With Anne's new kitchen knife from Toledo (and our new relative poverty due to Iowa's never-ending wisdom) has come a wonderful excuse to entertain ourselves by cooking me delicious food. Anyone who said that the food is bad in Spain wasn't talking about my apartment. In the last week, we've eaten:
Monday
salad - spinach with Raspberry vinaigrette, strawberries, and oranges
mostacholi with homemade spaghetti sauce cooked for hours
garlic bread
homemade rice pudding
Tuesday
Anne made some biscuits and we had a snack of biscuits and tea.
Stir-fry with broccoli, sweet peas, and low-mien
Wednesday
We had some friends over to work on a project, so Anne got to make meat for them. We had a salad with spinach, raspberry vinaigrette, toasted almonds, Roquefort cheese, and oranges
They had pork chops with mushroom gravy, I spaghetti
Then we had chocolate-walnut brownies made from scratch for dessert
Thursday
Fajitas with red peppers, onions, zucchini, TVP, and cheese.
Friday
Anne created a noodle bake with spiral noodles, peas, and a creamy broth/sauce with vegetable broth and cheese. Then she baked it with bread crumbs and our sharp special Manchego cheese on top.
Saturday
Today we cooked together and made a delicious Middle-east style curry dinner. We started with a mild yoghurt-curry sauce from the store, but we added all kinds of spices and some tomato to it to make it more delicious. We put it over cooked potatoes, peas, and broccoli and also made Basmati rice. To top it off, we toasted some flour tortillas to make a flat bread and added some bananas, just like Ahmad's in Omaha.
Sunday
Today I got hungry for a snack, but Anne outdid herself making some of the best nachos I've ever had. She used the TVP and taco seasoning that my parents brought and added red peppers, red onion, tomato, and red beans to make a taco "meat" mix. Then she put the mix, refried beans, and more onion and cheese on the corn chips. Add salsa and enjoy. Mmmm
With that, I think I'll sign off and go get another serving. Stop in for dinner if you're in the neighborhood!
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Touring the City
We have been in Madrid for three days now. Now that I've c
aught up on sleep, the city is new and exciting (rather than foreign and overwhelming).
The USAC orientation that has taken most of our free time (and energy) over the last few days is finally over. We finished today with a walking tour of the city with an intercambio (Spanish friend). The historic plazas and grand buildings started to blur together after awhile, and by the end of the three hours, I just wanted to eat and sleep. Central Madrid is fairly touristy, so most of the shops and restaurants were expensive and gimmicky. I am suprised by the saturation of American products and brands. The potato chips were made by Lays, the toothpaste by Colgate, etc. One of the things I like best about the city is the diversity of stores and restaurants (Spain has the largest number of bars and restaurants per capita than any country in the world), but one of the sorority girls in my group just HAD to go to Starbucks (despite the dozens of local cafes around the are). Except for the higher prices here, Starbucks sucks just as much in Spain as it does in the US. I wasn't really in the mood for a $5 hot chocolate.
Funny restaurants
1. Nebraska Restaurante - to my horror, downtown Madrid has no shortage of this chain. We passed four or five in our tour. I got my picture taken in front of this window to my home. The only thing about the menu that reminded me of Nebraska was its generall boringness - pasta, chicken, meat, salad.
2. Restaurante Canadense Iglu - Outside our apartment, there is a Canadian restaurant that we'll have to try someday. "Iglu" seems to be referring to igloos. I had to pass this on to a few Canadian friends of mine.
Our apartment
To our delight, the apartment is beautiful and much larger than we hoped for. It may take a while for the novelty of our big kitchen and living room to wear off. Today, we had a couple of friends over to eat eggs. Our room mates - Amanda and Sara (there are two Sarahs) are nice and funny. After encountering the abundance of drunk sorority girls that make up the study abroad program, I was thrilled to luck out.
Wireless internet is just catching on in Spain, and since we don't have a phone line in our apartment (even local calls are charged by the minute), luck was our only chance to get online. Fortunately, we're at the top of a 15-story apartment building, and we can access (steal) a few unsecured networks. There's one particular spot on the floor in my room where I can get a passable connection. The challenge is to sit absolutely still.
Twilight Zone moment: Tonight, as Sarah and I were returning from a trip to the bakery (our bread habit is outrageously enabled here), we both stared in each other in shock as we saw tha tour apartment door had a different lock. We checked to see that the floor and apartment numbers were right, and eerily returned to the bottom floor. Finally, we saw that the painting in the lobby was different. We were in the wrong building. Everything else looked the same. We felt really stupid.
