Munich, Bavaria, Salzburg, Málaga, Seville

A European Meditation Through Food.

Raffi like the kidpunch but liked getting to try the adult Gluewiein even more.

These last two weeks the family and I have been traveling through Europe. To see Edie in her new hometown of Munich, a snowy escapade to the Bavarian Alps, a quick trip through Saltzburg, a city Edie knows well, Malaga, where she learned to speak Spanish last summer, and in Sevilla, for the cobblestones, the cathedrals, the tapas and the iberico, the very good shoes, the strong dollar, and the weather.

A lot of our trip was really about Edie showing us her life in Europe. Like the time David got to have coffee with Edie and her friend, Emily and Emily’s dad. Or when she took me to the Irish bar she likes to frequent in Salzburg. Or to see the house where she now lives with her German family in Munich.

I could show you all the photos. But instead, I’m going to take you through the trip using mostly the food. Because you know me. We start (above) with Raffi and mugs of hot Gluwein at the Christmas Markets in Munich.

This was our first stop. Where the kids ate candy apples and curry wurst, got used to jet lag, before Lucy got in from Utah, Munich set a beautiful, cold start to the trip. Edie had stuffed her bag wth German bread from her neighborhood bakery (German bread is consistently wonderful and Germans seem to always have beautiful fresh bread on hand) and a string of weisswurst that we boiled, stripped of their skins, and ate hot on slices of bread with swaths of grainy mustard.

Our first meal, standing up inside an ill conceived Airbnb kitchen. Perfect.

Then, Lucy got in and we gathered ourselves for Bavaria, the German Alps in Schwangau, the home of King Ludwig’s great castles sitting atop snowy peaks.

Edie + Lucy. Neuschwanstein castle.

Bavarian Kitchen. Fresh snowfall outside.

In the Bavarian Alps it was wintery, as you would expect.

Desi and Raffi ran out into the backyard and made snow angels and asked for carrots for the snow people’s noses. They fought and made-up and fought again. One would get away from the other by going out into the snow. The other would cozy up inside.

Lucy, Edie and David hiked up the mountain behind our house to the castles looming over us. The older girls, were raised on David getting them to do adventures out in the wild. It’s a part of them and they crave it now on a kind of cellular, unconsciou level.

As I brought them in, David pushed them out into the world. Travel and adventure is his legacy to them.

Lucy + Edie. Walks in the snow.

I was cold. To the bone cold.

So I stayed near home and cooked. And brought the children in. As I do.

My cooking has changed since Lucy and Edie moved out. Raffi and Desi are more repetitive and rigid about food. Liking certian foods intesnely and then after eating them non-stop for months, deciding they no longer like that food. And the obsession starts again . (Desi and Raffi have autism and our vacations are geared to meet their expectations - see my essay about our last trip to Mexico City here.)

The older girls were my adventurous eaters. I’ve missed cooking for them and - quite selfishly - watching them eat what I create, having them ask for old favorites, the feeling of having someone you love obsess and crave something that only you can provide and then being able to provide it, is one of a cook’s true pleasures.

I miss it as I miss them.

Asparagus wrapped in cream cheese + pancetta. While researching the next bits of vacation in Spain.

Post-hike chicken noodle soup with those wide chewy German noodles.

By the time we landed in Saltzburg, Desi was asking for sushi. Salmon nigiri is her preferred food. This can be tricky as we found out later in Seville. Not every piece of salmon nigiri is created the same or at least the same way she likes it.

But this shop in Saltzburg, Austria was just what she needed. Familiar in preparation and quality. A little taste of home for her, and just what she needed to feel less anxious.

Sushi in Saltzburg. As you do.

Next, we got into Malaga, Spain and picked up our car and David, who is the ultimate airport dad, travel planner, passport holder, luggage organizer, directions guru, family production manager, oragnizer of all good things, got us a gorgeous apartment on the beach where we devoured sunsets and sunrises, shed the coats and scarves, played on the beach.

Desi + Raffi. They never met a beach they didn’t love. My water babies.

When Raffi is overwhlemed he takes to the porch, sinks under covers and games with his friends back home. Calm is the key, even on vacation, even if it means “staying in.”

I went to a rinky dink supermarket and remembered that even rinky dink supermarkets in Spain often come with a full on bread-baking bakery and an actual butcher. Lots of eateries around the apartment were more touristy and more english-oriented, so we ate in.

The butcher gave me a gorgeous steak from a hunk of prime rib and I picked up beautiful bread, meats and cheeses, wine for the girls, non-alcoholic beers for David. We ate on the porch while the sun set across the ocean.

Spanish butchers know how to hook you up.

Until we set off to Seville by car. David always saves the best for last on vacations. The same way he might save a big act for the end of one of his shows. (He produces live entertainment.) The take-away memory is clutch. Seville spoke to us all in different ways.

We resumed our family tradition of watching Love, Actually, while loving it and critiquing it as we watched. I looked up little-known facts about the movie and the cast and lobbed them into the fray. We got teary at the airport scenes, even though we knew what was coming.

I made us a flurry of toasts, some with cream cheese and smoked salmon, others with pate. And all the meats, the hard cheeses. The nuts, berries and pickley things. This is a tradition we have to check off the list.

Another tradition, is of course, Elvie, the house elf. Desi is the only kid in the family to have this tradtion. She asked for a house elf. And now, Elvie comes along in the suitcase. She was found on the balcony watching the tourists and shamelessly drinking beer inside the fridge.

Traditions live on no matter the geography.

Snacks for movie-watching. Did you know the guy who wrote Mr. Bean also wrote Love, Actually??

Then, we ate Seville.

