Aw, Sugar, Aw, Honey Honey

Hi, Deb in the City here, coming at you from Ontarie-arie-arie-o. OK, I’ve been trying hard to get my Canadian on and I’ve signed up for curling lessons for the fall. Very exciting! But in the meantime, I found these:

These little hunks of friend dough heaven are what are called Timbits and they are one of Canada’s culinary gifts to humanity. Dangerously bite-sized and lethally delicious, it is possible to polish off a whole box of these suckers on Hockey Night in Canada before Don Cherry has given his first period intermission report.

Today I was over on Bloor west in Koreatown and found another amazing tasty haven. This gentleman is Kim

in front of the amazing machine that makes Korean walnut cakes which are like the unofficial snack cake of Korea. They are frighteningly delicious and I’m thankful that Kim’s bakery is far from home because they are deelish, reasonably priced, hot, fresh and plentiful:

Like a Timbit, Korean style, filled with a half a walnut and red bean paste or sweet potato. Kim’s machine makes 1500 cakes an hour. Kimbits!

I wandered back downtown on the subway, happily hands-free to devour my Tim-and-Kim bits. I got off at the King Street stop by mistake instead of St. Andrew but realized that I could just walk underground in the PATH system.

Now, I don’t want to sound like a spoiled American who needs a GPS device to get anywhere, but is that system confusing or what? It’s like an underground shopping labyrinth, where all the landmarks are nearly identical. There are several food courts with stalls named things like Mr. Wok, Mr. Sub and Mr. Sushi and I swear I went past this same lottery stand four times.

And yeah, I did buy a 649 ticket each pass. OK, I know I have poor impulse control when I’m unsupervised. I was lost in the PATH for so long, the jackpot went from 14 to 16 million dollars by the time I finally climbed back up to street level. I headed south to the foot of Jarvis at the lake.

Tracing my sugar binge to the source, I ended up at the Redpath Refinery where there is a most fantastic sugar museum in the administrative part of the factory. It traces the history of the sugar industry in Canada, covering sugar import, modern refinery and extinct sugars, like beet sugar.

The sugar hut is awe-inspiring, a huge unassuming steel structure on the lake from the outside but filled to the ceiling with 10,000 tonnes of raw sugar in the inside. The air was misty with sweetness and before my pancreas conked out entirely and stopped producing insulin, I booked it out of there.

This is Deb in the City, parting, which is such sweet sorrow, from Toronto, Upper Canada, the former beet sugar capital of North America.

chino latino

OK, internet, ayude me, ayude me! Deb has reached her maximum tolerance for vigilancia de la niña. She is driving me crazy and her father is no help and so before I dress her a pretty little red cape and send her to the bulls, I have to do something.

So, I went to find something to make her happy. To try, anyway. I asked around but there are not really any stores in Salamanca that are Mexican. But lucky for me, Mexican food is now an international treat and so at the hipermercato Carrefour, I found tortillas de trigo, wheat tortillas. Made in Belgium, hecho en Belgica! I can’t take the kid to have a burrito with her dad in Mexico but I can bring a burrito to her. I hope it works.

Afterwards, I was in town and walking around looking at more old stuff and I wandered into the Las Duenas Convent, seeking spiritual comfort.

It is very serene and calm inside the convent but even better the Dominican nuns have a gift shop that sells their baked goods! Finally, spiritual enlightenment through cookies. I bought a box of the most heavenly almond cookies, galletas de almendras. Since they are made by nuns, they are heavenly in all senses of the word. Y sin manteca!

Then in front of Casa de las Conchas, another cookie epiphany.

This gentleman is selling chicarros. They are fragile and delicate straw-shaped cookies and they are not sold in stores. He told me he is perhaps the last street vendor of this cookie. He also sells obleas, the flat ones that are remind me of holy wafers from church. Another heavenly cookie.

As difficult as life is, I can’t eat only cookies so I stopped in for some lunch at this place, El Café Te Pacifico.

It is a Chinese restaurant run by a Buddhist family from Taiwan. Since they are Buddhist, they are vegetarian so I had a Chinese style pork bun that was made with vegetable pork! In Salamanca, with so much good pork this is nearly heretical but I must say, the bun was delicious.

Yi came to Salamanca and fell in love with the city and culture and decided to stay. He and his wife have two kids and they teach Mandarin to children who have been adopted from the Chinese speaking world, so that they can retain their mother language. They give these classes for free.

Yi’s son entertained everyone in the restaurant by trying to teach us words in Mandarin. I told him that Spanish was still difficult for me to understand. This woman told him it was too hard for her to pronounce Chinese and he smiled and said, "Oh come on, it’s easy!"

This is Deb in the City, saying goodbye from Salamanca, Spain where Spanish is hard and so is Chinese, depending on how you look at it.

Viva Jamon!

OK I have good news. According to El Google, Santa Concordia is the patron saint of nannies! Sadly, Santa Concordia is not Spanish and does not live in Salamanca but I’m very happy to know that the catholics have nannies covered in the saint department.

