FOOD! DRINKS! NAPS! (See? You looked.)

I have taken two two-hour naps a day for the past two weeks. I'll let that detail settle in for a bit.

That additional four hours of sleep a day has not been an entirely voluntary undertaking, a fact that I will freely admit. Every minute of that has been a food coma. At this point, you are likely just a bit jealous, a sentiment that I will likely cultivate for the remainder of this post. If you don't enjoy being told in painstaking detail about a full range of culinary delights, then let this be your fair warning to stop reading. Here goes.

On my way across the Atlantic, I had the good luck of ingesting a spot of poorly concocted jam. Following this, it was my luck for the following four hours to unceremoniously become close friends with the middle water closet on the starboard side of the plane. Upon landing in London, I bought a pair of bananas from Starbucks and snarfed them down in an attempt to ameliorate the discomfort. Inauspicious beginnings to a trip, to say nothing.

Hours later, I found myself seated at a white linen covered table on the second floor of a swanky hotel a block away from Puerta del Sol in Madrid. I had just finished a plate of cannelloni, a plate of broiled chicken and potatoes, and several glasses of wine. The waiters had kindly cleared our plates and presented us with a dessert dish of sliced kiwi. In a run that would have made Bill Murray circa "Groundhog Day" jealous, I and the rest of the Stanford in Madrid crew repeated this type of dining engagement for the next week during our orientation trip through Andalucia in the South of Spain. Every lunch and dinner was a three course engagement, a sizable "salad", followed by a main course, followed by a dessert, all washed down with a bottomless bottle of Spanish red wine.

If that was our introduction to the high end of the Spanish dining experience, then our nightly bar crawls were an education in much more standard Spanish fare. Make no mistake, though; "standard" Spanish fare is anything but boring. Tapas ranging the gamut from piping hot croquetas (mashed potato dumplings of sorts) to spicy and toothsome chorizo (seasoned sausage) to paper thin strips of jamon iberica (Iberian ham) all made there way happily down my gullet over the course of the trip. One night, we were visiting Malaga, a city on the southern Mediterranean coast, on Friday of Holy Week. The city was ripe with processions of great fanfare pertaining to the Christian celebration of Easter, and thousands upon thousands of people filled the streets and bars. After night fell, three of my friends and I stumbled upon a back alley bar, the kind that is fetishized in travelogues as a "diamond in the rough" or a "local haunt"; personally, we were just happy to find a place that had any space inside to spare. We clustered up close to the bar and made merry conversation with an affable bartender who was distributing canas of beer with such speed that one would think that prohibition was due to begin the next day. In Spanish that was just fast enough to bewilder but just slow enough to befriend, he made joke after joke about the throngs of people that had descended upon the watering hole tonight, often slipping in a bit of unmitigated flirtation aimed at the lone chica in our group. As the rest of us finished our delciously tender rings of lightly breaded calamari (squid), he offered her a free triple shot of vodka, provided that she drink it with no chaser. With gusto befitting someone undertaking a cultural immersion, she christened our entrance into the Spanish culinary life with abandon, only to be quickly beset by a series of coughs at shot's end. The bartender and the rest of the staff bellowed with good-natured laughter, and we all raised our glasses in salutation.

My arrival to my Spanish host family's home was telling. I walked into their fourth floor apartment in the La Latina neighborhood of Madrid, and headed down the hall to find the three of them sitting in the family room. Ofelia, my host mom, introduced herself first, then Aida, her sister, did the same, followed by Gustavo, Ofelia's nephew. Much more on them in a later post. Not two minutes after these introductions, I was seated at their kitchen table with half of a 13 inch in diameter tortilla espanola (an inch thick omelet deal with onions, potatoes, and eggs, this is one of the most emblematic of all Spanish dishes) in front of me. I was told, in cheerful but not uncertain, terms, that this was all mine to eat, and that it would behoove me to do so. More than happy to oblige, I tucked into my meal. I could get used to this, I told myself.

Over the next two weeks, lunch was every day at 2:30 or so, and dinner every day at 9:30 or so. As I mentioned in an earlier post, lunch is the more serious endeavor in Spain, dwarfing dinner in size. My meals over this time period included the following:

Pastel de Patata - an Argentinian dish similar to Shepherd's Pie, with a thick layer of mashed potatoes baked on top of a mixture of ground beef, raisins, onions, peas, carrot, and herbs; my host family is Argentinian, which is extremely fortunate for me, given the sheer variety of food that makes up Argentinian cuisine; the sweetness of the raisins perfectly sets of the smoky richness of the ground beef, all capped off with pillowy fold of potatoes

Merluza - a type of Cod, that's prepared with a heavy breading

Lentils with Spinach and Carrots - rich and hearty for the several rainy days that we've had so far this quarter in Madrid

Pollo a la Portuguesa y Lomo de Puerco a la Portuguesa - these dishes involve a kind of meat cooked in fillet form with a seasoned mixture of peas, carrots, and brown gravy; the meat is well salted and its flavor lights up the surrounding veggies

Seafood Paella and Vegetable Paella - this typical and celebrated Spanish dish originated on the Valencian coast; it involves saffron seasoned rice (which turns the rice bright yellow) which is cooked in a delicious broth mixed with various types of mariscos (seafood), meats, and vegetables; Ofelia and Aida always make it on Sundays

Pan Tumac - a spectacularly simple and delicious sandwich originating in Catalonia, a region in the north-east of Spain that fiercely defends its linguistic and cultural heritage; consists of horizontally sliced, fresh baguette filled with slices of jamon, fresh tomatoes, and a drizzling of Spanish olive oil; the flavors mingle perfectly every time

Pastel de Choclo - a dish that Ofelia claims is Uruguayan, but resembles in description a Chilean dish by this name; it features smooth corn pudding baked atop a mixture of ground beef, olives, raisins, peas, and green onions; the saltiness of the olives really complements the corn mix

Suffice it to say, that after a lunch or dinner involving any one of these behemoths is enough caloric intake to make your body say "Good night! Transitioning to rest-and-digest functionality! All additional systems set to standby." It's at this point that the allure of my waiting bed is a Siren's song that I'm helpless to resist. It usually only takes a few minutes before I'm out, off to the Land of Nod to dream about my next culinary experience.

All of this is to say nothing of the countless churros, porras, and chocolate at Chocolateria San Gines, the 60 cent mini-baguette sandwiches at Cien Montaditos, or the nun-made sequillos that have all found their way into my happy stomach over the course of the past couple of weeks, but all of these deserve their own story, later. Right now, my bed just looks too attractive...