Dinner and other food...

While traveling for two weeks with Shawna prior to my home-stay, we ate a lot of tapas.  Tapas are basically any small portion of food served with a drink.  It’s not a starter/appetizer, although they appear to be in size and design. Sometimes if you are lucky one will come gratis with your drink.   But, even if you get the first one free, it’s impossible to stop at just one, because they are so good and varied, and this then becomes your meal:  you just keep selecting different ones until you have made a meal of it.  The cost is very reasonable for both the tapas and drinks.  You can get a glass of wine and a tapa for 4 Euros. Individual Tapas run from 1.80 to 2.50. 

Seafood based tapas are very popular.

Just had to try to quail egg.

I made many a meal with croquettes

 But, that’s not what I wanted to tell you about.  I wanted to tell you about dinner – the last meal of the day.  While Shawna and I were traveling, I think we only sat down to a dinner – as we know it – twice. Otherwise, we made a meal of the tapas each night for our dinner.  The reason for this was that the tapas were available at a time we are accustomed to eating dinner, while a sit down meal is not available until 8pm AT THE EARLIEST!  My hosts here in Guadalajara eat dinner each night at 10:00pm.  Yes, 10:00pm!  If you consider the whole day of meals though, you will understand this – at least to some degree!

Breakfast is a very small meal, usually consisting of coffee and a croissant or other small pastry.  Churros con chocolate is also common in the cafés.  The kids in my host family put Nestlé’s powdered chocolate into their milk with their cereal or broken bits of crackers/biscuits/cookies. (Not sure what to call them, as they are like a British “biscuit”, but what I might call a wafer type cookie.)  They also heat the milk in the bowl before dipping the biscuits.  For a weekend breakfast treat, they will have a doughnut for breakfast.  I posted a photo last week of a Burger King in the mall closed at noon – it opens at 12:30….there just must not be a market for fast food breakfast sandwiches here!

The biggest meal of the day is lunch.  Sagrario’s office takes two hours for lunch and they go out.  Jaime gets home at 1:15 from school and we do our hour English lesson and then he has lunch and heads back out to school at 3:00 for more classes and/or sports activities.  The girls get home from high school around 2:30 and have their lunch then.  Sagrario’s sister, Ninas, come every day and makes the lunches and prepares the dinner for later. 

The meals have two or three “plates”.  The first is usually a soup or a veggie dish:  maybe cream of asparagus, cream of spinach, or chicken broth with small noodles, etc.  Sometimes they have a dish with garbanzo beans, tuna and olives.  Other times I have seen flat beans in a sauce, or pasta with tuna.

The second plate is typically a piece of meat (chicken is common) and a side dish; maybe a salad or a starch if the first plate didn’t have much starch.  The green salads we’ve been having are loaded with other things besides veggies.  There are almost always hard-boiled eggs and olives in it and sometimes tuna and I think surimi.  A baguette is eaten with the meal as well. Butter is never served or put on the bread. The kids drink water with their meal and the parents drink wine.  Sometimes Jose adds sparkling water (agua con gas) to his wine.

On school days, the kids have sports activities or homework and are back in the kitchen (which is across the hall from my room) around 6:30 or 7:00 for a snack.  I see them having yogurt, toast with honey, left overs, etc.  This is also about the time Sagrario and Jose get home from work – they definitely have long days at work.  They also have a snack about this time. So, they really don't go from 3 in the afternoon until 10 at night without eating.

Dinner – the last meal of the day – is of the same layout as the lunch, only in smaller quantities.  On Sunday nights we usually have pre-made pizza for dinner with a salad – no first plate.  For meats we’ve had fish, chicken, hamburger patties, thinly sliced Iberian ham and calamari.  Most of the time, the meat is fried (in olive oil), but is in much thinner pieces than what we do at home.  No big ol’ hunkin’ pieces of chicken breasts here!  And, every night, the meal is finished by one of the girls getting the bowl of fruit and everyone having a piece.  This is a drag for Jaime as he doesn’t really like fruit and it can be an ordeal at times to get him to eat a piece! 

We usually finish dinner around 10:30-:45 which would seem to be bedtime.  But, this is the time everyone heads to watch TV as this is the time of the sitcoms.  Bedtime for the kids is around midnight and Jose is usually the last to head upstairs, around 12:30 or so.  Since this meal is so late, and I really don’t want to go to bed right after dinner, I have had to adjust my sleeping hours.  I’ve been going to sleep around 12:30 or 1:00 and I have also made a point of going for a walk before dinner. 

Last night was the first time we ate restaurant food – we had Chinese food delivered as the girls were out with friends and ate out.  It tasted pretty much the same as at home, although the spring rolls weren’t really “rolls”, but more like “flats”!

We just finished our Sunday lunch (3:00pm).  My starter was a small bowl of spaghetti with tomato sauce with sausage.  We then had a traditional Spanish dish called Migas, very much like our Thanksgiving dressing with bacon in it.  It wasn’t quite as sticking and heavy as our dressing though. This was served with small cut-up pieces of orange.  Jose said grapes are more traditional to be served with it, but that oranges are used also – and they didn’t have grapes!  And then for the final plate, we had baked chicken and home made French fries.  The fruit bowl came out and was passed around.  If this sounds like a lot of food, the difference is that the portion sizes are definitely much smaller – the oversized American servings have not hit this household which is great! 

I don’t think this kitchen could function without  the olive oil and olives.  The size of the jug of wine made me think of a few of my friends, and I just had to include the ubiquitous ketchup.  What is not in the picture and is also a required item in the fridge is hard boiled eggs.  Not for breakfast, but used in many different dishes at lunch and dinner.

A common dish we saw for tapas and that Ninas made this last week is Russian Salad.  They all laughed about it being called Russian, as it is a Spanish dish.  After one try as a tapa when we were traveling, I avoided it as it was loaded with mayonnaise.  Ninas made her own mayonnaise for it and again seemed to use an awful lot.  But when it was served, I was surprised to see and taste that it was ok.  It’s much like a potato salad, but with peas, diced carrots, green olives and tuna added to it.  Don’t think I will order it as a tapa again, but will definitely eat it with the family again.

Another very popular tapa and homemade dish is the Spanish tortilla.  Totally wipe from your mind the Mexican tortillas we eat – these are a totally different dish.  In fact, it is basically a potato omelette.  The potatoes are precooked in slices and then layered in the pan with beaten eggs and cooked on the stovetop.  We have had this as a second plate followed by the meat and salad for the third plate.  I have eaten it many times now in the bars and cafes. 

Of course ham is a staple, but there is so much to tell about it, it will have to have it’s own entry!