I'm going to add stories, reports and musings about my time in Spain in installments here. Part 1 (of however many I do before I run out of things to say or get bored).

You know how you go on a trip and everyone asks you the same questions so you get your answers down pat and know which stories are in your repertoire and you just keep cycling through them? Yeah, everyone asks me about the food. I don't exactly get this. Maybe because despite living in the Bay Area and appreciating the food scene here, I'm just not really a foodie.

Breakfast was pretty much cereal and milk - not that different from here. I could have stopped somewhere for churros and chocolate, but most days I just ate at "home" or skipped breakfast (something my host mom didn't like -- I found that amusing as my real mom isn't the 'you must eat breakfast' type). Oh, and when the guide books say that chocolate in Madrid is a thinck gooey drink - they mean it. Nothing at all like hot chocolate in the U.S. Not that I am complaining.

Lunch is the main meal of the day. Most places have a "menu del dia" where the entire meal is from 7 to 12 euros. The meal would include one item for a first course (usually from a list of 3 or 4 choices), one item for a second or main course, bread, a drink and either dessert or coffee. The beautiful thing about this system is that bottled water, soda, or a glass of wine all count the same for a drink. Also coffee upsets my stomach so - hello dessert! The bad thing is that Spanish restaurants don't have the same habit of keeping water glasses full as most U. S. restaurants. In fact, they didn't really give you water unless you asked for it. No big deal really.

Lunch, in Spain, takes place from 2 - 4. I like this system. Mainly because I was getting up at 10 and wasn't hungry for lunch until then. I would generally stop just about anyplace to eat. Well, any place that didn't intimidate me. There are a lot of small bar-like places that have lunch menus and I was a wimp and never ate at those because, honestly, I was a woman traveling alone and when I glanced in almost all of the patrons were male. Seriously, I feel like a dork for being that way. But it is what it is.

The food was - good, but not great. One Greek restaurant was better than average. The vegetarian place (probably the only vegetarian restaurant in all of Madrid) was good too. Everything else - just sort of blends. Nothing horrible, nothing great.

Dinner takes place at 10 p.m. I think people normally have a snack or something on their way home from work. I seldom did. So I was hungry sort of early sometimes. Dinner is also quite light. Mostly what I would consider a side dish here. Of course at 10 or 11 p.m. that is just fine as you wouldn't want a heavy meal right before bed. I ate dinner at "home" most of the time. This was interesting because cooking was not my host mom's thing. To explain how much it was not her thing - she had never used her oven. Never. The baking rack was still wrapped in plastic. It isn't anymore because I baked some chicken one night.

Some of the dinners she served: a salad of tomatoes, tuna and olive oil which was quite good; peaches cut up and in a yogurt and honey sauce which is also quite good; previously frozen spinach cooked and mixed with something that made me gag which was sort of droopy and... made me gag (which I did not let on to with the result that this was dinner at *least* 6 times, 3 of which were right in a row); bread crumbs fried in olive oil with grapes which tasted fine even if it wasn't the healthiest meal ever; and my favorite, in the makes-a-good-story sense, a plate with around 1.5 cups of peas and .25 cup of mayonaise on it. My host mom explained that I could mix the mayo with the peas. Yummmm (I don't like mayo). Yes, I had a plate of peas for dinner one night. Ah well. What is the use of traveling if not to collect stories such as these?

The only thing I strongly associate with "Spanish cooking" is paella - which I didn't eat becuse of my seafood thing. Other areas of Spain are known for other stuff but Madrid - not so much.

The lunch places had a disconcerting habit of serving fries with the main course. Baked chicken - with fries. Steak - with fries. I associate friench fries with fast food here, but apparently they are a more general thing in Spain.

I did give in a couple of times and have fast food for lunch. Burger King and Mc Donald's have a strong presence in Madrid. Subways exist. Starbucks will get its own entry later. There is also a place called Rodilla that serves sandwiches made on white bread with the crust cut off. The meal deals would have 3 or 4 of these half sandwiches, a drink, and maybe a side dish or salad of some sort.

Oooh - warning. Even if they call it caprese (salad or sandwich) - they mean normal (not fresh) mozarella and dried basil. They have fresh mozarella - I had it on another salad somewhere - they just don't use it on caprese salads. Or the 3 places I tried it didn't (I'm a sloooow learner).