Twelve olives

And well, now that New Year's Eve is over, let me add a little water to the wine. Tradition says—and there are some very new traditions—that you have to eat twelve grapes during the twelve chimes: one for each chime. Since they go by quickly, the person in question tries to chew and swallow, because the point is to finish with an empty plate.

We are a wine country; in most areas of Catalonia there are vineyards. What I mean by this is that the vine is very present here: we know when the buds sprout, we know when the harvest is. And here's my point. How can it be that on December 31st we eat grapes from the "Cámara Frigorífica" Designation of Origin, from who knows where, and without it being a big deal back then? A few months ago we had all the grapes we wanted. Now that it's winter, we don't have them, except in their most exquisite form: wine.

I read that this idea of eating grapes comes from the protests of the common people in Madrid against the wealthy who were eating exotic fruits and drinking champagne. If so, the ironic protest has done some damage. It's true that at Christmas people buy cherries, lychees, and pineapple. This perhaps made sense before, when exotic fruit was a luxury. Now that even Pere Aragonès has admitted to having pineapple for breakfast, it's pointless. Perhaps it's time to do as those we used to laugh at did and celebrate with olives, which we have, or with nuts.

My New Year's resolution is to eat only seasonal and locally sourced fruits and vegetables. Of course, there are always things from overseas that are essential, like coffee. Of course, we like the idea of things they have there that we don't have here. But eating a tomato now doesn't make much sense, and above all, it doesn't taste very good.