how do you get past "slumps" in writing?

a field guide to spanish junk food. part 2: gummies

You thought I'd forgotten about this series, didn't you? That I was going to leave you all alone, clueless and overwhelmed in the Spanish candy store, unless all you happened to want were some caramels?

Think again, because today I'm tackling what is probably the most popular and definitely the most overwhelming of the Spanish candy families: gummies, known locally as txutxes or the less-Basquified chuches.

The first thing you're going to notice when you approach the gummy section is how dang much there is to choose from.


only a tiny selection from a local chucheria


Hang on, you're saying, is that an egg? A turtle? A bone? A brain? A twisty-looking something or other?

The first thing to keep in mind is this: if it looks like something, it probably doesn't taste like that thing. Clownfish don't taste like clownfish, and burgers don't taste like burgers. They both taste like generic chemical fruit flavor.

The only exceptions to this rule I can think of are 1) fruits and 2) chilli peppers. Yes, this is Sp- uh, Iberia, where nothing is ever spicy, but these little guys are picantes nonetheless. Way to buck two rules at once, gummy chillis.

The next thing you'll notice is this: they're all priced by weight, so you can mix and match. And for your first time in the den of sugar rush that is the chuchería, this is your best plan of approach. My suggestion? Go through and grab one of everything that looks interesting. Grab one of everything that looks popular, too. Do a taste test and remember which ones were your favorites.

At this point, I've narrowed it down to a couple standbys I go for every time. Red gummies of the Manneken Pis (see middle right-hand side of picture) are reliably wonderful and taste a lot like Swedish fish, if you can get past the admitted weirdness inherent in chewing on a tiny peeing boy.
Cola bottles are good and, come to think of it, another exception to the "things don't taste like what they look like" rule.

My very favorites, though, are the bizarre fruit licorice tubes filled with cream (see just below Manneken Pis). Picture a Twizzler or an Australian fruit licorice, filled with the filling of a Cow Tale, and you pretty much have the amazing treat you see here. Lucky for you, these are also the most ubiquitous - I've never been in a chucheria without seeing these.

So get after it! Just keep in mind, though, if you're planning on returning to the US, you're going to find yourself stocking up before heading home, then hoarding them Gollum-like upon arrival on American soil. I still bring them back in embarrassing quantities to my friend Elizabeth.


these things: not just blackberry and raspberry flavored anymore

Focaccia: Greatest Hits

And so there I went, blabbering on about different travel styles and the Cinque Terre. Too much self-awareness, especially when I know what you people really want.

Food.

And so here are what I´m going to call my Top Three Focaccia Moments, even though really the pesto-mozzarella one I had in Genoa should be in here. But it´s not, because 1) I couldn´t delay the gratification to take photos and 2) my hands were too freezing to take photos. So my Almost Top Three, as follows:

3. Vegetarian Focaccia.

Ingredients, besides focaccia bread: Black olives, artichoke hearts, mushrooms
Where I ate it: Monterosso
Other notes: Greasy, greasy, greasy, in the best way.

2. Potato-cheese focaccia.

Ingredients, besides focaccia bread: Potato, amazing cheese (asiago?)
Where I ate it: also Monterosso
Other notes: Perfect amount of crunch (from crispy cheese) and squish (from perfectly cooked potato). Mmm.


And the #1 focaccia of my trip, my life, ever:

Ingredients, besides focaccia bread: mozzarella, green beans, focaccia
Where I ate it: Princi bakery, Via Speronari #6, Milan.
Other notes: This is the best baked goods place I´ve ever been to. I know them´s fightin´ words, but I´m sticking with it. There was just enough pesto on here to give you that tangy, salty kick but still left you wanting more rather than overwhelmed. And green beans! Amazing. I wasn´t gonna, but I went back for a cream-filled carnavale pastry afterward. Couldn´t help it. I´m ´bout to start drooling, Homer Simpson-style, just thinking about this place.

