Thoughts and questions raised by 21 days of vegetarianism.

After three weeks of vegetarianism, and food experiments with chickpeas, veggie patties, tofu and nuts-for-protein-boosts-in-salads, I have one thought:

1)  I should try to get lovey with lentils in my next meal.

And two questions:

1)  Where is the bout of tiredness I expected?

and

2)  Why aren’t I slimmer and more fabulous yet?

Perhaps I’m just impatient.  I always did suspect as much.

DISCLAIMER:  the latter of my questions is not the reason for becoming a veggie…but would certainly be a welcome side effect.

Stuff I thought I understood, but apparently don’t at all.

BEER

I went out last night to one of many newfangled ’boutique’ beer bars Brisbane is sporting, and learned that I can now not at all lay claim to knowing anything about the amber drink at all.  Seriously, the stuff has become wine!

It’s now possible to have conversations about the ‘chocolatey’ hints or the ‘organically grown hops’ your pint’s sporting.  (Actually, just as I wrote that, I asked myself if hops is actually grown at all?  Well, anyway…)  But yeah, tastes are so varied – sometimes awful, sometimes coma-inducingly great – that a quick shot glass of your potential choice should really be distributed before buying.  Or at least a description, again wine-like to the effect of:

Gently matured in our vault’s Spanish stainless steel barrels, this full-bodied, tropical bouquet of summer fruits delights and tantalises the palate with its masculine combination of peach, mango and maiz notes, blended generously with golden Tasmanian hops.

I’m sure that there made no sense at all (and that my hipstery-micro-brewery friends would draw my attention to the same) but dangnabbit!  I just can’t talk about beer anymore.  *Sniff*

And these friends’ hipstery-micro-brewery status brings me to the next thing I no longer can claim an understanding of.

HIPSTERS

Hipsters seemed not to exist and then be omnipresent a heartbeat later, kinda around the same time ‘facebook’ became a verb.  I’m now fairly convinced that my former flatmate and a major percentage of my university acquaintance were masquerading as hipsters before there was a term for it, and that all hipsters under the age of 24 morphed gelatinously out of the now all but obsolete stripy-stockinged emo population that used to frequent any city’s main shopping strip.

Regardless, like the chavs I was introduced to in England and later struggled to find their counterparts here in Australia, hipters were first pointed out to me by a friend in Europe, thereby remaining foreign concept to me for a long time.  Especially as no one I knew would admit to being one, despite their suspiciousness.   Finally though, I thought I’d mastered the ability to identify a hipster.

Feeling thus educated, last night I was sitting with a friend on a bench in West End while she gnawed her way through a disappointing kebab, and basked in the glow of schooling her in all things ironic facial hair, chunky and/or unnecessary glasses, pointy mens shoes, vintage tees and old bikes-coupled-with-too-much-Apple-gadgetry as such examples walked by.

Feeling suitably learned, we went to the aforementioned boutique beer bar (the one-time source of bacon beer I’m told) where at certain point, our tired feet welcomed a mass exodus of hipters from a table near ours.

Hipsters?  She asked me.  I nodded.  Case in point closed.

But it was not to be.

HIPsters?  Nahhhhhhhhh.  Added one of our crew.  Nah, they’re not being ironic enough.  They’d have to be wearing those tight, girlish pants, but in a different shade.  Referencing a band from the 90s or something.

And so, last night a valuable lesson was learned.  I’ll never understand what a hipster is, as irony has never been my friend.

IRONY

Since Alanis Morisette’s ‘Ironic’, as if trying to mix a cocktail without enough ingredients I’ve just never quite known how many levels to add to an unfortunate situation before irony’s achieved.

Isn’t rain on your wedding day just plain old bad luck?  Wouldn’t it only be ironic if the bride was also a meteorologist who’d predicted her own sunshine and cornflower blue skies?

I hope so.  If not, then my Morisette-induced, 12-year-old self’s misunderstanding of irony has had the flow on effect of allowing me to appreciate neither hipsters, nor micro breweries.

