The Search for Deliciousness

Some things, dear reader, this food-obsessed writer cannot do without. For instance, Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie would be a sad affair. When I was twelve, my family spent Thanksgiving in a cabin in the middle of the Panamanian rainforest. We had to hike a mile through jungle, cross a rushing stream on a halved-log with only a single wire as a railing, and ride forty minutes down a road that seemed to consist only of boulders in the back on a real jeep (the kind you go sit in at the Africa exhibit at the Oregon Zoo) just to get to the hotel with a restaurant where we could eat our meals. A twelve year-old on their first out of the country trip in ten years cannot be expected to appreciate the exotic and fascinating environment. The uninspiring pizza and gamey burger that constituted my Thanksgiving meal (we ordered American food in an attempt at something familiar) were severely disappointing and could not be entirely saved by the sheer awesomeness of the french fries that accompanied them. Today, stemming perhaps from that traumatic meal, I have an unreasonable need to consume all the traditional foods at Thanksgiving. Thus, I have recklessly promised to help host a Thanksgiving party for the gluttonous holiday deprived group of Europeans I am friends with.

However, cranberries seem to be unknown outside of the continent of North America, definitely not in Spain, and while winter squash is sold fresh in stores, canned pumpkin does not appear on the shelves. Not even in the snobbish gourmet supermarket I shop at. This, dear readers, presented an enormous problem as you have probably already deduced. Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce and with strange pumpkin pie? Say it isn't so! (Although, to my credit I actually produced a dessert resembling pumpkin pie for my piso's highly successful Halloween party using pumpkin that I cooked and mashed myself.)

I turned where many troubled souls in this day and age turn for the answers to their confounding questions: I turned to the internet. And lo and behold, I found a store in North-Eastern Madrid, the Salamanca barrio, that sells "American" food and is named "Taste of America." The website promised to have everything one might need for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays.

So, today I trekked to "Taste of America." For a girl accustomed to central Madrid and to walking everywhere she needs to go, this was a real trek. I had to take two different metros and then walk about a mile to the store. It was really tiny, about the size of a small convenience store in the US, but then everything is smaller here. More importantly, they had Ocean Spray canned cranberry sauce (the whole berry and jellied varieties both), Libby's Canned Pumpkin Puree, and (dear reader this was a miracle) Libby's Pumpkin Pie Mix. I have to admit that I wandered around the store for a good twenty minutes and bought a lot more things: Quaker oatmeal, ground ginger (which is the only spice it is impossible to find here), vanilla extract, two kinds of tea, English ginger biscuits, and peanut butter filled pretzel nuggets.

Using my handy knit market bag, a birthday present from my friend Sarah, and my Portland Farmer's Market cloth bag to conceal the plastic bags that had "Taste of America" written in enormous letters on the sides, I triumphantly walk and rode the metro home. This year I have vanquished chance; I will not be deprived of my culinary tradition.