SPAIN: Our Chocolate Fetish!

OK, we can confess that we both have a chocolate fetish and chocolate addiction! I think we might have been born with it as I was eating chocolate since we could remember. Whenever we smell it, taste it and see it we start to feel wonderful! I don't believe it is the sugar which makes it good and neither the cocoa butter fats as the experts want us to believe, as we are not fond of milk chocolate, and I don't like to have the chocolate in those boxes which are ubiquitous around Valentine's day. The higher percent of cocoa the better! Also bittersweet chocolate is wonderful too!

We know we are not alone in this addiction as there are chocolate pastas, chocolate syrup (which I only like the bittersweet version), chocolate pudding, pie, ice cream, almost everything or anything has something made of chocolate! Imagine having a bath in a vat of slightly warm cocoa where we could have a fun guy party in!

Again, we are not alone nor the first ones with this addiction, cacao was in rituals and in a drink long since 1900 BC!  I know there is a dark and evil side of chocolate and cacao in our history with exploitation of the farmers who grow it, the early Europeans who excluded others from enjoying it, but I am not going to get into that discussion now but might save it for another posting. 

                                             

Cacao was wonderful in the ancient times and Mayans and Aztec peoples were using it in religious ceremonies too. If I were a Mayan or Aztec person and lived during the time in history when chocolate was the norm in rituals, I would be always having a religious experience so often that I would probably be cannonised as the Holy Saint of Vagaybonds!

When I was living in Halle, Germany, where a famous chocolate factory is in, there was a day when all the museums were open using a combined bus ticket and admission fee for all of them. The chocolate factory and museum was one of the participants so you could imagine what I was doing that day!

Our latest trip to Madrid, Spain had us both on a chocolate frenzy the moment we left the airport and were in the city centre. We found a cafe and pastry shop which also served hot cocao. It was  "just what the doctor had ordered" and we instantly felt better. We also enjoyed "churros" with the hot cocoa which we also fell in love with.

You could imagine our excitement when we came to know that we could take some of this cacao home and "extend our Madrid experience". We got two different boxes of cacao. One box is not shown here as it didn't exist long enough to photograph it. This version below is for the budget conscious, but very nice too!

We ask that if there are any future chocolate eating parties or even a chocolate swimming party that we be invited to it please?

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Madrid, Spain: Exploring the tapas market!

There are several interesting markets located throughout the city in Madrid. One of these is the market, Mercado de San Miguel, which seems dedicated to tapas. Chris and I were keen on making this market part of our agenda to visit.
Upon entering, one gets the feeling of an up scale "foodie" market. Tourists mixed with locals were walking around, having lunch and some wine as one could buy a nice bottle of wine or a glass of it to enjoy whilst trying different tapas from the various stations. Almost every kind of food imaginable was featured in that market, with tall gas heaters located in different places for clients to keep warm whilst sitting together with some wine and their tapas. A few people pushing around huge carts would go around and collect the waste and plates, cups and clean up the areas after clients had finished, so the market had a clean feel to it.

We wandered around the market first, to get an idea of what every place had to offer, and later we chose some interesting ones made from "bacalao" fish, another spicy ,another was savoury, another was sweet, and after successfully finding a free table where it was more quiet, we tried a paella. There was some venison mixed in the saffron rice and vegetables which was wonderful especially with the wine we had with it!
All the tapas sampling as well as the sight of other foods around us, and it being lunch time, we stayed at our table which was quiet, and we took out our own lunch items which included some local cheese, bread, Spanish (black pig) jambon slices and  a nice quality Spanish wine, which we carried with us in a traditional wine goat skin flask which we knew we would enjoy as we had already tasted it and chose to take it with us on a picnic. This tapas market would be our combined picnic lunch as well as tapas experience.

Various people would wander around the market, being a market, they were selling things like having your caricature drawn, as well as a wandering man from Gambia who looked like he just came from Africa. Smiling as he approached our table, he offered us some African bracelets for free ," because we looked like nice guys". After telling our stories and hearing his story about living in Gambia and in Spain now, he managed to get a donation from us, which I felt good we gave. It is more blessed to give than to receive, although we did receive some good moments with him as well as two souvenir bracelets!

Having finished our tapas experience as well as our lunch, and having a gentle and happy buzz from the wine, we left the market and wandered some more around beautiful  Madrid.

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