Food
The food here is just wonderful. It's not so much that I love the Spanish fare (although I'm sure I'll get used to it), but that fresh food is more available in the grocery stores. Baguettes for .40 euro ($.53) is nothing out of the ordinary (compare to Jean's at the Bread Oven for $2.95). Wonderful cheeses are inexpensive and available even in convenience stores. I knew to be on the
lookout for cerrano ham, but I couldn't have missed it - it's everywhere. I was really suprised by how good the ham is here. I've never liked it too much, but the sliced meat here is of a much, much higher quality and, like the other "gourmet" products, is cheap.
Instead of frozen pizzas, they have refrigerated ones that are much fresher and better. We also got something that looks like chocolate mousse for $.23. Soda is expensive, but a bottle of champagne was $2.00.
The only thing that is a little weird is the milk. Although I like the idea of milk that keeps for a few months and doesn't need to be refrigerated, I'm not quite used to it in practice.
Newspaper
The Spanish newspaper tries its best to be nonbiased, but it can't really hide its scorn for the US policy in Iraq. Naturally, Sarah and I love it. If only we could have studied this kind of Spanish all along! Our favorite lead was with "Bush sends more troops to Iraq and hopes that the plan will work this time." A graphic described how the money for the new troops could otherwise be used (curing AIDS, helping the poorest countries, etc.).
aught up on sleep, the city is new and exciting (rather than foreign and overwhelming).The USAC orientation that has taken most of our free time (and energy) over the last few days is finally over. We finished today with a walking tour of the city with an intercambio (Spanish friend). The historic plazas and grand buildings started to blur together after awhile, and by the end of the three hours, I just wanted to eat and sleep. Central Madrid is fairly touristy, so most of the shops and restaurants were expensive and gimmicky. I am suprised by the saturation of American products and brands. The potato chips were made by Lays, the toothpaste by Colgate, etc. One of the things I like best about the city is the diversity of stores and restaurants (Spain has the largest number of bars and restaurants per capita than any country in the world), but one of the sorority girls in my group just HAD to go to Starbucks (despite the dozens of local cafes around the are). Except for the higher prices here, Starbucks sucks just as much in Spain as it does in the US. I wasn't really in the mood for a $5 hot chocolate.
Funny restaurants
1. Nebraska Restaurante - to my horror, downtown Madrid has no shortage of this chain. We passed four or five in our tour. I got my picture taken in front of this window to my home. The only thing about the menu that reminded me of Nebraska was its generall boringness - pasta, chicken, meat, salad.
2. Restaurante Canadense Iglu - Outside our apartment, there is a Canadian restaurant that we'll have to try someday. "Iglu" seems to be referring to igloos. I had to pass this on to a few Canadian friends of mine.
Our apartment
To our delight, the apartment is beautiful and much larger than we hoped for. It may take a while for the novelty of our big kitchen and living room to wear off. Today, we had a couple of friends over to eat eggs. Our room mates - Amanda and Sara (there are two Sarahs) are nice and funny. After encountering the abundance of drunk sorority girls that make up the study abroad program, I was thrilled to luck out.
Wireless internet is just catching on in Spain, and since we don't have a phone line in our apartment (even local calls are charged by the minute), luck was our only chance to get online. Fortunately, we're at the top of a 15-story apartment building, and we can access (steal) a few unsecured networks. There's one particular spot on the floor in my room where I can get a passable connection. The challenge is to sit absolutely still.
Twilight Zone moment: Tonight, as Sarah and I were returning from a trip to the bakery (our bread habit is outrageously enabled here), we both stared in each other in shock as we saw tha tour apartment door had a different lock. We checked to see that the floor and apartment numbers were right, and eerily returned to the bottom floor. Finally, we saw that the painting in the lobby was different. We were in the wrong building. Everything else looked the same. We felt really stupid.
Food
The food here is just wonderful. It's not so much that I love the Spanish fare (although I'm sure I'll get used to it), but that fresh food is more available in the grocery stores. Baguettes for .40 euro ($.53) is nothing out of the ordinary (compare to Jean's at the Bread Oven for $2.95). Wonderful cheeses are inexpensive and available even in convenience stores. I knew to be on the
lookout for cerrano ham, but I couldn't have missed it - it's everywhere. I was really suprised by how good the ham is here. I've never liked it too much, but the sliced meat here is of a much, much higher quality and, like the other "gourmet" products, is cheap.Instead of frozen pizzas, they have refrigerated ones that are much fresher and better. We also got something that looks like chocolate mousse for $.23. Soda is expensive, but a bottle of champagne was $2.00.
The only thing that is a little weird is the milk. Although I like the idea of milk that keeps for a few months and doesn't need to be refrigerated, I'm not quite used to it in practice.
Newspaper
The Spanish newspaper tries its best to be nonbiased, but it can't really hide its scorn for the US policy in Iraq. Naturally, Sarah and I love it. If only we could have studied this kind of Spanish all along! Our favorite lead was with "Bush sends more troops to Iraq and hopes that the plan will work this time." A graphic described how the money for the new troops could otherwise be used (curing AIDS, helping the poorest countries, etc.).
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