And that would be a tragedy.

Of Food and Flatmates

So, to have a very Carrie Bradshaw moment, after moving into a temporary studio apartment in the centre of Madrid, I’ve gotten to thinking.  “Is this the height of coolness, or a desperate attempt to live a life that I’m not yet equipped to live?”

The apartment is very cute; wonderful for a single girl to enjoy and call her own.  It’s a split room job, polished floors and high ceilings, a faux-leather sofa and a wall made entirely of shelving (enough for even the most rampant trinket horder to stash all her bits and pieces).  There are several lighting options to suit mood, and a balcony at the height of the young tree outside.  True, I’d change the pitch black entrance hallway before the front door, my kitchen wouldn’t be in a cupboard, and my shower would be big enough to shave comfortably in; but as this is not a place where I’ll live for ever, those are things that I can forgive.

View from my temporary haven's window. So easy to be a voyeur in Spain...

The first night I was here, I decided not to eat, and instead filled what space was left in the wardrobe (my friend has a lot of clothes), with the contents of my bag.  The next day, I headed out the front door, strolled past the fountained plaza and as yet unopened bars and cafés near it, and went in search of sustinence.  Coffee first, and then food.

Coming home, and beginning to fill my fridge with my first food purchases, I had a thought.

“That was expensive, for not much reward.”

That is to say, I’d brought home the bare necessities (cereal, milk, rice, pasta, veggies and…tuna – yes, again tuna!) and had been forced to hand over 20€ without even trying.

Now, I’m not a brand girl (except for chocolate and coffee) and believe what my mother always told me; that all over the world, there are factories where the same products exit via two doors.    One door, grey and boring for the black and white no name brands to come out, and the other, a sparkly pink door with it’s own personal fairy lit marching band, where the glittery name brands exit and are stamped with an inflated price of their own.  This may or may not be a slightly cheesed up version of my mother’s advice, but the point still stands.  The morning in question, my first shopping outing in Madrid, I had entered in Día (known cheap-o supermarket) and had not even indulged in farmer’s market, organic produce and Kellogg’s cereal.  The milk was UHT (like all milk is in Spain, but that’s another complaint) and the pasta was certainly not made in Italy, nor had any pretence at all of having been.  Neither had I splurged on wine, or chocolate, or fruit, or the saucepan and dishwashing liquid that I’d seen my little flat had lacked.  That would all have to come later.

After observing my not even full bar fridge for a moment or two, I became aware of a little voice whispering at my shoulder.

“It’s because you’re single.”

“Pardon, little voice?”

“You’re buying for one person.”

“Well, what do you expect?  That I buy for you too?  Or the family I hope to have someday?”

Sadly, the little voice was right.  Eating for one, and not eating crap, is not cheap.  You can buy all the rice, potatoes, salt and garlic that you want, sure.  But once you have the idea to dress it up a little with something green, it’s time to say adiós to loose change paying for the weekly shop.

I, anyway, can’t actually do a weekly shop, as I eat vastly more than a rabbit does, and so in shopping for only a few days, already come home lugging a few bags as it is.  In some share houses, my biceps haven’t had this work out, as I’ve shared food, and thus had help with the lugging of bags.

Upon leaving home, I moved in with Kieran, a excellent friend who also turned out to be an excellent flatmate (these are more difficult to find then they may seem).  We had a shared interest in hungover underwear shopping, blue chaise lounges, the blue and grey monochrome of our neighbour’s washing line, eggs for breakfast, strong tea drunk on the back deck and hunting rogue mice that were invincible to any bait.  And importantly, we only fought one and a half times.  The first, when he criticised an outfit that I was going to wear; after which I told him to shove it and he would not, where upon I reacted by hitting him with a boot.  And the second; a half-hearted moment when I was making curry the way I’d always seen it made, and he got just a teensy bit uppity about my mum’s quick and busy method before spouting a small monologue about India and insisting that he continue.  The fact that his version was light years superior is beside the point.

