Hey LiM,

The "little culinary cultural shock" that you suffered last X-mas reminds me a little bit of my surprise when in Ohio, and for the first time, I was offered ice-cream for dessert a day in either January or February when it had been snowing for like a month and a half!

It's true, generally speaking, ice-cream for Spaniards usually means warm weather, and we only eat sweets like cookies for breakfast or at 'merienda' time.

BTW, while on the subject, I was also quite surprised to see people eating the uncooked dough of the chocolate chip cookies, and many people baking their own bread (very few people do it here these days). Also serving cake and ice-cream together was quite a new thing for me (until the arrival of American restaurants here), and the diferent shapes and flavors of doughnuts (here we only had Donuts back then) and my favourite thing....those cans of frozen natural orange juice, Hhmmmm!!!