Oscar, the nearly-three-year-old gourmand, has taken to the idea of going to the market - in this case one of Europe’s largest, the Mercado Central - on the way home from school.  Today he was particularly insistent that we go buy some strawberries and some fish.  What could we do but oblige?

Of course, Oscar isn’t very specific about his definition of fish, so he was perfectly happy when we bought some langostinos - prawns.  Well, I say that like it’s a simple matter of translating the word but, like most culinary terms, it’s a bit more complicated.  I have been in the habit lately of referring to jamon serrano as ‘ham’.  That’s tantamount to calling caviar ‘eggs’.  By comparison the langostino/prawn description is downright accurate.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that in Canada we call everything ’shrimp’ whereas in Britain the word ‘prawn’ is more than a pretension.  I won’t get into the details right now, but perhaps a picture of one of the ‘monster shrimp’ that we bought and cooked wrapped in ‘ham’ (jamon serrano) today will help.

I’m not sure that the size is convinvingly communicated through this picture - I have others if anyone is really dying to know just how large (and delicious) these are.

But I digress…

We have always been charmed and amazed both by Oscar’s love of food and his appetite.  Katie claims to be turning into an old Italian grandmother, happily pushing food at the young.  (A stereotype equally applicable to Spain.)  I just hope that the black widow’s garb that goes along with that stereotype isn’t required anytime soon…

Today, as most days, we made lunch the gastronomical focus of the day and realized that we have always been much more in step with the Spanish approach to food than Canada’s approach to eating.  We love late, lavish lunches but what makes the experience luxurious for us isn’t typically Canadian.  Today’s lunch did feature the super-rich prawns in ham - langostinos en jamón serrano - but we were just as excited by the perfectly ripe cherries and mildly spiced olives that we also picked up at the Mercado Central. (The strawberries were there too - and good - but they didn’t make it into the picture.)  Of course if goes without saying that there was also wine and bread in abundance and a favourite of ours - tomato and cucumber salad.

There is so much more to say on the subject of Spanish food and how our habits are oddly in line with those of our newly chosen home (and I will be saying it soon) but, for now, I just had to share the simple pleasure of what for us is a typical Spanish lunch.

We’ll be looking forward to more of the same at about 2 PM tomorrow…

Stay tuned.