Meating Jesus

I was honored enough to be able to attend a very authentic Catalan dinner this past Friday night. The group of students and young professionals that volunteered at the Moodlemoot decided they wanted to do a reunion dinner. We set up a date through a web survey and then the organizer sent around the group menu, which had four options for us to choose from. We got to vote on our favorite option and whichever one won would be the meal requested for us in advance. I looked over the menu choices, and they seemed mostly the same for me, except for #3, which seemed to consist entirely of different kinds of sausage.

Now, some foods are definitely not my favorite, but I will eat almost anything. I like sausage, but it can be kind of heavy, and I do find some of it stomach turning, so I was thinking that I’d vote for any option but #3. However, since I’m open to eating all kinds of thing, I abstained from voting for a few days to see what happened. When I checked back on the survey, with two exceptions, everybody had voted only for option #3. Of the two exceptions, one had voted for all the options, and the other had voted for option #3 and #4. I didn’t bother voting after that. Hard to override 10 votes in favor of sausage with one lone voice crying out in the anti-sausage-wilderness.

Friday night arrived. I showed up to our meeting place in front of the restaurant around 9:35 and then... well... I greeted a few of the others with two kisses, but if people weren’t standing near by me or come to me to greet me in this way, then I didn’t go to them. I just am still a little too unsure of the protocol. Then I look around and realized that the only people I’d kissed were male and I’d only said hello to the girls. But by that time, was it too late to go back and greet them with a kiss? Sod it. I’m a foreigner. I’m going to be awkward. They ought to know that by now.

We finally went in around 10 and were led to a room in the back where a table was set up for us. Each place was set with a white dinner plate that had a clove of raw garlic and a tomato on it. I was glad I didn’t have to go through the stress of figuring out what sort of thing should be ordered at a gathering like this, but I still had no idea what to expect. Finally they brought us three plates of salad to share between the 12 of us, but hardly anyone was touching them. Okay, I thought, I’ll wait. Then they brought out three plates of assorted cheese and three plates of sliced meats, things like sweet ham, chorizo, and other things that look like mortadela (which if you’ll remember I discovered not liking on my pizza a few weeks ago). But no one seemed to be touching the food.

The waiters came around and gave each of us a large slice of bread that had been grilled. And when I say large, I mean large. It was a slice, but it was about 4 inches high and almost a foot wide. Then the action began. Everyone at the table cut their tomato in half and started vigorously rubbing the cut side of the tomato into the bread. Aha! Tomaquet! I’ve heard of this! I thought. I was pretty sure there was oil involved, too, so I kept an eye on what everyone else was doing as I followed suit with my tomato. Yup, the girl next to me picked up the olive oil and drizzled it on her bread and then sprinkled it with a little salt. I did the same. And then... no one was in any hurry to eat their freshly doctored bread.

I don’t think the delayed eating was anything more than just being too busy talking, but since I wasn’t doing much talking, I felt silly just sitting there, watching, waiting for somebody to EAT SOMETHING!

Some people cut their bread in half, some cut off a chunk... Alright, I’m thinking, some eating must be coming. They took slices of the cheese or meat and laid them on top of the bread and began slowly to eat. Okay, cool, I thought, selecting some cheese for mine. Honestly, while I’m sure I could have found something I liked on it, the plate of meat did not look that appealing. Bread, tomato, olive oil, cheese... this is good. But everything is still going so... slowly. I noticed no one had eaten more than half their slice of bread, so I paced myself, though I could have devoured the tomaquet in a heartbeat. I didn’t know if they were waiting for something, but finally I saw that two girls had basically finished theirs, leaving behind only a bit of crust, so I finished mine off.

Then came the second course. More meeeeaaaaaatttt. Three trays with butifarra (a traditional Catalan sausage), alioli (garlic mayonnaise), white beans and french fries and three plates with chorizo, chistorra (both types of sausage), bacon and one hamburger each. There was so much butifarra, both white and black (the black kind being blood sausage). There must have been about twelve feet of butifarra in all. I sat back and waited to see how people would eat what had just been set before us. Maiye, sitting across from me, asked, “Are you not hungry?” “Um, I well... I just have eaten so much chee... um I, um, I can usually always eat even if I’m not hungry...” I suppose I could have admitted that I just had no idea what I was doing. It’s not as if she wouldn’t have understood, but I was just so very confused by the question, because nobody else was digging in to the food either.

