The Escort Who Stole Breakfast

This is rather embarrassing, but somehow I have unwittingly stolen breakfast. How does one steal breakfast, well something along the lines of this:
Hungry escort needing nourishment, pops into the nearest hotel to her apartment, lets say the a rather large international chain. I ask the reception where breakfast was being served, so into the restaurant I pop. It is a buffet, goody. I look around for staff, none to be had. So I figure I will help myself, and settle up later. The problem is later never came! Apparently, breakfast is included in the price of the room, kinda like the bed I suppose. Well considering how expensive everything else is in the place, I guess they can afford to give breakfast away.

No one came over and asked me anything, I then cheekily, pack myself a rather nice lunch for later on in the afternoon. Bad escort, but hell if they are give away free food, far be it from me to turn it down.

Simplicity.

My (mumbles incoherently) birthday is fast approaching, and as I always do, I like to stop and check the milage on the old chassis, ponder the steps I have taken, and the ones still hopefully, left to come. This year is no different, but what I have noticed is I have more of an appreciation for simple things, simple foods, simple places, not simple people, they will always drive me nuts. There is nothing delightful in the village idiot.

Some of the simple things I have come to appreciate are chips/crisps. Potato chips, plain sea salted chips. Kettle chips have this one down perfectly. Potatoes, oil, salt! Sorted! Don’t get me wrong, their other flavors are wonderful, but in some way they miss the point of a potato chip.

Popcorn! Need I say more. Puffy kernels with sea salt!

Oysters, with lemon, and tabasco pepper.

Vanilla, not the artificial stuff most people associate with vanilla, but the sweet subtle flavors from a vanilla pod.

Lavender, fresh grown on my terrace, when door is open and wind is blowing, lovely scent.

Blueberries, never really appreciated these before, friend on last tour made some fresh blueberry pancakes for me, I ate about 6 of them, and kept texting her how much I appreciated them. If they weren’t so small, I wouldn’t mind peeling them and just eating the skin. Note to self, task for domestic slave. 🙂

Truffles! Smelly things that they are, but so delightful and subtle.

Marseilles Soap, brilliant stuff, I can clean just about anything with this stuff, from floors to clothes.

Crisp white, bleached and starched  to within an inch of its life, linen on beds. Nothing like it.

White, couldn’t live with it in a house, but do appreciate it in small doses.

A good kiss. Not the kind that you try to force, but the one that just happens naturally.

A good cafe, that just isn’t trying to be trendy and hip, here I forgive short latte spoons. In all honesty, they aren’t all that bothered if you stay or go.

Book shops, small ones.

Cookies, homemade.

Hamburgers, greasy.

Milkshakes, thick.

Chocolate, for breakfast.

The Price of Salt

Can someone tell me why anyone would pay 8 euros for a few ounces of salt? There is this new salt on the market from The Himalayas, with amazing health benefits, in fact I am amazed it can’t raise the dead it is such amazing stuff. It is S-A-L-T! Plain old fashion sodium chloride, with some iron thrown in to add the pinkish color. In fact it isn’t even from the Himalayas, it is from Pakistan, about 160 kms from the Himalayas, but I suppose that is about as close as it is going to get to the great mountains, so technically it is sort of Himalayanish. I mean, it is amazing what a bit of packaging and marketing can do, even salt can be hip, and over priced. I love the net.

The Market

One of the things I enjoy doing is cooking in my free time, I am always having dinner parties, whipping together a ‘lil somethin’ in my kitchen. I seriously wish I had brought a larger bag on this my trip to Barcelona. I would have been filling it with legs of pata negra, fois gras, dried mushrooms, and oh somehow I would have managed to get the fresh wild strawberries in there as well. I have been longing to make a jam from these beauties.

Well, since I couldn’t bring back all the culinary delights I found, I took pictures, I hope these fill you with as much delight as they did me. Enjoy.

Fruit and Veg

Pata Negra

More again!

Even more, pigs are catching hell in Spain

More pata negra, other hams and cheeses

More live seafood

Seafood so fresh, it still moves

Razor Clams, my favorite.

Just shot this morning!

This would be hard to explain to customs.

A big fat pigeon.

Pheasant

Dried Mushrooms

Dried wild mushrooms

Fresh mushrooms

Wild strawberries! YUMMY!

Chocolates

Chocolate roses-middle

Ducks catch hell too-frois gras

Chesses

Carne

Olives

Salted fish, and meats.

Seafood, larger stand

Octopi

Goose eggs

Hen and ostrich eggs

Market entrance.

Here piggy, piggy!

If you have cloven hooves, weigh about 100 kilos, like to eat acorns, have a snout, like to run and play in the woods, and make grunting noises, don’t move to Spain! They will eat you. But if you have all of these qualities, and still decide to move there, be rest assured you will not be slaughtered in vain, you  will be put to good use.

Iberian pork, my god the stuff is delightful, tasty and I am not just talking about the famous ham-Jamón ibérico, or pata negra. This is just one way in which to enjoy this delicious variety of pig, you can also get it served raw with various sauces depending on which restaurant you decide to try in Barcelona. I went to a lovely restaurant called PLA hidden down some twisty turny streets located close to Plaza St. Jaume. Once you know where you are going, it is easy. Plus I love late night cities, where you can make a reservation to go out to dinner at 10:30, and still get served a delicious meal. We skipped the starter, because we had gorged ourselves earlier in the afternoon on some delicious tapas at Tapas24, now don’t ask me what I had, I just pointed to the coolest sounding thing on the menu and a dish appeared. One, I think was a crunchy fried pork trotter, de-boned with a fried egg. YUMMY!

Anyway, so we were ushered in by a rather dishy looking waiter with serious bedhead, in fact it was so serious, it could only have be contrived, arms like a weight lifter, and the sweetest accent when he spoke English. This delicious specimen pouring the wine.

He told us what was on offer, and then gave us the menus. the standard bottle of cava was ordered, it was dry crisp and went down a treat. My friend ordered the special of the day, which was a lovely sticky rice-almost risotto like cooked in a fish stock with squid ink as garnish and pulpo fried on top. I had this:

The BRAISED IBERIAN PORK sirloin! The tiny medallions melted in your mouth, and left behind a flavor you just don’t get in factory raised pigs. Half way through my friend and I switched and he too was melting with pleasure at how tasty the dish was. We followed with a pear tartin, cava, coffee for me, and a digestive which I think if there wasn’t food in my stomach to coat it, would have eaten right through. It was a wonderful Catalan blueberry liqueur.