Condiments

I have recently been having a love affair with condiments, putting them on just plain bread or disgusting sandy cookies or pasta or just my fingers and calling it good. I never gave condiments much cred, but as it turns out, they are the glue of our lives, pulling dishes together, making them better and special, turning blah to delicious, and breaking up the mundanity of it all, (and when I don't have an oven or even a toaster, I need to take advantage of any way I can be creative with the food I eat, or else it will all end up tasting the same).

Favorites include raspberry jam (a.k.a. crack), Dijon mustard, forte (strong, which is more similar to Wasabi than bright yellow American mustard), Tabasco (I think the general lack of spiciness in France has driven me to finally try and fall in love with it...I put it in soup last night), a sweet Mustard with sugar from Germany that I tried yesterday at "German breakfast," where a German and an Austrian cooked sausage and potatoes, and, of course, the king-daddy of all sauces: brava sauce!

It comes from a tapas that I discovered and fell in love with in Barcelona. It's basically a combination of everything good and delicious: ketchup, mayonnaise, tabasco, paprika, thyme, and sauteed onions. So far I've put it on fried potatoes (patatas bravas, the original dish from Barcelona), pasta, ble (wheat stuff), canned corn, bread, my fingers...

Cooking. As long as I'm only working 12 hours a week, I figure a sizable amount of my time can be devoted to learning how and trying new things.