I knew this was going to happen…during our trip to Spain in December last year, we clearly noticed that a favorite staple of the Spanish diet was pork…in every shape and form imaginable.  You could have it sliced thin as prosciutto;  in thicker, cured chunks called lomo; inserted in bocadillos (long thin sandwiches eaten almost any time) usually with cheese slices and tomato jam;  as pork chops in a main mid-day meal; on pizza instead of Canadian bacon;  in an omelette…and on and on.  A real treat is to be served thin slices right off the hind quarter of a cured pig – you see these hanging in many bars and restaurants wearing what look like little tin hats stuck in the bottom (or top – not sure which end is up) that are there to catch the curative so the bar doesn’t get messy.  Hard to avoid – and really hard to resist.

 (Hanging hams with their hats!)

My inner Jew – and Jewish upbringing has been duly challenged while being surrounded by this plethora of pork-eating opportunities…and it tastes so, so good.  It’s hard to find really, really good chicken and beef (not impossible, but not common), and we have not as a family taken the vegetarian oath of purity.  So we have succumb to doing as the Spaniards do.  There is a little consolation from a health standpoint.  Apparently the pigs here in Spain are raised with some measure of reverance – they are not fattened up by steroids and given all sorts of other nasty feed. They apparently are “free range” or a close facimile thereof, are fed well,  as a result as not nearly as fatty a food as what ends up as bacon strips and chops in the States.  Call me rationalizing, but this makes me feel at least a bit better on the stay fit front.  As for throwing the last bastion of my Kashrut (Kosher) roots out the window – well I am hoping both G-d and my grandparents will forgive me this slight indiscretion.  I will do what I can to avoid serving lomo or some other pig by-product at Friday night Sabbath dinners!