Cookies! (Food and other news…)

We are officially no longer homeless, which is great news!

Tonya and I gave talks in sacrament meeting today, which was fun.

But this post is about food, so here goes…

Food in Spain has been its own adventure. Almost everything is different. Dairy is probably the biggest difference. Dairy in the U.S. tastes awesome–so far in Spain our children have turned their noses up on most dairy products. This makes it a significant challenge since our kids love their cheese-based meals. I honestly don’t know how Natalie is going to survive without a regular diet of quesadillas and black beans.

By the same token, most of the food products seem healthier than in the U.S. Eggs have thicker shells, and the yolks are a richer color. Bread feels and tastes more dense and, at the same time, more fluffy. Meats seem to stay good longer in the fridge. Dairy products taste like they’re good for you (so they’re not as tasty), which makes me worry about what we’re doing to those cows in the U.S.

In the end, I think we’re going to pick up some better food habits here in Spain. By the same token, it has made it a little more difficult to figure out what our kids will eat, and how to give them a taste of home and help them feel they can do this.

Enter cookies…

I probably (definitely!) make too many cookies. But the kids have been bringing it up. A couple of interesting quirks when it comes to your average cookie ingredients in Spain. First, they don’t seem to have readily available what we consider to be “normal” brown sugar. I’ve heard you can get it, but you have to know what to look for in terms of the brand name, and the specific terms you search for. Instead of being packable, the brown sugar pours like granulated white sugar, but the granules are larger and look healthier (if sugar can look healthy). Second, it was difficult to find vanilla extract, so we got vanilla paste instead. Third, chocolate chips are not sold in bags that are big enough to make cookies with, and it was a challenge also to track down chocolate chips.

I’ve heard there’s a Costco somewhere at the edges of the city where you can get American-style chocolate chips (and American sizes of peanut butter containers), but alas, that’s an adventure for a future week.

Today, we made cookies with a different kind of brown sugar, and a different kind of vanilla, and a different kind of chocolate. The cookie dough was still great, and the final product still tasted like cookies.

Other cool things:

1. Having an address is nice! Now that we have an address we’ve been ordering our food instead of going to the grocery store and bringing back bags of food to our “piso.” Grocery delivery is amazing here. On Amazon Fresh in Spain, so long as the order is over 50 euros, they will deliver your groceries for free inside 2 hours. It’s truly amazing, and I don’t see myself personally shopping for a large order of groceries while I’m Europe.
2. El Corte Ingles. I just think it’s funny that there’s a store called “The English Court” that’s like this super fancy mall-like store. It’s an everything store (think a combination of Sears [pre-bankruptcy] meets a high-end Target/Walmart/Grocery chain). I can’t imagine having a very popular store in the USA named “The Spanish Mall” and experiencing anywhere near the success that “El Corte Ingles” seems to enjoy.
3. Kids went to a primary activity yesterday (I did not, but should have gone. Pictures attached at end.) It was missionary-themed and took place at the temple. The temple chapel appears to be our stake center, so that’s cool.
4. Callao. We decided to go and try to find Washi tape for Natalie on Wednesday. We looked up some places on Google maps, and we decided we would try to 1) get Washi tape, AND 2) go out to eat for dinner. We wanted something familiar, so we picked a Mexican taqueria somewhere on Google maps that would likely be near a store that might have washi tape. The store did not have Washi tape, and the Mexican taqueria didn’t open until later (8pm is when dinner restaurants open here). But, when we got off the Metro at Callao (Madrid gives names to their neighborhoods and Callao was this one’s), it was just an amazing place. It was this huge open air walking area that was awesome. A group of string players were playing popular music together, everyone was out walking around, and there were tons of shops. We ate dinner at KFC (because our kids would eat there…sad, but true), and we also stopped at a Chocolateria (a shop devoted entirely to chocolate-themed food [and icecream and churros]). But we also listened to the string group, stopped at a duck store, and generally enjoyed ourselves.
5. Chocolaterias. So, this was a phenomenon my mom had told us about. I was excited to try one for the first time. We ordered the standard churros and chocolate. Basically, you get the churros and dip them in super thick and creamy hot chocolate. You could drink the hot chocolate, but the viscosity approaches pudding. And after we at the churros, I did drink the hot chocolate. It was perfect. The kids did not like the Chocolateria as much as I think they thought they would–they got ice cream instead.
6. Homework and Math. So, one of the cool things about traveling the world is learning that people do things different and think about the world differently. That pervades into everything, and sometimes in unexpected ways. Hazel, who is very good at math, was getting frustrated with math homework the other day. When I stopped to look at what she was up to, I realized that the method they use to teach long division is different here in Spain than in the U.S. This was emotional for Hazel because, with the language being different, she was kind of counting on math (numbers!) to stay the same. For an example of what I’m talking about, check out the long-division method used on page 7 of the PDF here. Fortunately, the numbers are the same, you just write them in different spots. I think Hazel has a handle on it already, but this sent up a big red flag as something we’re going to have to keep an eye on to make sure she keeps progressing in math, and thinking about it in multiple ways so she doesn’t get behind in either country, at least for the time being.

I’m sure there are other things from the week I could bring up, but this is the list that is top of mind. Overall, I’d say things are getting a little more normal, especially with a home. I think life will be “normal” in a couple more weeks, and then it’s off to planning for and executing other adventures once our home base is fully set up. I can’t believe we are now living in Europe!