A Spanish Year Fat with Memories and Queso

By Amber Jamieson

In 2013, nine years after they first met, the author (second from the left) eats lunch with her host sister Sara (third from the left) and their friends in Barcelona, Spain. Photo: Daniel Alonso from People Producciones

Roasted red bell peppers always make me feel homesick, but for a home that is not really my own.

When I was 17, I spent a year on student exchange living with a family in a small city in the north of Spain. That year I gained 25 pounds, a ton of amigos, the ability to speak another language and a new respect for food.

Roasted red bell peppers were a constant in the kitchen, often warmed up and served with bread. I assumed they came from a local supermarket, but one day bags of fresh bell peppers appeared. My host dad Miguel fired up his outside brick oven and char-grilled them until their skins were crispy and black.

My host mother, Marie-Tere, sealed them in plastic bags and then, once they’d cooled, we stood in the kitchen, next to a poster outlining the top red wines of the nearby La Rioja region, and peeled those burnt skins off, leaving our hands and nails covered in charcoal. Then, Marie-Tere bottled them in olive oil, putting the jars in boxes to last throughout the year.

I’d never worked that hard for food before, never prepared a meal months in advance.

Food is life in Spain, with the main meal, a late lunch, serving as the most important time of the day. Between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. nothing was open in Miranda de Ebro – schools closed, banks closed, all shops minus some supermarkets closed – in order for everyone to go home and eat together.

I didn’t quite realize how important it was until that summer when my friends and I went on a trip to the beach. Our mothers packed us bocadillos, sandwiches full of jamon and tortilla (a Spanish-style potato omelette), and we carried them wrapped in foil. Our train was late and I was hungry, so I started eating my sandwich as we walked to the beach. My friends were horrified.

Even though we had only brought packed lunches, they were waiting until they were all sitting down together before they would dare eat the main meal of the day. I still feel guilty about that lunch.

Another day that summer I ate a slice of fresh tomato that had just been picked from the garden outside for our lunch. “No! Estan soso! (No! They are without salt!)” cried Miguel, horrified that I would eat a tomato that was not perfectly salted, and drizzled in olive oil and red wine vinegar.

Food became my obsession that year, meals my favorite part of every day. Every day Marie-Tere drove into town to pick up fresh bread. Miguel went mushroom picking on weekends in the fall and returned home with varieties I’d never seen before, which were fried with butter and garlic. On weekends we drove to small local villages and stopped for a mosto (non-alcoholic grape juice) and a pintxo (the Basque word for tapas) of anchovies or eggplant or cheese on bread.

If I knew that dinner was either croquetas, fried balls of jamon and queso, or empanadas, fried pastries stuffed with tomatoes, onion and meat, I’d be happy all afternoon. If flan – that glorious, wobbly caramel egg custard – was cooked for dessert, I’d spend the whole meal in anticipation of spoonfuls of its syrup.

I returned to Spain last year, nine years after my first visit. My friends and family are a little older but the dedication to dining remains. Miguel still took me out to incredible pintxos in local towns and scoffed when I tried to pay. Empanadas were waiting, as was the flan. The lady from the bakery remembered me.

One afternoon I went into a clothes shop with my host sister Sara and, while I tried on a dress, I heard the shop assistant ask her if I was that the Australian girl who used to live with them. When Sara replied yes, the girl asked “didn’t she used to be a lot fatter?” It was a refrain I heard that entire trip, as all that fried pastry, cheese and bread had had to have gone somewhere. “Just that year,” I replied, remembering how quickly the weight dropped off after I returned to Melbourne, Australia, and its salads and Asian food.

But I still pour olive oil over everything. I still believe a meal is the most important time of the day, and should be shared with loved ones whenever possible. I try and buy my fruit and vegetables in season, when they actually taste like food and not empty calories. And I always, always, salt my tomatoes.

Amber Jamieson