An American in Andalucía: The Aftermath of Cuisine Culture Shock

Emma Gase  

This past winter I studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain. For four months, I lived with a Spanish family (actually, two Spanish families, but that is neither here nor there), traveled around Spain and Europe, and improved (very, very marginally) my Spanish language skills. But most important of all, I ate every meal with my host family. That’s right, I was treated to four solid months of home-cooked, authentic-as-could-be Spanish cooking: Breakfast (if you can call a sad slice white bread and knock-off Nutella “breakfast”), lunch (paella, paella, and oh wait did I mention paella?), and dinner (who likes frozen pizza…with ketchup?). In order to make a long and still freshly painful rant shorter, I will summarize this: Never have I lived in such a dearth of tasty and nutritious food.

What’s that? Spain is a country rich with culinary tradition and charming local flavors? Paella is kind of good? You enjoy small, barely dead crustaceans in everything from white rice to season-less garbanzo beans? You dig drinking milk that is so pasteurized it doesn’t need to be refrigerated? All right, to each his own. But grudges aside, I have in my possession official evidence of the food crimes committed against me. Below you will find an excerpt from my soon-to-be award-winning masterpiece, I mean blog, which was written after a dinner at a Sevillano Country Club I was treated to by some Spanish friends. My American roommate, Megan, can corroborate every detail below:

“Last Saturday night, Carmen and her husband Pepe took Megan and I out to dinner at their tennis club. Essentially, it was sort of like a country club, but a very, very Spanish country club. While the conversation was excellent, the food was…Spanish.

And now:

Things I will never again voluntarily ingest

Caracoles = mini snails Carmen loves, eat them with a tooth-pick. Fried.
Gazpacho = liquidy tomato soup, lots of olive oil, weird cucumber aftertaste. Served cold, in a beverage glass. Sufficiently disgusting, tastes like tomato juice and minced red onions. Native to Andalucia.
Salmorejo = essentially gazpacho, but thicker, served with boiled eggs, cured ham, and fried crutons on top. Slightly resembles Thousand Island dressing. May edge out the long-holding croquettas for worst offender.
Croquettas = unidentified fried balls of previously fried, minced meat. Resemble spherical mozzarella sticks. Inside looks like Crisco. Just stay away—they smell deceptively good (you could fry a finger, and it’d smell good), but trust me on this. Your stomach and arteries will thank me later."

Alksd;laskdggggggggg…sorry, I just passed out on my keyboard from a tidal wave of Post-traumatic-Spanish-food symptom-induced shock. Safe to say, I subsisted for four months mostly on oranges, $8 imported peanut butter, pretzels, and Maria cookies, which are basically sweet Ritz crackers (I am discounting travel, where my dining habits hovered on the exact opposite end of the spectrum). Either way, I think the real milagro here is that I didn’t become anemic.

So, never one not to be proactive, I have since come up with a Plan of Attack for those who are either going to study abroad in a country with um, “foreign” palates, or anyone, really, who needs a quick out when presented with a plate of unspeakable stew.

Emma Gase’s Survival Guide To Residing in a Food-Tundra

1. Is your meal inoffensive but besmirched by only one overused ingredient, e.g. it is swimming in a pond of enough olive oil to dress a salad the size of the Prado? Be creative. You never know what a little garlic, salt, and seasoning (and draining!) can do to save a dish. Also, the microwave is your friend.
2. When secretly throwing away food in your host mother’s tiny Spanish kitchen, make sure to wait until she is vacuuming the living room to execute your disposal. Hah! Just kidding, that is a ridiculous and obviously horrible idea. What you really need to do is secretly stash the offending meal into a grocery bag while your roommate creates a diversion, and then run it out to the dumpster as fast as your American legs will take you. Using a different trash can is key, in case the aforementioned host mother decides to rifle through her own garbage to see if the American girls are throwing away her cooking and then confront them about it later (this is not an unfeasible occurrence).
3. Lie and say you are feeling un poco enferma (ill), and then revel in your victory at getting served tea, yogurt and a fried egg for dinner. Then obey your host mother and put on your slippers immediately, because not wearing them is the reason you are sick.
4. Take a financial hit and eat out (but make sure to let your señora know a day in advance, especially if you don’t want a passive aggressive and emotional Spanish lady to hide your socks and bleach your underwear into oblivion as her own special form of retribution).

And, in the last, most hopeless case of desperation:


5. Get an apartment