Today I was in town and discovered the other religion of Salamanca when I passed this beautiful stadium:

I thought it was for futbol or maybe Flamenco Dancing with the Stars or something. Que boba! No one dances with stars here, but there is dancing, the dance of death, le corrida. Sadly I have to wait until September when the bullfights begin.

But there is plenty of bull activity anyway because Salamanca is where the best bulls are born and raised. I drove outside of town and found this place:

Dehesa de Rodesviejas where they grow the bulls. The youngsters are so cute! Look! Mira!

Just like little kids. And they are domesticated animals. Just like kids. As a nanny, I thought a little bit of bullfighting might teach me a thing or two about dealing with beasts. At the finca, they let me go for a capea, which is an amateur bullfight.

I don’t want to brag but they said I have some talent. I did not get the ear of the little bull, but I made my entrance, first try. Beginner’s luck.

Salamanca is very proud of its bulls. But, Salamantinos are also proud of another animal, the pig. Pata negra, or in other words, the best ham in the world, comes from the province of Salamanca and the region raises special black pigs, that eat acorns and produce premier ham or jamon and pork or puerco products.

The culture of jamon is incredible here. Jamon is everywhere.

There is even a special bag to carry your jamon in that you can buy at the supermarket:

Ham is so dominant actually, that it is pretty hard to find things to eat without ham in them. Even cookies.

I was enjoying my afternoon cafecito con mantecados the other day, and I started thinking it's funny because manteca is the word for lard. Yes, that’s what makes them so good.

This is Deb in the City, saying goodbye from Salamanca, España, the cerda, cochina, puerco, marrano, conchinilla y lechon capitol of the universe.

Viva España

Hello internet. My name is Deb and you have clicked on my blog, Deb in the City. Do you use the word blog in Spanish? Probably El Blog, no? Or La Blog? Blogs are girls or boys? No se.

Anyway, Deb in the City is my new coping mechanism since my doctor said I should stop eating churros. See, I never expected this but now I have moved to Spain and I live in Salamanca. It’s fantastic here but a little stressful because my Spanish is so terrible and everyone here speaks such a pure Castellano. It’s embarrassing because in the United States a lot of people speak Spanish and I only know enough to negotiate the laundromat. It’s pathetic, no? OK, don’t answer that.

But I live in a fantastic house.

It’s a luxury green farmhouse. Green means it’s friendly to the environment. The water of the three jacuzzis is recycled. Very ecological. This house balances out the other house, the one in Mallorca:

We go here on the weekends with all the other Americans and waste a lot of water together. It’s comforting for us.

Salamanca is probably the most beautiful city I have ever seen. So well-made and old. Everything here is really old to me as an American.

The new cathedral for instance, is older than the United States. Salamanca and Spain have profound history. The United States has “classic” rock.

And Salamanca has many many religious and folkloric traditions which I hope to see. Like El Colacha near Burgos.

This man, dressed as the devil jumps over babies to cleanse them of their evil. Because babies are so evil.

Sadly, I came too late for Holy Week this year so I will have to wait. But the Virgen de la Vega festival is coming

so I will get to see my first procession and my first Virgen. Spain has a lot of different processions and a lot of different Virgens.

And the Spainsh are a balanced people and so that everything in Salamnca is not all just virgen, virgen, virgen there is also llunes de aguas festival which is after Easter, to commemorate when the prostitutes are invited back to Salamanca after being exiled across the river for Lent.

I hope that maybe there is a festival and procession for nannies or at least a patron saint of nannies that I can pray to here in Salamanca.

This is Deb saying goodbye from Salamanca, Spain la ciudad dorado, the Golden City.

Goodbye, Columbus

With God all things are possible.

This is the motto of the state of Ohio and though I am not very churchy, I am willing at this point to go with God because I am at the end of my nanny rope.

The Child has become officially impossible and her deadbeat dad is off roaming someplace and has left me hung out to dry with a difficult little buckeye on my hands. But, she is just a kid and as Woody used to say to me when I was sitting on the bench, paralyze resistance with persistence.

So in the spirit of persistence, I went out to Morse road to try and find something to make peace with her. And I found this amazing store.

They sell just about everything from Mexico and pretty instantly I found what I was looking for.



Fresh cactus, right off the tree, bush, vine, whatever. But, the thorns were still in place and I don’t know how to deal with them but lucky for La Gringa, safety cactus comes harmlessly tamed in a jar. I cannot take the child to her dad in Guadalajara but I can bring a little of Mexico to her.The Mexican supermercado is muy fantastico and this shrine to the virgin of Guadaloupe that is next to the produce section says it all. When I was wandering by the meat counter I started chatting with this woman, Margaret who was buying spicy chicken to grill.

Margaret is from Cameroon in west Africa. She told me that she can get any African products she needs here in Columbus, right at the supermercado, actually. Margaret said she misses her parents but otherwise she loves it here.

Next door to Michocana is another store, the Jubba Halal meat market and it is run by this fellow, Farrah.



Farrah is from Somalia and I bought some amazing coconut cookie bars from him and we chatted about the complicated politics of his country. He too said that he loves it here, and the "USA is the best country in the world", which kind of surprised me, considering our recent history with his homeland. He told me he was from Mogadishu and when I asked him what he missed about Somalia he told me “I miss walking for miles and miles in my city. And playing soccer.”