I can´t stress this enough: Milan is worth it just for Princi bakery. The place will possibly be packed when you go, so it may take you a while to get your order in. Take it as the good sign it is and use the time to build the anticipation.

i found this blood orange lying on the ground

and then I ate it.

tales of Italy, Carnaval and everything else I ate (not true, only highlights) coming soon.

a field guide to spanish junk food. part 1: caramel family

caramel/coffee/cream varieties


Ah, the chuchería. These junk food meccas are found all over this fine peninsula. The moment you step inside, you realize how much America in fact has to learn in the snacking department. Upwards of 20 varieties of puffed rice snack; gummy and sour treats beyond what you had previously even imagined; caramels with beautiful down-home looking labels. A first visit to one of these places can be daunting - where do you even begin?

Fear not: "A Field Guide to Spanish Junk Food" is here to help you navigate the snacking wonderland you've just discovered. Today, Part 1: the caramel and coffee candy family.

I rounded up some of the more common caramel and coffee flavored candies (OK, common in the Bilbao area), did a tasting (hey, it's educational) and came up with my top 3 most absolutely special and delicious local caramel treats to be found in your local chuchería.

Third Place: La Cafetera, Café con Leche (Pastillas Aroma)

Flavor: Coffee
Where it's from: Pamplona
Why it's awesome: Rich, creamy coffee flavor. And check out that label - this one definitely has the coolest label.

Second Place: Caramelos con Piñones, El Caserío

Flavor: Caramel and pine nuts
Where it's from: Tafalla (Navarra)
Why it's awesome: First flavor you notice: delicate caramel. Second flavor you notice: roasted pine nuts. And there are actual pine nuts in there, so the texture is fun, like a Bit o' Honey if it were hard instead of chewy.

First Place: Caramelos de Malavisco, Confiteria de Santiaguito.

Flavor: Caramel
Where it's from: Bilbao
Why it's awesome: Whoa, look at that amber color! The "Santiaguito" is perfectly simple: just pure caramel flavor, in that amazing "crust on top of a creme brulee" kind of way. Simple things done right, y'all. These are the ones my dad devours when I bring them home to NC.


Go forth and devour caramels.

partial success: mexicanesque pork

check out those sexy scorch marks


To be fair, this effort was kind of doomed from the start. I had wanted to make cochinita pibil, but was unable to find some key ingredients. You know. Annatto seed. Allspice.

Whatever, I thought, I'll just use what I have and we'll see what happens.

It turned out OK. It was basically tasty, but a little dry and too intense in flavor. I'm not going to put the recipe up, just what I'd do differently next time. First, it was kind of dry - I tried to seal the pork and then the casserole up well with aluminum foil, but not airtight enough apparently. I'd cook it on lower heat for a bit longer to make up for that.

Next, the vinegar. I'm just gonna give it to you straight: I saw that a recipe with pork called for vinegar and my Carolina girl DNA just took over and I added too much. I'm honestly not sure it needed any at all.

Also, more onions (like 2-3 instead of just 1) along the bottom of the aluminum foil would have protected the pork from scorching on the bottom (see above).

Oh, well. You win some, you lose some.

i think all that oven wants is a good exorcism

Snickerdoodles

No, they're not complicated. Anyone can make them (although not as many people seem to bake in Iberia as in the USA. I wondered why this was, but now it dawns on me that maybe all the ovens here are as evil as mine, which I cannot get to cook anything without burning it). But anyway, LOOK HOW CUTE THEY ARE.



So cute, right?!

Adapted from the standard Betty Crocker recipe:


3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 egg
1 1/3 (plus change, a heaping 1/3) cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt (but a short 1/4 teaspoon; I've already almost doubled the salt here, let's not get crazy)

Vanilla extract, preferably a lot of it. I like a teaspoon or so. I'd probably add a tablespoon if I weren't over here with limited resources, trying to make my vanilla extract last.

Some more sugar, mixed with some cinnamon, on a little plate.

Heat oven to 400ºF. Or a little less than 200C, if your oven is crazy evil. Like mine.

Mix 3/4 cups sugar, the butter, shortening and eggs in large bowl. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt.

Shape dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. Roll balls in cinnamon-sugar mixture you have on your little plate. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet.