Kieran's alphabet magnets were awesome. Beat pen and paper anyday.

Anyway, we shared food.  And it made shopping easier and cheaper and more fun to return from the shops together, working our abs by tensing and relaxing them as we lifted shopping bags like dumbells.  Sharing food only became just a teensy bit of a problem when the fact raised its ugly head that I ate just a teensy bit more than he.  Which only came to light one day when I ate a teensy bit of what was his share of some leftovers we’d cooked together.  Which I think was in fact his aforementioned superior curry; thus adding fuel to the half-hearted fire.  From which point I simply ate less, that in itself being an effort I must say.  But all this did explain how it was that he could fit into my jeans without any effort, while I had to suck in a little to do the same.

My next house was an airy flat of a minimum of five, maximum of seven in Barcelona, myself at one point being the only un-Brazilian.  We didn’t share anything, but occasionally cooked together before enjoying an impromptu 5am mojito.  These flatmates taught me how many carrots should ideally go in a carrot and chocolate cake (eight or nine), how to make empadão (a chicken dream) and, finally and most importantly for humankind, where I learned how to cook rice without either searing the pot black, or ending up with a lump of indistinguishable grey smush.  Nothing scary food-wise happened in this flat, except for when Thorsten, the German counterpart, brought home a leg of jamón one day and we all learned how to carve off little slices with the strange sort of long, un-serrated knives that evidently one is to use.  I wasn’t a fan of this piece of pig in my kitchen (its hoof still attached), as it smelt and tasted as I imagined (and still imagine) human flesh must smell and taste.

5am mojitos in jars. Scary jamón in background.

House number three.  I had my second, and equally successful attempt at moving in with already made friends – the lovely Mandy and Kelsey.  Mandy and I met in Spanish class, and had already bonded over food in a major way, her serving me a sort of mini dinner once or twice a week between her classes, and before my skipping off to serve beer in large quantities to drunken Englishmen on La Rambla.  During our time as flatmates, I learned how to make potatoes interesting, and she learned that potatoes are not, in fact, a “free” vegetable.

This sad fact came to her one night when at around 10pm, after returning from giving a late class and having eaten a sizeable plate of her “pink pasta” (spiral pasta, butter and tomato sauce), she returned to the living room with a plate of freshly fried and salted potato cubes.  While trying to decipher the Catalán news program on TV Kelsey and I had heard them spitting away in the kitchen and thought it better not to ask.  But ask we had to, as Mandy happily sat down to eat her second massive helping of carbohydrates in almost as many minutes.

“What are you eating?”

“Potatoes.”

“Didn’t you just eat pasta?”

“Yep.”

“Potatoes are like pasta, you know.  It’s a huge source of carbs.”

“What do you mean?  It’s a vegetable.  Veggies are free food.”

“Who said that?”

“Everyone knows that.”

“Yeah, but potatoes don’t count.”

This went on for some time, and finally became a world-shattering realisation for Mandy of the variety that I don’t really think will ever allow her to return to her life of old.  Sort of like for me, when at 5 years old I had a nightmare where in Michael Jackson was waiting for me in the darkened spare bedroom at my grandparents’, before chasing me through their house.  (Soon after, I learned that he had not always been the translucent, white, destroyed of nose specimen I’d grown so used to seeing.  And my world hasn’t been the same since).

Old flatties, Brazilian and otherwise...

Kelsey too had a special relationship with food in our house, involving mostly her amazing ability to whip up delicious hors d’œuvres suitable for the sort of entertaining we didn’t yet consider ourselves old enough to partake in.  Of special note were her honey-roasted tomatoes with balsamic vinegar, and a certain dip which remains curious to this day; namely cream cheese, purple grapes and coriander leaves, sliced and mixed together.  Kelsey also introduced quimwah (a grain which I can’t spell) to my life, taught me how to make salad dressings from scratch, and was the author of some amazing, yet odd molasses and chocolate chip cookies (made, or not made as the case may be, for the arrival of a very dashing Venezuelan one lazy Sunday afternoon).

