The remarkable thing is that since I’ve been living in Spain, I hardly miss anything. Many Dutch products are easy to find here. Dutch cheese — even Old Amsterdam. Peanut butter, chocolate sprinkles, satay sauce — in the camping shop nearby you’ll find things you wouldn’t expect to come across on the Costa Brava. So I rarely feel homesick for flavours.
What I hardly miss are typically Dutch things. Herring, sauerkraut — nice enough, but no real craving. It’s not in my system to think: I need that right now.
And yet this week I suddenly found myself looking for something very specific: fresh cranberries.
That actually has nothing to do with the Netherlands. It’s a tradition that’s been going on for more than twenty years. Once, I found a recipe for a Christmas cake — not heavy, not an English fruitcake, but something of its own. With hazelnuts, a little hazelnut oil, and fresh cranberries folded into the batter. Alongside it comes a sauce made from cranberries, orange juice, orange zest and cinnamon. And when you take a slice of cake with a spoonful of that sauce and a bit of clotted cream or crème fraîche, it suddenly feels more like a dessert than a cake.
I made that cake every year. In Lelystad even in small versions, with a jar of cranberry sauce alongside it, as a Christmas gift. In Alkmaar as well. It belonged to December.
Here in Spain, that’s different. Not because it’s impossible, but because the context has changed. The first Christmas I spent with a family member who isn’t really into homemade desserts. And, to be honest, these days you almost hesitate to give anything away. No sugar, no gluten, no lactose, no nuts. So I let it go.
But this year I thought: for myself, it’s allowed. And so I went looking for cranberries.
I couldn’t find them in Pineda. Not even in the small greengrocers. So I walked to Calella, where there are more specialist shops and where you sometimes find fruit that isn’t standard here. I tried two shops — nothing. Dried cranberries, yes, but that’s something entirely different.
On the way, I ran into a Spanish friend. She laughed when I told her. Fresh cranberries? She’d never seen them here. Maybe frozen, she said. Or sauce in a jar. But that’s not the same. She did point me to another supermarket, a chain we don’t have in Pineda. Big, well-stocked, and honestly a nice discovery. But even there: no fresh cranberries. Not chilled, not frozen.
And then I realised something slightly strange: this might have been the very first product since I’ve lived here that I truly couldn’t get. Not because it’s exotic, but because it simply doesn’t have a place here. Cranberries don’t belong to this cuisine, this season, this way of life.
It made me think. I don’t miss the Netherlands. I don’t miss products. But sometimes I miss a ritual — an action tied to a particular time of year. And sometimes that simply can’t travel with you to another country.
Maybe I won’t make that cake this year. Maybe I’ll come up with something else. Or maybe, at the beginning of January, I’ll have friends who are driving this way with their camper bring two bags of fresh cranberries — and I’ll bake it then, out of season, simply because I can.
It doesn’t have to be fixed. Like so many things here, it doesn’t have to be.