Posted by Chris Showers on June 6th, 2010.
 The butcher shops here in Spain come complete with hanging "legs of ham" to entice customers to buy (especially look where the red arrow is pointing). Have you ever woken up in the morning and had a hankering for ham? If you answered affirmatively to that question and you live in Spain, you’re in luck: a nice “leg of ham” is waiting for you just around the corner at your neighborhood deli. Yes, you heard right… here in Spain “ham legs” like the ones pictured above are suspended from the air and sold in places like grocery stores and delicatessens.
As an American, I was a little put off the first time I saw one of these ham legs literally “hanging around” in a grocery store. In fact, I remember asking myself how these things don’t go bad after being stuck in the middle of the store with no refrigeration whatsoever for days (or even months) on end. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on November 29th, 2009.
 During the winter, churros stands like this one begin to crop up all over Burgos. It’s easy to eat these delicious delicacies; however, it’s somewhat more complex to order them. The winter has finally arrived to Burgos. The days are darker, the temperatures are lower, and the people of the city are sporting their “Eskimo attire” to combat the cold. Of course, if you don’t like bundling up to stay warm, you could try another “heat-seeking” technique: eating freshly made churros.
Since the weather has begun to get colder, churros stands (like the one pictured above) have been popping up all over the place around the city. For those of you who don’t know what churros are, they’re basically rod-shaped pieces of fried dough that are covered in sugar — the Spanish version of the doughnut. The truth is, nothing quite warms you up on a winter day like some freshly fried churros along with a little hot chocolate to accompany them.
Despite their delectable goodness, ordering churros from a street vendor posed a bit of a problem for me when I first moved to Spain. It turns out that ordering churros is more difficult than you might think. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on June 4th, 2009.
I just made a quick trip to the supermarket to buy a few items: bread, milk, potato chips, lunch meat, and chocolate bars. When I got to the checkout counter and paid the cashier, she returned my change and handed me what I like to call my “grocery bag ration” for the day, which for today’s purchase consisted of just one bag.
Now, I’m not trying to complain, but getting everything into one measly little plastic bag is a little tricky when you have a mixture of fragile and non-fragile items to carry home. For instance, in today’s purchase I had items that could be squashed (bread and chips) and items that could do the squashing (large, heavy boxes of milk). Why couldn’t the cashier have given me just one more bag? After all, she surely saw that with just one bag I was struggling to get all my items “jammed” inside without smashing anything.
This is a trend that I see in virtually every supermarket that I visit in Spain. In fact, no matter what store I go to, it’s always the cashier who keeps the bags stashed away behind the counter –almost like a hidden treasure– only to be handed out sparingly. In the USA, when you bag your own groceries at a store you usually have full access to all the plastic bags you want… here in Spain, however, the bags are rationed and you have to “sweet talk” the cashier to get more than your daily ”allotment.”
I understand that giving people less bags can cut down on costs for the store and that less plastic can save resources and help the environment. Yet still, I sometimes think that they go a little “too far” here with the whole “bag rationing” thing. Of course, that’s just my opinion. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on May 10th, 2009.
 Ice cream stands like this one have been popping up all over the city of Burgos recently. Just within the last week or two, lots of odd-looking, brown booths like the one pictured above have mysteriously appeared around the city of Burgos. At first, I wasn’t really sure what these little booths were for since they were all closed and locked up very tightly. Later, however, when the weather began to break here, these strange little buildings that resemble tool sheds began to open their “hatches” and I soon realized that they were ice cream booths designed to keep passersby cool on those hot, summer Burgos days.
I think it’s a cool (literally “cool”) idea to have ice cream booths strategically placed around the city. I guess, in a way, these booths are the Spanish version of the familiar “ice cream truck man” that I grew up with in the States. Speaking of the ice cream truck man, does anybody know if there are ice cream trucks in Spain? Personally, I’ve never seen one here… I guess the booth is as close as they get to the whole “mobile frozen treats” thing.
Here’s something fun for this post. Would everyone who reads this post please write a short comment below telling me what your favorite ice cream flavor is? Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on April 19th, 2009.
 Nothing like some spaghetti sauce from a box rather than a jar. Yum! Ever since arriving in Spain in September, I have been eating my spaghetti without sauce. I would put butter on it, or maybe some cheese, but never spaghetti sauce. Why? Here in Spain spaghetti sauce is only sold in boxes – not in jars — and until recently I just couldn’t bring myself to eat “fried tomato” from a cardboard box. In the USA when you want to have some sauce with your spaghetti, you buy a little Ragú in a jar and have at it. For the longest time, I just couldn’t comprehend how “cardboard box sauce” could be the same.
Anyway, things have changed now. I finally got tired of eating my spaghetti dry and bought a box of “fried tomato” at the supermarket down the street. As you can see in the above photo, the box came complete with a picture of a tomato on the front (for us foreigners to easily recognize it) and there was even an “easy open top.” Continue reading this post…
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