Category Archives: Spain

Going Home

July 31, 2012 – 9:12 pm

*This isn’t a funny post, nor is there really a food aspect to it. I know this is a food blog and you expect food, but sometimes it’s okay to break the rules.*

It’s over. I’m in London for the night and head back to the States tomorrow.

At the beginning of this trip I was still overcome with the crippling anxiety and worry that I couldn’t seem to shake. The unease and numbness from being bored, boring, wanting. Of feeling that I was stuck, of needing my comfort zone and relying on it while attempting to thrive in the small box I’d placed myself into.

Whenever someone asks me to try and explain what anxiety is like, I tell them it’s like dealing with a child, someone completely separate from yourself. Like children, anxiety is temperamental and can lash out at any time with seemingly no rhyme or reason. And the more you reason with it and contain its petulant behavior, the more it wants to be heard. There were times when I was so overwhelmed with such heavy anxiety I would be curled on the floor, nauseated to the point of wanting to die. I would speak to my anxiety and bargain with it, pleading for it to work with me. We will get through this together, I’d say, feeling nuttier by the minute. How could I throw caution to the wind and strip away the tethers that comforted me when going to the next town over sent me into a cold and sweaty panic? A person can only handle so much of that before it beats them down, leaving a shadow cast over who they used to be and who they want to be.

Anxiety isn’t as strong as it thinks it is.

In the last 3 months I’ve gone to so many beautiful places, ate many delicious and disgusting things, put myself into situations well outside of my comfort zone and thrived without the burden of anxiety. I quit my JOB, the most stable part of my life! To come to Europe! To cook and eat!

I don’t know what’s going to come of my adventure. Maybe something incredible, maybe nothing but these amazing memories I’ve built. But if nothing else, I pursued something I felt was beyond my grasp and defeated the worst part of my anxiety: the part that was always so convincing when telling me I couldn’t have what I really wanted for myself.

I wouldn’t say I’m lucky, because that discredits the work I put into it. But I feel so lucky.

I wouldn’t say I’m blessed, because that places too much holy into my very secular journey. But I feel so blessed.

Above these, I feel something I forgot I could feel until I got out of my own way and let it peek through layers of senseless worry I’ve accumulated year after year:

So. Fucking. Happy.

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San Sebastian Spain Travel

Trust Issues and Pintxos in San Sebastian, Spain

May 28, 2012 – 1:32 pm

Most decisions made in the wee morning hours after a few glasses of wine aren’t usually very good ones. Whether it’s attempting to lure and capture a probably rabid wild possum; striking up a conversation with an off-his-rocker homeless man because he kind of looks like Uncle Jesse from Full House sans the glorious mullet, token vest, and home; or to call anyone ever for any reason whatsoever, I’ve had my fair share of unique Chardonnay-inspired adventures. Deciding to buy tickets for a next day 9AM bus ride to San Sebastian at 4AM while mooching Internet from center city Madrid and eating 23-and-a-half-hours-old pizza from the 24 hour pizza place is absolutely one of my better ones.

I’ll admit I had no original intent on traveling to Basque country, but after having been told unanimously by many unrelated parties that I absolutely, undoubtedly, indisputably needed to go, it felt impudent to not acquiesce. Just the night prior I’d accepted an invitation for a homemade, traditional Spanish dinner from the girl who owns the apartment I’m renting. In between bites of gaspacho and various tapas we got to talking about obligatory day trips before I leave Spain next week. When I brought up the possibility of heading up north, she locked eyes with me and said in a tone that was upsettingly serious, “you must go to San Sebastian.”

I told her I’d think about it, but didn’t tell her when or if I was going because I was more than certain she’d let herself into my apartment to try on my clothes, or whatever landladies do when their renters vacate the property for any stretch of time. I’m aware this gives clear insight to my baseless trust issues, but I’ve seen too many minutes of nanny cam footage to ever trust anyone again. I’m still not unconvinced there’s a hidden camera in the shower, which is why I shower with the lights off. But she probably thought about that possibility and installed one with night vision, which is why I now also shower fully clothed.

But the point I’m working toward is after so many undivided positive recommendations, I went to San Sebastian and now understand the fanatical praise it’s received. San Sebastian, set on the idyllic, pristine Bay of Biscay at the northernmost part of Spain in Basque country, has the highest concentration of Michelin starred restaurants of any city in Spain and is regarded the hallmark of cuisine in the country. Oh, and the pintxos. Did I not mention the pintxos?

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Madrid Spain Travel

How do You Work Through Your Failures?