A note for people with evil ovens that love to burn your treats: 1) parchment paper is your friend. Lay it out on the cookie sheet. This helps but is not enough to foil the most determined of evil ovens so 2) make the cookies a little smaller so they cook inside faster. The bonus here is it also makes the cookies more adorable. 3) turn that broiler function on. It's your only hope of your cookies getting a nice tan on top before the bottom is incinerated. Freaking oven.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until set. Which is to say, 5 minutes in an Evil Iberian Oven. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

Makes 40 tiny cookies, or like 20 regular-sized ones.

the catalan snack that changed my life

Check out this raw tomato, just chillin' on my plate like it ain't no thang.


It's finally happened, folks. I think I've found my gateway drug to raw tomato enjoyment.

Regular readers will recall my long-standing distaste for raw tomatoes. I had almost resigned myself to a life of missing out on that sharp, acid bite of a raw tomato that people with more fortunate tastebuds are always raving about.

Then, last saturday, came pa amb tomàquet. That's right, you clever linguists: bread and tomato. It's crazy simple: toasted bread, rubbed with garlic, smeared with a raw tomato cut in half, and drizzled with olive oil. Oh no, you don't get to cook it once the tomato's on there: you just rub that tomato snot all over the place, then go to town.

I tried it; I liked it.

Then I had it again on Sunday; I loved it.

Then, curious to see if perhaps it was just something in that magical Catalan air, the same something that had possibly influenced the fantastical thought lives of Salvador Dali and Antoni Gaudi, I bought my own crusty bread and a tomato back in Bilbao.

I made it myself; I liked that, too (though not as much as the Sunday one; see picture. Seriously, that stuff was killer).


Sunday's p amb t


I'm still not up to full tomatoes yet, but that distinctive flavor and tomato snot are right there, on the bread, and I'm pretty into it.

There's hope for me yet.

la boquería market, barcelona

My loot from the market: raspberries, strawberries and lychees. none of these were grown in Catalunya.


So about Food People: there are certain "buzz words" that have a tendency to make us go weak in the knees. "Playfully combined texture/flavor" is one; another is "fresh local produce." By golly, do Food People love Fresh Local Produce. That sounded ironic, but it wasn't. I truly do love me some FLP.

La Boquería, Barcelona's famous indoor food market, is not primarily about Fresh Local Produce. La Boqueria is about So Much Variety It Makes Your Head Spin.

Did you want some cherries? Got those from Chile. Mexican Habañero peppers? Got 'em. Strawberries come from Huelva, lychees from Madagascar, durian fruit from Thailand. Dragon fruit, papaya, kiwi, coconut, sweet potatoes, every dried chili you could want.

My Iberian friends and I have had this discussion a few times - which is better, the "Spanish" way (cheap and good quality, but mostly only what's good locally at the time) or the "American" way (the more variety the better, cost and quality - to a certain extent - be darned). After last night in La Boquería, my senses entirely flooded with so many colors, smells and flavors from so many places, I'm not sure I can bring myself to decide which I prefer. Maybe I won't choose at all. Maybe I'll enjoy my FLP here in Bilbao but revel in the memories of the dizziness-inducing multitudes of treats on display this past weekend.

love is in the air. so is onion breath.

Ever noticed something adorable about the souvenir shops in Barcelona, Bilbao or San Sebastian? All those T-shirts and keychains featuring a Basque flag and a Catalan flag squeezed in next to each other, as if to say, "hey, baby, mind if I move in closer?"

This is because Euskal Herria and Catalunya have big regional crushes on each other. Both have languages distinct from Spanish, after all, and both have sizable independence movements. And both have a seriously righteous - sometimes downright intimidatingly so - food tradition. Today being both Valentine's Day and the day I got back from a mini-vacation to Catalunya, I've decided to indulge the puppy love for a few extra days with Catalan Week on Life in la Capital del Mundo.

First up: calçots.

All you really need to know to be successful at the event known as a calçotada is this: get ready to get messy, and you pronounce the "ç" like an "s."



These poor little guys have no idea what's coming...

