Tapas

Tapas in Spain is a light snack usually served late morning to noon or early evening although you can have them anytime. It usually serves as a stop gap before the main meal of the day which is lunch at around 2.30pm or as an after work stop off on the way home. We're not having lunch today so our substantial noon tapas stop consisted of alitas de pollo picantes (hot spicy chicken wings), ensaladilla rusa (russian salad), patatas bravas (basically square cut french fries served with a spicy tomato sauce) and fresh bread. It sounds like a mix of Indian, Russian and British dishes but they are all traditional Spanish tapas. All of this was washed down with some cold Cruzcampo beer. I was reading something lately that confirmed what I have always thought about the Latin American people and that is that their temporal markers throughout each and every day all work around food. You don't see many Spanish people eating on the move and, outside the big cities at least, almost never see them with a take-away coffee or sandwich -no Starbucks where I live thankfully. Their days are marked out precisely around desayuno (breakfast), almuerzo (basically a coffee and sandwich break, la comida (lunch), merienda (could either be tapas or a coffee and cake around 6.30pm) and finally la cena (a light supper served around 9pm). All that food and yet obesity does not appear to be apparent in the population. They know how to eat.