Incredible as her cooking skills could be, Kelsey herself ate simply.  She was often seen staring at her shelf in the fridge – remembering yet again that she’d forgotten to go shopping – before taking out an apple, a block of cheese and a knife.  She’d be found moments later, sitting on the couch and expertly shearing off slices of each, before eating them in a sort of apple-cheese-apple sandwhich.  Sometimes, cheese-apple-cheese.

I was reminded off all this as I lugged home my first shop, before returning to the supermarket to lug home the saucepan and cleaning materials I lacked.  I was actually very lucky that month.  A friend not currently in Madrid was letting me use her cute little studio for a relative pittance; paying basically the bills themselves.  This was such a gift, that it was actually making me a little lazy.  Lying in, making breakfast slowly before deciding whether or not to go out and achieve anything that particular day.  Soon, I realised that my diary had filled up with trips here and there out of the city, and I hadn’t yet put any elbow grease into finding myself a place for when my friend returned.

True, I wasn’t going to find myself a place quite like this one.  600€ a month is too much for me; much as I’d like to tap into my inner Carrie Bradshaw and live alone and mostly fabulously in the centre of an exciting city.  Though, as I remember, even Bradshaw, in her special whiny way, complained occasionally about the rent.

“How can you save some money, short term?” I asked myself, watching my shopping bags cut into the palms of my hands.

Survive on rice and chicken stock?  Hmmm, no.  I like food.  Not salmon and sirloin mind, but having colour on my plate.  And not eating things that already look as they’ve been chewed and partially digested.

Grow my own veggies?  Yeahhh.  In a little apartment, sure.  Over a year ago, my new year’s resolution had been to find a place with a rooftop terrace, from which to grow fresh herbs (which I’d of course learn how to include in my soon to be awesome cooking).  Rooftop terrace found, five months later the herbs had yet to eventuate.

Keep the lights turned perpetually off, and live under the glow of candlelight?  Sounds wonderful, though romantic though it may be, would not be practical nor ease my already fairly innate jumpity-ness.  Having been brought up in a land where leaves crackle as merrily as one’s morning Rice Bubbles, and a single spark can birth a blaze which wipes crops clean off the face of the earth, fire danger is always a very real thought in my mind as I watch a tealight candle burn in its little metal dish.  Knowing a candle is burning, I can hardly leave the room for a moment, not even to go to the next.  And anyway.  After a trip to “Natura” (Spain’s answer to Australia’s hippy wannabe shop “Tree of Life”), I found that candles are not actually as cheap as they might be.  And with a burning time of 5 hours each, but diameter of…well…30 centimetres…I would need a good 40 in my flat at any one time to light my way.  And the heat they would give off in a Spanish summer isn’t even worth mentioning.

Paying for one person’s inner city existence isn’t a cheap practice.  Smaller packages of food aren’t proportionately smaller in price, and bulk buying isn’t feasible as the produce rots in the refrigerator before one has had a chance to munch through it.  We are hence limited to choosing one of the two options or trying to agree on a wider range of shared food with flatmates.  Some cities have limited this problem for us, making outdoor eating as cheap as it is in your dreams (I’m looking at you, Berlin and your massive Turkish community!).  But others (Hi there Barcelona and Madrid!) haven’t, leaving us to be as creative as possible with our food preparation.

One of my resolutions this year was to be more creative food-wise, while not spending any more money on sustinence.  What will be acomplished will be interesting, as I am still a little too impressed with myself when I manage to do something simple well – as with my 2007 rice success, the first time I made a good white sauce, and the perfect omelette I fashioned moments ago.

My goals therefore, will be:

• To be able to identify fresh herbs by their leaves
• To know which should go in the major foods of each continent
• To be able to think of something more interesting to serve than pizza, beef stirfry or olives and cheese para picar when people come over to eat
• To enjoy good cheese while not getting as large as said cheese would have me become
• And to spend no more than 30€ per week on store bought food

Let’s see how we go.

