FOOD

I just found tasty yoghurt at Mercadona. It has bits of fruit and has flavors of desserts, like apple tart and lemon creme pie. It is very very tasty and worth the extra eighty eurocents.

Speaking of me eating yoghurt, I wanted to talk a bit about the "Mediterranean diet" and its claims of being the healthiest diet on earth. I must admit it seems to be having healthful effects, but I think that a lot of it has to do with the Mediterranean climate, and not just because of the growing season's length causing fresh produce to be more widely available. The climate is such that it is very very rare that it is not good walking weather. And the way that the city is set up, all of the dialy necessities are within walking distance of everything. There is no driving across town to go to Walmart or the like. You walk a block or two away. So, while the food is wonderful, I think the climate and organization of the cities has more to do with the healthful results than just the food itself.

But going back to food, I find that my tastes have been changing quite a bit. I now love olives, specifically green ones stuffed with anchovies. I buy pickles willingly. I have climbed trees to pick almonds and then ate them fried with a bit of olive oil and salt. I've eaten pizza topped with tuna and salmon. I really like salad! It's best with tuna and corn with a dressing of olive oil with balsamic vinegar. I understand how important bread is for life, :-) and rarely buy the sliced kind that is normally consumed in the States. Eating in a restaurant rarely rarely happens (a meal for one person is the equivalent of a week of groceries most of the time!). I'm starting to feel weird about eating eggs for breakfast... Brussel sprouts and cauliflower with bits of bacon can be considered a main dish and a tasty one, at that. Red bell peppers from the fruit stand a few blocks away are wonderful eaten raw. That's about all I can think about right now, but yeah...lots of changes.

I'm enjoying buying groceries now, but am still having problems figuring out how much to buy, in what sorts of amounts and how much I should spend. I haven't had to throw out much food yet (a tiny bit of a green pepper that got ignored a bit too long and there was some bread I probably should have thrown out but ate it with onion soup instead as it was conveniently the hardness of croutons). I ran out of bread Saturday night and couldn't buy any more until today (I didn't try hard enough to find an open bakery on Sunday. My Mercadona and Consum were both closed so I didn't think of other options). It's fun to deal with the responsibility of making sure I eat. Heh. Right. Zucchini is wonderful cooked in olive oil with garlic and lemon juice! Tuna is a staple.

So, that is my blog about food. I hope you enjoyed. I'm going to go eat a piece of chocolate (which is so much better than the majority of chocolate you can find in the States...yummy).