On Ham.. from Home

We are home now and are getting used to living in the same house, establishing a routine, and NOT being on the Mediterranean. The husband and wife part is fun to learn... how to NOT wake up to some idyllic movie scene just off your balcony is a more difficult lesson. Even so, we are getting settled and used to life back home.

So now, I desperately need to catch up on postings and fill in the gaps in the blog that I now realize were HUGE. Time was flying over there!!

We quickly learned just how big of a deal the ham is in Spain. The picture above was taken at the Museo de Jamon in Madrid (not a real museum, but it could be for all the different types of ham that were represented there). They filled every nook and cranny in that place and all over the walls with ham! You could buy it there like a typical deli, or you could try it at the little tapas bar that ran down the center. In case you still aren't convinced of the omnipresence of ham in Spain, take a look at the flavor of these chips we first saw in the Parque de Retiro. Ham flavored Ruffles! The bag was complete with a picture of the legs you see everywhere from which they cut the ham slices directly. When we later visited a grocery store, we saw the wooden leg mounts with bolts where you could secure a leg and cut ham in the comfort of your own home. I would say it's not for the squeamish, but if you taste the ham, you suddenly stop caring about all the pig parts hanging from the ceiling. We ate it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sometimes in between.

Later in the trip, concerned about our cholesterol and the complications of having a heart attack overseas, we opted for seafood soup and aubergines (eggplant). I was on a perpetual hunt for bananas (which, by the way, taste different there, leading me to wonder what is going on with our food) to try to clear the salt out of our systems.

I'll end here because I sound old.
More coming!