Don't Get Me Started..

Grumpy, Sober and Taking Notes: Ten Modern Annoyances

mail@andaluciasteve.com (Admin) — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 21:55:00 GMT

One of the things I've noticed since I gave up the booze (in May 2024) is that I'm an exceptionally judgemental person. I don't know where I get it from as my parents were really easy-going, tolerant folk. Not me. Hardly an hour goes by where I don't find something to moan and groan about. I thought perhaps I was just experiencing the common cognitive bias which psychologists call the 'fundamental attribution error'. That's the one where, for example, while driving you think that everyone going slower than you is an idiot, yet everyone going faster than you is a lunatic. It's a fallacy because we make assumptions about the other drivers without considering the reasons they might be proceeding at a different speed - a wedding cake on the back seat or ferrying a heart-attack victim on the way to hospital, etc. However, I don't think that applies in my case. I think the world really is a crazy place full of crazy people doing really dumb things!

So here are just a few of my pet peeves - the things that are currently making the veins in my temple throb. See if any of them chime with you.

Foreshadowing pre-roll on YouTube videos.

We used to see "COMING UP..." a lot at the start of American TV shows, but in the last couple of years it has been creeping into low budget videos on YouTube and social media. I even saw it on a two-minute YouTube short. I watched an interview recently which was about an hour long, and about every ten minutes I heard the punch line of gags that I'd already heard in the pre-roll. I normally skip these things if the author has been thoughtful enough to include a bookmark to where the content really starts. If not, I sometimes get impatient and randomly skip forward so I'm probably missing some of the action but it's worth it not to have my brain cells assaulted by repeated information. In one five minute video I saw so much pre-roll I swear it took up half the video. Does anybody 'like' having to endure pre-roll? I have a sneaking suspicion it's really only there because some media studies teacher came up with the idea because their course was a bit thin on content, then every student takes it as gospel rather than questioning its actual value. Its real value to me is that I have unsubscribed from channels that are big on pre-roll. Stop this nonsense now!

Intentionally wobbly camera work.

This has been around for a long time, and there is a time and a place for it, but in 2025 folk are still doing it for no good reason. I was watching an episode of a show called The Mentalist, which admittedly is ten years old, but the camera was wobbling so much it made me feel seasick. There is a case for doing this in action scenes but the fly-on-the-wall documentary style is long gone. Get over it. The technique is also extremely bad for streaming since the constantly moving background is much harder for the algorithm to compress the video stream, so if you see this malarkey on Netflix, someone needs to get a sternly worded memo.

My Android Phone's Interface.

Christ on a bike, I could write a book about what's wrong with the mobile phone market, but I'll confine myself for the purposes of this blog to the recent 'One UI' update on my Samsung A25. For some reason, they moved the audio player controls to the bottom, so now it is next to impossible to hold the phone steady while reaching down to change tracks with my thumb. To change tracks safely without dropping the thing I need to engage my other hand. One-handed people must be up in arm about this. I wrote to Android to complain but of course nothing will happen. Our feelings as customers have very little importance in the grand scheme of things compared to the whims of some self-satisfied graphic artist and the corporate bod who commissioned him to make the interface look snazzy!

Cuisine

The very word cuisine itches my scrote, being French (pretentious moi?) yet originally coming from the vulgar Latin word for kitchen. Cuisine is used when a TV show or a Sunday magazine supplement is going to wax lyrical about regional food that is a fancy dress version of what folk really eat there. I was triggered while watching episode six of Searching for Spain with Eva Longoria. I generally feel obliged to watch shows like this about Spain since I live here. This series is OK but tends to skip around the regions focusing on their unique 'cuisine' - gnashes teeth. In the episode in question, the house special was four slivers of fried fish served on a log, "inspired by my grandma's recipe". What happened to plates? Was nanna a lumberjack? Why the compulsion to serve tiny portions of food on roofing slates or Citroen hubcaps? For the love of Grok, give me some decent grub on a dinner plate!

Facebook's disappearing posts

Social media suffers from so many ills, I almost feel bad for singling out Facebook, but this one yanks my chain on a daily basis. Often I'll want to add my 10 cents to a post by making a witty, well-observed comment. However, so as not to appear a complete knob, I normally want to fact-check what I'm going to say and open a second browser tab to make my enquiries. Then, certain of my facts, I return to Facebook to fashion my killer invective, only to find the original post has gone. Facebook refreshed the page and the post has disappeared, never to be seen again. Sometimes I've spent half an hour researching, planning my comment, only to be unable to write it! No wonder people are giving up on social media!

