What is it with Spanish women when they’re buying meat?  They’ll stand in a queue for ages and it’s only when it’s their turn that they even begin to decide what they actually want!  

The other day I had been waiting ten minutes already when the woman in front of me was served. She hmmed and aahd as she sauntered up and down the counter, asking the butcher to hold up various cuts for her. Finally she settled on liver. 

“How would you like it?” the butcher asked.

“Fino” she said. He cut a thin slice

“No! Finer than that!” she reprimanded.  He cut it so fine you could read a newspaper through it. 

“Anything else?” He asked, after he had painstakingly sliced about 30 slivers. 

She took a deep breath and started pacing up and down the counter again, tutting as she went.  Finally she replied. “Yes, I’ll have a chicken.” After choosing her chicken – the most difficult one for him to reach of course – she said she wanted it cut into pieces.  The legs she wanted in bite sized pieces for a paella, the wings and gizzard had to be cut into chunks for stock and the breasts and liver she wanted sliced finely for frying. Each section then had to be wrapped separately – including the head and feet. Next she asked for a kilo of stewing steak. 

“Thank goodness,” I thought, “this can’t take long.”

“The chunks are too big – cut each one into four pieces” she ordered.

Don’t these women own knives?  Aren’t they capable of cutting up a few chunks of meat? 

From now on I’ll buy my meat in Mercadona – okay it’s shrink wrapped and probably weeks old but at least I won’t have to wait half an hour for a kilo of mince.