Life: Idiotropic

A rainy day in Puzol... so what to do? Ok, so it wasn't really rainy, but looked like it might rain, so we didn't want to go far, so we took advantage of the potentially bad weather to walk my village and have a "taste" of Puzol... horribly bad churros at a coffee shop that I'll never return to - one that served cheap hot cocoa instead of that thick delicious "chocolate a la taza." Greasy, hard, disgusting churros. I might expect this in a US diner... but in Spain? It's like flying to the US for a "real American hamburger" and eating at McDonald's. It's just wrong.

Our antidote was a stop at Charo Sanchis, our local Charcuterie with the best selection of the best cheese and meats in each "class". Three adults, three slices each of 4 hams. Serrano, Trevelez, a shoulder of Iberico, I think y Iberico. And 4 cheeses... would love to say more, but I took notes and can't find them... eventually I will and will update this.















Bottom line: Though I was warned to start with the cheap and move up because of the flavors, I liked the second ham the best. Now, it's not cheap at all, but the Trevelez from Granada had the best flavor and the lowest grease factor. Let's face it, we don't eat Spanish ham to melt away pounds though watching the twiggy Spanish woman walking around you'd think that Spanish ham and Sangria would be the perfect diet. I think the trick is in the "one bit is enough" method, something that my "but I'm living in Europe and must try everything" attitude has a difficult time adopting. Still, when you only order one slice per person, it does cut down and amazingly enough, our lunch of 4 slices of thinly sliced meat, 4 small slices of cheese, and one wedge of a mushy chirimoya filled us all up completely.

Spanish Ham: The pig makes all the difference. I've never thought much about pigs. They are cut, but I don't eye their chubby pinkness and think, I wonder what you taste like. Here, there are lots of pigs and each type combined with how they are raised (free range pig or farm raised pig) and what they eat make a huge difference on what the flavor will be. So these different types of ham varying in qualities come from different pigs from different regions of Spain. It's like the French cheese guy in Germany who could tell me what side of the hill the cows stood on when they were milked, give them enough time and these Spanish folks can tell you a lot about pigs.

Jamon Serrano 21.90 Euro/kilo
Treveles 31.00 Euro/kilo


Cheese: Ok, so they're biased and I do really love the Dutch cheeses, but I was informed today that though Dutch cheese is good, it all comes from cow milk where here in Spain, they use cow, sheep, and goats milks creating different types of cheeses from all individually and mixed together. Today we tried one from a mix of cow and sheep cheeses. Good, but it's not like I can tell the difference.

A Chirimoya? No clue. It's green on the outside and not perfectly smooth as if someone had left thumbprints all around it. White and mushy inside and shiny black seeds that are more like stones and supposedly toxic if you have teeth enough to break one open. The flavor was good - almost melon-like, but none of us could get over the mushy texture. May be it would be good in ice cream.