The Butcher, The Baker, The Local Wine Maker
Here in Oria, there is a little shop for everything. Sometimes for multiple somethings. We go to the grocers to buy most things, including wine and beer. But you aren’t going to find fresh baked bread. For that, you go to the local bakery. You aren’t going to find much for fresh or frozen meat at the grocers. For that, you go to the local butcher shop. There’s very limited produce at the grocers, and only one in town will actually let you pick your own to purchase. It’s usually behind a counter and they choose your produce for you. This means that often, we get produce that’s starting to go off since their produce standards are vastly different from what we are used to in Canada. For a larger variety, fresher, and pick your own produce you go to the local market on the weekend. The fridges here are also significantly smaller, so you’ll find that most people are out shopping for food multiple times a week. Much different than going to Farm Boy on the weekend and stocking up for the entire week, as we did back home!
The butcher is so sweet, and visiting his shop is definitely an interesting experience. They sell tons of cheeses, sausages, and cured meats. You will see many cheeses that have mould on them, and it’s normal. You buy the cheese and go home and trim the mould off yourself and wrap it back up. They have the huge legs of jamon that you see everywhere in Spain. But definitely do not ask them for prosciutto… the butcher was quite quick to tell me prosciutto is Italian and we are in Spain, not Italy. He sells jamon!
In addition to this, they do sell beef, pork, and chicken as well as their own products they make with these, like their own homemade burgers and sausages. We are particularly fond of their homemade sausages! However, when you look in the meat cabinet, you’ll see that the Spanish like to use the entire animal! You will find skinless heads with the eyeballs still intact, a tray of all pigs’ feet, a tray of all pigs’ ears, a tray of mixed internal organs, etc. And poor Emmeline, whose favourite animal is a bunny, is constantly horrified that they sell whole, skinned rabbits to eat (again, eyeballs intact!). The more mundane, typical cuts of meat only sort of exist… Do you want chicken breasts? Sure, but you are probably not going to get what you would recognize as a chicken breast from a Canadian grocery store! We have not been fond of the beef here, but their pork and chicken have all been delicious!
There are two bakeries, and it’s hit or miss what they will have on any given day. You walk in and it’s a surprise. Will they have bread today? Depends on how early you get there, and bread is mostly the long, baguette-style bread. Will they have muffins today? Maybe, or maybe today will be cookies instead. We love their almond merengues, which we bought the first day, and finally (2.5 weeks later!) we were able to find some in there again to buy today! I’m sure there is some rhyme or reason to what they make and when they make it, but since our Spanish is extremely limited, that will forever remain a mystery to us!
The Spanish are versatile people! Were it not for locals here, we wouldn’t have known that there is one (and only one) local winemaker in Oria. Because the winemaker is also the one who owns the local mechanic garage. So if you want to buy local wine, you go into their hardware/car shop that’s attached to their garage where they have a rack with their local wine for sale. Considering we have no car, we would never have wandered in there if we hadn’t been told about this local winemaker! We bought a bottle of red and a bottle of white to try, but we haven’t opened them yet. So no comment on how it tastes yet!
We go to the Sunday market every weekend, which we will get into more details on at another time. We stock up on as much produce as we can there to get us through most of the week, to limit what we need to buy from the grocers.
It’s a good thing we have nothing but time on our hands here since a significant amount of it goes to walking all over town to the various shops to buy the things we need to make our meals! We asked the girls what they liked best – the once-a-week shopping back home or the multiple shopping trips each week in Portugal and Spain. They’re a bit up in the air on that, as they do feel it takes a lot of time to go shopping here. But at the same time, they do love going into the bakers and getting treats multiple times a week! As for us, we definitely miss the variety and selection we have been fortunate to have back home, but do like the more regular shopping trips and love eating local and in-season items as opposed to imported items.