Twelve Grapes, Redux
You may or may not remember that Spaniards have a quaint New Year's habit of eating, in rapid succession (one with each stroke of midnight, it's supposed to be) twelve grapes at New Year's. This seems to me to be a hazardous custom (grapes are round and can easily be choked on), and do you really trust a crowd of drunk (well, if it's just turned New Year's they're probably not drunk yet) people to administer appropriate first aid? But I digress.
So, this year it's the 31st of December again, and, until about an hour ago, I didn't have any grapes. I thought about acquiring the grapes, sure, but I didn't remember really seeing a lot at the fruit stands, and then yesterday was Sunday.
I don't really leave the house before noon, and so once again all factors were against me in grape acquisition.
I went to the fruit markets, and the first stand was closing, and they had no grapes. The second and third stands were also closing, the fourth was open but had no grapes, and the fifth and sixth were also open but, again, grapeless. But a guy at that last one told me to go to the fruit stand that said "Belen." (I was confused, because why would a fruit stand have a crèche, but then it turned out that that was the stand's name.) I went there, and a woman was buying the last nice big container of grapes.
Apparently, I looked purposeful enough, and sad enough at seeing the last basket of grapes sold that the woman automatically put the grapes from the proverbial bottom of the barrel and the literal bottom of the display basket into a bag and gave them to me.
There are probably a couple of dozen, and once I remove the ones that are well on their way to being grapes, I should be all set to greet 2008 like a Spaniard!
Alternately, I could just go to the supermarket and pick up one of these:
These are bizarre! They are canned, seeded, peeled grapes, sold in twelve-grape packs. They even say "Special for New Year's Eve." And the big supermarkets have them at the ends of the aisles and by the checkout right now (or, they probably did until sometime this morning.) Talk about a niche marketing idea.
Happy 2008, everyone!
You may or may not remember that Spaniards have a quaint New Year's habit of eating, in rapid succession (one with each stroke of midnight, it's supposed to be) twelve grapes at New Year's. This seems to me to be a hazardous custom (grapes are round and can easily be choked on), and do you really trust a crowd of drunk (well, if it's just turned New Year's they're probably not drunk yet) people to administer appropriate first aid? But I digress.
So, this year it's the 31st of December again, and, until about an hour ago, I didn't have any grapes. I thought about acquiring the grapes, sure, but I didn't remember really seeing a lot at the fruit stands, and then yesterday was Sunday.
I don't really leave the house before noon, and so once again all factors were against me in grape acquisition.
I went to the fruit markets, and the first stand was closing, and they had no grapes. The second and third stands were also closing, the fourth was open but had no grapes, and the fifth and sixth were also open but, again, grapeless. But a guy at that last one told me to go to the fruit stand that said "Belen." (I was confused, because why would a fruit stand have a crèche, but then it turned out that that was the stand's name.) I went there, and a woman was buying the last nice big container of grapes.
Apparently, I looked purposeful enough, and sad enough at seeing the last basket of grapes sold that the woman automatically put the grapes from the proverbial bottom of the barrel and the literal bottom of the display basket into a bag and gave them to me.
There are probably a couple of dozen, and once I remove the ones that are well on their way to being grapes, I should be all set to greet 2008 like a Spaniard!
Alternately, I could just go to the supermarket and pick up one of these:
These are bizarre! They are canned, seeded, peeled grapes, sold in twelve-grape packs. They even say "Special for New Year's Eve." And the big supermarkets have them at the ends of the aisles and by the checkout right now (or, they probably did until sometime this morning.) Talk about a niche marketing idea.
Happy 2008, everyone!
posted by AV at 9:57 AM
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