Open soda bottles

This hints that I might have OCD issues, but on occasion I'll be watching a film or TV show and a character will pour some cola from a big two-litre bottle and not put the top back on. That's it for me. I've lost all interest in character and plot. The only thing that matters in my life at that point is that I'm watching a fizzy drink go flat before my eyes. Art imitates life - do people do this? Do they not know every second counts with fizz? There should be a law against things in media that are this triggering. I lose sleep thinking about it!

Modern day slavery

I've covered this in previous blogs, but the gist is, businesses keep getting us to work for them for free while they enjoy the profits. That's why I don't wear merch - why should I turn myself into an advertising hoarding? I've mentioned in previous blogs how online banking and sorting recycling are sneaky ways in which we're made to work for free, so other people can make a buck. I only recently realised that supermarkets are another example of this. In the 1965 thriller The Ipcress File, Michael Caine and Guy Doleman are pushing trollys down the aisle in the supermarket and Doleman's character says something like "I can't abide these new American shopping methods". He's a man after my own heart. We think nothing of it today, but before supermarkets existed, one would have gone to the butcher's or the grocer's and they would have served the goods to you, instead of you being the 'picker' pushing the trolley around. Elon Musk recently tweeted we're all going to be living lives of leisure while our personalised robots do all this sort of thing for us. He also wants to sell us a bridge.

Bullying

I got a distaste for bullying at school. Though I wasn't a huge victim of it (apart from always being chosen as the goalkeeper) I saw how it affected other kids and it stayed with me. Even today I really hate to see it, and unfortunately there's a lot of it about in 2025, much of it emanating from that guy in the White House.

Trump's threat to sue the BBC is only the latest in a succession of heavy-handed attacks he's made on media outlets and universities for the crime of disagreeing with him. What really grinds my gears is that with all his swagger and overbearing bluster, he clearly thinks bullying is "projecting strength". While I'm no expert on strong men, I strongly suspect they don't have to keep telling you how strong they are. I'm pretty sure previous presidents used their position to apply leverage, but did so without the self-fêting fanfare that would have made them look like a dick.

Streaming

I know I'm on solid ground here, as social media has been full of posts recently where folk have been cancelling Spotify, Netflix and my personal pet hate, Amazon Prime. It was on Prime Video that I was watching The Mentalist mentioned above. As I worked my way through each series (which is a great show BTW), I swear to Grok that the number and frequency of adverts sneakily increased. Maybe it's because I'm British and grew up with uninterrupted viewing on the Beeb, but I find this sort of caper very distasteful, especially since I'd forked out my hard-earned cash for an annual subscription. Why in the name of Lord Reith, do they think it's OK to charge a subscription fee and show advertisements at the same time? So I'm done with Prime - still have several months left but I won't be watching any more videos on there thank you very much.

Privacy

Last on the list (I kept it to 10 - it could have been a lot longer) is privacy, and I felt compelled to add this in reaction to the proposed UK digital ID card. I've read a lot of reaction to this on social media and a common misunderstanding is that folk ignore the digital bit altogether. They say things like, "other countries have ID cards and they're OK" or "I have a driving license and a passport, what difference does an ID card make".

Well, quite a lot actually. Your passport doesn't send an update at three in the morning telling half the government, three contractors and a bloke in IT called Kevin that you went to Wetherspoons twice this week and bought some cold & flu tablets and a pregnancy testing kit. In fact, few countries do have truly digital biometric identification, and the consequences of having one are potentially very serious.

We're stumbling into an Orwellian future that makes the movie Enemy of The State look like a cosy Sunday evening drama where the worst thing that happens is someone loses a dog. At least in the movie you could disappear by throwing away your beeper. With the proposed digital ID, we move another step closer to Big Brother knowing everything about you. Now I don't have any brothers, never mind a big one, but I reckon there are some things it's best that your brother doesn't know.

I'll leave it at ten moans for now. How do these grab you? Is it just me, or do you have a similar list of gripes? I'm already getting ideas for a part two of this blog!

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Funny Things They Eat in Spain

mail@andaluciasteve.com (Admin) — Sun, 25 Oct 2020 01:02:00 GMT

It was during my first week in Spain that I ascended an escalator in a big supermarket, turned a corner in to the meat section and was greeted by a rack of pig faces. It was quite a bizarre sight! It looked as though the left half a pig's head had been placed in a polystyrene tray and wrapped in cling-film. There were dozens of them, all looking the same way, which of course prompted a question in my ever curious mind. Where were the right hand sides of the pig's heads? Was there another shelf somewhere with dozens of pig faces looking the other way? I never found out. I consoled myself that at least they all had their eyes closed. Were they open, now that just would have been weird!

