One of the most fundamental and hopefully enjoyable aspects of life is what we eat and drink… so I decided this week to write a bit about that and how it gets done around here.

Whenever we’ve been in Spain in the past it’s been as a tourist, and of course what you eat on holiday is not what you eat at home – so whilst we knew a lot about restaurants and bars before we arrived, there was a lot to learn about the day to day stuff, some of which was familiar, and some less so.

Supermarkets for example are pretty much the same anywhere in the world… but as in every area, they each have their own feel and culture and good and not so good points.  Some names are familiar – Aldi and Lidl and Carrefour are spattered along the coast including a Lidl in Javea, and others are new.  Eroski is huge and seems good value, with lots of non-food items (eg we bought Cassie’s bike and our office chairs there, as well as some kitchen stuff).  Mercadona is a good all-round weekly shop, Masymas seems to be a fairly local chain with stores all over the area and some regional produce, medium sized premises.  Dia is cheap if you chose the right promotions, Consum is cheapish but mainly because you can’t find anything you actually want…  Supercor is part if the Corte Ingles chain, with choices and prices to match.

There are lots of little supermarkets too, many serving the expat or tourist trade.  Quick Save has several local branches for those who can’t live without Heinz beans or PG tips, though the prices are very different from the UK chain with a similar name.  There are smaller independent ones out in the urbs where lots of people live, the closest to us is a German run store with a surprisingly good bakery.

But the fresh produce in the supermarkets is generally disappointing, so we try to be a bit more Spanish about it and get to the markets when we can.  A lot of these are during the working day which is a shame, apart from Pedreguer on Saturdays which is heavingly busy.  The Thursday market in Javea is great and we have found all sorts of things from a charity stall selling secondhand English paperbacks for 1€ to cheap socks, along with a great range of local fruit and veg.  There is also an indoor market in Javea with permanent stalls selling all kinds of foods, and the produce there is excellent and also competitively priced.  Lara has a school trip there in a week or so, as they have been learning about healthy eating and hygiene as a topic.

Eggs we get from a local mum at school – amazingly fresh and very free range, daily from their own finca.  Bread we tend to buy every day or so fresh, but exactly as in the UK generally also have a sliced sandwich loaf (‘pan moulde’, though it keeps pretty well!) on hand for simplicity in lunchbox making.  Wine of hugely varying quality and price is available in all the big supermarkets, and we keep forgetting to make some note of the good value ones that turn out surprisingly nice… although for everyday drinking its hard to beat the reliable and acceptable brew from the bodega in Jalon (95c per litre!) -you wouldn’t take it to a dinner party, but then we don’t go to many of those.

As I may previously have hinted, Spain isn’t an easy place in many ways for vegetarians.  Lifetime carnivores too are confronted in a more head-on way with the reality of what they’re consuming, and if accustomed to shrink-wrapped unrecognisable body parts in Tescos the corpses with heads and legs on, especially on the fish counter, might come as a shock – likewise the ubiquitous whole hams, complete with trotter, hanging in every bar and racked in rows in the shops.  Of course there are plenty of alternatives, and local cheese is pleasant and plentiful, as are pulses galore (though many precooked ones may contain the ever-present jamón.  Processed vegetarian foods are rare, imported, and consequently extremely expensive – I remember being thrilled to find quorn mince in a local supermarket, only to drop it in horror on spotting a pricetag in excess of 5€!

I have found one local health food shop that sells organic tofu for a similar price you’d pay in the UK – there is no mass market alternative like Cauldron – and they also sell a good selection of whole organic pulses as well as some limited fresh stuff.  I am currently trying to make my own tempeh, as I have never seen any of that on sale here, although the delicious Indonesian takeaway must be getting it from somewhere.

Restaurants, cafes and bars are of course everywhere in a resort town in Spain, and whilst we can’t frequent them as often as we’d like whilst Sterling continues to circle the drain, it is nice to pop out for a quick bocadillo or café Americano occasionally.  The Arenal area has endless ‘international’ restaurants, including the famous Scallops, renowned for ridiculously low priced food offers.  The Port and the pueblo have many more Spanish establishments as well as some high quality international/fusion offers, including two excellent Indians.  There are places serving greasy chips to Brits in a language and environment that they understand, and there are coffee shops serving brandy and wine at 9am to Spanish workers taking a break for their segundo desayuno.  At lunch time a fixed price ‘menu del dia’ is commonplace, offering a good value 3 course meal, generally with several choices for each and possibly including a drink – us veggies have to negotiate our way around this of course, so we don’t end up with an a la carte salad costing twice as much as the menu steak!  A veggie entrée is a rarity in a Spanish restaurant but often the starters will include soups, salads and tortillas and lots of places will be flexible… it’s no coincidence that restaurant ordering is probably my most advanced area of Spanish language knowledge!

Of course one of the things that really attracted us to the mediterranean lifestyle in the first place is the fact that children are welcome anywhere, at any time – there are no ‘family’ restaurants serving rubbish food in small portions.   Kids in Spanish restaurants are seen and heard, but you can generally spot the natives who are well behaved and accustomed to being treated as part of a society of many elements.  One thing that is a concern eating out though especially with kids is special Spanish loopholes in the supposedly EU wide smoking ban – many establishments opt out of being smoke-free, meaning the interiors are like sticking your head in an ashtray.  Though when you can sit outside that isn’t a concern – bring on the summer! 

We have had a couple lovely days this week and are promised more for the weekend which will be great, as it’s been a long week for us in the office – mainly dealing with the fallout from the extreme weather conditions in the UK.  Cassie is furious to have missed the best snowfall in decades, she doesn’t even know her old school was closed for part of the week whilst she was sat at her desk.  We are hoping to go back to Jalon tomorrow- restock on wine obviously, but the almond blossom should be out, so we’ll take lots of photos.  Right now writing this has made me realise it’s almost teatime…

Try before you buy at the Jalon bodega