La Comida

For those who know me, even a little bit, this entry has been a long time coming. Living in a coastal town on the Meditteranean, I find the cuisine pretty standard as far as that goes: various types of fish, seafood, rice and tropical fruits. But this is no Red Lobster.
The meat is often mixed into some sort of salad doused in olive oil. Here, the dessert of choice is flavored yogurt (strawberry Petit Suisse is my new love). The leche fria (cold milk) is more lukewarm than anything and pumped with preservatives. It sits in a box on grocery store shelves until opened. But I dont mind its temperature, am actually getting used to it, and am pretty sure I´m the only one on this trip who feels this way. "Pop" is nowhere to be found here in Alicante, the cheese is soft and gooey, and Zuma (juice) comes in all kinds of yummy tropical flavors. Today, my mama packed me zumo de pina, my favorite!
Here, Chinese restaurants all have the same name (restaurante chino) and aren´t not worth their prices. So far I´ve found one Indian restaurant that doesn´t look to have a single vegetarian entree (so weird!). And the tapas bars are everywhere.
Tapas: a variety of meats, cheeses and/or vegetables, either fried, grilled or prepared cold, and served on slices of baguette, to be accompanied with wine or cerveza. For example, yesterday I went out for tapas with a friend and had a plate of three tapas with white wine. One was a fried spinach croqueta on a slice of zuchhini. The other was a vegetarian pate´ of cucumber, tomato, olive oil and goat cheese atop baguette. I don´t remember the last one. Two old jovial men at the bar bought me two tapas and unfortunately, both had hunks of bacon on them so they sat on my plate, uneaten.
But Spanish food isn´t nearly the nightmare that I was fearing. It will be hard going back to Iowa. That said, I miss Indian food like burning! My mama here in Alicante seems not have discovered the wonders of salt, let alone pepper, garlic, cardamom and cilantro.