This is Deb in the City, globetrotting on Morse Road from Mexico to Cameroon to Somalia in Columbus, OH.

Sporting Fools

Deb in the City here. OK, not to dwell, but Columbus is crazy for sports. There is a lady football team, OK? The Columbus Comets are a pro women’s team and I can’t wait for their season to start so I can go watch Chelsea and Whitney and Ashley and Ebony dominate on the gridiron. Behold their awesomeness:But it’s not all contact sports, there is also Columbus’ native son and legend of the links, Mr. Jack Nicklaus. He has his own fantastic museum over on the OSU campus and though not directly related to the Golden Bear or his gift shop, I did notice that I can also go to my final resting place with a golf theme.This casket is called the Fairway to Heaven and even though I don’t really get golf, the thought of being buried in this makes a passion for the links burn in my heartplace. New hobby, here I come!

So today I was walking around looking at insurance company buildings (very impressive array) and I came upon this park downtown. From the street, it looks kind of regular but once I passed through the gates and walked in a bit, it was like a trip to the Louvre in Paris or something.

OK, it’s hard to tell because my lousy snapshot does not do it justice but this is a topiary recreation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Sunday in the Park with George! Seriously! I could not believe it. It is incredible. Look at the shrubbery lady walking her shrubbery dog.
I don’t know what kind of bush clipping genius took on this beautiful notion but it is truly amazing and I think the bushes themselves speak to the majesty of this vision.

Maybe it’s just me but cenral Ohio seems to like things that are made to look like other things. Bushes that are shaped like dogs and buildings that are just amazing. This is the corporate headquarters of the Longaberger Basket Company in nearby Newark and I cannot say enough about the basket passion that made this possible. Longabergers are highly collectible, handmade baskets and they are sold through a shadowy network of 45,000 basket agents around North America. Perhaps it is possible to be buried in a human sized picnic basket, for devotees of the basket cult.

Besides a good cult, I really like a good hall of fame and the OSU campus has a couple of excellent ones. I headed over to the Fisher College of Business, wearing my buckeye necklace to blend in with the crowd, looking for the accounting hall of fame there. I was bummed to find there is no real hall with plaques and it’s just an award given to the titans of accounting. Personally, I think this is a rip-off for the winners.

Then I wandered into the Agricultural Engineering building where I found this first-rate hall of fame.
Yes, this is the Drainage Hall of Fame and it recognizes the visionaries and innovators in the field of agricultural drainage. Humble water, the giver of life, has to go somewhere after it falls out of the sky and these gentlemen have made it their life’s work to figure that out so all the rest of us don’t have to. Personally, I’m pretty happy about that because I would not know the first thing about draining a field, though I bet I could flood one if given the chance.

This is Deb in the city, saying so long from Ohio, where the state insect is the ladybug, the state rock song is "Hang on Sloopy" and the state beverage is tomato juice. And the state tree is the buckeye. But everybody knows that.

High in the Middle and Round on the Ends

Hello out there wide world of webs. My name is Deb and you have clicked on my blog Deb in the City. OK, I know, I know, it’s not really a blog, it’s a vlog because it’s video. But seriously, do I have to use the word vlog? It sounds like some part of the Starship Enterprise that Chekov might refer to. (with bad Slavic accent) "Captain, the vlog accelerator has reached maximum!" It’s just too hard for me.

Anyway, Deb in the City is my little coping mechanism since the economy has gotten rotten and I’ve had to curb my discretionary spending. So, no more Precious Moments collectibles and I am trying to deal with the fact that I now live in a fabulous new city, Columbus, Ohio.

I get to live in this fantastic house.

As you can see, they sort of ran out steam on the lawn there. And landscaping is not in my nanny job description.

The house is in a community with its own name, Marble Cliff Crossing.
Here’s the marble cliff, which according to the Google is technically made of Columbus Limestone. The cliff has its Crossing as I mentioned and its own gate and community center and concierge service. Oh, and self-watering lawns. Sweet!

When I first got here, everyone kept telling me about Buckeyes and how they were so great and I looked into it, once again, on the Google and it did not add up for me that everyone was so devoted to a nut off a tree that you can’t even eat. It’s poisonous, actually. What's with worshipping this killer nut?

But the locals were really kind with my misunderstanding and set me straight that the buckeye is just the symbol for the people that live in Ohio. And that the real site of worship, the cathedral to buckeyes past and future is this edifice.
OK, this buckeye worship is a very well developed cult and I’ve discovered that living in Columbus and becoming a buckeye is essentially a cradle-to-grave deal, literally. Start here:

With the Buckeye pacifier.

And end here:











It is possible for me to get buried in high Buckeye style with an Ohio State University memorial casket or if I decide to go with cremation, my ashes can sit on a shelf in a handsome OSU licensed urn. As a domestic worker I like the idea of leaving a legacy for somebody else to dust.

This is Deb in the City, singing off from Columbus, OH where Cristopher Columbus parked his ship after he discovered America with the Pilgrims.

SANTA MARIA?