Sometimes you chase down a rabbit hole. Sometimes the rabbit hole finds you. Occasionally, you just tag along down the last part of the path to the rabbit hole. And in some cases, the rabbit hole comes from sugar's sweetness. The moment you start down a rabbit hole time disappears and the search becomes the thing.
Living here in Portugal there are things common in the US that cannot be found, period. One example is Crisco. So, it was a surprise to me today when in a specialty store I actually found a can of Crisco. It was small and expensive. The reason I was in the specialty store was the rabbit hole of my morning.
Francie is an excellent cook. I eat well most of the time. Today at lunch for example we had a salad of greens. It was topped with poached and shredded chicken breasts, savory peanuts and a Thai style dressing. Yeah, like I said she makes wonderful food and I recognize that fact.
When special occasions arise, she throws her inner chef into gear and cooks all out. Today is Maundy Thursday, tomorrow is Good Friday and Sunday is Easter. In this 95% Catholic country, and in many countries around the world, Sunday is a feast day. Lenten deprivations will end with sweets, alcohol and other sworn off items. As a result, Easter requires something special, something with panache.
Last year we had a full Easter meal here. This year we are attending a nibbles and drinks mid-afternoon Easter gathering. Obviously we will take libations and food treats. Francie has decided to make her famous lemon rosemary cookies.
I don’t know all of the cookies' ingredients but I can tell by the number of lemons present in our home, and the swatches of rosemary on the kitchen counter that real lemon and real rosemary are a major part of the confection. I don’t think Crisco is required (but if that were the case you could use lard which is readily available here). My guess is that lots of butter will come into play.
Sanding sugar is not a “thing” in Portugal. It is similar to “vanilla extract” not being a thing in Portugal. We smuggle Kirkland vanilla extract back each time we come. Next time we return from the US there will be a big can of Crisco in our checked bag. Customs folks may think we are swingers. Maybe the sanding sugar also crammed into the suitcase will also throw them off. Yeah I can see them testing the sugar to see if it is a drug. I digress.
Francie entered the rabbit hole first searching all the stores around for sanding sugar. We have been to the small stores, Coninente and Pingo Doce We have visited the big stores like El Cortes Ingles. Nope, nada, not to be found. Next she tried Amazon.de and Amazon.es, but to no avail. Nothing even vaguely resembling sanding sugar was listed on either site.
In the hope of finding sanding sugar, she joined an online English language cooking group for Portugal residents. Most people made suggestions that were a bit off the mark, suggesting using things that really were not comparable. One person however indicated there was a baking supply store near where he lived that might, just might, have sanding sugar.
Party & Bite was the name given to the store and it was said to be in Alvalade. For us to get to Alvalade required a walk to one subway line, a short ride on that line, a transfer to another subway line and the ever optimistic and euphemistic Google Maps estimated walk of 9 minutes at the tail end of the journey. Google maps does not consider the condition of the sidewalk, the topography of the area, the incline of the street, whether it has rained or the decrepit and aged person making the jaunt.
Did I mention rain and wind came today? Oh yeah, the forecast indicated heavy rain all afternoon and high winds. Lisbon is the city of dead cheap umbrellas. Two of the three weather services said the rain would hold off until noon. We were starting out on this wild goose chase a little after 10. To me that implied we would get wet if we ventured out to Alvalade.
Nope, I did not want to get wet. Thus, the wizard inside Google Maps was consulted again. We found a second location for Party & Bite, a mere nine minutes’ walk from our apartment. We both looked at the suggested route, and nodded "yes" to trying this location first. Primarily we agreed to this because of the bothersome time factor to get to Alvalade and because the walk to the Picoas location being entirely and totally downhill.
Down, down, down we passed even walking under the yellow line of the subway. We traversed a fairly narrow street with coffee shops, clothing stores and a beautiful stand-alone balcony covered in flowers, see above. Things like that balcony just covered with plants and flowers in bloom are what make Lisbon just a great place to explore. Eventually, we got to Party & Bite.
Party & Bite is a big store. I mean it has aisles with all kinds of baking pans, walls of tools to use in frosting and otherwise decorating pastries. It also has a large selection of jimmies, sugar confetti and the like for decorating. Off to the left I saw it. There was a jar of white sugar that was exactly what we wanted. It had very large square crystals of sugar. Sanding sugar yeah.
Well, no. After we picked it up and marched around the store we looked at the jar again before heading to the cashier. The label stated this sanding sugar was marshmallow flavored. Yuck. There were other colors too and all were flavored. Red was raspberry. Yellow was bananas. I believe the green was asparagus or avocado. Back the jar went on the shelf.
Being the half of our dyad that will seek out clerks to avoid a half hour of unnecessary searching I approached the cashier. She took us to a the clear plastic door of a locked cabinet. When she opened the case the cashier reached very high and pulled down two McCormick spice sized jars of what for all the world appears to be slightly murky looking sanding sugar. Bought it without a second's hesitation. We haven’t tasted the sugar yet to see if it has any flavor other than sweet. God I hope it is not flavored because what non-obscene thing could slightly brownish sanding sugar taste like?
Finding ingredients like Crisco and sanding sugar in Portugal was a significant discovery. With these some beloved recipes from the US that rely on such specific ingredient can be made. Every once in a very long while one needs a sense of intimate familiarity with food, a childhood taste memory. To occasionally have a throwback food creates a bridging as it were of the gap between the two very discrete living experiences of the EU and the US.
Today’s rabbit hole was the search for the ever-elusive sanding sugar. Monday’s rabbit hole will be replacing a lost government ID. One way or another the rabbits of our lives beckon us deep down into their lair. Computers may have made the journeys a little quicker but they have not made them disappear by any means.
Happy Easter. Ah, it would be a great time to be in the low country eating hush puppies and oysters.
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