Phase one: calçot growing. Sometime in the late summer or early fall, plant some nice white onions. Spend the next several months gently packing dirt up around them so they grow long and green, like leeks. These guys have some great instructions if you care to create your own little slice of Catalunya somewhere. Then, in late winter, pull them up! On to phase two: calçot cooking.


To cook calçots: grill to the point of charring. Remove from grill/fire pit, then roll them up into bunches and let them steam in their own goodness until they're a little squishy. You may do this part yourself, or you may, as we did, go to a restaurant where everything up until here is handled for you. Don't worry, I have big plans to grow my own calçots next year.



Phase three: calçot eating. First, put on a bib. This is key if you don't want to wind up with romesco sauce all down your front.



Next, holding calçot by the green part in one hand, strip off the charred outer layer. Allow Anselmo to demonstrate:



Finally, dip calçot in romesco sauce, then, in the immortal words of Tony Bourdain, "coil gracefully into your grateful, gaping maw."






The only appropriate response to a calçotada invitation.

dreams really do come true.

Those of you who know me (and shoot, probably a few who don't) will doubtless recall my long standing obsession with going to a calçotada.

In brief summary, a calçotada is a Catalan tradition that involves going to a field where onions have been packed into the ground such that they mutate and become long stalks, then charring the living daylights out of them, then letting them steam in their own goodness. Then it's over the lips, over the gums, look out stomach, here it comes!

I'm happy to report that tomorrow morning I get to cross that particular life goal off my list. We leave at some crazy hour like 6 AM, fly into Barcelona, where my friend Anselmo will pick us up in his chariot and whisk us away to a fantastical place where onions grow in stalks and have been patiently waiting all winter for us to eat them. If we're lucky, we may even get a song-and-dance number out of the onions and Romescu sauce (a la "Be Our Guest").

In Defense of Foodies

An article came out recently on CNN Eatocracy about, basically, why "foodie" is a dirty word among chefs. I'm gonna lay it out here: it made me mad.

I should confess that I have a vested interest here. For me growing up, "foodie" was not a dirty word at all - it was praise my dad gave me whenever I was a good little eater. It meant you loved food, were willing to try new dishes and enjoyed discussing food with people. That's it.

Sometime between my upbringing in a food-loving and minimally pretentious house (my family's from Asheboro, NC, for goodness' sake), "foodie" acquired some negative connotations. My friend Marti describes foodies as "gross," "navel-gazing" and the foodie movement as "[l]ike some kind of commercialization or trendifying of the love I felt for food." Seattle Weekly writer Jason Sheehan (quoted on Eatocracy) takes it a step further, calling foodies "coup-counting, lock-jawed, cake-eating, nose-in-the-air dimwits."

OK, so let's be honest here. When people who are passionate about food are that quick to declare themselves absolutely not foodies, what they're really trying to do is distance themselves from people who are elitist and more interested in the impression they make on others than the actual food in front of them.

Let me ask you this. Why is it that adventure travelers can swap Everest-climbing stories or Bruce Springsteen fans can trade tales of the time they were at this concert and they swear the Boss actually looked at them, but the minute a foodie mentions to another foodie how good that mole they had down in Puebla was, or how sweet and down-to-earth Elena Arzak really is, or how perfect North Carolina Sandhills peaches are in the summer, they are immediately branded disingenuous and elitist?

Since when is it by definition elitist and affected to share my passion with other people who have the same passion?

Let's get even more honest, though, since I was really giving anti-foodie food lovers the benefit of the doubt there. In some cases, it seems an awful lot like distancing themselves from the elitist boors they call foodies is a way to show how much more elite they are than the elite.

Because here's what frustrates me about exhortations from anti-foodies to "shut up and eat:" you know they're not about to. Of course they are still going to talk about food; they're interested in it and for Pete's sake, talking is what people who are interested in something do when they're with others who share their interest. And so what may have been intended as a battle cry for the purity of flavor, untinged by the flapping of gums about it, ends up sounding like: "I can talk about food; you can't."