A month on a Tuscan hill

The idea of eight weeks at summer camp was daunting even before it began.  Even though I’d done it before, I was aware that it takes a certain type of person to deal with the daily ups and downs of children; in particular, a certain willingness to leave the corners of your adult world behind.  I knew it was possible for me to re-enter this world, but I was feeling painfully aware that I’d been living in a ‘normal’ life for the past six months, during which time I’d more than once felt the absence of creativity or spontaneity.

I “got it” during week five and from that point had a lot more fun being in the childrens’ sphere, as I’d finally re-learned to play.  Though hugely creative and willing to be imaginative, kids and adolescents feel everything very deeply, in a way that is easy to forget you once did too…and the change from seeing them as mini people rather than odd aliens can only be made when you are willing to remember what it was like being knee high to a grasshopper, or gangly of limbs and angry of mind.  Or at least, to be able to acknowledge that this is how they feel.

My first four weeks of camp were held in an 18th Century villa in Tuscany, near the recreational town of Cortona, in the midst of land valued more for its Etruscan artifacts than ability to deal with the dramasa of 68 children as they navigate life, love and the English language.

Who's got a spare house in Tuscany for me?

The villa’s owner, Angelo, was an Italian in his late 50’s, suitably potted of belly as Italians over the age of 40 tend to be.  He ran the villa with his much younger Ukranian wife, Julia (not quite sure how they got together) and three Romanian staff.  Legend has it that Angelo’s first two weeks “at camp” were lovely, and he overly jovial.  However by the time I arrived with the second lot of children (and 50% more than last time), his patience had suffered several blows and he was no longer the bouncy Santa Claus of old.  Perhaps he’d realised that no monetary benefits could balance out the insanity of agreeing to house 68 kids and teens in a villa more fit for yuppie honeymooners and business gatherings.  Such an undertaking was not a recipe for perfect paintwork and unbroken cups, after all.

While the reaction to some instances was an overreaction at best, that to others was not.  Two terror children resided at camp, and all events of a slightly more insane and less forgiving nature could always at some level be accredited to them.  Antonio and Fabio were two 14 year old Romans; big, strong and proud.  Antonio had a case of ADD to complement his already impulsive manner, and Fabio was the regional director’s son…two elements that would prove their exploits to be particularly innovative, and them difficult to get a confession out of, or punish when caught.

Antonio was in my class, and was the sort of student who either looked at you blankly, or with a glint of madness in the eye (depending on how stupid or ridiculous he currently felt in class).  At 14, he was years older and levels below than most of my students, a fact that was made painfully obvious as he flopped unskillfully through the classwork, or devised more and more ingenious ways to leave the room without permission.  I was always incredibly happy to see him go at 12.15, so as to be able to spend the rest of the day watching him scathingly from afar as he ran amok, eluding all attempts to pull him in and supposedly planning his next adventure with Fabio. Some trouble of note that the boys got into included almost setting fire to their room by placing a towel-covered fan on the hot stove in their kitchenette (why two such Romani brats were granted a stove in the first place remains to be answered) and throwing mini fire crackers out of their bedroom window.  The latter offence scored Angelo a visit from the police, as a similar incident a month earlier had destroyed a field of wheat before landing two other boys in juevenile detention.  Angelo was not impressed, and the boys were barely punished.  “They’re only children,” said the heavily-biased regional director, before adding “And look how beautiful they are.”

Such behaviour from the children could be accredited to dud genes, or the excitement of being away at camp.  But I had it on good authority that Italian kids are this way because of their parents.  Now, of course, not all go about setting fire to other people’s belongings, nor feeling lax about their ability to set fire to a staple crop…but they were almost without exception, more quick to talk back than other children I’d known, and less willing to clean, help and tidy.

