Pork leg with hoof anyone?

Shopping in Portugal

Hola all,

Tob and I have spent the day at a campground outside of Madrid cleaning out “Fantastic” organizing and packing up all our stuff. The past week hasn’t been too bad with the beast but it has been a stressor for Tob so we are excited to make the drastic change and trade this in and pick up our teeny tiny Europmobile tomorrow afternoon.

For the next 10 days it will be hostels, hotels and restaurants. We are going to TRY our hardest to find a soccer game to take the kids too. There is one in Zaragoza on the 13th or 14th and then plan to head to Barcelona and visit Melissa (one of Tob’s family friends). She has been generous enough to offer us a place to stay for a night or two while we are there. It will be nice to have someone who speaks both English and Spanish to bounce all of our thoughts and questions off of. There are a lot of things we wander past and just wonder why??? And now we have someone to ask, if we remember our questions of course.

Regarding food our kids aren’t always the most daring food tasters (especially nojah) but they have done a little better this trip and have enjoyed some new favorites. We have enjoyed cracking and eating nuts (except for the chestnuts we recently purchased) although we were brave and tried them again roasted from a street vendor and thought a little more highly of them, but walnuts and almonds are our favorites. Tob and I both have fond memories of my grandma and his grandparents having nuts and a nutcracker when we were little and visited their homes. We hope to instill this tradition at our home and have more nuts available for the kids when we get back. Another family favorite is Olives, green olives, black olives, olives with seeds, but not directly off the tree. We all LOVE THEM. We have eaten lots of pasta and sausages (mostly wild boar). Grocery shopping was a bit of a culture shock as I remember back to walking through our first (Supermercado) 3 weeks ago thinking what in the world are we going to cook and eat? With having 4 plates, 4 bowls, one nonstick scratched and chipped pot and frying pan and then one other pot we didn’t have a lot of options for gourmet cooking however I think we have done pretty well. The kids love Nutella which they have had at home (thanks to Gma Teri) and have eaten many a nutella sandwich here as peanut butter is a rarity. Another thing we have noticed regarding produce here are things are fresh and not mutated to ensure the fruit is larger or comes seedless. We have thoroughly enjoyed the plump grapes from local grape vines even with the seeds. One last thing we will miss when we leave Spain will be the pasteleria’s and panaderia’s. Fresh bread and pastries in Spain are quite the treat.

Anyway I should probably get my dirty children to the showers and dinner made. I think after that there are card games to be played and journals to be written in. We are loving our time together (most of the time anyway) and are looking forward to phase 2 of our trip. Hope to update everyone soon. Adios for now!