Cooking in Spain

¡Hola!

I had a nice little chat with my host dad, Luis, about cooking. He does a lot of the cooking in the family, and it's quite evident that it's something that he's passionate about. All of our meals are so nicely prepared. By the way the dishes are presented sometimes, you'd think he picks up tips from a tv program like Master Chef, but he actually does not watch any sort of show like that. He does a lot of the food shopping while I'm at school, so I wasn't able to accompany him to the market. He also will generally go grocery shopping once a week.

If you didn't see my barrio blog (about the neighborhood), I should tell you that there are stores for anything you could possibly desire within a ten minute walking distance. There are six supermarkets in my neighborhood, and several stores with very specific products, like seafood, or meat, or bread. Luis will usually go to both the local stores and the supermarkets when grocery shopping, and he always has a list of exactly what he needs to buy. Whenever I grocery shop (the few instances that I do), I am usually pretty bad at following the list. I always end up getting more things than I planned. Oops!

Luis has noticed an increase in some of the prices in the markets, specifically in fruits and vegetables. Fruits and veggies are much fresher and cheaper than in the US, so we eat a lot of those. No wonder Spain's population is so healthy.

During a typical day, it takes about 1-1.5 hours to prepare lunch, the biggest meal of the day. That also depends on what is being made. We eat a lot of salads (not like a normal American salad, but more like tuna, pickles, onions, and olives in a vinegar sauce. It's delicious!), bread, gazpacho, pasta, y meat. Gazpacho is a cold tomato soup, and we actually have it every day for lunch. It's SO good, and Luis taught me how to make it! Gazpacho is Luis' favorite food to eat, and his favorite dish to make is carne estofada (braised meat) o carne guisada (stewed meat).

When Luis was my age, he made all of the standard simple foods that I am able to make- pasta, more pasta, lots of pasta, salad, and soup. He actually learned how to cook extravagant dishes with his mother in law, and let me say, I've eaten a la casa de mis abuelos several times, and she is a fantastic cook! I definitely need to come back with a recipe book.

Anyhoo, I'm eating very well over here in Granada. I'm going to try to keep up some of these cooking tips and habits that I've learned when I come back to the States.


Until next time,

Halie