E is for Espana

June 3, 2010--E was by far the hardest letter I’ve had yet—ok, yeah, I know it’s only the 3rd one I’ve had, but it was much more difficult than I anticipated. After some unhelpful suggestions for friends (exhibitionism…hahaha!) and internet searches that yielded NOTHING, I found a blog where someone else was doing alphabet dates, and they had use Espana. I liked their idea, so I must give these mystery people due credit for their help—I can’t seem to find the same blog again, so I can’t provide names or a web address, but I just can’t take the credit for this idea. I did give it my own spin though! I found that the traditional dish of Spain is Paella, which is a chicken and rice dish with some veggies. It looked good, and somewhat easy to make. I also found an avocado salad recipe that is common in Spain. Now, both of these recipes were originally in Spanish, so I printed them as is, and then (with the handy google) also printed the English translation. I went through the recipes and bought all the ingredients, then printed off miniature Spanish flags, and taped the flags to each ingredient. I thought this would be the easiest way to figure out what ingredients we were working with—like a matching game. I know, it’s lame, but some of the words were difficult and I didn’t want this to take FOREVER. I also purchased some Spanish wine, and made little nametags for the wine glasses.

We made the recipes and DID have to resort to the English translated recipe on step 3 of the paella. It was pretty good when we were done. It could have used some more flavor. I think next time we try it, we’ll use chicken stock instead of water to give it that little something extra. The decorations were cute —Ed said that I was creative, and the dinner was pretty good! That goes down as a win in my book!