Even though I'm a meat eater, I was still troubled the first time I bought what I thought was an oven ready chicken in a small local supermarket. It looked like the ones in blighty, again sitting in a polystyrene tray wrapped in plastic. However when I unwrapped it I was in for a surprise. The head was still attached and dropped onto the counter with an unexpected thud! What I was supposed to do with it I don't know to this day. I think I actually closed my eyes when I cut it off with scissors and threw it in the bin. Yuk!

Spain is obviously a different country with a very different culture to the Britain I grew up in. The food they eat here and the relationship to food and to animals takes some degree of adjustment. The first house I bought was a country house, and the owner had a shed full of rabbits he bred for the table. I had him remove them before I took possession of the house as I didn't fancy myself having to kill and butcher rabbits. However a short time after I moved in, a neighbour invited me around for Sunday lunch. He introduced my wife and I to our meal, which was a live, white rabbit that was hopping around in his garden shed. You know what's coming next don't you? Yes he killed and skinned the rabbit before our eyes. Within the hour, bits of poor bunny, including his head were on a plate in front of me. I understood being served the head was quite an honour, but one I could have lived without if truth be told!

Heads are quite a thing here. One of the restaurants in Cehegin used to serve roasted goat's heads on a Monday night. They were brought out on a tray from the oven and placed on the bar. Each head was sawn in half, and as I recall served face down, so you could see the brain, tongue, sinuses etc. I'm going back a few years, but I think half a head and a few roast potatoes was pretty good value for one euro fifty.

My rabbit murdering neighbour invited me out a few weeks later to go snail hunting. Eager to integrate myself into Spanish society I was accepting all such invitations at the time as it seemed the right thing to do. The day came and I went with him and some family members on a walk in the 'campo' along a quiet road where I was assured lots of snails would be found. Now I'd seen bags of snails for sale in the market and they all had ornate spiral shells, which I'd assumed was the hallmark of some special edible species. How wrong I was. All sorts of varieties and sizes of snails were apparently fair game, some looking distinctly like the ones I'd had to put pellets down for in blighty to stop them chewing my Hostas. After a while, we had amassed several buckets full of sundry snails, which my neighbour took to the kitchen of his country house. I was hoping they would be well cooked or at least boiled for long enough to kill any remnants of 'snailness' but alas no. All he did was put them in bowls of vinegar and pop them in the fridge. The next day I was invited around for a snail feast. They were served in some kind of sauce which I had not been privy to the making of, but it tasted quite spicy, as though some cumin and chilli was involved. Much to my surprise they tasted quite good, though I don't think I'd go to the trouble of making them myself. Incidentally, this incident revealed the answer to question that had puzzled me since I first bought my house. The grounds were fenced in, and the fence mounted atop a small wall, two breeze blocks high. Dotted around the property, ceramic tiles were lent up against these walls. It turns out they were snail hotels, deliberately placed to provide a cool, moist, comfortable space for the snails to repair to so they could be easily harvested. I'd inadvertently purchased a snail farm!

Probably the most unsavoury thing I've known the Spanish to eat are wild birds. I've not seen this with my own eyes, but someone who does it showed me the equipment he used. I visited the country house of a friend of a friend one Sunday morning for a barbecue. Breakfast barbecues are not uncommon on a Sunday in Murcia when the weather is good which is often. On this occasion we were eating six week old goat (yes I know, animal lovers must be cringing by now, but when in Rome). So we were talking about barbecue and the bird topic came up. The guy went into his shed and brought out a large black net and a device that looked like a camouflaged military radio. It turns out it was a bird-caller. He turned it on and within a minute or two, birds started flocking into the olives trees around us. He explained how he would setup the net between the trees, play the bird sounds, and when enough birds had arrived, he would gather the net entrapping them. Then he would pick them out of the net, and, miming the action, described how he would spike them on a skewer, presumably while still alive, and cook them on the barbecue.

"Which birds" I asked, visibly wincing a little in anticipation of the inevitable answer.

"All types" he said. "Whatever is in the net."

As you can imagine, I was extremely glad not to be invited back to see that in action.

