The Food in Spain

Many people have asked me what the Spanish eat or what we are eating here, this post is for you!

 After living here for a few weeks, while Kamree was helping me make dinner she stated with a little disgust, "Spanish people eat animals, huh."  I answered saying, " we do too", and reminded her that "we ate chicken last night and that's an animal. What animal do you think that is?"  She then responded, "oh a pig."

Then a couple days later, as I was helping Mason and Kamree practice the Spanish words for different farm animals, Kamree announced that we eat chickens.  Mason laughingly said, "no we don't that would be disgusting."

Kamree wanted to pose for a picture in front of this concrete wall that we walk past on our way to Dia, the closest market. We thought we would grab a few things for dinner and get some pictures to post to show you what you could find in their grocery stores.    There is graffiti on the wall which we think is characteristic of Spain since we see it everywhere we go on about every fence, building and playset. 

You would think we would know by now that we can't shop between 2-5 pm.  But again we showed up during the siesta.  Kamree has our large grocery bag, which we always bring because they charge 5 cents for small ones at the stores.  Most people have large carts that look like rolling suitcases that they bring to the store to cart their groceries home.   Many times when I walk to the larger and farther stores, I've wished I had one as I carry two of these large bags packed full with heavy groceries having to stop every 20 steps or so to rest my arms and back.

 

Alcampo 

 Since we finally got a car I was able to drive to a neighboring town to a much larger store for some pictures. This store is similar to the size and set-up as Walmart.  We've noticed that even in the larger stores they don't sell a larger variety of food just more brands of the same standard foods.  Below is a picture of one of the two aisles of these large pig legs. 

This is Iberian Jamon (ham) or Pata Negra (black hoof) which is likely the most traditional food here. These legs have cured for at least 12 months to 48 months and they cost about $60 on up.  The older and better quality they are the more expensive they are.  You can find these on stands in the kitchen of most Spanish homes next to a large and very sharp knife.  You just cut off a piece when you want it for breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. Besides the entire legs, there are 100s of different whole sausages and sliced sausage and hams to choose from in the grocery stores. 

 

This is a picture of one of the many dairy aisles.  It is full of butters and lots and lots of yogurt.  I don't have a picture of the next aisle over but it is just cheese, cheese and more cheese on both sides and mostly just white cheese.  It is quite hard to find cheddar here which we greatly miss.  Breakfast here is very European (Continental) with  coffee, fruit, rolls/breads, cheeses, meats/ham and yogurt and cereal,  additionally the Spanish eat magdalenas (lemon flavored muffins), torrifas (bread-pudding), churros and "tortillas" or Spanish omelet made mainly with potatoes, eggs, onion and sometimes sausage or ham.  

 

El Desayuno  

We prefer the simple yogurt and cereal.  In fact yogurt and granola are quite cheap so most days that is what we eat. We love french toast but have not been able to find syrup or even maple flavoring, but Sunday we had french toast with strawberry syrup (recipe from allrecipes.com) and it was so good.  Their strawberries are super cheap and we usually get them in 5lb crates so we get to eat them really fast. 

Milk is not in one of the dairy aisles as it does not need to be refrigerated.  It comes mostly in small boxes.  We aren't big milk drinkers so we can't really tell if it tastes different than what is sold in the US, we mostly just use it for cooking and cereal.  We do drink the boxed soy and chocolate soy milk and they taste about the same.  We do refrigerate ours before using it.

This picture is back at the small Dia market,  I took it to show that even the eggs are not refrigerated.  At first, I had a difficult time finding things here since this market really places their products in strange places.  As you can see, the eggs are placed between olives and olive oil. 

La Comida

Lunch in Spain is usually the largest meal of the day and is around 2pm-3pm and consists of a first dish (soup, rice or salad usually),  a second dish (meat or fish), and then dessert and coffee.  Often they will eat Paella (rice with meat or fish and vegetables) which combines the first and second dish.

Lunch here for us is much simpler, and is usually ham or turkey and cheese sandwiches, we also eat croissants with hazelnut spread and raspberry jam, which is del-ish.  They don't have mac-n-cheese and their peanut butter is expensive.  They do have plenty of regular loafs of bread but they seem dryer than we are used to so we don't use them much except for grilled cheese sandwiches.  We eat our sandwiches on their super yummy rolls or baguette "barres del pan".

Everywhere you go you see people carrying their  "pan", baguette.  They are really cheap and there are many bakeries so we think that is why there is a very little baking section here. We've never seen a bag of flour larger than about 4lbs.  Their brown sugar is different and they don't have powdered sugar.  

  Spanish Ingredients:

Some food items and flavors that are common in Spanish cuisine are olives (mostly green), olive oil (they produce more than any other country), red peppers (we like the bottled as in the picture), potatoes (potato chips, potato bravas, etc), lemon, parsley, salt, tomatoes and unfortunately nothing spicy.  I'm always on the lookout for jalapenos.  When we moved here, the owners left us at least 6 different containers of salt, we kept thinking one of them had to be sugar, but nope we tried them all.  How could anyone use that much salt?  The yellow box in the above picture is salt with lemon.

 

La Cena

Dinner is similar to lunch but smaller.  Besides eating a lot of ham and sausage they eat a lot of fish.  Whole suckling pigs, lamb and rabbit are also common here.  Sorry I couldn't bare to take a picture of them to post.

This was part of our very yummy dinner tonight: Spanish rice and pork meatballs. We have tried to incorporate the Spanish flavors and foods into our dinners, but most of the time our dinners are about the same as they were before coming to Spain.  We can find most everything we need, although many ingredients taste a little different, but often times better. 

Fruits and vegetables are quite similar here, nothing too strange.  We most often buy ours at the shops that sell just fruit and vegetables since they seem to be fresher and cheaper.  You have to put on gloves before handling the produce at the stores here, except for a few stores where they pick and bag the produce for you, which is nice but I really like to handle my produce to choose the best.  

They also have a really good selection of sweets that we have enjoyed trying.  Including cookies, chocolate bars, cakes, ice cream, gelato,  pastries etc.  Good thing we walk most everywhere.