Mercado (Market) Day

One of my favorite things about Madrid is/are (idk - English grammar isn't a high priority for me these days) the markets.  Saturday morning is my 'explore the market fun time' of the week.  Sometimes I decide to be really adventurous, sometimes I just buy normal stuff, and sometimes I just wander around and enjoy looking at things.

I've been wanting to try a new recipe for beef barley stew.  So, my mission this morning was to find reasonably priced stew meat.  I ended up at my usual butcher and took a number.  While I was waiting, I listened to pieces of the various conversations happening around me and watched the butchers fill orders since I find that incredibly interesting.

The mercado knife sharpener (afilador), Luis, saw me waiting and came over to say hi, so we chatted a bit.  He gave me a hard time about always coming to the market when the lines are long and we joked about that a little.  Then he asked me what I needed to get, so I showed him my list.  Then he gave me a hard time about it being in English.  I laughed and told him he had a good point.  Might as well write my future lists in Spanish - why not?

Anyways, they called my number and I ordered a half kilo of pork chops, and a kilo of stew meat.  So, I'll tackle that stew recipe tomorrow.  But for now, I'm going to download some Spanish podcasts then go explore an area of the city that my language exchange partner showed me last night.  Looked like there were some interesting places to discover!

The butcher slicing my pork chops.  Good job guy!