Life in Culebrón

When I went to the hole in the wall to get some cash there was a turrón stall in my way. Turrón is a sweet confectionery, associated with the Spanish Christmas, made with almonds, oil, and sugar. In the average supermarket a 250g bar of turrón will cost about 2.50€, most supermarkets carry something slightly better at, maybe 10€ a bar, but most steer away from the handcrafted product because it is breathtakingly expensive. There are all sorts of varieties of turrón, but the traditional ones are the hard and brittle Alicante variety and the soft, oozing oil Jijona style. The varieties of turrón, with chocolate or fruit are really for people who don't like turrón; they aren't much to do with turrón and are trading on the name. The chances are that if you have some turrón this Christmas, it will be ordinary production line stuff. You might like it; you might not; but it's unlikely to send you into paroxysms of delight. The same is probably true of the majority of foodstuffs th...

Besides perfume and cars there are multiple adverts on Spanish telly for food. Particularly for fast food or franchised food chains - Foster's Hollywood, KFC, Domino's - or for quick to eat food - Casa Tarradellas pizzas, Yatekomo noodles. Now I'm not a discerning diner. I was a big fan of Spam, I like crabsticks and I still buy el Pozo meat products despite seeing the stomach turning documentary on TV. But I have to say that the adverts are putting me off a bit. The food is all so shiny and bathed in red or yellow sauce of dubious parentage. Eating with hands squidged over with sauce appears to be a positive thing. I have a Spanish pal who is very set in his ways. From what I can tell he eats a lot of very traditional Pinoso food. If it's not local then, whether it's at home in a restaurant, he sticks to the tried and tested - grilled meat, stews, rice dishes and the like. I usually meet this friend around 12.30 so, a long hour later, I'm saying goodbye because...

Spain is, in essence, like the rest of Western Europe. Lots of freedoms, well organised and safe. That doesn't mean it's hard to find things to complain about. People complain in France, in Norway and in the UK. It's dead easy to moan about Spain. On the macro scale watching the continual bickering and backbiting of national level politicians or the point scoring over laws that only paid up members of the KKK could be against in essence (anti rape or protecting animals) is so wearing. On the micro level small, everyday, things like the outrageous banking charges or the scandalous unreliability of official websites seems depressingly inevitable. On a day to day level though I keep running into tiny things that make me grin from ear to ear. So, this week a bit of positivity and, with a bit of luck, a bit shorter too. A Sunday morning, nothing planned, my partner busy with something in the house, too busy to come out to play. I popped over to have a look at the cypress tree ma...

We had a couple of pals who moved from Pinoso to the coast. One of the reasons they gave for their move was that the food in Pinoso was a bit boring. Its true that if you're after Mexican or Thai or French cuisine then Pinoso isn't the perfect spot. I suppose it's a matter of taste (sic) but I definitely like the local offer. And you'll know, if you've ever got past the most basic conversation with a local, that food is a safe, and always interesting, conversation in Spain. If Brits talk about weather then the Spanish talk about food. Every area of Spain has its specialities and every region is quite sure that they have the best food. The one thing that all Spaniards agree on is that Spain has the best food in the world.  There is something very purist about Spanish food. If you're British, and you eat meat, then your Shepherd's Pie is not quite the same as your mum's or your brother's. You add garlic or tomato or mushrooms and they don't. This d...

I bought some porridge oats the other day. The supermarket ones were missing from the shelf so I shelled out double the price for some branded ones, Oatabix. There was a label on the side of the packet. It was a bit like the label you get on electrical goods to show how energy efficient they are. The one on food is called Nutri-Score. I'd never seen it before but it's simple enough. Green is good, orangey yellows are okey dokey and red is a certain ticket to purgatory. Apparently the French invented the label using some UK Food Standards Agency scoring system. It uses seven indicators: energy (lots of calories) -bad, sugar -bad, saturated fats -bad, sodium -bad, fibre - good, protein - good. So far, so good. It's not that hard to see the sense. Obviously it's an oversimplification but that's the idea; to make it simple and fast. I think it's a good idea. Now, imagine you're Spanish and you think that the Mediterranean diet is the bee's knees even though ...

