Shopping, Thanksgiving, and a Boat Ride

This weekend we went into town for some authentic American BBQ at Alfredo's. In the states Alfredo may specialize predominately in pasta and pizza, but in Madrid he does BBQ. It was a massive feast. We couldn't fit all of our plates on the table. People were starting to look and make comments. Amazingly, though, I managed to eat the whole thing.

Afterwards, we headed to Madrid's version of Central Park - El Retiro - where many Madrileños spend their sundays lounging around and drinking. It is not at all unusual, and certainly not morally questionable, to see groups of middle aged people standing around drinking out of 40s - ála snoop dogg. Just another sunday in the park.

It was surprisingly cheap to rent a rowboat to go out on the little lake in the middle of the park, so here I am, rowing away. Now I can cross that one off the list.

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all of you out there in cyberspace. I hope you had a lovely holiday. I did my best with what is available and ended up making a perfectly acceptable, though far from transcendent, meal for the roomies and myself.

The biggest problem is that Spanish grocery stores, though becoming more Americanized all the time, lack some items that most Americans would consider essentials. Although there is an entire aisle for both olive oil and canned fish products, sage is virtually impossible to come by. Anything vaguely "ethnic" or "spicy" you can forget about. Since Thanksgiving isn't a holiday here, obviously, there were no stacks of turkeys to choose from. Even if it had been a holiday here, Spaniards eat seafood for their major holiday feasts. Anyway, I don't think a whole turkey would have fit in my oven. Instead, I made turkey chops - which were actually very tasty and moist, since all I had to do was sear them in a frying pan for a few minutes. The most challenging dish to acquire, though, was the cranberry sauce. Because I needed it so much I spent a day walking 11 kilometers (round trip) to the American specialty market in the north of the city. It was quite a trek just for the most expensive can of jellied cranberries ever. But I needed it. And it was worth it.