This was seen most readily during mealtimes.  Food at the villa was simple, good and almost entirely devoid of vegetable product (the teachers, suffering from violent constipation, had to specially request a plate of something derived from the earth at each meal).  But most importantly – and alarmingly – it was served to the children in a three course procession, during which they needed to do nothing except sit and watch the plates come and go.  “Say thank you!”  we reminded the multiple offenders, but it did no good.  Very rarely did you see them thank the wait staff, and even fewer times did they spontaneously stack their dishes to ease the staff’s workload.  It’s not difficult to imagine that this is how their lives are at home.  Food comes and goes, help is begrudgingly given when asked for.

From observing two groups of children and teens over this one month period, it seems that Italian children grow up quicker than other nationalities, and learn how to be “adult”.  Not necessarily responsible adults, mind.  But “adult” in the sense of learning how to deal with the opposite sex, however obviously.  Perhaps it’s the influence of the Mediterranean, the sureness that the sea and sun are only a couple of hours away at any point.  Or, maybe it’s the culture of fashion awareness, of Gucci and friends permeating thorugh their lives.  Regardless, flirting must be a subject taught at school.  One such student, Daniela, had man-hunting down to an art.  And she was only 12.

Daniela and two male friends arrived in my group on the first day of camp, and were so adjoined at the hip that I had to ask if her if they were old childhood friends. “No, I meet they on bus yesterday,” I was informed.  Right. No big deal, really.  A girl can certainly have a few guy friends.  But it soon became clear that she was enjoying an intricate game of being both cat and mouse for these boys.  Daniela had woven a situation in which she was never far from either, sitting on either one’s lap, sometimes while giving another a head massage or calling out to which ever wasn’t currently with her.  Not that she was often with only one of them.  And never with another girl.  Their presence as a threesome, and their fashion choices were so amusing and obvious, that they were soon dubbed Aber, Crombie and Fitch. Fitch was also in my class, and as neither of her men were there with her, she’d enlisted the platonic help of another boy, Andrea, with whom she seemed to get on with splendidly.  Andrea, it seemed, was not interested in Fitch.  Aber and Crombie would have all the Fitch they wanted, or at least, half each.  Why they were both so unwilling to back down was something which we teachers wondered daily.  If a friend of yours so obviously likes someone that you do too, don’t you kinda sorta back off (after having discussed whose 12 and 13 year old love was purer, perhaps?)  But it was a battle to the end, and all tension escalated on pool afternoons.

Fitch felt the need to shower more than the average student before being playfully pushed into the pool, and she’d happily drag one of her admirers in with her to rinse off.  Happily, her bikini top would often come a little loose at the back, and she’d need help to have that tied up.  Or her towel would inexplicably fall off.  Or, maybe her ice cream would need a long lick to clean up all that unruly trail of vanilla heading down her arm.  Towards the end of camp, once Andrea had been roped in to the fun as well, Crombie – under questioning – admitted that “She told us yesterday that we are all just friends”.  Good thing.  She’d be a lot for even four men to handle.  And good luck to her.  At the rate she’s going, she’ll need it.

The set for our first production of Grease

Adolescent delinquents and teenage love foursomes aside, Italian camps were certainly memorable, if not almost completely lacking in vegetable matter.  Once Grease the musical had been choreographed (read, the kids had been forced to enjoy themselves while doing it), Daniela’s bikini top had been secured, sobbing homesickness was over for the moment and the outrageous seven year old had stopped asking to see the “porn” on his roomate’s mobile phones; lunch time wine drinking under the Tuscan sun was an agreeable way to spend part of a summer…especially if when you didn’t have to watch a field of wheat blaze beneath you, and two teenage boys skipping off into the sunset, fire crackers in hand.

All hail El Bocadillo!

There’s a little something in Spain; a snack; a foodstuff; something to stick in your gob when you’re hungry.  But first, let’s just take a moment to cast our minds over what we consider typically ‘Spanish’.  Bull fighters and flamenco.  Right, ok, well good try and we’ll get onto all that later (and I’m sorry in advance for disappointing you with their lack of relevance to normal Spanish life).  So, move on.  In the realm of food, what did we end up with?  A bit of paella, a little taste of tapas…what else?…well…paella…and…tapas?  Yep, yep, yep.  Fresh seafood including almost-never-seen mussels, saffron, perfectly cooked rice; and small little dishes of tasty treats, usually hugely overpriced.  Yummy and awesome.  Both go amazingly well with white wine.

