❧Digester's Digest

There should be more of a forewarning concerning the food of Spain. It's really not bad, in fact, I like it a lot. But I would have appreciated a bit of preparation. A night to try the food and to actually experience it instead of just hearing about it. It's easy to think " well yes, so they cook with olive oil, so do I. but it's definitely not how we cook with olive oil. They seriously cook everything in olive oil. Aceite. The staple ingredient in every recipe. Even when they cook their eggs, they cook them in olive oil. I have begun to miss the taste of butter. I really don't like eggs cooked in oil, they don't have a natural flavor. Well not the natural flavor I'm accustomed to: they actually taste like egg. I suppose it might be better if the yolks were fully cooked. And not on top of my broccoli. That would really help.
It's not just the eggs. they eat vegetables cooked with lots of garlic and olive oil. We eat then steamed mostly, as I recall, and sometimes they don't have a whole lot of flavor. but here, the flavor of the vegetables is lost in the flavor of the garlic and oil.
Garlic is also in everything. In the soups in the bread in the veggies. and not like the minced garlic we normally eat or put into soups or saute with our chicken. It's whole cloves or slices and you eat them whole.
Tonight we had a soup with carrots, artichokes, potatoes, beef, and black pepper (not ground, whole). The artichoke was the hardest thing to eat. it's not like we eat them in the US. it was in Soup. And you had to eat them like you normally would, just the meat, but it was IN SOUP.
My señora stuffs me with food, every day, more, more, more. And if I don't eat enough she thinks I'm sick. Which is probably true, or I had a snack between meals. But with meals at 8, 2:30, and 9:30, I know I'm allowed to snack. She love natural food, "no congelado" nothing preserved, nothing frozen. It's tasteless and generally not worth the money; fresh is much better. Most days I get fruit for desert: a pear (pera), or a plumb (ciruela, which I just discovered I've been saying wrong, I've been saying it with a "g" not an "r". O my silly ears.); occasionally an apple, or yoghurt. If she's feeling extra sugary, Salud will give us Flan. She's made it once and purchased it a couple times. I like the purchased stuff better; it's not burnt tasting.
One day I want to cook for Salud; make her some really good pasta, chicken filets, fresh broccoli or green beans. And then some brownies for desert. I have the chocolate and the recipes, I could do it pretty easily, maybe. I'm no too sure how well I could do anything actually, or if I should. Maybe for her birthday. It's Oct. 24. So I'll probably have to celebrate the day before seeing as I'll be headed out to Italy that morning. I'll have to come home with some great authentic Italian recipe books. How amazing would that be. Perhaps a bottle of wine to go along with it.
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