La Comida Española - Sam Ozminkowski

Here in Spain many families eat all of their meals at home. It is rare for Spanish families to go out to eat meals together - generally the only time they eat out is for tapas. For this reason, a lot of work goes into making food every day. In my house, my host mother makes all of the food so I sat down and asked her some questions to better understand the typical practices around making food in Spain.

Today we had rice with chicken. It was delicious.

When buying food to make for the family, my mother exclusively shops at supermarkets. Her two favorite supermarkets to shop at are Mercandona (which is extremely popular here in Spain) and Dani, a supermarket I've never heard of before. She goes shopping for groceries twice a week. Before she goes shopping she plans out the meals and decides what she needs to buy. She always takes a shopping list and doesn't stray from that list. She is adamant that food prices have gone up markedly in recent years. Without being too specific with her time frame, she says that she used to be able to buy everything she needed for thirty euros, but now pays more than fifty.

Today for lunch we had rice with chicken. It took between one and two hours to make, which is pretty typical. According to my mother it takes an average of about two hours to make most meals.

My host mother makes the chicken for our lunch today.

My family here seems to like a variety of different foods. When asked what their favorite foods are they spent about five minutes listing off different things. My host mother's absolute favorite was paella, while my older host brother likes Russian salad (which, incidentally, Loly (the CEA advisor) claims the Russians have never heard of). My family also really likes tortilla de patatas and carne empanada.

Finally, my host mother claims that she learned how to cook a bit from her mother, but mostly taught herself. She doesn't like to watch cooking shows, but rather prefers to get her recipes from the internet. Wherever she gets her ideas and skills from, her food is always delicious.

(S/O to Natalie's aunt if you're reading this!!)