Looking West

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 8!

After a few truly frigid days—down vests and flannel pajamas—it has warmed up again.  It’s Saturday noon and we need to get outside, all of us.  Swimming at our gym pool?  Or hiking up on the mountain?  I might want to figure out what I want to do before giving the kids a choice.  They’ll want to go swimming for sure.

More tales of the market.  It’s becoming clear to us that the markets here are publicly subsidized, and they are doing an awful lot to bring in younger customers.  As seems to be true throughout much of the world, many people are working longer hours and placing more of a premium on convenience, which means more prepared food, more mega-markets where you can get everything at the same place.  The markets have tried to meet this trend by building supermarkets that are attached right to the market.  So you can get your fish, cheese, produce, etc. at the market and your toilet paper, flour and sugar at the supermarket without having to make two stops.  Our market also delivers.  For three euros, we take a slip of paper around to each of the vendors (including the supermarket), which they fill out after we pay.  They keep the bags of our stuff, we return the slip to the desk, and someone goes around and collects all of our purchases and delivers them to our house at whatever time we want.  This is a godsend because, while there is an elevator at our metro stop near our house, the one near the market only has stairs.  Getting down the stairs from the street to the platform is almost impossible for me.  Also, the delivery service is done by mentally handicapped people who are working to be mainstreamed.  So it’s good to support that.

But the other thing about the markets is that they are not cheap.  Although it’s impossible to tell just by looking at people, I doubt there are too many low-income people shopping there.  The mix of people feels a bit like Whole Foods, or the farmer’s markets in New York City, which are actually quite expensive even though many of them now accept Food Stamps.  So there is still a challenge of how to get good food to low-income communities inexpensively. The Park Slope Food Coop, where we belong in Brooklyn (and where I hopefully will not be in too deep a black hole when I return because of missing too many shifts those last few months) does this pretty well.  You have to work in order to shop there, and every item is only marked up 20% (which makes you realize just how large the markup is at other stores).

The guy who delivered our groceries yesterday told us that there would be a celebration at the market today—cake and cava—to mark the 1 year anniversary of the renovation of the market.  I spent enough time there yesterday so won’t go, but it’s nice to know these things happen.

We had a friend for dinner last night—Karen Paget—who worked in the Carter Administration, was an elected official in Boulder, CO, and has spent the last 12 years writing a book about the CIA and the national student movement.  She is here for a couple of weeks with a friend from her hometown in Iowa to get to know the city and unwind.  Karen and Linda are smart and funny and we had a really lovely dinner.  Alec made a Spanish fisherman’s stew called suquet, which was delicious.  Apparently the recipe evolved from fisherman cooking it on their boats from fish they didn’t think they could sell.  You start with sofrito, which is the basic beginning of many a Spanish dish—onions and tomato sautéed in olive oil until it is totally broken down and browned.  Then you dredge the fish in flour put it in a pan with oil, add the sofrito, add some brandy and light it—very theatrical.  Then fish stock and lots of very thinly sliced potatos.  The recipe was supposed to serve 6 – 8 and the four of us polished it off nicely.  I made a frisee salad with pears and honeyed pork lardoons.  Can’t have a Spanish meal without a little pork.  And a lemon tart I’d bought at the patisserie.  I’m a lazy phase with respect to cooking just now, and very grateful for my husband’s cooking ability and willingness to put three squares in front of us.

And today, once we have our outing, I need to pack up!  Heading to the states for a whirlwind tour of Baltimore (1 day of research), Atlanta (2 days giving a talk at the Federal Reserve Bank of  Atlanta AND seeing my wonderful friend Elke), and Greensboro, NC (4 days—I get there just in time for my very first niece to be born and hang out with my sister, brother-in-law and Mom cooing over our new family member).  I will also buy chocolate chips, vitamins (very expensive here, and I haven’t found fish oil, which all of you should take), deodorant for Alec, and a few other random things.

So I may not be posting as much over the next week—stay tuned!