Normally I feel this way about food. Our son is a classically trained chef whose best metier is pastr, and whose second forte is elaborate vegetables. Everyone in my paternal family cooks for adventure and cultural transmission of heritage, plus exploration of other food heritages. I teach a course in the anthropology of food.... I even have a lovely cookbook of foods from the CF (which represents an augmented art form version of the simulacrum most of us encounter on the CF). Pilgrim food across the meseta made me sad. Things improved from Astorga to the end.
What I ate on Camino last time was overwhelmingly bland, and I didn't see a green vegetable on a plate for weeks. Sometimes a microwaved frozen dinner served as a "pilgrim meal" (somewhere in Cacabelos), far too many "patatas bravas" that were actually just frozen french fries....
So this time Spouse is cooking for himself a lot, staying in smaller albergues in smaller towns where the food has been better than I experienced. But for our cooking (I join him Tuesday) he has a bottle of dried chilli and lime, and I am bringing a "Mediterranean" herbed salt blend. "To each their own" and those who like the bland food of the pilgrim meal are not robbing us of anything by doing so. I see nothing disrespectful to local cuisine (which is one thing), by shaking a little "zip" from home on what is served on the Frances (which is another thing).
If we were going on the Portugues, it wold be a different matter entirely. I've heard food on the Portugues is wonderful, fresh, and beautifully prepared. The CF? Not so much (even though, yes, I had beautiful tortillas and empanadas, and a really neat baby eel salad with fried egg, those stand out as unusual). I'm not complaining about what one gets for 10 euro. It gets the job done. But I don't revere it as cuisine.
Righ?!
