Jamón, jamón

Living with a family means that I get an authentic Spanish food experience while I'm here. My abuelita cooks traditional Galician recipes that have been in her family for forever, and some of my favorites have been:
Tortilla de patatas : an omelette with fried potatoes and onions.
Cocido gallego : a stew with everything in it. Seriously, EVERYTHING.
Empanadas : a pastry stuffed with peppers, onions, and meat OR with fruit.
Bocadillo : it's a sandwich, but it's awesomer than an American sandwich because of the bread in Spain, which we eat with almost every meal.
Croquetes : a roll of fried breadcrumbs or something, with a filling of mashed potatoes, meat, and other deliciousness.
Other food that's really popular here is chorizo, which is a cured, smoked sausage. I don't really like eating it by itself, but it's really good in stews and stuff. I had garbanzos with chorizo, and that was amazing.
Jamón : we eat so much ham here, it's ridiculous. It's really good though. There's a lot of different types of ham too, including jamón serrano, which I am going to miss when I go back to the US. There's also jamón iberico, paleta, and jamón york.
One of my favorite things here is going out for tapas. We go to a bar, or a bunch of different bars, and order a drink and pick up a few different small plates of food. My favorite tapa was bread with some kind of ham and cheese on top.
Since Spain has completely different food, I miss a lot of different foods from the United States. I miss chili, Dr. Pepper, Mexican food, sushi and other Asian foods, and pepperoni pizza. We have pizza in Spain, but apparently no one has thought of putting pepperoni on one. So, if anyone would like to send me any of these things, my address is Camino... Just kidding about sending me American food. Mostly.
I ate at a McDonalds here to see if there were any differences between the American and Spanish McDonalds, and I have to say, American Micky D's beats the Spanish one any day. First of all, they give you more unhealthy food for your money, and it tastes a little bit better. It's McDonalds, so it doesn't taste great in either place, but still. They also have a lot of Burger Kings and Dominos, but I haven't tried them yet. I'll keep you guys posted.

The wine here is also good. La Rioja is a region of Spain that's famous for producing really awesome wines, and it's right next to Galicia. So I can buy a decent bottle of wine for about 2 euros, which is about 3 dollars. I love Sangría as well; it's a drink made with red wine, fruit juice, and fruit. It's a little bit sweeter than regular wine, and it's yummy. The only sad thing is that tequila is really expensive here, so that means no margaritas for me. :-(


I just realized that I am really horrible about updating my blog. But in my defense, I'm in an exciting new country, and I'm lazy.