I have a friend who's been vegetarian for as long as I've known her and that's nearly 50 years. Back in the 1970s she said that the one thing that had made her waiver, when she first stopped eating meat, was the smell of cooking bacon.  Bacon sandwiches are a bit of a Thompson family tradition at Christmas time. I like them best with white, flat bread, with butter and with the bacon tending towards crispy. Bacon sandwiches are easy enough to buy in bars in Spain though they're not entirely to specification. They usually come in baguette type bread and, when I order one, I'm usually asked if I want "just" bacon which Spaniards find a little odd; the usual suggestion from the server is to add a little fried cheese or at least some mayo. There is only one remaining chain of fast food sandwich shops in the shopping centres of Spain and they sell lots of bacon rolls from basic ones with just cheese added through to ones that are full of crispy chicken, lettuce,...

One of my early blog entries was about Spam . I was probably suffering withdrawal symptoms and I'd just discovered the delights of mortadella. I must like fatty meat products of doubtful provenance because the other day I was attracted to the design on a tin which showed some sort of processed meat. It was called magro and I don't remember having tried it before. Magro is unmistakably similar to Plumrose plopped ham with chalk - if you're old enough you'll remember the TV advert and if you're not your mind will still be nimble enough to work it out. As I sampled the magro I wondered if there was a blog to be written about the Spanish things that had replaced what had been UK staples. Cola-Cao for Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate, Hero bitter orange jam for Robertson's or Frank Cooper's marmalade and so on. No, that wasn't blog material. Far too mundane. Most of it would simply be about trade names. There are some things, the sort of things we occasion...

People, in general, seem to be very interested in food. Spaniards certainly are. I think I've said before that the first time I ever managed to catch the drift of a conversation in Spanish, when I presumed that the discussion would centre on Wittgenstein or Nietzsche or, perhaps, the novels of Kafka it turned out to be an impassioned debate about the pros and cons of adding peas, or not, to some sort of stew. Spanish food tends to plainness. Spicy is, generally, not seen as good. Recipes are often traditional and made from the ingredients to hand. It's permissible to argue about whether tortilla de patatas should have onion or not but basically the recipe is eggs, potatoes, oil, salt and nothing else. Woe betide the TV chef who thinks a clove of garlic or a couple capers might spice it up a bit. That's why Jamie Oliver got so much stick about chorizo in paella. Paella and arroz (rice) are interchangeable words in some situations but paella has fixed versions. If you want to...

I was in a bar this morning. The bar is called Arturo but the boss isn't; his name is Salvador or Salva to his friends. Arturo is a nice bar, an ordinary bar. Plenty of Britons use it but we tend to be mid or late morning users. Earlyish morning it's a pretty Spanish environment. Clientele wise it's for anybody and everybody from pensioners and office workers to parents on the school run and working class blokes. From what I can gather lots of Spaniards seem to leave home without a decent breakfast. I get the idea that most shower the night before so they're ready to go in the morning. It seems to be up and out rather than dawdling over toast and cereals. But regular food stops, and a real interest in food, are very Spanish traits. Anytime between nine and eleven in the morning overall wearing blokes down tools and open up their lunch-boxes. In a similar time slot bars the length and breadth of Spain fill up with people getting something to eat as a sort of more s...

What goes into a paella is a bit of a moot point. Valencian paella usually contains white rice, meat (usually chicken or rabbit) garrofó (a sort of bean), saffron and rosemary and, of course, olive oil. There are plenty of variations but most of them replace or add to the meat with, say, snails, seafood or fish and the beans with maybe artichokes or cauliflower. You may remember that, a couple of years ago, Jamie Oliver the British chef, suggested a paella made with onions, carrots, parsley, red pepper, tomato puree, chicken stock, frozen peas chicken thighs and chorizo. He received death threats from enraged Spaniards. They were appalled by the recipe in general but especially about the inclusion of chorizo. I suppose it is a bit like calling something made from quorn and onions in a soy  sauce gravy topped off with mashed yams a Shepherd's Pie. I doubt though that the British newspapers would be able to mine the rich seam of national outrage in defence of the Shepherd's Pie...

