Mi Señora!

As a pescatarian, after about a week in Salamanca, I'd already tried a lot of different types of fish. Now, after 5 weeks here, I've had a wide range of fish along with many different traditional Spanish dishes. About 2 weeks in, I finally sat down with my señora to talk to her about her shopping habits, eating habits, and Spanish food in general. Since then, my señora, Dayaneet, Zach (the other two foreign students), and I have talked about food during almost every meal. Dayaneet and I especially like learning about Charro's cooking habits. During our first conversation, Charro (not sure if I'm spelling her name correctly) told us that she goes grocery shopping almost every day of the week, and that in the past few years, the price of food has increased a lot. She says she tries to save money by going to markets with better prices, but she mostly goes to the ones closest to her apartment. Along with Carrefour, she said she enjoys going to fruit, fish, and meat markets. She says the markets are the best place to get the freshest food, although it's fine to buy things like bread, muffins, and cereals at Carrefour--she'll buy these items days or weeks in advance, while she says she always buys the meat, fish, and fruit the day that she's going to use them or a day before.

Charro really likes to eat healthy foods--usually our meals consist of some type of fish, cooked vegetables or a salad, and fruit for dessert. She's diabetic, which limits her options for sweets obviously, but we did have ice cream one night. I can honestly say I've enjoyed every meal she's cooked for me except for one, which was octopus (pulpo). I tried about 5 solid bites of it before I gave up. I think the meaty texture just did not sit well with me, but I do know that I've talked to other people here who have tried it and enjoyed it. When asked what foods she likes and dislikes, Charro immediately said that she likes everything. After more conversations with her over the weeks, I've found out that not only does she enjoy eating healthy, but her favorite meat is lamb. The one thing pertaining to food that she doesn't like is when different parts of her meal mixes together, like the vegetables and the meat. As for her cooking, Charro lightly fries the fish most of the time. The merluza she made was delicious, and my favorite meal of hers was tortilla espanola with eggplant instead of the potatoes. Overall, Charro is a great cook and I thoroughly enjoyed trying everything she made for me. It is very nice of her to go out of her way to make me fish instead of other meat, and I made sure to tell her how much I appreciate it. My favorite part about trying food in Spain was the fact that it's so much fresher than the food in the U.S. I genuinely feel better after eating healthy, fresh fish, vegetables, and fruit every day.