Spanish food—not to be confused with the tacos and burritos of Mexico—is very diverse and each region or even city has its own specialty food or way of making a national dish. Most people think of tapas (small plates to be shared over drinks) and paella (rice and meat dish with saffron made in one big pan), but there is obviously much more. Below are some observations. Be sure to check out the other three parts to this set on How to be a Spaniard in How Spaniards Say It, Do It, and Live It.

Common Foods
- Pig is king. Ham, suckling pigs, dried, fried, boiled, roasted, cured, smoked, you-name-it. There is no escaping it. Jamón York is most like ham in the US, whereas Jamón Serrano is served raw and quite scary to eat for most Americans. I think almost everyone had an “accidental” incident with the ham from ordering simply “jamón” expecting ham as we know it and getting the fancier Serrano or Iberico.

- Crusty bread/baguettes all the time. Every evening the son would go to the corner shop and for a 50 cent loaf of bread for dinner and whatever was left would go for toast with jam for breakfast. My host-dad would get quite upset if we didn’t have any bread, apologizing to us. The bread is never as an appetizer or served with butter, but used for soaking up any leftover sauce on your plate or the serving plate (my goodness do they love sauce) or for getting food on your fork instead of scooping with your knife—ingenious idea, and again a strategy to get every last drop of sauce.  And, this seeking out of bread forces each person to go out into the community daily.  There’s no way to get by like we can without leaving the comfort of our desktops.

- Nesquik! For chocolate milk with breakfast. Always in powder form, never as a syrup or pre-made chocolate milk. My family would buy 10-pound boxes of it and go through it without a problem.

- Olive oil with everything. When I was in the olive tree covered South, I learned that most of the olives used for Italian olive oil come from Spain, though they never get credit for it (ever think of Spanish virgin olive oil?). There was an economic depression/scare sometime in the past and all the Spaniards were forced to sell their olive tree-rich land to the Italians; though today many just have share cropping-like agreements.

- Coke not Pepsi with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Second choice is always orange Fanta. The soda aisle was not nearly as extensive as ours.

- Chicklet not stick gum. Drove me nuts because I don’t like the crunchy ones. Slowly Orbit-style gum was showing up on the shelves. There is definitely no thin, bendy sticks like Extra, though the packaging for some Extra gum abroad looks like it should be sticks but it is a trick and really chicklets on their side. Weirder yet was seeing gum in a zipper pouch.

- Tomato jelly?

- Mayonnaise as a sauce for vegetables, French fries, potatoes…disgusting. Worse yet, as a salad dressing. Plain mayonnaise—ick!

- Bananas are not the poor man’s fruit, but are just as expensive if not more than all the rest of the fruits. Oranges are the most common and cheapest.

- Fresh orange juice machine at even the lowliest of establishments. It wheels around the oranges like lottery balls and you can watch as it churns out your juice.

Culturally Eating
- Average meal times: 8am breakfast. 2pm lunch (menu closed before then; some restaurants not even setup at noon or one). 8-10:30 dinner (11 or12 in the summer). Of course, many people stop for tapas/snacks and a drink around 5 or 6.

- Lunch is the biggest meal of the day. More often than not, people go home to eat or leisurely dine-out during the typically greater than 1.5 hour midday break (sometimes called siesta)

- New plates for each course. My family felt bad if we mixed plates because it was either not necessary to dirty another dish or not a problem if a few drops of the first plate ended up in the second. It was as if the first would be contaminated by the second.

- Lots of drinking with festivals. People say that Spaniards are always trying to find an excuse for a fiesta to drink some more.

- Pastries aren’t very good. They don’t look particularly appetizing in store windows nor do they taste very good (well, for a pastry that is).

- Dessert (postre) is traditionally a piece of fruit or yogurt. Any sweets (like a cake or cookie) would be in the morning or perhaps at lunch. Infrequently at dinner, even at a restaurant.

- -ería added on to the end of a noun to mean it’s a local specialty or profession. They do exist!

- Instead of buying sliced meat at the deli counter, not uncommon to own a personal slicer and buy the whole ‘loaf’ of meat. A carnivorous country.