The same chap provided the meat for a birthday party I was invited to a few months later. He worked in sales and drove all over Spain for a living, so contrived to bring back two baby pigs from a trip to Segovia, which those in the know will tell you is the best place to go in Spain if you're into eating piglets. The pigs were placed on olive branches which were laid inside a bread oven. I can't remember the cooking time but I think it was a good few hours, and when the pigs came out of the oven, the meat was succulent and falling off the bone. As is traditional, they sliced the pigs up with dinner plates which were then ceremonially smashed, and everyone was served piglet slices on a paper plate, which seemed somewhat ironic. I must say though it was delicious.

The list of odd things I've seen in bars here goes on and on. Pancreas was something I tried but didn't care for. I was hoping it would taste like liver but no, it tastes, well, like pancreas. One bar surprised me by selling frogs legs as tapas. On the bar in a glass case in lots of steel trays were all the usual suspects. There was Russian salad, eggs stuffed with tuna, anchovies, tigres (stuffed mussel shells), then, unusually, a tray full of frogs legs. The tapas was free with a beer so I had to try them. They tasted a little like chicken. I was surprised to see them in Spain. This was in a transport cafe on an industrial estate, so it is possible they were there to delight visiting French lorry drivers. I pondered for a while as to what happens to the rest of the frog when it loses its legs. Perhaps there were choruses of ribbiting frogs pushing themselves around in wheelchairs somewhere.

Possibly the weirdest thing I've seen someone eating was after a bullfight one day. When a bull is killed, the animal is taken out and butchered. The meat, known as lidia is quite prized, as a bull bred for fighting is in pasture for five years to gain the necessary weight for the ring. I've never eaten any myself but it must be along the lines of Wagyu beef. Anyway, I happened to be in a bar near a bullring one day after a bullfight and witnessed a chap chewing a raw bull's testicle! I know it's rude to stare but it was hard not to look!

Probably my favourite curious culinary delight is Mondongo. There was a gastronomical society that met once a month in Murcia, mainly patronised by elderly folk who revisited their youth by dining on some of the meals they ate during the Franco period. As a foreigner it was quite an honour to be invited to join the club and I went to many meals over a number of years. We were even featured on regional television, such was the interest in what we were eating. You may know, the Franco years were characterised by extreme hardship, so good meat was expensive and hard to find. Mondongo was an ingenious use of two cheaper more readily available cuts of meat, sheep's stomach and cow's knees! It doesn't immediately sound very appetising, but trust me it was delicious. The dish is rice based and cooked in a large paella pan (I know I know, you don't have to say 'pan' because paella means pan). The tripe, bones and a little stock is added and, as it cooks, something magical happens. The cow's knees have very little meat on them, but the gelatinous fat in the bones melts and gets soaked up by the tripe and the rice. When it is served, the trick is to get a palm full of oregano, then rub your hands together to grind the leaves over the rice, and then the flavour of the herb gets drawn in by the fat. I really couldn't believe how something so simple and potentially unpalatable could taste so good. I don't have much contact with Murcia anymore these days, but if there was one reason to go back it would be to relive the Mondongo experience!

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Ex-pat cravings

mail@andaluciasteve.com (Admin) — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 14:25:00 GMT

For my first visit to Spain my wife and I were lucky enough to be invited over by a friend who had moved over to Alicante in the previous year. He kindly offered to shows us a few locations up and down the Costa Blanca. One thing stuck in my mind from that visit. One day we popped into an English grocers shop and my friend happened to spot a box of cornflakes. These weren't ordinary cornflakes but the fruity ones with added strawberries. What happened next left quite an impression. My friend retired to the car, opened the box of cornflakes and started cupping handfuls of the dry cereal into his mouth with tears of joy coming down his face. He explained these were his favourite brand and that he had not had them for a year or so since he was last in the UK!

Now that I'm a Spanish resident myself I completely understand how he felt. While I never get homesick for England, every now and again, a flavour or a smell can trigger an unusual response in the brain. Like Proust's Madeleines dipped in tea, they can open a neural pathway with surprising efficacy, transporting one back to a different place and time. Sometimes though it happens the other way. One imagines the place and the time which in turn reminds one of the taste or smell which stimulates the craving. I've lost count of the number of times this has happened to me. Typically I'll think of an event like a Christmas celebration, which will remind my of a beverage like ginger wine. Once the flavour and smell of the ginger wine gets in my head I'll be unable to shake it off. I'll trawl around the supermarkets here to see if there is anything similar. Then when inevitably I find that there isn't I'll go online to shop for some, only to be defeated by exorbitant delivery charges. Then I'll hit up YouTube and start typing "how to make ginger wine"...

