Spanish Nights y Hombres!

Sincere apologies for my time lapse blog posts. I'm finding it hard keeping up, what with so much sightseeing to do.

Especially in Barcelona, Spain, the fabulous Catalan city of Gaudi, tapas, and interesting men. Check out this list of hombres I've found:

1. Bernardo Cortes, the happiest man singer I've ever met on a beachfront.

2. Thoughtful Saturday men with dogs.

3. An earnest hunting man selecting a hairy hare for dinner at the Boqueria.

4. A lovely man who miraculously made a sardine disappear from a box at the Circo Raluy.

5. And this travelogue listicle ends with an extraordinary man who created buildings with curves and creatures, before my great grandmother was born.

Gracias Cabeleros!

Travelogue 2: W&W In France in a Foody Way

A Listicle in two parts:

      1. Kiwis have been known to scoff huhu grubs. They taste of peanut butter apparently. The French (well some of them) prefer snails. They ram their, ‘terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks’ with garlic butter, cook them up and eat them with tongs and a petit pokey pronged fork.

‘They’re hardly a bite,’ complained The H. 

 Daughter 15 spat hers into her napkin at the L’auberge d’Louvre. 'They’re gritty,' she gagged.

I had memories of sandy summer pipis in cornflour thickened sauce.

Our Parisienne host's son had loved them since he was three. She had snail tongs in her cutlery drawer. 

You can buy them at the supermarche. I found them in the frozen section beside the prawns. Pre stuffed. 

Nutritionally they’re not a bad food. Three little french land snails contain: 24 grams of protein & 5 grams of fat as well as generous quantities of iron and magnesium.

No wonder those rubber balls are a grocery staple. And the locals are so relaxed.

1    2.  Le French twist on the free range chicken: Keep head and legs attached at all times. Easier to get to the after life? A blank dead eye stared nowhere, from a pink head and neck in an arched yoga twist from the butcher’s window. I took photos on my phone.

A ruddy butcher scrubbed down his block with a wire brush. Piles of pink mince appeared from the cross grains.

He had seasonal advertising on his door, written in his stout assistant’s swirly French script: basically a variety of edible birds stuffed with their own bits in different ways.

Fois Gras was definitely on my consume-with-crunchy-baguette list.

I balked at the free-range chickens though. Despite having a fancy microwave slash broiler in our historic Parisienne apartment’s one person kitchen.

I mean what on earth would I do with the head and feet? Make bouillon?

The white sausages in the foreground are called Boudin Blanc. Another traditional Xmas Eve dish eaten with stewed apple. I've tried them once, like snails. They're mildly dull. Possibly due to lack of blood.

1    After a short time in France I decided, that in order to assist with reducing the wine mountain cheese consumption has escalated. Everywhere we dined cheese snuck in; even in the thin streets of Paris. 

     Melty ways with cheese to come...