Another common complaint against foodies, so the argument goes, is that it's a label used to differentiate oneself in a separate (higher) social class. Of course there are plenty of people who will seize whatever they can in a bid of "look how rich I am," but I'm calling BS on foodie-ism being intrinsically so.

First of all, people of the very lowest income brackets can get ingredients and take an interest in how to put them together in tasty ways. They can appreciate things they think taste good, and they can talk with their friends about it. For goodness' sake, have we learned nothing from Anthony Bourdain's countless diatribes about how the best cuisines of every nation sprung from necessity - poor people figuring out how to cook the cheapest things well? If anything's elitist, it's the assumption that people without a high income can't be foodies.

Second of all, and I know this is a crazy thought, but terms exist to differentiate things from other things. What do I mean here? Not all people are fascinated by food. This doesn't make them less civilized or lower-class any more than not being a kayaker or a pop art fan or a ukelele player.

People have different interests, and not everyone's is food. Anyone who looks down on people with different interests then theirs is first and foremost antisocial, not a foodie.

Oh, but cooks hate foodies, you say. Foodies are always being jerks in restaurants and making the chefs come out so they can look important in front of their friends. Foodies are always sending food back because they can. Foodies are only interested in chasing trends, not the purity of flavor.

Here's the thing: you haven't just described foodies. You've just described pretentious jerks, obnoxious bullies, and silly trend-chasers. And excuse me, but I guarantee you that there are pretentious jerks, obnoxious bullies and silly trend-chasers who are rock climbers, art fans, ukelele players and so on. We don't stop using the terms "rock climber," "art fan" and "ukelele player" just because there are jerks who do those things. We let the words keep their original meaning.

"Foodie," I should point out, came about as a term to describe people who loved food because "gourmet" sounded too pretentious. Sound familiar? A question for all the foodier-than-thou anti-foodies out there: what term do you suggest? If we go running from "foodie" next, how do we describe people who have a serious interest in food?

Another question: let's say you have a deep respect for cooks as professionals. You truly appreciate good ingredients prepared creatively or even just well and simply. You tip generously. You don't look down on people who don't share your interest in food. Now, how many cooks are seriously going to hate you just because you call yourself a foodie?

I thought not.

A thought for lovers of food: let's spend less energy punishing the language for the behavior of a few pompous jerks and more energy on being good examples of what a foodie really is.

My name is Kit Cox, and I am a foodie.

get ready, because this one's a doozy.

sunset, monte urgull

Jessica and Allison's visit to Basque Country was fantastic, just fantastic. But before I tell you about that, I need to take you back in time about a week. Come with me please...

So my mom had mailed me some packages of gear I had put together to hike the Camino de Santiago this June. Don't you love getting packages in the mail? Especially in a foreign country? I know I do, and so it was with much anticipation that I looked forward to getting these little boxes of goodness from me to myself.

Then they came: the letters from Madrid. We have your packages here, they said, and we hope you weren't wanting to get them too easily. Please come to Madrid in person to pick them up, or else contract an expensive company to do it, but if you choose the company you must send us a copy of your ID, birth certificate, college entrance essay and a drawing from when you were six years old that your parents put up on the fridge. After a long and hectic process that involved lots of document-scanning and talking to post office officials on the phone, I figured out that one could have one's friend go in one's place, provided one's friend was in Madrid and was going to be where one was shortly.


rescued backpack


Eureka. So Allison - who I believe should be recommended for sainthood - went to the post office for me, picked up my huge backpack and brought it all the way up north for me. I luh you, Allison.

But wait, you said. This post has "donosti" and "food" tags. Where is all the food and the picturesqueness?

Patience, grasshopper.

Saturday morning we arrived in Donosti to a surprise:


...IT WAS SPRINGTIME.

We took advantage of the perfect weather to do the following: walk to el peine de los vientos. get Juantxo's for a picnic (Juantxo's is a bar that specializes in sandwiches. Its name is not actually Juantxo's, it's Juantxo Taberna. Enter How Southerners Handle Establishment Names). Play in the sand on the beach. Walk up Monte Urgull for some perfect views of the city at sunset.


