food

While on our Convivencia trip, one of the things that moved our days along was food being literally shoved in our face. One big difference about the Spanish and Moroccan cultures is that they eat. They eat a lot. They continue to keep eating until all the food is gone. In Spain, we had a lot of "tapas" which are famous Spanish appetizers if you will. Most of our meals in Spain were a course of 4 or 5 different tapas that just kept coming. So then when we thought we were all done and stuffed from our meals, they would bring us out dessert. Silly us- thinking we would lose weight on this trip. While in Spain we got to eat some incredible dishes. We had sardines, shark, croquettas (which are essentially little tatter tots with mashed potato and a meat), octopus, cheeses, mushrooms, and we discovered a love for olive oil. Spain is famous for its olive oil. They use it to cook everything and eat it with everything. Every meal, there were loaves and loaves of bread and by the time we discovered the olive oil, we stopped asking for butter for our bread. The olive oil was delicious.

In Morocco, things work a little differently with food. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day. They do not use plates or forks. Their culture believes that food is a blessing from God and that the last thing it should touch is your hand, not a fork or a plate. Also, you must eat with your right hand. Another amazing thing is their mint tea. Literally, you could not go anywhere with out getting mint tea offered to you. And you better drink it! We ate so many new things in Morocco as well. We had cous cous which is a dish with little pastas and chicken, potato, and various vegetables...

We also had a very unique experience to do something that would turn most people into veggetarians (one member of our group does claim to be a veggetarian now after trying this). One lunch we got to have a camel burger. Yes, I know.. I just wrote about riding camels down the African coast and how mine's name was Suzana. However, this was a cultural experience. And you have to try everything. I will precede this by saying that the camel burger was my least favorite dishes in everything we tried in 2 weeks. But most of us did try it...

This was a Moroccan salad, that was served as a first course. It had a sampling of different little dishes. Many people enjoyed this at a couple different meals. My favorite dish (I think of the whole trip) was something that we got offered most of the meals. This Moroccan soup was a combination of tomato soup and minestrone soup. I thought it was so delicious. We obviously had bread to eat it with (and a spoon, not our right hands) and it was just so authentic and made you really feel the culture. It also made me so full that I barely had room for my meal.