¡Bienvenidos a mi Blog!: Week 1 (1/5/09 - 1/11/09)

Welcome to ¿Quieres Comer?: Bites in Barcelona! For the next few months, I will be documenting my travels during my semester abroad. More specifically, I'll be bringing you the delicious details on dishes and desserts, cheese and chorizo, tapas and tortilla, and much much more. I have a passion for food; any given day you might find me browsing menus or cookbooks online, searching for satisfying culinary experiences wherever I may be. Although my goals throughout this semester include self discovery and language learning, I am also looking to expand my palette.

I also have an affinity for anything and everything cheese. Manchego, brie, cheddar, goat.... its all heaven in food form. Thus, this blog should really be called ¿Quieres queso? and the answer should be yes. I would like cheese. Always. I'm not really sure why you even bothered to ask.

Living with a Spanish family in Barcelona, I have the best of both worlds. En mi casa, my family cooks up cenas (dinners) that appear to have come out of the encyclopedia under the entry "Traditional Spanish Cooking". In Barcelona, an international city that has been influenced by Spanish, French, and Mediterranean styles, you can find just about anything. So I will be serving up all kinds of interesting food stories, from the bland to the bizarre.

Week 1 EN MI CASA: Thus far I have neglected to take any pictures of the food I have been served in my house, mostly because I think my family might be freaked out if I whipped out a camera and started taking pictures during dinner. But I have had some awesome traditional food! Tortilla española is a Spanish cooked egg and potato mixture, kind of like a quiche without the crust. Albóndigas, meatballs, are served in a tomato based sauce and are flavored with a variety of spices cooked into the meatball mixture. Lentajas are lentils, and they are served in a bowl with chunks of chorizo, Spanish sausage.

And then there was the not so great. Huevos rellenos, blech. Hard boiled eggs are cut in half, have the yolk scooped out of them, get tuna mixed into the yolk, and then put back into the hard boiled egg white. Not very awesome.

Week 1 EN BARCELONA: I went out for tapas with my group and remembered to take some pictures after everything was half-eaten.
Over on the left we have cubes of manchego cheese served with aceitunas negras (black olives) and on the right, calamares (calamari).
We also had tortilla española, 2 types of jamón (ham), bacon wrapped dates, seafood croquettas, and miniature chorizos. All of this was of course accompanied by uber sweet sangria. During another outing with a friend, we ate paella mixta with mariscos (seafood) and pollo, and patatas bravas, which are fried potatoes served with a mayonaise-based spicy sauce. ¡Qué rico!

Most cultural food of the week: Roscón de Reyes
This is a traditional cake served on Los Reyes Magos (Three Kings Day), which is like Christmas, The Sequel, in Spain and was celebrated last week. It was really super sweet and is filled with whipped cream. My family gave me a giant piece and warned me about swallowing the toys that are baked into it. Mmmm... crunchy.


Thats all for now, adios!