Hittin' the road with Churros & Chocolate

Churros & chocolate are a bit of a breakfast staple all around Spain. Changing ever-so-slightly as we move through each region. The thinner, traditional churro was served when we were in Zaragoza although the thick spiral ones also made a breif appearance. The Churros in Sevilla are called Calentitos. They are the thick churro that is cooked in a spiral. When they are removed from the hot oil it is quite a spectacle.



We have arranged to meet our good friends Io & H early on this morning, we are driving down to Cadiz. Our contribution to the road trip is a cup of hot chocolate for each of us, and a giant bag of churros. When we order she just asks how many ...... 4 hot chocolate and then the bag of churros is enough for 4. It certainly is generous!



Even with the stop for road trip snacks, we manage to arrive a little early to our meeting place. The smell of the hot chocolates, the sugar, the warm bag sitting in my hands. It's too much. We are waiting a while, as we are sure Io & H are having some navigation troubles .............. We sample a few while they are hot .... and just can't help ourselves.

Lucky their appetites aren't quite as big as ours, they will never know how generous the initial portion was.

Macarons? I'm not too sure ....

We were very excited spotting a traditional little sweets shop while walking around Zaragoza. Kim spotted some Macarons (well, at least we thought they were) in the display window. We popped on in thinking a tray of these would be perfect snacks for our bus ride to San Sebastian. After I got in trouble for touching something in one of the displays, oooops, we get a tray with 8 of these delightfully colored looking sweet treats.



We don't even make it onto the bus before we unwrapped the beautiful little package. We are sitting out the front of Zaragoza bus station and dive on in ........................ to both of our surprise they are not at all macarons. They are soft chocolate centres encased in beautifully painted candy shells.



Kind of like a giant smartie. They were delicious, just not at all what we were expecting ....

En-route ~ Rome 2 Tuscany

Road tripping ... across the Italian countryside. Dinah (Kim's mum), Don (her husband) Kim and myself met in Rome earlier this month. We pile our stuff in a little turbo VW golf and head off bound for Tuscany .... our first stop, and a taste of what was to come, was a little town called Montalto di Castro. We squeeze the car through miniscule little cobbled streets and stumble across some beautiful sights, including this particularly pretty blue door:



But we did pull into this little town with the hope of food, but weren't so blessed with that. We get back on the road, and to our horror and dismay pass a Salumi & Fromagi van on the side of the highway .... oh my?! But it's on the wrong side of the road and it's way to hard for us to turn around, so the mission continues.

We are taking the beautiful coastal drive up to Grosetto, before heading inland towards Greve in Chianti. It between Grosetto and Siena Kim and I simultaneously spot a sign proclaiming "PORCHETTA" - an Italian culinary wonder of boned pork, that is heavily salted with herbs or fennel seed and then roasted over charcoal. A crisp, crackling skin and super moist meat, we know if that's to be had at this roadside stall we'd be good for the last stretch of the drive.



The place was pumping with Italians, loads of construction workers happened to be stopped for the lunch and coffee fix as we arrive.



Then we walk in and are greeted by a delicious pork head, crackling skin covering his face, with those come hither eyes. So it's prochetta x 2, piled between delicious Tuscan salt-less bread. But the pork, oh the pork, this one packed with crystals of salt and loads of fresh rosemary.



2 massive sandwiches and 1.5l of mineral water, for 5.5euro. Awesome!

We then see that all the locals seem to then head into the bar and drink a coffee at the counter before moving on. Well, you know what they say "When in Rome ...." So we perch at the bar and order duo caffe. Watching the precise and efficient use of the coffee machine makes me weak at the knees.

Then we are overwhelmed with the choice of panforte, sweets and pastries on offer. We both decide on the spiced panforte - which is taken from the showcase ... a animated indication with our hands of how much we would like, and a little buffalo horn knife (yes, we found one in Tuscany and Kim bought one back with us, tres cool!) cut's a chunk for us. It's placed on the scales - so many things are just sold by weight, so cool - and we scoff it down.



And all this was had at a little service centre / road side food stall. You can only imagine what lies ahead on our 14 day adventure in Italy .........

Japanese fast food on a road trip, Katsu-mania!

On our way home after a quick visit to Sapporo we're both a little hungry. It's our first time driving into and out of Sapporo, so we're both concentrating on the driving and keeping an eye out for the signs. Almost out of the city we're really hungry now .... and as much as I'm wishing something would just jump out at me, like the golden arches, but not the golden arches, I'm thinking it might turn into SeicoMart hot chef lunch at any moment.

But then, just as I hoped it would, it jumped out at me. A shopfront plastered in sporadic wood planks, giant red kanji and something that just screamed out that there was a whole range of tasty's waiting inside. ''Kim, Kim, take the next left'' I exclaim. He seems a little puzzled as to what I'd seen but around we go. We trace back and find a park, then in we go.



I don't know why I had such a strong feeling that something delicious was waiting for us inside this wooden front building, but it certainly was.  What we discovered was a katsu shop.  Yup, just katsu's!  All be-it about 25 varieties and ways you could enjoy your katsu.  It was katsu-mania.  We point and order a couple of things from the menu. Firstly a cheese-u katsu. It's super crunchy with a mountain of freshly shaved white cabbage, rice and pickles.



Japanese curry katsu was also delicious. Slices of pork katsu sitting on a bed of rice and floating in a pool of Japanese curry sauce with some pickled ginger.



But the star of the show, something we noticed advertised by posters on the wall, the katsu sandwich. Now I love a good sandwich, and quite often the simple 2 or 3 filling ones are the best! And simple this was indeed. Plump pork katsu with a super crispy coating was sandwiched between 2 crustless slices of white bread. There was a scraping of butter and a splash of terriyaki sauce. Sublime! We add a little extra ton-katsu sauce from the pot sitting on our table.




Re-fuelled and nursing content tummy's we are again on our way ...