Patricia and Jason have just opened a new Bed and Breakfast business here in Culebrón - the Sunny Vista Casa Rural . They've done a really nice job on it too. It looks great. As a double celebration, for both the opening and for Patricia's birthday, the owners hosted a party. Never ones to miss out on a knees up Maggie and I turned up at around 3.30 pm, in the middle of Spanish lunchtime, when most locals would be eating at home. Later I was both surprised, and pleased for the Batram's, that so many of the villagers put in an appearance. Forty some years ago I had a Spanish couple stay with me in Peterborough. They flew into Heathrow so I took them for a pub lunch in Windsor. "You'll have to try British beer," I said, to Jaime. He literally spat it out. "It's hot," he said, "like broth." For the rest of the holiday he would only drink lager. He never complained about the taste of that terrible, 1980s, fizzy, British lager but he did...

This morning Spanish radio was quoting from an article in the Times. The original impetus for the Times story came from a scientific paper in the Lancet which predicted that Spaniards, by 2040, will be the longest lived nation in the World, overtaking the Japanese. It's not much of a predicted difference - 85.8 years for the Spanish and 85.7 for the Japanese. If RNE 1 can pinch an idea from the Times. which pinched it from the Lancet, I don't see why I shouldn't join in by appropriating information from the freebie newspaper 20 minutos. The prediction for the UK is 83.3 years by the way. The 20 minutos title was "They drink, they smoke; why do Spaniards live so long?" In the piece it says that more Spaniards than Brits smoke, 23% versus 16%, the alcohol intake is more or less the same and both nations sleep, on average, the same number of hours. The Times suggested a few key differences. Apparently Spaniards walk more, not in a strenuous way but in the idea ...

Egg and chips is a typical Spanish dish. Egg and chips is a typical English dish too. I wouldn't be surprised if half the world has a similar claim to egg and chips. Of course there can be lots of differences between one plateful of egg and chips and another dependant on the quality of the ingredients and the preparation. I like my bacon sandwiches in white bread with lots of butter and with crispy but cooled bacon. I know people who are appalled at the idea of butter and white bread and pour ketchup or brown sauce on theirs. So preparation, ingredients and personal taste all make a difference when we're talking food. Sometimes Spanish people ask me if I eat British or Spanish food at home. I suppose the question is whether I eat paella or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding because, most of the time, the stuff I cook is probably stateless. I might think it's chilli con carne or biryani but a Mexican (or is that a Texan) and an Indian wouldn't recognise it as such. And...

There are fifty provinces in Spain and two autonomous cities on the North African coast. Then there are the islands. Each province and all of the islands have a capital and Ceuta and Melilla have a similar sort of "capital" status. Over the years we've bagged most of those towns so that it's just Palencia and Melilla to go. Until last week we were also missing Ibiza and Formentera. But not now. It takes only 35 minutes in the air, more or less, from Alicante to Ibiza. Nonetheless, it took us something like six or seven hours to get there. The plane being four hours late didn't help. Then there was a slight hiccough with the pickup minibus to take us to the hire car. Actually the car was quite odd. I'd taken out insurance to cover the 1200€ insurance excess, which cost about 50€, but the car hire itself was flagged as being something less than a euro a day and that proved to be true. There was a bit of a trick though, I'd been expecting something becaus...

It's been a funny old day. I was expecting music in the streets and a bit of exploration near Caravaca de la Cruz in Murcia but the weather has been terrible and I've hardly strayed from the kitchen and living room. My food intake has been a bit odd too. Maggie made an apple pie which I was very happy to help her eat but that was a while ago. I just decided to have a packet of Knorr soup - Thai soup. Whilst I was waiting for it to thicken up I had some peanut butter on bread. My total committent to a healthy, fat and sugar free, diet is almost complete. Spanish people occasionally ask me whether I eat British or Spanish. I suppose I tend to eat British unless I go out but, then again, most of the stuff I eat is probably without nationality. I don't do a lot of rice with rabbit and snails or faseguras but neither do I do a lot of roast beef with Yorkshires or steak and kidney pie. Spaghetti with mushrooms, bacon and onions in a yoghurt and balsamic vinegar sauce is Ita...