Ok, so no, that’s not what we’re dealing with.

Now, this little baby isn’t what you’d expect.  It’s not difficult to make, in fact, taking little to no thought, patience, or really any skills at all.  You won’t have to source the ingredients in a special supermarket, or ask your Indian, Thai, Israeli, Italian or Cuban friends to bring back spices and interesting bits of herbage and fun from their recent holidays back home.  Nor will you spend hours in preparation; need to prop a recipe book up behind a plastic, spatter-proof guard before reading it thoroughly; whisk, beat, sautee or glaze anything.

Drumroll please………let me introduce you to:  The Bocadillo.

Ingredients needed:

• Baguette bread
• Ham
• Ham
• Ham
• Probably cheese, to compensate for all that ham
• Ham
• Tomatoes
• Oil and garlic if you’re feeling fancy
• Ham

This is what you do.

• Cut the baguette and the dirtiest, juiciest of your tomatoes lengthways
• Peel a clove of garlic
• Rub the clove over the open baguette, both sides.  Repeat, if your hands aren’t already smelly enough.
• Do similarly with the cut tomato.  You’ll get a little bit sticky, but just deal with it.
• Place ham, ham, ham, ham and ham on the baguette.
• Cheese too, unless you’re a ham nut.

You’re done.  Let’s have a little look at what you’ve done.  Yeah, I know, it’s what we’d call a sandwhich, isn’t it?  A ‘sub’ if you’re from New York, fine, but let’s not get into that here….

The hilarious thing about the bocadillo, is that it’s among the simplest food the world has to offer, along with cornflakes and milk, vegemite on toast and the baked bean jaffle (with or without cheese).  It’s easy to make and eat, and in no way reflects any sort of austere, creative culinary genius.

I was forced to first stand up and take note when I suffered a gnawing in my stomach about four days after having settled in Barcelona (I, of course, had more than one previous gnawing, but had been able to settle that with the sugary cake and white toast breakfast my hostel insisted on providing for free.  Not that I was in a position to bitch about processed carbohydrates.  I’d recently borrowed $1000 from my parents to be hungry in Barcelona in the first place.  Realising that my innards were threatening to soon digest themselves, I looked around for a sushi bar as you do, for at home we are overrun with corner-sized mini sushi bars staffed by equally mini Asian attendant serving questionable to excellent sushi.  Not finding one within visible distance, I took myself for a walk.  Nothing eventuated, and while considering either inflicting my abominable Spanish upon a unsuspecting passing local in a plea for sushi help, or eating another of the two Euro felafel wraps I’d scoffed with my friend Anita before she choofed off back to Australia and left me to begin a life here, I noticed that almost everyone around me had a French stick in their gob.

‘Odd,’ I thought.  ‘We’re at least 100km from the French border.’
I was not partial to the baguette at the best of times, as I’d just been in Paris with Anita and had had a horrible time trying to convice the city’s extremely polite, decent, patient and accomodating bakery staff (!!) that the ‘uuuurgghhhh’ we would each utter was ‘un’ and the sound after was ‘pain’, which we’d been told meant bread (it could of course have mean ‘shag’ and we’d have been none the wiser.)  This wretched daily ritual which had driven me crazy with pent-up frustration at the impossibility of the French language and the insane popularity of its national bread all came flashing back the moment I noticed the Spanish sea of half-chewed French sticks.

Still, I didn’t partake in the bocadillo fun.

I didn’t think much more about them until being forced to make their accquaintance in Spanish class a couple of weeks later, when during our unit on food, our teacher went on an almost fifteen minute rant about the wonder that is el bocadillo, and its cousin la tortilla. At best comprising bread, ham, tomatoes, eggs, potatoes, garlic and oil between them, they were a students’ food wet dream she said; a gift from heaven from the saint of study and little time or money; a joy to behold and eat.

