Saturday, May 5, 2012

Spain Vacation: Day Five; Equipo B

Sunday, Pari generally travels across the city to a squat called Equipo B.  She used to live there years ago but has since gotten her own place.  At Equipo B, Sundays is pizza day.  They make pizzas for anyone who wants them and asks for super cheap donations.  The folks who live there have made an amazing brick oven in the back yard where they make pizzas to order.


This sunday, they were light on help and asked if Pari and I would come help cut and prepare the veggies.  All of the pizzas are vegetarian and many are vegan.  A couple of the guys who live there asked if I could make a vegan cheese for the pizzas.  I hesitated but said I could whip something up.  I did and they loved it.


When Hocine and Azaam arrived, they brought some American BBQ sauce.  This is a rare commodity in Spain.  They have some BBQ but I was told it was more like ketchup.  As I suggested that we make some BBQ pizza (a southern common flavor) they poked fun at me for being American.  I made one anyway with some vegan cheese and they scarfed it down.  It quickly became a running joke between me and the Equipo B family.


Maik, one of the Equipo B residence and I, agreed that the following week we would make seitan for the pizzas.  Seitan seems to be much more common in Spain then in the US.  In the US it is largely a vegan food but their it seemed far more "normal".  We were both excited to see each others recipes.


There is another squat next door to Equipo B.  I visited there briefly to see a cave they had under the house.  I was pretty skeptical at first but when I went in it was impressive.  There is a fresh water cave that comes from the mountains right under the house.  This one an amazing sight considering we were in the middle of the city.  I would make plans to return to the cave on the following weekend pizza day.


It was a pretty amazing day.  The squat was fantastic.  There were orange trees in the back yard along with some other fruit that was pretty tasty but no one seemed to know what it was.  They had a great view of the city from their roof and it was even very kid friendly.  It was a phenomenal day and made me happy I was open to meeting some new folks and seeing a bit of the city.



We left about 9pm and took the bus back to Pari's.  I had counted roughly 35 people who had arrived for pizza and they said it got busier after we left as they served pizza until around 11pm.  After her kids went to sleep, Pari and I planned out a trip to the mountains that I would take in a couple of days.  It would be a solo trip.  I was excited and looking forward to getting to see some wildness.


4 comments:

laura said...

WTH, I want a cave under my house!

pari said...

i love these posts!!! And not just cause i'm in them. :)

Alessandra said...

That pizza looks great! The fruit is biwa, a Japanese fruit, lots of tree were imported into Europe for exotic gardens, and can be found a bit everywhere, although the fruit is not commercial in Europe, as it doesn't store well, but is it really yummy!

Ciao
Alessandra

P. M. Doolan said...

Seems like you are keeping well away from tourist Spain. Good on you.