another embarrassing admission...

Ok, this is the saddest one of all. After cooking nothing but the grandest of meals for the two weeks or so that I was just in London, I have been living off of nothing since I got to Madrid two days ago. You see, the first day I was shattered after not sleeping all night at the airport. When I got to Madrid I had 8 hours to pass before I could even meet up with the person I was renting a room in a flat from. The first two hours were passed just riding the metro from place to place, line to line trying to decide where to get off.

When I did get off...there was nothing much there although it's one of the major bus connections to the city and surrounding areas. I sat on a bench for another hour or more, ate an apple that was so green it made my teetch hurt, then got back on the metro. I jumped off in all of the neighborhoods I was looking at renting in with no luck...although I did find an area full of Chinese but no Chinese restaurants.

I did find a bar and got a surprisingly good calamari baguette...it had 5 calamari rings on a baguette...and a little salt. It wasn't exactly filling but I moved on. I never saw a single market or grocery store in all of my walking about, nor a place to buy a sim card which I thought especially strange because in Barcelona you can't spit at your own feet without hitting three competing mobile phone stores.

At my flat around 7pm, I took a shower and perhaps stared into space for awhile before deciding that I really needed food since I hadn't slept since Monday (and it was now Wednesday night). Unfortunately, my neighborhood is very far away from the world and only has a few odd (tiny) shops. I could get Colombian ice-creams, Brazilian chilis (mmmmm....brazilian chilis.....) pasta (can't eat more pasta now..I ate too much in England) and a few other odds and ends. What did I get? Bananas, a box of juice, a bottle of garbanzo beans, a can of tuna and a can of anchovy stuffed olives (drooling noises). I mixed these together with chili and ate them at room temperature. I remembered my Dad happily. He eats from cans and bottles too.

The worst of it is that today, that's pretty much what I got too since I didn't leave the office until 10pm and so I couldn't go looking in this great city for food. sigh...no olives tonight. The juice is good though.

Yes, Zorba, I know..."Juice is not food." but maybe it is if you are thinking about the fruit it came from?