Teaching How To Make Cookies and Homelife

Today I taught my host sister Janire how to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Although she has little experience in good, thorough stirring and beating -and aside from her need for practice in the art of scraping cookies off the sheet with a spatula- they came out great! We had fun whipping out the hammer again and breaking the chocolate bar to pieces (I mentioned that she might take to baking this sort of cookie when she is in need of a little stress release!). And thus, after a day of baking, my mind is on food.

My host mom prepares two meals a day for us: lunch and dinner. Lunchtime is an hour that I hold in high regard, and rightly so. The usual heavy, lunch dishes are lentils or garbanzo beans, each served in soup/stew form with mild, green peppers, carrots –always extra for me-, and meat (steak is frequent and chorizo –a sort of chunk of pepperoni- is a must). Other usuals are the Spanish omelet, Spanish rice (garlic flavored rice served with tomato sauce and a fried egg), fish of every sort, puree of vegetables, and fillet of steak or pork. Many of these are also served for dinner, but practically never the garbanzo beans or lentils since they are considered too strong for right before bed. As a first dish, a salad of lettuce, tuna, tomato, olives, pickled leeks, canned corn, oil, vinegar, and salt is common and french-fries are served with almost every meal. We’ve also dinned on hamburgers that are more like a hamburger and BLT all in one from time to time and French omelets (which are like our regular omelets). Frozen pizza and breaded and fried rolls of ham and cheese are also part of our diet. My favorite dishes are the garbanzo beans, Spanish omelet, Spanish rice, puree of vegetables, and salads. Desert is always yogurt or fruit (apple, melon, pear, banana, cherries, strawberries…) with an occasional ice-cream thrown in.

Aside from cooking for us, my host mom also does the laundry (put the clothes in the washing machine, hang them on the clothes line, take them down, iron, fold, and distribute to the appropriate rooms) and cleans the house (sweeping, mopping, scrubbing, wiping down…). She would like to work (perhaps as a hostess at a hotel or in retail) but since they are relatively new to the area, she has not found an opportunity. So, she spends her time on the computer communicating with her friends back home in the North of Spain in Bilbao. My host dad works in the Civil Guard, which means he does hard work and suffers a lot of tragedies. In his off time, he goes running, bicycling, plays Paddle, fixes little electronic things, helps his daughters with homework, and does odd jobs around the house. He helps my host mom with dishes and does the weekly shopping trip with her. He is also the only one with a working driver’s license, so he takes people places if they aren’t using the usual methods of transportation –walking, bus, or tram. Since we only go shopping once a week but eat bread with every meal, we keep loaves of bread in the freezer to make them keep through the week and place them out over the clothes line or in front of the portable heater to thaw a few hours before we expect to eat them. We also use scissors to cut our spaghetti to pieces, but I am assured that this is not normal. Janire, my 15-year-old host sister, is not old enough to go clubbing like all of my friends. She prefers shopping, hanging out around the city, and going to the beach to tan, bathe, play volleyball, or chat with friends –but above all to tan. She’ll also go to an occasional movie, but usually opts for TV shows or the movies that are shown on a variety of channels. We watch Los Simpsons over lunch most every day, unless there is a soccer game, which is first priority, or car races, which are second. Over dinner, we watch Cámara Café (Coffee Camera) which is an imitation of a French show where they use one fixed camera set up where the coffee machine would be in an office and every show is made up of witty scenarios that could or could not take place in a similar situation. It is very funny, but I didn’t start getting the jokes until after a few months. We also watch the news during many meals. As you might guess, this is not conducive to lengthy discussions, but we do chat.

Well, ttfn! Ta-ta for now!

Love,

Jocelyn