These are some of my favourite things

 I'm enjoying summery salads with fresh sweet tomatoes from the green market - they taste like a tomato should, and mixed with fresh basil from the garden, a bit of garlic and black pepper, and tossed through some pasta, it is a meal fit for kings.

The lady in the green market that I get my tomatoes from keeps slipping me nektarines and peaches - just one, and a smile and a tap on the hand. She used to give me recipes too.

Watermelons are just beyond  imagination - sooo sweet, and huge - I have been buying 1/4 at a time to eat my way through. And we eat it with a silky balkan feta, basil, black pepper and olive oil. So fresh, so delicious.



The other day I spotted a pack of breskvice, those were my favourite when I lived here! They are like a yoyo biscuit but the middle of each half is hollowed out and filled with a mixture of ground almonds, ground walnuts and rum / brandy flavour - they are delicious, a delicacy, but who would have the time to paint these beauties when I can eat them so quickly.


Oh and then there is always krempita (literally cream pie) also claimed by Slovenia as kremsnica.



Last night I made a salad and then couldn't stop eating it was so tasty, just tortellini with finely chopped tomatoes, basil, garlic and olive oil - the key is that the tomatoes taste so good. Everything tastes so good - is it the sun? the minerals in the soil? not sure.




We did have a discussion the other night about the globalism of food. Everyone celebrated when Lidl came to town in Makarska - huge German chain of supermarkets, and isles of stuff that can be bought anywhere else in the world. And then the conversation turned to why we travel - whether we travel to have exactly the same as we have at home, or whether we do it to try new things, experience new food etc. If you want to eat the same food same brands as you do at home, why bother getting on the plane?

And these big supermarkets do save the local person time and energy - you can park at the supermarket (bonus) and everything is there under the same roof. 

i remember when I lived here there was a joy and a ritual in going to one shop for the prsut and cheese, then to the green market for the vegetables, 



to another place that has good sweet grapes... but I'm not running a household, rushing to work, feeding a family.  Sadly, it's not difficult to imagine a homogenous type of travel where nothing much changes from country to country. Having said that, I'd be happy if Croatian laundry and cleaning products came to NZ, such wonderful smelling towels and bathrooms (shout out to Marina who does the cleaning here, so fast, so efficient and leaves a waft of freshness behind her!).

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