Live to Eat!

We started our dining adventure in Portugal, where our choices were PEIXE or CARNE--fish or meat.  We had no idea what KIND of fish or what KIND of meat we were ordering,  but the fish we got both times was fried with the heads on.  It was good!  We learned that carne refers to beef and pork.  I'm really not sure what kind of meat I had.  Maybe ox tail?  The fish and meat were served with two sides, usually rice and potatoes.  In the first restaurant where we had lunch, the server spoke NO English, and she kept telling us our choices in Portuguese, louder and louder as if she said it enough we would understand (the way we all tend to do).  We finally just pointed and hoped we liked what we got.  We did! 

In several restaurants, Olivia ordered different tapas for us.  I had choco frito, or fried cuttlefish.  I found out after I ate it that cuttle fish belongs to the same family as squid and octopus.  Cuttlefish have eight arms and two tentacles, and suckers to catch their prey.  Yum.

Tim had one of Olivia's favorite dishes, carrilleras--pig cheek with potatoes and fried egg.

We had croquetas in Granada, which are fried potato "balls" with stuff in them, like cheese or ham.  I had tried, without success, to make these for Olivia's going-away party.  I found out why she likes them so much!

One of our very favorite tapas was a seafood salad, salpicon, with red and green peppers, onions, crab and shrimp in a sweet dressing.  This is what it looked like the first time we ordered it, but the next time it had corn and pineapple instead of peppers, and the dressing was thicker and "whiter".  Not sure what the difference was, but it was delicious too.  I'm going to try to make both versions!

Another tapas we LOVED was fried zucchini with honey drizzled on it.  Oh my goodness!

This was one of my FAVORITE mornings!  Olivia had toast drizzled with olive oil with crushed tomatoes spread on it.  Tim had bread, tomato, and tortilla espanola (a potato/egg tortilla).  I had churros (fried dough) dipped in chocolate.  SO good!

We tried to get churros several times after these, but weren't successful until Friday morning when we were leaving Huelva to travel to La Linea.  When we went out to the car, there was a long line of people waiting for churros.  A man was frying them in a huge vat, and as fast as he could cook them his wife was packaging them.  No chocolate for dipping, but they were hot and DELICIOUS!

Sometimes we just had ham and cheese on bread.  It wasn't always WHAT we ate, but WHERE we ate it!

In Huelva near the apartment where we stayed, on the beach in Portugal, and in Sintra.

I had fish and chips in the British Territory of Gibraltar!

We loved our Moroccan lunch in Tangier.  The first course was a delicious soup.  It was a little spicy, but not too much.  The second course was a "mystery meat" kabob.  It looked a little bit like hamburger meat squished on a stick, and it was really good.  Maybe camel?  The main dish was chicken and vegetables over couscous.  We had a delicious dessert that was like pie crust with honey on it.  It was a little like baklava, but the pastry wasn't as thin and it wasn't as layered.  At the end of the meal the servers brought hot tea with fresh mint in it.  Not sure what everything was, but I would eat it again.


Some of our favorite meals were our "picnics" of cookies and chips, or bread and cheese and strawberries.






We ate french fries at McDonalds, had drinks at Burger King, ate pizza in La Linea, and had Chinese food our last night in Huelva.

We certainly didn't go hungry.  No diets.  Lots of carbs.  But we walked so much that nobody gained any weight.

YAY!

Let's go back.