- Milk (and often not eggs) is not refrigerated. It is ultra pasteurized so it does not need to be kept cold. My family had a case of the brick cartons in the closet and would just pull one out whenever they needed. It still was weird finding it out on the counter all day or not seeing it in the dairy cooler at the store.

- (Over)Ripe fruit preferred at my host family—just when I’d be ready to toss it, they’re dying to eat it. Apples with the skin pulling away from the fruit and all mealy were their preferred ripeness. Pears that bruise on first touch and bananas with way too many spots (though I will admit that I like mine with a touch of a green stripe). I think it was an excuse to not buy more fruit when there were rotten pieces around.

- Nutrition labels not mandatory and done in 100g serving sizes, which means nothing if you are holding a cracker in your hand or don’t have a pocket-sized scale. Figuring out what I was eating was always a task.

- Missing health consciousness in Spain. They can’t even support sandwich or salad joints, which are, of course, my staple.

Buying Food
Restaurants
- Menu del Día (menu of the day) is the daily specials; typically for lunch. Usually you get two plates and a few choices for each, plus a drink (can be alcoholic) and a dessert for around 8-10 euros. Since they change everyday, you could eat at the same place without ordering the same thing twice. Unlike daily specials in the US, people order the menu quite often. Through them you get to try a lot of different foods (many of them traditional).

- Bottled water in restaurants. Definitely hard to find a place that will give you it for free, from the tap. One explanation I heard was that the restaurant does not want to be responsible for water poisoning. Every now and then you would get a vase-pitcher for the table. And you would always have to specify if you wanted fizzy or flat, and cold or room temperature. So complicated!

- Window to the kitchen for ordering from the street, if you want. Perfect for crepes or on-the-go. Often there’s a little counter, too, to stand and eat while talking to cook.

- Kebap is international cheap food. Every country had the roasting meat on a rod for gyros and always dirt cheap.

- Pig legs proudly displayed in stores or in the house. Rows hanging from the ceiling in markets or the grocery store. The Museo del Jamón will certainly make any vegan or vegetarian cringe. Some restaurants might have the leg on post on the counter for customers to see and the cook would freshly cut a slice before your eyes. Even individual households will buy a leg and stick it in the fridge (what a surprise to open your fridge door and see that!) or hang it behind the kitchen door.

- 1-2 euros more for every item on the menu for eating outside on the terrace, in some places.

- Half-triangle sandwiches on Wonder bread without crusts sold fresh in a glass deli counter where you can choose a collection of halves for lunch (Rodilla was the most popular chain) or in triangle packages proudly displaying the insides (which always looked like some variation on a tuna salad or colored lines of sliced meat/cheese), pre-packaged in coolers at convenience stores. I think they are pretty gross.

- Mini deli-counter like cooler on bar counters with tapas displayed.

- Ice cream/snack kiosks in parks, always advertising Frigo brand, which as another name in other countries but the same logo, which I found to be quite amusing.

Grocery Store
- Saran wrapped produce on a Styrofoam plate (like meat here) or person with the specific job of measuring produce for customers, guarding the products from the enemy customer. Signs are often posted, begging you not to touch the produce or use disposable gloves and sticker/weigh it yourself. Definitely none of this picking through the case of fruit for the best ones, tossing it in a bag to see the price weighed in at the register.

- Produce in bags kind of like potato chip plastic (i.e. vacuum sealed) that you have to use two hands to pull on that folded and crimped seal.

- 1.5 L bottles of drinks instead of 2 L. The bottles are long and skinny-ish with a tapered out bottom instead of the uniform cylinder.

- Boring cereal choices, which is a bummer because it’s one of my favorite foods. Always corn/rice flakes (i.e. Special K), muesli, and chocolate variations, but hardly anything else. Definitely not the aisle worth we have.

-Shopping baskets with wheels on them; rarely carts/buggies (as some like to call them). It’s not really because they are buying less food (because they sure can fill those babies or will grab two), but that there simply isn’t room in the stores. You are supposed to check any personal bags by locking them to poles at the store entrance or stuffing them in a locker. Never did that and only got in trouble once.