Gachas and Boxed Milk

Okay. Milk in boxes. 

It's one thing I'll never get used to about Spain. It's like something out of 2001: A Space Oddessy. Picture this: you're in dire need of some pancakes. You go to the store. You look in the Dairy section for milk, but -- gasp! -- it's not there!  It's not nestled in the fridge between the yogurt and the cheese, it's not even next to the orange juice. You find an apathetic-looking Mercadona lady pricing puddings and you ask her if they're out of leche. She looks at you like she thinks you're joking, then you see her face shift from skepticism to pity as she registers your genuine confusion. She leads you away from the refrigeration, toward the center of the store, to a mammoth aisle near the cleaning supplies, lined with stacks upon stacks of sterile, white bricks. Here she leaves you alone to realize: they're not bricks at all! They're little pods of airtight, room-temperature milk, waiting to be activated! 

Until they're open, they don't need to be refrigerated, and the sealed bricks can keep for nearly a year. I can't decide if they're just more highly evolved than we are or if something is very very wrong, but I must say it's pretty cool that you can buy milk in packs of ten and keep the other nine in your cupboard until you need them, like extra cans of Coors.

It's little things like this that keep me in awe at Spain daily. Little things that I took for granted in the US -- like milk in refrigerated bottles or speed limit signs in miles or prescription medicine, or even the assumption that everyone in the world had at least heard of Captain Planet -- that still strike me every time I see them.

Two weeks ago, I was invited to a friend's house for lunch. I was told we would be making gachas (pronounced like "gotcha(s)", which is a pun that I've had really probably too much fun with -- Person A: "Hey, want some gachas?" Person B: "Sure!" Person A (punching Person B): "GOTCHA!" Bahahaha, get it??), a traditional Manchego dish made with olive oil, some only marginally identifiable meat products, and this mysterious special red flour that's only found in La Mancha. Delicious. Makes you so full you think you'll probably explode, and even if you don't explode you'll definitely never eat again. Food junkie that I am, I was content just with the concept that I might be able to sit around and consume some obscene amounts of this gooey amazingness, but when we arrived at the house, I quickly discovered that when someone asked you over to "make gachas", it was a far cry from being asked over to "make spaghetti". In fact, I'm not sure I'll ever feel adequate asking someone over to make spaghetti again. I'd just feel lame. Operation Gachas was no puny pot-and-pan deal -- it was a giant iron skillet set atop a roaring fire in the fireplace, next to which several baguettes sat toasting. It made Los Angeles stoves look like Easy Bake Ovens. 

The heat from the fire made the house glow and we sat around the hearth talking while our host set to her delicate gacha-making work. As she cooked, carefully and continuously stirring the mixture with a mammoth wooden spoon while she simultaneously adjusted the burning logs for an even heat, the rest of the guests explained to me the art behind what she was doing as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "It's just a peasant food, really," one friend said, "but it's hard to make right." No big deal, just making weird magical paste food with a Hagrid-sized spoon in a fairy-tale sort of fireplace. The usual.

I don't know what it was that I found so frickin cool about what she was doing, whether it was the fire or the physicality of the work or maybe just the novelty of the giant spoon (seriously, though, GIANT. I want to make sure you're getting this -- GIANT.), but I stared, possibly rudely, for the entirely of the process, and then, once the table was set, had to be walked through the technicalities of how one finally goes about eating gachas. The meal, so normal for everyone around me, was completely and entirely new. It was great to feel so out of place.

In the past couple of months, I've been starting to feel more and more at ease in Spain, but just when I start feeling comfortable or complacent, my roommate will ask me to pick her up a six-pack of milk at the market and I'll be thrown back into intense, exciting, frightening feeling of being foreign in a country where fundamentally different things are taken for granted. I know I could get used to things here, and I know I probably will, but part of me is very glad that I haven't quite yet.