Food

One of the endless differences between Spain and the US is the food. It is the number one thing I am still adjusting to! I am very lucky because my host family eats healthy and fresh, but still, the way of eating and the types of food are not what we are accustomed to at all.

Starting with breakfast: Breakfast is not really a meal in my opinion. The girls drink hot cocoa or warm milk and the parents drink coffee. With this is maybe a piece of toast or a "galleta" which translated to cookie, but it's not something really sugary or sweet. We have them in the States and they are called MariLu's, they are really good and I used to eat them when I was young all the time. My host father asked me what I eat for breakfast and I told him I usually eat eggs and he found this to be hysterical. Not only do they not eat eggs for breakfast, but when I was making eggs in Madrid, Yesenia's roommate was shocked when I flipped them in the pan. If eggs are made, they are made sunny side up or scrambled.
After this scant breakfast (at around 7:30), everyone goes to work or school and doesn't eat again until 2:30ish. I'm not sure how they make it through the day, but I am trying to eat the same as them and I guess it is something you just get used to. For lunch, they eat a bigger meal, and potatoes seem to be a recurring ingredient. The Spanish Tortilla is very common and popular and this is like a quiche with eggs, onion, garlic and potato, but it has no crust. 
After lunch and a little bit of rest time, everyone goes back to work.
In this house, the children eat dinner at around 7:30 and the parents at around 10 pm. I think it is most common to have dinner between 8 and 9, but the girls bedtimes are 8:30 and 9, so they eat earlier.  Dinner will be leftovers from the previous day's lunch, or maybe some kind of meat. Last night, the girls had the seafood stew that we had for lunch, but the mom pureed the younger girls stew for her. It was eaten with a little bit of bread and pineapple for dessert. I had a little bit of ham and some croquettes, which are little fried balls of potato and usually have something else to them, mine had ham. 
Ham is the favorite food in Spain, from what I have seen so far. There is a chain restaurant called "Museo de Jamon" or "Ham Museum", and when you go inside, all of the walls and ceiling are covered in legs of ham or other types of ham. I am yet to see any vegetables other than potatoes, save one tapas plate in Segovia which had a little bit of bell pepper sauteed with sausage. I miss vegetables very much and I am going to have to go to the store and get some for myself in a few days when I am more comfortable in the home. I don't want to offend anyone, and even though they have been very nice about telling me to eat when I want and what I want, I still want to try to eat with them and like them. Another kind of different thing that they do is put this tomato sauce on their rice. And not Ragu, its smooth tomato sauce that almost reminds me of Campbell's Tomato Soup. The food is not bad, it is just rather plain (the food is not spicy at all, and I miss spicy food so much already!!!) and salty and cooked with a lot of oil. They only use Olive Oil though, so at least it is a healthy oil, and the people look good, no wrinkles or obese people walking around, so I guess they are dong something right!
When I asked my friends in Madrid what they missed the most in the US, they all said Mexican food and In N Out (californians, obviously!) I miss sushiland though! And salads. Dan asked me if I thought we were healthier or Spainards were healthier and I would have to say it really depends. We have a lot more variety in our diet, but we also consume a lot of chemicals and hydrogenated oils, which are unheard of here. Although the food they eat has a lot of fat, they are mostly healthy fats and they rarely eat anything from the microwave which has been pre packaged. In the US, we are so obsessed with being thin, that we eat all this horrible crap, like aspartame and frozen "lo-calorie" meals, and we don't realize that while we are saving calories, we are putting awful, awful man made, un-natural substances into out bodies. That being said, I think Americans who are informed consumers and make smart choices about food probably have a "better" diet then Spanish people, but again, it's all relative.