Traditional foods

I just got back from a wonderful meal of paella. Now I have a pretty good idea that nobody really knows what paella is so let me explain. Paella is a mixture of rice, shrimp, squid, beef, sometimes chicken and for foriegners they mix it with a chicken base. It is very good and I have been told by the directors of my program that they will give me the recipe and then I will post it for you guys. Paella is a traditional dish of Valladolid but all of Spain claims it. Paella is traditional eaten in the afternoon as lunch is the strongest meal of the day. Maybe I should explain about the meals here.

In the morning around 6-10am they eat breakfast which tipically includes toast, coffee, hot chocolate, fruit, and little sweet breads. This is a very small meal. There is a snack time between breakfast and lunch where people typically consume various drinks, and small cold tapas ( It is not normal to do this in Sevilla so I don´t know too much about this ¨snack time¨). Then lunch at 2-3pm where we typically have salad which is a lot like the US but it has olive oil and salt added to it, so no salad dressing is added also it normally has a little bit of corn on top. Then we have the main dish of paella, or some type of soup, etc. I should add here that we have bread every meal, it is always served. Then for desert we have fruit or helado ( helado is ice cream and we have only had it once). Then we have siestas for 1 to 2 hours (of course I sleep for two hours usually) and about 4 hours until dinner from 9-10pm. For dinner they usually have soup or another smaller main dish, salad, and bread. We have fruit again for dessert.

Other traditional foods for Spain include:
Flan, churros in chocolate, and some others I don´t really know the names of.

Spain is really known for it´s seafood dishes, wine, and olive oil.

If anyone wants to know more about something let me know.

Lauren