Food!!!

"Today there will be black rice or paella," Andreu told me on our way to the cafeteria for lunch. "Do you like paella?" he asked me.
"Yes, I do," I answered.
"You can't get good paella anymore," he bemoaned.
"Really? Why's that?" I was a bit incredulous.
"It used to be made with love, now it's made in the interest of fast food. You used to be able to go down to one of the restaurants on the beach and order a really good paella, but not anymore. Not even there. People just cook it. They don't love it. And so many of the people who make it come from other places," he explained.
"Oh." That made some amount of sense. In fact, I am yet to have really good paella in Spain. And here I thought I was just ordering it in all the wrong places...
"Do you know of anywhere you can get good paella?" I asked him, hoping to find someplace to try to get authentic paella. The kind made with love.
He thought and answered, "The best paella, well, my grandmother makes it." That wasn't much help.

La Castañada
Today at lunch, I overheard Arnau trying to explain some traditional fall Catalan foods to Antonio, our resident Colombian. The first food is a roast sweet potato, which was a bit difficult for him to explain only because Spanish has about 3 different words for sweet potato, so he had to explain the actual food rather than relying on a word. I don't know any of the words for sweet potato in Spanish but I had seen them being sold on the streets, so I knew exactly what Arnau was talking about. He went on to explain that roast chestnuts are also common "end of October" foods.
"Mushrooms and chestnuts. That's what you go into the woods to find" Andreu piped in, then added, "chestnuts have a prickly shell that you peel off and then the fruit is inside, but it has another shell you have to peel off."
"They're great in the cold weather too because they keep your hands warm," Arnau continues. He then goes on to try to explain marzipan and notes that it is popularly sold coated in pine nuts, but that it can be expensive. ("Yah, about 20 euros a kilo!" Andreu adds.)

They then went on to talking about catching crawfish with bits of bacon. I have no idea what that had to do with the discussion of typical "End of October" Catalan foods.

Anyhow, now that I know a little more about these things that I've already seen out being sold on the streets (well, the marzipan is sold in bakeries) I'm going to make a more concerted effort to try some. I'm really excited. Especially about the chestnuts, because I've never had one before. I'm expecting to gain first-hand knowledge of what "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" actually smell like. Stay tuned.

Cooking.
On another note completely, I finally cooked tonight. I've been here for three weeks and it's the first time I've cooked besides boiling some ravioli my first week here. Mostly, my diet has consisted of cereal for breakfast, lunch in the company cafeteria, and some bread and tuna fish or soup for dinner. I couldn't bother to do more than that. But about two weeks ago I bought the ingredients to make an easy rice dish I found a recipe for. Today I finally decided to make it. This was also partly aided by the fact that I bought some of my own tupperware to store the leftovers in. The result? It was okay. It was easy and kind of fun to make. Actually, easier than I expected. But the dish had one flavor: salty. And well, I like salty, but I also like a little more complicated flavor palette... Oh well. Next time. Errr, after I've finished my leftovers. Yay! More nights of not cooking!

By the way, all the names in this story have been changed, however, I tried to keep the spirit of the names by employing some of the Catalan names that I have learned. Somehow they all ended up starting with A. Sorry if it's confusing :P

Anyway, I ought to get some sleep. Adèu!