The first big bump in the road after first moving to Spain was that I found myself living in a remote village that was far, far away from a decent curry house. Not only that but I was really surprised by the paucity of spices used in Spanish cuisine. They just don't do hot and spicy food over here. So a process began of teaching myself how to cook Indian food and sourcing ingredients. I'd brought some dried chillies and coriander seeds with me and surprised myself by successfully planting and growing these. I discovered cardamoms were available through a local health-food shop. Also, I came across a Moroccan bric-à-brac shop which had a small shelf of spices from which I was able to source a few things. Bit by bit I was able to get everything together, and using the invaluable book, 'The Curry Secret' by Kris Dhillon, I was able to recreate the good old-fashioned British Indian restaurant experience in my own home. I shed a tear myself when I cooked my first perfect Chicken Tikka Massala!

This was over fifteen years ago and things have moved on. My local supermarket carries fresh coriander and ginger these days. However there are still many items that obsess my senses from time to time. Fresh cream seems to be unknown here. They only do the UHT stuff or horrible squirty cream. Clotted cream is pure fantasy. I often dream of kippers, smoked mackerel fillets, custard powder, Colman's mustard, instant desserts like Angel Delight, pickled onions, Vesta Chow Mein with crispy noodles, the list is endless! Most of this is crap, processed food, but such is the way my brain is wired, these happen to be the ones that take me back to the past most effectively.

When I moved to Andalusia a decade ago I found the situation little different. There are places near the coast where British and Asian groceries can be sourced. As I don't have a car, and the bus ride would be a round trip of about 25 euros, I rarely bother to make the journey.

Fortunately online purchasing has gradually made the availability of many items possible, though some online retailers either won't ship to Spain or charge a lot for postage. Even Amazon didn't have an online store in Spain until as late as 2011 but now it is possible to order some items through them at a lower cost of delivery than getting them sent from the UK.

A better solution over the years has been to inconvenience friends of mine to bring stuff over when they come to stay. Fortunately I've known many folk with holiday homes here who have volunteered their services as my spice mules, squeezing all sorts of things from poppadoms to tamarind paste into their luggage. My most trusty trafficker, Lynda has brought hundreds of items over for me in the past, but alas she is retiring this year, having made the sensible decision to base herself over here permanently. Respect and many thanks for your years of loyal service!

Really she couldn't have picked a better time to hang up the shopping bag, since this year I've discovered a couple of online Asian grocers specialising in the Spanish market, carrying a much wider range of items than I've ever seen before, and with reasonable delivery charges. For the first time in almost two decades I can order everything from rasmalai to frozen samosas with more spices available than you could shake a cinnamon stick at!

In case these websites are of interest to my fellow ex-pat sensation-seekers, here are the addresses:

https://www.jkasianfoods.com/

https://www.indianflavours.es/en_US/

Admin ...

Views on Spanish Cuisine

mail@andaluciasteve.com (Admin) — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 13:03:00 GMT

I'm on comfy ground writing about food. I like it. I eat some every day. In fact I'd struggle to live without it. So here I'm going to dispel a few myths about Spanish nosh and probably make myself unpopular with the tourist board into the bargain.

Or maybe not. In the village in Murcia where I lived until 2009 there was a chap who worked in the tourist office called Santi, who was born and raised in the Basque country. While chatting one day I asked him what he missed about being so far away from home.

"The food" he said. His face was a picture as his mind drifted away in deep culinary reverie. Now I'd heard the reputation of Basque cuisine first hand since my neighbour Manolo and his wife had not long returned from a gastronomic coach trip touring eateries from Galicia to San Sebastian. Santi confirmed what they'd told me, that the food in the North of Spain is a cut above the food in the South. He put forward a bold theory that the high temperature experienced by the South of Spain for much of the year was a deterrent against cooking. Who wants to be stuck in a hot kitchen all day? In fact the kitchen is often purposefully kept away from the house. I'd been working with an estate agent at the time and I'd noticed a trend for houses to have 'summer' kitchens, often in a separate building. One old lady giving me a tour around her property showed me a pristine kitchen that looked as it had been totally unused, and probably it hadn't, because she then took me to another hut four doors up the street where she said she did most of her daily cooking!

