Tapas

Today we had two famous Spanish dishes for the first time on the trip.
We had paella and tapas. Paella, which my dad continued over and over
to pronounce phonetically rather than paAya, is generally a rice dish
with various legumes and other ingredients. Tapas nowadays is
generally just thought of as appetizers. But the origin of the word
and tradition of eating tapas is very interesting. Our tour guide Remy
told us that tapas began when there was a lot of alcohism in Spain. It
originated from some king (ferdinand?) in some century (Remy knew,
shame on me for forgetting) and actually was a law. Every alcoholic
drink served had a piece of bread placed over the top of it so that
the individual had to at least eat something before consuming their
adult beverage. The appetizer then transformed when they started
putting things on the bread such as jamon y queso. Now there are
places devoted just to tapas. There's a history lesson for everyone,
hope I haven't bored everyone out of their minds.

Tommy
6/23/09 10:00pm Valencia