My grandfather always told me the story of the hungry grass when I got like this. It's is a story of hunger, despair, sheer peril and salvation. And I'm going to tell it to you now. Fair warning weary traveller, heed my words, lest ye be captured by the hungry grass.
Should a fair young traveller be walking along the grass one day, and put one single toe inside a patch of grass, the grass slightly greener than all other grass, all of the strength will be sucked out through the soles of his feet. The life will be sucked completely out of the traveller, killing him with weakness! Unless! Unless he has a single piece of bread in his pocket. When he eats this bread, providing he still has the strength to lift his hand to his mouth, the spell will be broken and he will be able to escape the hungry grass.
I think I may be genetically susceptible to the hungry grass, perhaps this is why dad and grandad told me the story so often. Also I would like to take this time to blame this great childhood fear of being caught without food as the prime reason for me not loosing any weight on the camino. (Seriously, 4 weeks and not a pound in the difference!)
Initially I was excited about food in Spain, mainly because of the film where Yoost the Dutchman always talks about it. What you soon realise is that for a Peregrino the selection can be very limited.
For breakfast - often the best meal of the day, eaten at 7-8am after seven or eight kilometres, when you are really spectacularly hungry and you find the first open bar. This is normally cafe con leche, fresh orange juice, toast and maybe a pastry if you are feeling fancy. If you are properly ravenous and are at risk of eating another Peregrino, a tortilla is your only man. This is a potato omelette, normally two inches thick and delicious. This can get very samey day after day. Sometimes you have this for lunch in a sandwich and it's often served for dinner too. Eggs and potatoes are cheap here apparently and are good for feeding needy peregrinos.
Lunch is a bocadillo or sandwich with ham, cheese, ham and cheese or cheese and ham and any combination of the above. It will be eaten on the hoof or when the hungry grass strikes.
When you finally arrive in your village for the night, get your bunk and sort out exactly how tired you are, you head out to some bar, any bar and get whatever they give you. Some tapas maybe, with olives, patatas bravas which is spicy fried potatoes normally, or patatas alioli which is garlic fried potatoes, add some cheese to these and you are at home.
As you can see potatoes seem to be the main staple for the peregrino, this becomes more clear when you see the dreaded peregrino menu or menú del dia.
This is a carb rich, low cost, fast cooking time menu consisting of three courses, wine, water and bread. It's good value, but nothing spectacular.
The choice for a starter can be good, a salad (note: this will be the only source of vegetables you get), pasta, spaghetti, rice, lentil and bacon soup or noodle soup. This is the carb rich plate. The second plate is your meat and potatoes served in all sorts of imaginative ways, but mostly fried. Fried chicken, fried beef, fried pork, fried fish with fried potatoes. I think the meat is to build back up the muscles you tore earlier while walking.
The desert is the postres. Which is flan or "creme caramel" as they optimistically put it, ice cream which is probably a cornetto, yogurt or fruit.
As much bread and wine as you can drink and sometimes they give you a little local home brew to warm you up going out the door all for between €8-10! Not bad, but not inspiring either. It sounds like such a lot of food for such a good price, but it's all the same wherever you go. I have had amazing peregrino menus and some just ok ones but all have filled me up.
The problem here is if you are in any way slightly picky or have made a diet choice or are allergic to a certain type of food. If you are vegetarian you will be eating fish or tortilla for your entire trip. If you are vegan, don't come, either cook for yourself all the time or give up. If you are a coeliac - tortilla tortilla tortilla, or the plate of meat, with tortilla. If you are picky, deal with it.
What a lot of people do is raid a supermarket when they see one. What I always end up buying without fail is a baguette, sliced cheese, chorizo, muesli bars, babybel cheeses, some bananas and nectarines, a bag of little fairy cakes or magdelenas and chocolate. In the case of a long way without a village or a bar, having a feast in your Mary Poppins bag is greatly appreciated by all and can be shared out indiscriminately when you just can't stand the weight of the food anymore.
The thing that makes food and drink so beautiful is the knowledge that it will be so cheap. Coffee for €1, wine for €1.30, beer for €1.50 a sandwich as long as your arm for €3 that could feed a family of four.
It's all basic but it's all fresh, proper bread, hand cut chips, the meat and cheese is regional as is the fruit (oh the fruit!!) Spain is a producer of food. Agriculture is it's biggest industry, (the camino I have heard is its 3rd biggest industry) the food just isn't that varied for pilgrims.
When I asked a Spanish person why there wasn't that much vegetables on the menu at restaurants I got an odd look.
"We eat so many vegetables at home," he said, "why would we want to eat them when we go out?"
But we don't have a home, we are homeless, we are travellers, an army of pilgrims marching on our bellies.
Most of the best food experiences have been from recommendations. I got one recommendation in Astorga to go to the place that sells rotisary chicken and buy one. So I did, I brought it back to the albergue and wafted in front of my sleeping sisters nose and we tore into it like savages. There was chips and juice and chicken and happiness in that little takeaway tin.
Another recommendation was when we got into Galicia, Dan and I, and we were introduced (by gawking at other people's plates) to the wonderful world of Galician food. Galicia is a maritime land, and even though we were up in the mountains in the mist and the rain their pulpo or octopus served with potatoes and paprika was the most welcome warm dish in days. According to Dan, it was the best dish he had on the camino. Then came the galegea soup which is cabbage and potatoes in a stew, doesn't sound that great but in this woman's kitchen with a fire and turf, it was just beautiful. For desert we had to have yet another speciality of soft mild cheese and honey. Yumdiddlyumptious.
When we finally got into Santiago another recommendation lead us to taste the most incredible seafood tapas in the land where the food was raw and you picked it out for it to be cooked for you.
Then later that evening I was invited to another spectacular place that used to be a one star Michelin restaurant but the chef had decided to change his menu to tapas. I have never tasted better food than here. Veal that fell away on your fork, potatoes cut to look like onions, fried somehow and then drenched in egg yolk, tuna sushi made with tuna more delicate than a butterfly's wing, a whole lionfish that looked as if it was terrified to death and then battered. So good, so blissfully wonderful, so right for the final end to the camino.
Some people complain that they don't get enough vegetables, some complain about the food being the same, but if you look, there are jewels to be found in the wonderful lands of northern Spain ... And lots of flan.
Xx
Buen Camino.
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