Another consequence of Santi's conjecture is that simplicity is a common characteristic of the culinary art in the South. Generally the dishes here are prepared with as little fuss as possible, again as a conservation measure in the battle with the heat. I'll cover a few dishes I've encountered while living here, all of which will be noted for their simplicity.

The first thing I was taught to cook here (by my neighbour Jose - he of the Swimming Pool Saga post from last week) was chicken in garlic. If you've not had this you must try it. The same process can be used to cook rabbit and works just as well. Fry the chicken in oil on a medium heat for 15 minutes until it is nearly done, then near the end of the cooking process, throw in a handful of chopped garlic. Let the garlic cook for a few more minutes, then just as it threatens to brown, pour in half a cup of vinegar. As if by magic the vinegar boils, taking the garlic flavour into the meat and leaving a dry saucy residue. Plate it up and eat. Couldn't be simpler! I understand this technique was popular in Portugal, and was taken by Portuguese sailors to India during the Age of Discovery where it was adopted and developed into Vindaloo (from Carne de vinha d'alhos meaning meat with wine and garlic).

Another friend gave me a good lesson in cooking garlic prawns (Gambas al Ajillo). You can Google the recipe. It's pretty simple and widely available online. Tips I got from her was that she heated the individual sized clay dishes (cazuelitas) on the stove top - I'd always assumed they were heated in the oven. Also she used the cheapest olive oil called suave or refinado. I thought it would be all extra virgin but no, with the strong flavour of the garlic, the prawns and the cayenne pepper pods, you'd be hard pushed to tell the difference between the flavour of the oils so use the cheapest!

Of all the dishes Spain is famous for however, seafood paella must be the best known. Strangely I don't think I've ever had it once since I moved here. This is probably because I live inland. Don't get me wrong, they get the paella pans out here and cook rice in it, but I've rarely seen fishy ingredients. Rabbit yes, vegetables yes, chicken yes, snails oh yes!! Again, it's an easy way to cook and a a rabbit and a kilo of rice will feed ten people from a one metre pan. Rabbit with rice (arroz con conejo) was therefore a popular choice during the summer fiestas of the towns in and around the North West of Murcia. Another popular fiesta treat is tortilla in bread. I found the doubling of carbs in having potatoes in a baguette quite heavy going but they serve them by the hundreds at the local feria.

If you've never been to a Spanish feria, these are local events where a town or part of a city takes three or four days to party, with food and drink forming a big part of the celebrations. My best feria food-fest was in an office I worked in. The boss's extended family turned up in number to the office and on this particular day they brought with them a huge kitchen tray, about a metre wide and a metre and a half long. They filled the tray (pictured) with dozens of chicken quarters, added potatoes, tomatoes, lemons, onions, garlic, oregano and lashings of olive oil. Then half a dozen people ceremoniously picked up the tray and proudly marched it to the local bakers where it was cooked in the bread oven. I don't think I've eaten anything quite so delicious made from such basic ingredients! This has influenced the way I roast a chicken - now I always add the same ingredients and it tastes much better.

One disappointing note about the cuisine in Southern Spain is the lack of vegetables, making it tricky for vegetarians and vegans to eat out. I find many restaurants think of meat/fish first, then add chips and maybe a little salad by way of a garnish. If it's a posh place and you're lucky you might get some goo that consists of a few varieties of seasonal veg boiled to death in tomato sauce for a couple of hours so you can barely identify what you're eating. Bread is served with everything, which together with the obsession with chips and dearth of vegetable makes me very sceptical about the merits of the so called 'Mediterranean Diet'. As someone explained to me recently, the chap who came up with the notion (Ancel Keys) did so after visiting the island of Crete, noting how fit and well-aged the population was. Apparently he visited the island during lent so had a rather skewed view of what was being eaten and he neglected to take into account his visit took place just after WW2, a period of harsh austerity when food was scarce and the population aged artificially because of the younger members of society being killed in the fighting. Untroubled by such facts, Keys got it into his head that the diet was the cause and went back to America creating his famed Seven Nation study to prove his idea, the results of which have since been widely discredited. However the myth that the food in this part of the world is some kind of panacea persists to this day.

If however your appetite has been whetted by all this talk of grub, I suppose it would be fitting of me to offer you something for afters to finish with. Many of the desserts in Spain are things you would find elsewhere, ice cream, flans, rice-pudding etc. One that was new to me which I took a liking to was fresh peaches soaked over night in red wine - yum! By experimentation I found this works best by adding a little brandy too and by soaking the peaches in the fridge it makes the perfect supper for a hot summer evening.

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