La crema de cacahuete

Peanut butter

They don't really do peanut butter in Spain. They sell one kind at the marcadona (the big supermarket) but it's very small and four euro and my friend Alex, who bought it anyway, says it's dry and not very delicious at all. Anabel went to California a year or so ago and was amazed at how much peanut butter Americans eat. The woman she was staying with had kids who ate peanut butter in some form for every meal and then dessert. And for snack they ate it out of the jar with a spoon. She told me this incredulously, expecting me to be shocked and ashamed of my countrymen, but I can relate to this. Maybe not breakfast, but everything else. PBJ for lunch with a Reeses, then pasta with peanut sauce for dinner and for dessert, peanut butter chip cookies. Yum yum yum. She didn't try peanut butter in the states, but she tried and loved chocolate chip cookies, which you also can't find in Spain. Now that she said that I'm going to be craving them.

I eat a lot more vegetables here. At first it was because I didn't want to be rude to Anabel, but I've started to enjoy them more and even order them for tapas. Katie will be surprised, I willingly ordered, ate, and enjoyed a zucchini...twice. I haven't warmed to mushrooms yet (they're slimy in every country) but I've cautiously widened my food horizons to include tomatoes, potatoes, onions, zucchini, and squash. Only in certain situations of course. I still don't want a tomato on my sandwich.

I miss peanut butter, but Mike has promised to bring me a jar when he visits. I miss steak, but I miss steak at school anyway. I can get chocolate on or in pretty much anything I could imagine here, so that's not a problem either. The food here is above and beyond anything I had expected. I prefer the meal schedule here to my stateside meal schedule. Even when it's rainy and grey, I love Granada.