And by we, I mean Lucy, Edie, David and I. Raffi and Desi procured cheese slices from the pizza shop on the corner. And I made cardboard cup curry ramen for them. Even Starbucks was too different for Desi, as it also was in Mexico City. A bacon gouda sandwich is not a bacon gouda sandwich everywhere. We even got them McDonalds one night.

And I stocked up on frozen jamon y queso croquetas, which Raffi loved, and cheese pizzas, which Desi loved, and chicken strips, which Raffi loved. They were happy. This is all that matters.

Fuck it. Vacation is about whatever happiness we can muster, isn’t it?

David, Lucy + Edie.The after-tapas walk of no-shame.

The little kids didn’t want to eat out much and enjoyed being in the Seville apartment, which was beautiful and ample, with those lovely French door windows, facing a cathedral and awash in activity and bustling with tourists.

They were happy to have us leave them at home for a couple hours some evenings. Sometimes David and I went with the girls to eat and other times, they were off doing whatever or stayed at home, and we had time to eat and meander and talk in a quiet booth or at a table in the crisp evening air.

This may have been my favorite of the adult eating experiences. Very simply prepared foods, tiny plates, tinned and fried fishes, meats swiming in briny olive oil, the olives, the crusty breads, the way everything makes you sop things up at the end with bread, long past the point of being hungry. The food beckons you to eat it, slowly, to tell a story while you do so, to make that story loud and full of exaggerations and arm waving. The tapas bars are raucous and filled with locals and tourists, the Spanish are nice but not overly so, you have to take a crack at them with your Spanish. They are not beguiled by tourists. They do not pander. There are hams hanging from the ceilings - of course! - and the plates keep coming, and glasses get refilled, and you can find yourself talking long into the slant of an evening and loving it and feeling like “just one more” tuna soaked in olive oil and one more cervesa and then you will really go home this time.

You think: I just want to eat this way always.

David and I ate alone about 4 times this trip. A huge win for parenting date night.

And this is why my suitcase is grossly stuffed with meats and tins of fish and little bar snacks. I simply cannot get enough.

Rosie the Cat surveys the haul. She is unphased, unless she gets some iberico.

Christmas “dinner” in Vegas this year will be tapas. To make our home a raucous bar full of friends.

It wouldn’t feel right to do anything else, what with Seville still clinging to us for now.

My favorite patatas bravas with one spicy sauce and stripes of aoli. Bulls tail croquettes. And the little trick is to eat those potato sticks washed up in whatever is left of the sauces. Perfection.

On the way back to Malaga from Seville, to catch our plane home, we were supported and sustained by the bocadillo.

The jamon y queso sandwich with tomatoes and arugula, on some sinewy and crunchy bread, that is a whole meal held in your hand. Touristy for sure, but everything you need. The bocadillo has accompanied us in planes and rental cars. Fed us in airports. On the steps of cathedrals. On benches in plazas. It is elegance and substance. A beautiful slate for creamy aoli or a spicy mustard.

The bocadillo aliways rides shot gun.

Runners up to the bocadillo include empanadas sold out of a little stand next to the cathedral by our house and made from ox and olives.

And another little stand that sold giant egg sandwiches on brioche that Raffi declared was the single best sandwich ever created.

And my child knows a sandwich.

Raffi + his “best sandwich ever!”

I am writing this while flying home. I left my darling older girls in the Malaga airport and cried when leaving them. Even when I promised I wouldn’t.

Whatever reserves that Raffi and Desi have had on this trip are depleting. They want to get home. There is squabbling in the last hours of the ten hour plane ride. Then, a plane meltdown that was only quelled by the ordering of more snacks and beverages. I am so ripe from all this, dysregulated and exhausted myself, that I’m worried I might self-emolate right here in 13J. This is part of traveling, too.

Another part of traveling: The little losses.

Raffi left his only (expensive) winter jacket in one of the hotels. His iphone was in the pocket. He also broke his gaming lap top somewhere in Bavaria. And lost my earbuds before he got off the plane in Spain. David accidentally brought the Seville apartment key home with us, and I left medicine (expensive) and syringes in the freezer. Lucy and Edie missed a connection and had to stay overnight in Amsterdam.

But as David says to us: Things happen when you travel.

Travel is a lesson in things are not meant to always go as planned. Travel is a “little life” all it’s own.

There are delayed and cancelled flights, wrong directions, long lines, traffic, food that doesn’t appeal, housing that doesn’t feel comfortable, paying too much, language barriers, different customs and communication snafus, that feeling of never being completely comfortable because you never have your space, just like home.

Travel’s own complications lluminate us to ourselves.

They even look tastier.

Sometimes though, travel is just marveling at why Spanish potato chips are just so much more superior to American chips. Like every brand.

Why they have that oily, dark saffron-colored tone, that they are heavy as if they has been hand-fried? You don’t need to dip these chips to mask their boring flavor because these heave with heft and the proper seasoning. They crisp up on the tongue. Why do they feel special and ours feel light and flimsy in comparison?

Why do Spanish people have the good chips? How do we get the good chips?

And then you remember that some food producers still exist to make things that taste good. Spanish chips use high-quality olive oils, making them have a more complex and nuanced taste, while still being healthier, that producers use special potatoes just right for chip-making, that many potato chip brands are not run by conglomerates (Big Food) and still made by smaller, family-run operations who focus on quality and traditional cooking and prepartion methods. Almost unheard of in the U.S.

You remember when you travel that food can be many things. And that we don’t have to accept the way it is for us. We deserve better. And there’s really no reason we can’t have it.

Leaving you with that thought as we swing into Christmas. Hope yours is whatever you want it to be.

Thank you, as always, for reading. Kim xo