Juantxo's on the beach

Then pintxo-poteo was on (I told you we'd get there sometime). We made it to 4 places that night, and I have to say I think it was the best pintxo experience of my life. I hate to be that person saying pretentious-sounding things like "the foie at La Cuchara de San Telmo was revelatory," so I won't (except I sort of just did, in a cheating way). I'll just show you a picture of it and tell you we went back for more the second night.



Another landmark: my first Gilda. Perhaps the most emblematic of Donosti pintxos, the Gilda consists of guindilla peppers, an anchovy and an olive on a stick I wasn't sure I'd be into it - anchovies aren't usually my thing - but this was Donosti, where things you don't like are still somehow delicious. Salty, briny, tart, with a little bite at the end.** We got ours at Bar Haizea, over near La Bretxa market.


Anyway, not going to describe every pintxo. Suffice it to say: Mmm.

Sunday was lots more walking, including a second (sunset) visit to a very lively Peine de los Vientos, the Eduardo Chillida sculpture at one end of the city's La Concha beach walkway. When the tide's coming in or the sea is especially playful, big jets of air and water are forced up the blowhole part of the sculpture. The tide was coming in.



After that, it was time for Jessica's Basque hazing. I took her into Bar Herria, a locale decorated with propaganda, murals of masked men, and photos of political prisoners. I had only been once before, and on a Real Sociedad-Athletic Bilbao game night when every bar was packed and so the atmosphere was a bit different. This is a class of bar called a herriko taberna, or bars that support the (now-illegal) leftist independence party Batasuna. They're the ones with the big basque flag out front. I ought to mention that these bars are not representative of mainstream Basque society - even most people who support independence are heavily opposed to violence.

Basque hazing complete, we were exhausted so we went to bed at the ungodly hour of 10:00 PM. Wuss-out... or opportunity for crazy amounts of sleep? I think you know.

Monday afternoon we parted ways, and I got back to Bilbao yesterday afternoon in time to teach my evening classes.

**a note to my fellow auxiliares in Bilbao - don't try to get a Gilda in Bilbao. They're always messing it up with onion chunks here.

perfect spaghetti.

Scott Conant did a stint on the No Reservations techniques special, explaining how to make the perfect tomato sauce/perfect spaghetti. It is, no surprises, easily the best tomato sauce I've ever made. Want some?

Boiled down (no pun intended), here are the instructions:

Blanche a lot of tomatoes. Pull the skin off. Squeeze the tomatoes to remove the seeds and extra juices. Save some extra juice in case your tomatoes get dry later. (Side note for when you're lazy and it's winter so the fresh tomatoes aren't all that good anyway: you can use canned peeled tomatoes here. Scott Conant would slap me I'm sure, but if you're pressed for time and don't have fresh tomatoes on hand, these work. Just add some white wine to the sauce to cover up your cheap canned tomatoes, you slacker.**) Stick tomatoes in a hot pan with EVOO; add salt. Mash tomatoes up.

In a separate pot over low flame, add lots of garlic, lots of fresh basil and a little crushed red pepper to olive oil to make a "tea."

Add now-infused olive oil (leave the garlic + basil out) to tomato sauce.

Make spaghetti - only 90% of the way done.

Here's the important part: set some of the tomato sauce in a pan. Add the mostly-cooked spaghetti and a little of its starchy water to thicken the sauce. Add a pat of butter. Cook it the rest of the way in the sauce, flipping it in the air a little (confession: I have yet to master this). The flipping in the air aerates it and makes the dish lighter and creamier; the cooking the pasta the rest of the way in the sauce means the sauce is absorbed some into the spaghetti so they're one dish instead of just sopping wet sauce scooped on top.

Done. Mmm.

**Note: I've used canned tomatoes in this several times. Not amazing like fresh, but still makes a better (and cheaper!) sauce than premade. Just sayin'.

hey, Ferran Adria hates bellpeppers, ok?

so pretty, and yet they repulse me


Circa 1991, a 5-year-old me was confronted with something that, to my little girl mind, was truly terrifying.

My parents had ordered pizza with artichokes on it.

