Little gilda snack - Barcelona (May 2017)

From Flickr album: Barcelona and Banyoles - May 2017

Yum! Ramen - Vancouver BC (September 2011)

Flickr Album: Vancouver BC

More than meats

supplies for impromptu bbq

At the end of Meats Sweats's description of protein-heavy holiday foods, I noted:

A visit to my life around Christmas would leave you thinking I subsisted entirely on cookies, booze, and spiced liquid eggs. My upcoming June trip to Spain will give me a chance to get another perspective.

Well, yes, there are veggies and variety in Catalonia! Burgers, cupcakes, and pizza too.

cupcake craze hits Barcelona....

...and the burger fad too

Between the rich food of the wedding (the reason for our visit) and the near-constant dining out, we still ate too many sweets and too many meats (and I say that as someone who follows a quasi-paleo diet). But that was entirely due to our lack of a kitchen than it was some to deviance in the culture.

Admit it, you're a little disappointed. Shouldn't there be some place where all food is meat? A kind of Willy Wonka world of salami and steaks, undulating bacon rivers, and soft lard beaches. Yum.

Meat Sweats - Christmas in Catalonia Pt. 2

Christmas Eve dinner - 2 meat dishes, sweets, red wine

Welcome to part 2 of your request for food, fotos, and fotos of food. Stop now if you're vegan.

What struck me most about the food was the amount of meat. Meat, glorious meat. Not a vegetable in sight. No complaints! All of the food was delicious, served with friendship and love, and I enjoyed every bite. But I was surprised at the lack of greenery.

Christmas Eve roast chicken stuffed with sausage, dried fruit, pine nuts


Christmas Day dinner included roast chicken and blood sausage.

One 7-course meal consisted entirely of seafood and meat dishes. A long-promised salad turned out to be a bit of frisee perched on the side of plate, topped with a lonely olive. I devoured them both and reached for the flower arrangement.

Jamon (ham) from La Boqueria market

But, then, it was the holidays. A visit to my life around Christmas would leave you thinking I subsisted entirely on cookies, booze, and spiced liquid eggs.  My upcoming June trip (2013) to Spain will give me a chance to get another perspective.

Note to self: Add Magnesium Citrate to packing list.

Molt de gust - Christmas in Catalonia, Part 1

 
all that remains of Basque pintxos (tapas)

By popular demand, this crowd-inspired post will be about food and fotos and fotos of food. But first, some context.

My little brother Brett, who lives in Geneva, invited me to join him and his girlfriend for Christmas with her family in Barcelona and Banyoles -- that's in the Northeastern part of Spain, Catalonia, for those of you without an atlas handy.

I always have an atlas handy.

That'd be a great name for a detective or adventure man, no? Atlas Handy fired one shot. The waiter fell to the ground with a thunderous thud. Faint, but not dead. Atlas missed. Or, did he? A great cry arose from the great hall beyond. The generalissimo, that evil-doer? El muerto. Atlas Handy finished his scotch, bouncing coins off the waiter's flaccid belly.

Ahem.... Context. Spain. Christmas. I'll make a separate post about the peculiar holiday traditions of Catalonia, but since I was there with a family, my time was spent with them rather than hitting the tourists hi-lights.

Shell sculptures light up the Barcelona night. Christmas Day, one traditional dish was a chicken broth with these kinds of pasta shells (escudella).

Sure, we walked past some famous stuff, but mostly we shopped, cooked, ate, drank. Like being at home, only it was Barcelona and therefore 1000 times more awesome.

fried chicken on bread with mayo, topped with a local pepper & a bit of Basque sausage

Tapas -- small plates, sometimes just a few bites -- are the most popular way to eat out. Also called pintxos (in Basque... check your atlas), most of our meals away from home were eaten in this style. Accompanied by wine and sometimes coffee, we enjoyed tapas as early as 11am and as late as 11pm. Barcelona is a famously late-night, all-night city, so even as we finished a meal at midnight, other people (younger people) were just beginning.

Some places, you sat and ordered from the menu or by pointing at a display case. Other places were more like a buffet, where you wandered around picking bites off the board and balancing a plate, a napkin, a camera, a drink, and some handsome Spanish man -- dear lord, a whole country of black-haired men, sigh.

smoked salmon with roe on bread, topped with "baby eels"

Prices seemed quite reasonable, certainly cheaper than tapas in the U.S. One lunch for 3 people, where we ate *everything* Ron Swanson-style, killed a bottle of wine, and had coffee & desserts was about 75 euro. Sounds like a lot, but the same amount & quality at Portland's Toro Bravo would be 3x that.

At the busier buffet places, your bill was tallied by the number of toothpicks left on your plate -- each bite speared through with one. No idea how people don't cheat that system. Undercover pintxos police?

Post reaching TLDR status. I'll save the topics of meats, markets, and traditional holiday dishes for another post.

I am so hungry now.

local green peppers, not spicy, except sometimes they are

All the fotos: Spain - Christmas 2011

Happy Halloween

Halloween so far in China has consisted of one department store display, accompanied by a Chimpunks-esque (with schoolgirl voices) rendition of The Monster Mash piped through the PA system. And two little kids in costumes. Though maybe those two kids just like to play dress up. Hard to tell.

The new money interest in all things American hasn't quite embraced Halloween, likely because Chinese culture does not make light of the dead, believing that unnecessary discussion of the topic might invite death to visit.

So, while my friends are carving pumpkins, I am eating them stuffed with mushrooms and pork neck.

Gulangyu - Island without cars

Gulangyu Island -- although I'm guessing some part of that word already means "island" -- lies such a short distance off the coast of Xiamen that it takes longer for the ferry to load & unload than it does to cross the water.  Once there, you will immediately notice the lack of cars, though pedestrians should still beware of motorized bikes and the army of bare-chested men carrying goods around the island in carts.

Once the preferred location for foreign embassies, the island retains a European feel but there are many Asian-style gardens, and temples. There are also a lot of pianos, from which the island derives the nickname Piano Island. I would have called it Stair Island.

We also had an opportunity to tour the Sun Yat-sen Library, and visit with staff who hosted us with cold tea (unusual in China but perfect on a particularly hot, humid day) and yummy Xiamen sweet cakes from the island's best bakery.

Brandon jumping over the wall

So, the food. The food, the food, the food. It's a never-ending banquet of one delicious dish after another. Our hosts are making sure we have the best impression of Chinese cuisine and hospitality.

bamboo shoots, sauteed

Yeah, yeah, there was some frog soup and some turtle feet and something bearing a strong resemblance to the visage of a certain carrot-eating fuzzy friend, buck teeth and all staring at me from my plate.... but mostly it's fresh vegetables, delectable meats, and an amazing array of seafood. All local, and much of it organic. Even something as seemingly simple as broth knocks me out.

crispy duck skin

There is one local specialty we have yet to try -- "Buddha Jumping Over The Wall". The story goes that the Buddha was walking along, and smelled something so wonderful and enticing, that he lept over a wall to find it. We asked, What was in this dish?

Every delicious thing. Every one.

Good luck with that

Another ah-ha moment, thinking about the trip to China. Chopsticks.

Chopsticks, chopsticks. Maybe I should practice that. I could get a lot of practice in the remaining 8 months before departure. It's not like I'm a complete loser with them.

In fact, I'm quite adept -- for the first 30 seconds. Then like the Coyote running in air after the Road Runner, some how I see the world dropping away below me and it all falls apart.

Practice will help me not overthink it.

Or, I could take JW's suggestion, and wear a big fork on a ribbon around my neck. Can I get one with an American flag?