May 24, 2012 – 9:16 pm

I was 12 years old and had most of my ingredients sprawled out in front of me. It was the first time I’d ever been in the kitchen to do something other than eat, ask what there was to eat, or wash dishes against my will. My inclination to bake at that point wasn’t because I had any interest in the congruous scientific workings of how baking soda, sugar, fat and flour, when measured correctly, form the perfect balance of soft and chewy. Being 12 years old meant I had an insatiable craving for sugar, and when the last crinkly wrapper of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls hit the trash, I knew I would have to take matters into my own hands. Being 12 years old with ADHD also meant I was remiss in following proper directions.

The semi-failure; edible but not perfect.

What was supposed to have been ½ a teaspoon of baking soda in the written recipe was mistakenly read as ½ a cup by my imprudent youthful eyes, which produced the saltiest, crumbliest chocolate chip cookies to ever assault my mouth. After feting the neighborhood kids’ hapless lips with my briny batch of chocolate chip crumbles and failing to peddle them as “gourmet salted chocolate chip cookies,” I threw the remaining dozen in the garbage along with any remaining interest in baking before sulking away from the kitchen, defeated. What most would shrug off a simple mistake, I understood it as inaptitude writ large and couldn’t shake feeling incompetent. It was years before I ever set foot in another kitchen.

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Madrid Recipes Salty Spain Travel

Paella and the Perils of Shopping for Fish in Spain

May 17, 2012 – 2:39 pm

“What in the name of good Jesus Christ are those?!” My classmate spat out through suppressed gags while pointing at the glass of the fish case.

It was my first cooking class in Madrid and we had just arrived at the local market to pick out fresh ingredients for the class itinerary. It hadn’t been five minutes since we got there before the disgusted student, a middle-aged Canadian woman on vacation with her husband, found something repugnant enough to beckon the name of JC to help her cope with it all. I followed her finger and found the offense in question: a heap of fleshy pink veinous blobs.

A zombie's delight.

I didn’t even have an answer for her, and truthfully, I was only half attentive to what was going on around me at that point. I, too, was fixated on what I can only assume to be HUMAN BRAINS (assumedly…probably) being sold in the fish case. The sight of cerebral matter hanging out with mackerel was almost as disturbing as when I was walking down the sidewalk earlier that morning through a stream of running water, only to look up and realize the “stream of running water” I was sloshing through was coming from an elderly bearded woman squatting and urinating on the walkway. Where was this lady’s ringmaster? I wasn’t sure what circus she ran away from that let her act like such an animal, but that is an image that will never leave my brain and may necessitate some Grade-A therapy when I get back to the States.

Still, I’m not 100% as to what those fleshy oblong lumps are. The sign dubiously read pescado fresca (i.e. “fresh fish”) and when I asked the fish vendor he just laughed and said, “yes! Yes!” before walking in the back room. Even he didn’t know.

In any case, shopping for fish — especially in a country with a veritable smorgasbord of available sea fare — is one part dinner preparation and four parts alien identification. Some of these things have the sort of teeth you can only find in nightmares or vagina dentata, while others have unidentifiable parts and purposes that make you just wish it were taco night. Take this beauty for instance:

Note that the thing above is what I now know to be a monkfish, but in Spain they call it a “rape.” As if it could be anymore terrifying. Later that day I Googled “how to prepare a rape” and judging from the upsetting results, I don’t think I was on the right trail. I’m also pretty sure Google sent my search to the police.

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Granada Spain Travel

Granada, Spain: Visiting Olive Groves and the World’s Most Beautiful View Ever

May 13, 2012 – 7:42 pm

I’ve only been in Spain for two weeks and already I have more stories and pictures than I know what to do with. From taking cooking classes; walking my feet to the point of having steel-thick calluses take residence on my poor, irredeemable soles; buying, storing and putting off dismemberment of a whole baby octopus; and realizing I possess some form of secret streetwalker magnetism that beckons every rent boy and prostitute within a mile’s radius to come speak to me, though I’d really, really prefer they didn’t. It’s been a busy two weeks with many stories to tell, but having just returned from a three day trip to Granada, I’ll begin there.

Before I left the states I’d been told that before I left Spain I absolutely had to visit Granada. Everyone said, It’s beautiful! You’ll love it! Go! And maybe it was the five hour bus ride from Madrid or the Stinky McCheese I was sitting next to, but when I arrived I felt exhausted and grossly underwhelmed. We pulled into the bus station after traveling through what looked to be Madrid 2.0, and I didn’t really see what was so special about this place.

Until I did.

I took another bus into the center city toward where my hotel was situated, and out of nowhere I was slapped across the face with a scene that immediately validated everyone’s praise. Overlooking the city were old houses clustered throughout the steep hillsides, and beyond them, in spite of it being nearly 90 degrees, was a sprawl of snow-capped mountains lightly faded in the distance. Bob Ross would shit himself if he could see this.

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