She encouraged me to try the butifarra negra, so I did. It was not anything like I expected. In fact, it tasted almost more like corn meal than meat. I tried a little bit of the other butifarra (though I’ve already had it a few times before), the chorizo, the chistorra, the beans, the french fries. All of it I’d tried before except the butifarra negra, but I tried a bit of each to see if there was anything I really liked and wanted more of, but I really wasn’t all that hungry, actually. If we ate a third of the second course, I’d say that was a generous estimate.

As the dinner wore on, I did start to talk a little bit more (a glass of wine never hurts with that) and then I got put in the spotlight. Maiye was in charge of volunteers for Moodlemoot and so she worked a lot with my office manager, Israel. Apparently, the two of them had seen me talking to one of the hired “volunteers” (they were called hosts) and it had become a subject of conversation between them that day at the conference. “So Heather,” she said suddenly, “you were doing a little bit of flirting at the Moodlemoot.” I, um, I, what?!? “With one of the hosts... I don’t remember his name...”

I happen to have a pretty good memory for names. It’s not perfect, but if I’ve learned the name, I remember it. “João?” I asked, thinking that perhaps I had talked to the Portuguese host at the event at the MACBA a bit. And then, having confused Moodlemoot with MACBA in my mind, I remembered that during the day at one of the conferences, I had talked some with a guy named Jesús, and I asserted his name a little too quickly. “Haha! You say you weren’t flirting, but you remember his name! I don’t remember his name. Was that the name of the guy you were flirting with?” I think back to my incredibly juicy conversation with Jesús. We talked about what we were studying in school and he recommended some places I should not miss seeing while I’m in Catalunya. Sure, I enjoyed talking to him. I enjoyed talking to anybody that day, but... flirting? I think they just wanted something to gossip about.

“Tell us what happened!” Maiye begged, intrigued to know that I knew who she was referring to. “Tell us! Tell us!” and she started attracting the attention of more people at the table. “Tell us what?” they asked. “Heather is going to tell us about what happened with the boy she was flirting with at the Moodlemoot!” I had said nothing to suggest that anything had happened. My only mistake thus far had been to say his name... But more of them joined in, insisting, “Tell us! Tell us!” I could feel my face burning, from the attention, the awkward topic, and the demand to start story-telling in Spanish with so many people listening. “Nothing happened!” I cried. “Then why are you blushing?” they retorted.

Feeling plucky, I decided that the only thing to do was to give them what they wanted. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.” They all leaned in to hear. “A month or so ago, there was this conference called MoodleMoot,” I started dramatically. “And I was a volunteer at it. And I met this guy named Jesús. And... we talked!” I declared, with great emotion. And then laughing I said, “and that’s it.” They sat back, muttering disappointed sounds, realizing that I had been teasing them. “But really, I don’t even remember what we talked about. I remember he recommended that I go to Montserrat.” “With him?” someone jumped in. “No, just in general.” “Well, if you ever want it, Israel has his phone number,” Maiye informed me a few times. And with that, the subject was finally changed.

After a little lemon sorbet (a dessert that does not tempt me) and some coffee (a substance that often beckons me), we left the restaurant. By that point, it was getting close to 1 AM. Since I had plans to go to Montserrat the next day and I didn’t want to get a terribly late start, I planned on heading straight home. But as some of the others starting making plans to go get a drink and asking me to come with them, I let my arm get twisted. I figured I would never have the chance to see most of these people again, and it was kind of fun being part of a group of locals. In the process of trying to convince me to go, I mentioned that I had to get up at a reasonable hour the next morning. “What have you got planned?” someone asked. “I’m going to Montserrat.” “With Jesús?!?!” “No! with a girl friend!”

Thinking back, I met the woman that I went to Montserrat with the same week that Jesús had been talking to me about it. When she told me she lived near there, and that if I ever wanted to go she’d be happy to meet me and spend the day with me, I was a bit more interested in the offer since I had heard that the place was a must-see. The woman I went with is an ex-Crusade staffer who married a Catalan man while working on staff in Barcelona. We had a nice time talking as fellow Christians, fellow Americans and fellow Crusaders. I already stated in my last post that it was good company.

And I’m sure that this would come as much of a disappointment to my companions from Friday night’s dinner, but the only Jesús I met with at that monastery, tucked away in Catalunya’s serrated mountain, is the real one.