Of course, I had no idea what artichokes were, only that they were green and must be gross. Mom and Dad quickly nipped that one in the bud, telling me I didn't have to like them, I just had to try them. You can see what's coming next: little Kathy (yes, I was Kathy then***) tastes artichoke pizza; little Kathy loves artichoke pizza; little Kathy grows up to order artichokes on her pizza all the dang time.

The valuable lesson I learned there was, of course, my parents' philosophy on food adventurousness: you don't have to like everything, but you ought to give everything a try. This has served me well and maybe later I will do a post on the weirdest or most interesting things I have eaten and liked, but for now, I want to talk about the failures. The foods where I tried them, usually really wanting to like them, but couldn't stand them just the same.


First up: raw tomatoes and raw onions. It's a tie for these two - raw onions taste abrasive and have a horrifying texture, and raw tomatoes are gag-inducing and have a horrifying texture. The tomatoes one causes me a lot more grief, though, because people are always getting good tomatoes in the summer in NC and making sandwiches out of them and I know I'm missing out.

Second: Chorizo. I know, I know, I live in Spain and don't like chorizo. The horror. Actually, come to think of it....

Second.five: all cured meats. That's right, country ham, jamon serrano, proscuitto, bacon that is not from America, and all their cousins. I don't actually hate these usually, but never do I love them. Of course I suck it up here: I will eat jamon on things, and obviously when someone gives me a piece of their jamon I eat it and praise its deliciousness. I'm still Southern, people. But sometimes when those cured meats taste really stinky, I do hate them. I'm looking at you, you nasty piece of Virginia country ham messing up that biscuit I was going to eat.

Third: bleu cheese. I go through phases where I am OK with it and where I hate it, and right now I hate it.

Fourth: horseradish. I can't even explain to you how much I hate horseradish. Except you know when you have mustard on something, and the first bite is just a little sour and spice, and then you taste the horseradish in the mustard in that second bite? Yeah, I can't go past bite 1.

aaand fifth: canned tuna on or in anything but tuna salad. Which I made. On a tuna melt. Here tuna winds up on everything: salads, pizza, you name it. True story: once I went with my roommates to a telepizza (think Domino's but much, much worse) to get pizza for a party. They started looking at jamon and tuna pizzas, and I, thinking I was getting around this problem of pizzaingredientsKatadoesn'tlike, requested a 4-cheese pizza. Guess what one of the 4 cheeses is here? BLEU. Cultural adjustment fail.

So... there it is, the embarrassing edibles a self-purported foodie can't bring herself to get on board with. Feels freeing to get that off my chest.



***side note for people who only know me from Spain/this blog: you most definitely canNOT call me Kathy. I go by Kit in America (or "real life"), which you may call me if you promise not to introduce me to a Spanish person as Kit, because then they will forever call me "Keet" which, let's be real, sounds like an ugly bug.

German food: or, how I saw the light

First of all, let me say that I am pleased to report that my German vocabulary has expanded considerably. I can now with some reliability say "good morning," "thank you," and "a hot chocolate with whipped cream, please."

And now, the food.

You would think someone with as much Anthony Bourdain viewing under their belt as I would not fall into the trap of heartlessly stereotyping a nation's cuisine before even going, but apparently, you would be wrong. I braced myself before I went, thinking, "I don't like bratwurst and sauerkraut very much. I certainly hope I can be cool about all that sauerkraut and bratwurst."

In retrospect, if the nation of Germany had wanted to bar me entry for even thinking such a thing, I would hardly blame them. Because - and I'm sure you saw this coming a mile away - food in Germany is varied, and it is really, really good.

I'm not saying you can't have a bad meal in Germany; I'm just saying I didn't have one.***

Highlights: creamy chestnut soup; wild boar with cherry and plum sauce; baked apple on top of crème anglaise with, get ready for it, homemade marzipan where its core used to be. OH YES.

Parmesan-truffle soup and pheasant ravioli with cognac-saffron sauce, at one of these places:



Currywurst, basically bratwurst (yep, turns out I like that sometimes too) cut up and covered with a ketchup-curry powder sauce. If you know me, you know I 1) won't get drunk and 2) have a special fondness for drunk food regardless. This, my friends, is drunk food at its finest.