‘Huh!’ I scoffed, solemnly swearing never to eat one, that I would instead be a wonder in the kitchen of the other, more international expat-ty delicacy sort of sense.

This did not last for long, as eventually, you are invited to a party where little cubes of tortilla are served, or you again suffer street-side gnawing in your tummy and must consider the bocadillo.  And upon doing so, you are forced to admit that these little suckers are actually damn tasty.  A genius idea actually, to rub tomato, oil and garlic into bread (two up on the Italians, who settled with oil and salt).  And while jamón still reminds me a little of how I imagine human flesh must taste like and has an aftertaste not unlike a stuffy bedroom; when it’s disguised beneath tomato and smothered between two layers of crusty bread, I’ve got to admit that it too is worthy of a sort of thoughtful applause.

But no too much.  I mean, the pig’s foot is plainly visible as you carve meat off its leg.  If I wasn’t sure that my revulsion was just psuedo hippie, hypocritical I-eat-meat-but-freak-out-when-I-see-where-it-comes-from, I’d wager a guess that I was in a past life.

Pork, you see, is something which upon considering a move to Spain, you’ll have to learn to like, or pretend that you do.  It’s just that it’s everywhere.  Sometimes even places where you’d expect that it wouldn’t be, and where it’s clearly not been invited:  like in a vegetarian tortilla in a Mexican restaurant.  ‘Meat’ is something a centimetre or two thick, probably with juices coming from it, criteria which its thinly sliced cousin jamón can’t fulfill.

Admitting that you don’t really flip over the taste of jamón is not going to win you friends in Spain, certainly not amongst the Spanish and interestingly enough, not really amongst foreigners either – as people generally flip over the stuff.  It’s unclear whether it’s the fun of carving your own meat directly from the leg that taps into a long lost tribal tendency currently unfulfilled by modern life, or if it’s the…well, nothing more really…it must be the tribal thing.

My personal aversion to jamón is, I feel, psychological, stemming from a disgust at eating meat which has been sitting out on a kitchen bench top for who knows how long.  Yes, it’s been cured, salted and preserved better than Michelle Pfeiffer, but…it’s meat!  Little bitty things are frequently born in it!  My argument – though adequately thought out and well organised – hasn’t convinced anyone, as upon dishing it out I usually find myself talking to Brazilians who at that moment are eating some sort of fish soup or meat stew scooped from a day old bench pot, or reminded by Andalusians that the climate here is also incredibly hot, and that should it be insanitary to keep meat out of the fridge in Australia, it would certainly be here too: Ergo, it’s perfectly fine for you to eat this wedge of jamón I’m brandishing at you.  This, from a housemate who in the same breath complains about the coming hoards of cockroaches that will soon invade our lives and sanities.  ‘And you’re going to continue leaving meat out for them??!!’ I want to interject, but somehow can’t, as I’m sure she has a counter argument about cockroaches not being partial to jamón.  Like me.  Maybe they also think it slightly iffy to consume bench meat?

Little truths

1)  Warm tea may as well just be dirty water.

2)  The world looks a little better upside down.

3)  The first few seconds of running and the feeling that you could keep going forever make up for the pain and blisters that will enevitably follow.

4)  When feeling a little emo about the world, get yourself up to the top of the nearest mountain, hill, building, or step ladder; as with height comes perspective.

5)  A day with 100 things on the to do list is easier to face than a day with 1.

6)  Belly laughing is an essential pleasure not to be thought of as a treat.

7)  Roast potato with all manner of vegetables and cheese kicks arse.

8)  It would be great to have the internet at home.

9)  $8 for a pair of boots that lasted 5 years is a bargain in the truest sense of the world, and mourning their passing is justified and right.

10)  Telling and hearing the truth is as difficult as pulling a fluffy toy through a barbed wire fence…but must be told and heard regardless.