I'm not much of a cook though I can usually produce something that is, at least, edible. That's not always the case; new recipes tend to turn out badly and, recently, I have had a series of culinary disasters. I did some beef, tomato and olive thing that tasted of salt and nothing else. There was another concoction that I ended up tipping directly into the bin, something with lots of cream and garlic. I'm safer when I cook up the lentils or one of the student favourites (well favourite with the one time students who are now beginning to draw their pensions or die) like spag bol and chilli con carne. Nonetheless my version of kebabs with chorizo is OK and that spaghetti with yoghurt and mushrooms and bacon isn't bad either. My shepherd's pie's perfectly tasty and there are plenty more in my repertoire that, whilst they may not exactly thrill the palette, do, at least, maintain the calorie input without hardship. The stuff that goes into my meals comes from...

The first time I ever caught the sense of a conversation going on around me in Spanish was on a bus in Granada. I'd always thought that Spanish conversations were probably about Goethe or something equally profound but that one was, in fact, about whether peas should or should not be an ingredient of some stew. Food is a topic of conversation close to the hearts of many Spaniards. One of the things that crops up in those food conversations is the Mediterranean diet. If you were to ask me what the Mediterranean diet I'd have to say that I'm not quite sure. I know that it includes more fish than meat, cereals, pulses, nuts, vegetables, fruit, wine and lots of olive oil but I'm a bit hazy on the details. We live pretty close to the Mediterranean. In fact yesterday we were in Santa Pola and if we'd chosen to we could have gone for a paddle, so I should know what the diet is but I don't. One of the confusing things about it is that lots of what seem to be traditi...

For years I didn't own a power drill. I made do with a little hand held job, in fact I often said that I preferred the manual ones. I forget now how it started but, for years, I have been doing online surveys. Sometimes they ask me reasonably sensible things like who I might vote for or how I keep up with news and current affairs. Usually though they ask me annoyingly written and stupid questions about whether I agree more with the statement that a) my bank is friendly, honest and innovative or b) that my bank is chummy, trustworthy and forward thinking. There's no space to say that all banks are equally soulless. money grabbing and intrinsically corrupt. The survey people give me points for doing each survey and I can change the points for things in an online catalogue. The first time I used the points to send pigs to Nicaragua but somewhere along the way I used others to get a power drill. I now know that power drills are better than hand drills. The other day I was a...

Thirty one years ago, in the Bar Lennon in Valencia, the barman turned out to be the chatty type. Having to talk in a mixture of mime, tortured Spanish and broken English was no obstacle to his chattiness. He sang the European anthem. He invited us to the beach and, amazingly, we and he turned up the following morning at the appointed time. He and his pals frolicked, stark naked, in the sea whilst we two Brits toasted ourselves to the colour of boiled crabs and ate all the food. Jaime has been an occasional friend ever since. Time passes. He turned 60 on Thursday. I would be even less impressed to see him in his birthday suit nowadays. Pepa, his long time minder arranged a surprise party in Fuentes de Rubielos​ in Teruel where the two of them have a business renting out a country cottage. It's 300 kilometres from Culebrón to Fuentes so we had to get up earlier than we would have liked on Saturday morning. We made good time though and we were only 10 minutes late for the agreed...

Mossets is, apparently, the Valencian language equivalent of tapa, or, in the plural, tapas. I presume that you know about tapas, it's one of those words that is now as English as coup or zeigeist. Tapas are little snacks. Normally, around these parts we're not big on free tapas. You often get a handful of crisps, a few olives, or some nuts with your beer but it's an optional extra. It's not the same in Andalucia. The last time I was in Guadix I forgot that we had crossed a frontier and I made the typical foreigner abroad mistake of telling the waiter that I hadn't ordered the mini hamburger that he had just put down in front of me. In Andalucia substantial tapas alongside your drink are still dead common. I think of the town I pay my rates to as being called Pinoso but, just to continue the Valenciano lesson, lots of people refer to it by its Valencian name of el Pinós. And the publicity says El Pinós a Mossets or something like Pinoso out for a bite to eat....