Currywurst

Hot chocolate mit schlag, or with a hit of fresh, homemade whipped cream on the side. Love, love, love.

Lots of fresh produce - oranges, apples, artichokes and other local items, but also, interestingly, I saw a lot of tropical fruit around. I tried my first fresh lychee nuts in Germany (yes, duh, they are better fresh, by the way).


tropical fruits at Wiesbaden Saturday market




Mom buying fresh bread


Needless to say, I am fully converted.



***This is partly untrue: in my last breakfast at the hotel, the lady who made our eggs and bacon BOILED the bacon. It looked like big grey wobbly tongues. Exception proves the rule.

oh, hello again

I just took a look, and it turns out I haven't posted for two weeks. TWO WEEKS! Oops.

I can explain: I was in America still, but all that had happened was still snow and Christmas and hanging out with my family. There are only so many ways to say "my dad makes a mean cuban sandwich."

Then I was in Germany, and the internet in our hotel was terr-i-ble.

Then I was here for 4 days, but my old friend Doctor Homesickness announced that he was open for business inside my mind again and really, who wants to hear detailed descriptions of how sad you're feeling? Not a travel blog audience, that's for dang sure.

Anyway, the long and short of this is: the blog is back up and running. Sorry for making y'all wait.

Germany post up next!

medieval fair, bilbao

The smell told us where to go. That perfect smell of meat roasting outdoors, the smoke blowing over in the cool winter air.


Oh yes. We had found Bilbao's medieval festival in a long row of tents strung out along the riverbank.

And there was bread, fresh baked by these guys, who kneaded & churned out about 10 loaves a minute.


Lovely afternoon.

Give the people what they want

I promised you all photos of delicious donostiarra food after the long weekend. Here I go making good:

the spread at Zeruko


golden artichokes, Zeruko


Cheese bouquet (order one and they brown it up for you so it's flaky and the cheese is melted), Zeruko.


The standby at A Fuego Negro: poppyseed baguette crunchy, sundried tomato, goat cheese, jamon.


I've found a favorite mussel. La Mejillonera.

Basque Disney?

Hondarribia feels, and I mean this in the most respectful way possible, a bit like Basque Disneyland.

Not in that it's too clean or packed with tourists or full of employees dressed as characters or anything. It's just that you hit a certain street and suddenly you find yourself looking at what Basque Coastal Town Perfection must look like. You don't want to use the words "quaint" or "picturesque" because you know they're too cliche but... this town is all of that. Even cliche, in a good way.


I mean, look at the adorable green-and-white painted fishing village-style houses. It's just a little too perfect.


There are even cute, fuzzy woodland creatures with big, watery eyes (OK, he's a puppy named "Gudari," or "soldier").


And these potted plants! Are you kidding me?

Just when you're about to be overwhelmed by the fairyland adorableness of it all, you remember what that lady you met earlier told you: you must go to Gran Sol. She told you to order whatever you wanted and promised it would be good.

So you find Gran Sol, which is exactly as packed as an excellent pintxo bar on a pretty holiday afternoon should be. You order the first hot pintxo on the menu, the "medieval."

And just like that, the Disneyland metaphor dies. Because while Disney has plenty to offer with respect to picturesque almost-otherworldliness, it is a known fact that theme park food is overpriced and generic.


This is neither of those things.

"You eat this one," the barman explains to you, pointing to the layered green cup, "and you drink this one," indicating the foggy shot glass. You look back at the menu to remind yourself what you're eating/drinking. "Medieval: Mushroom stew with vegetable game, little quail egg, air of spinach and Jaizkibel mist."

Then suddenly it occurs to you: if this were Basque Disneyland, the food couldn't be mediocre or it wouldn't be Basque. You remember that all fairy tales have a magical component: Cinderella has her fairy godmother, Snow White a magic kiss. Here, the magic's all in the food.

You take a bite.

Maybe that lady who sent you here was your fairy godmother...