I'll Take My Chicken Without A Head, Thanks

I seems like I cook more with hamburger meat here than I do at home, where every meal seems to center on chicken. It may be that I can just find more ingredients that I need for hamburger based meals than for chicken meals, but more likely it's the memory I have from our previous experience here:

Stan had gone off to the university to take care of some last minute items before the students arrived and I decided to bake a chicken for our first big midday meal (like the Spanish eat, only not with Spanish food.)  I was feeling pretty proud of myself for cleaning out the chicken--there was more there than I was accustomed to, if you know what I mean--and was preparing the final part of the cleaning when I lifted the chicken only to find that the HEAD WAS STILL ATTACHED TO THE CHICKEN!   Well, my abilities (or courage) only take me so far, so back into the fridge it went until Stan could return to clever it off.  It turns out he wasn't surprised and had already experienced the same thing during preparation of an earlier meal but had spared me the gory details.

We also had another interesting discovery during a subsequent meal.  I was in the middle of preparing some chicken noodle soup when I turned to my small bottle of pepper to add some flavor.  Interestingly, the pepper kept sinking to the bottom of the pan.  Now, we were gifted with many spices from former directors and the "pepper" I had been using was found in a small jar in a cupboard with the rest of the spices.  Kara had complained a couple of times about the gritty taste in some of our meals, but I had responded with something to the effect of, "maybe Spanish salt is just a little courser, it's nothing."  Since I had added "pepper" to virtually every meal we had eaten since arriving, and had tasted nothing very unusual, I really hadn't thought much about it.  But when I noticed its sinking nature in the soup, it caused me to wonder.  Still, I happily, even proudly, fed it to the family, despite their complaints about the texture.  Sure enough, as you may have already guessed by now, it was actually SAND, no doubt a souvenir left behind by a former director's family after a visit to the beach!  How it wound up in the cupboard, I have no idea, but it was a good lesson on the power of association. :)

We have laughed about that a lot over the years, and I'm grateful to say that (1) chicken breasts are readily available and I haven't seen one headed chicken (though I did tell Stan to double check when he picked up a whole chicken for me this week) and (2) I cleared out any odd spices from the cupboard when I arrived.
That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of odd foods in the store. Cassie and I were in line yesterday when we noticed this in the cart in front of us.



There is still plenty of meat hanging above our heads in the store, but they are actually less conspicuously placed than before (or I really am a true Spaniard and just don't see them as unusual anymore!)  We saw goat's heads, eyes and teeth included, in the market, and octopus is pretty common a lot of places.

Still, there is plenty to like.  Spanish are expert yogurt makers, the best I have ever tasted.  Delicious!

This entire aisle (about a quarter of the dairy section in the store) is yogurt.

And they are the absolute BEST at making olive oil. Spain is the biggest producer of producer of olive oil in the world by a long way and the students report that everything they eat is fried in olive oil.

Those bottles on the bottom are easily 2 gallon size and check out the prices.
(The varieties of olive oil are endless and some are more expensive, of course)

We mainly use it for making a dipping sauce for the delicious fresh pan from the panaderia.

Good thing I brought my own spices! :)