OMG I just ate what??

The subject of this entry can be deduced from the title, which is what I ask myself after almost every meal here so far: what the heck is going on in the cuisine in Spain? Some of the dishes are pretty easy to distinguish, like pollo and fritos (chicken and french fries) or sopa de lentejuelos (lentil soup), however every OTHER meal is made up of a variety of food odds and ends that I've learned are best explored AFTER eating them (don't get me wrong, I'll pretty much eat anything, mostly even after discovering what's inside).

For example, last night I had a special sausage that is a Spanish specialty all over the world but especially in the Basque country and Spain itself. I looked like any other sausage I've tried, and since I know I LOVE chorizo I figured I'd love this special dish as well. My host family had told me the name of it several times before but I could not quite remember it exactly (although it sounded so familiar), until after I tried some and LOVED it. Then I asked again for the name and it stuck this time, mostly because I remembered where I'd heard it before: morcilla. Now I know my spanish-speaking friends back at FU know this dish, mostly because they tried to get me to eat it without telling me what it was (knowing full well it had some, let's say "interesting" ingredients). SO I looked up the word in my little Webster's dictionary and all it said was "blood sausage or black pudding." UM.....OMG I just ate what?? Yes, morcilla is the specialty sausage made in Spain with BLOOD and other stuff that actually tastes pretty delicioso so I'm not completely complaining, but I think this is a good example of the types of atypical cuisine offered to me in Bilbao. To be honest, I've loved almost every dish I've tried so far with my family or at the University outings, but I must say that I've learned not to ask what's int he dishes until AFTER eating them (remember this tip if you ever decide to travel abroad).

Morcilla isn't the only dish that has some questionable cooking instructions, in fact one of my fav foods here are the sardinas (sardines, that's an easy one) that we eat for lunch. These aren't the little canned sardines that are soaked in saltwater or anything, thye are full on fried fish, skins on and bones inside. The best and worst part of the dish is grabbing the tail and ripping the entire skeleton out of the poor little guy before devouring the rest of him (maybe I shouldn't have personified the fish...). When you first see it, it looks absolutely horrifying, for both the fish who is being disemboweled over your dinner plate and then yourself who has to semi-prepare your own meal by doing the dirty disemboweling. Oh and I forgot to mention you do all of the above with YOUR HANDS, no utensils necessary! Hahah I'm definitely making this all out to be way worse than it really is, because after the first two or three fish you realize how freaking delicioso they are so you lose any qualms about bones and tails and whatnot.

There are so many other foods that are almost similar to American cuisine but also so different, like tortillas which resemble either a huge omelette/ crust-less quiche, or tomato, parmesan, and anchovies salads. I wish I could send you all some of the bread here, it puts Panera to shame, as does the fresh olive oil on melt-in-your-mouth steamed veggies that no restaurant in the US could ever achieve. So, I will keep trying all of these new cuisines and even learning the recipes (although I will definitely pass on morcilla, I think ignorance will be bliss for that one), and when I return I will gladly attempt to duplicate them for all of you! Oh, I almost forgot to add that adding to the already scrumptious meals is a lovely glass of Spanish wine at lunches and sometimes una cerveza at dinner, usually on Thursday to celebrate the weekend. :) I could probably get used to that everyday, I'm just saying...