EatWith.com and Paella

Woke up late (around 9am). Had some coffee,cereal and then hit the metro to take us to Juan’s place where we are going to be heading to the market to buy fresh produce and seafood to make Paella at his place! This is the first time we’ve tried out the EatWith.com opportunity and are really looking forward to it. We paid for the experience some time ago, so we don’t need to be thinking about cost today! :). After a few wrong turns out of the metro stop (GPS on my phone seems to be getting confused lately), we make it to Juan’s place just in time and he buzzes us up to the 3rd floor . He lives in a nice apt there with a great outdoor balcony/seating area. We quickly head for the local market (Mercado de la Maravillas, which turns out to be an incredible and HUGE market that offers tons of veggies, tons of seafood, meat, you name it. Juan wanders from stall to stall searching out what he wants - the merchants seem to know him and as it turns out he shops here every day for fresh food because he loves to cook and cooks for his family and for EatWith clients. We grab red shrimp, squid, mussels, clams, and some other seafood, buy some special paella rice, a Nora Pepper , saffron and some tomatoes, parsley and garlic and we were good to go.

Back at his house, he already had boiled some veggies to create a stock and then he got down to business with Janet’s help and my photography, cooking our Paella. In the meantime , we enjoyed some Manchego cheese with fig preserves (oh yes!), olives, jamón, some red wine, bread and mussels. . He had us join his private Facebook group for his guests so that he could share his recipes and help us with Madrid and cooking. How cool is that?

The preparing of the Paella was a joy to watch - you could tell he was good at this and it turned out perfect. Sat down to a great meal with wine and dessert and good conversation. We’ll be doing this again for sure - great way to get to know a local. (As it turns out he spent 6 years in Houston so his English is pretty good which was helpful!). For the most part, the Spanish have been pretty good with helping us struggling non-speakers - a smile goes a long ways towards getting some help.

Afterwards, Juan had to pick up one of his kids from school, so we walked about a mile with him and talked more about Spanish culture before parting ways and taking the subway down to the main train station (Atocha) before walking over to the Reina Sofia museum where we got to see Picasso’s “Guernica” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso) and some cool paintings from one of my favorite artists, Salvador Dali . After a few hours in the museum, our dogs were wolfing, so we walked across the street to the main train station just to check it out. They’ve got a jungle growing in there! Big palm trees, a lazy river surrounded by jungle grasses and turtles everywhere snoozing on rocks. Crazy scene in a train station!

Getting hungry and remembering we had ordered a loaf of bread from Panik(http://goop.com/specialty/spain/madrid/centro/p…), a bakery near our apt, we jumped on the metro and headed back, arriving about 10 minutes before closing at the bread store where we were sort of reprimanded for being “tarde”. I caught that word more than a few times, so I knew we had done something wrong! Apparently when we ordered this bread the day before and they said it would be ready around 3pm, they expected us to show up no later than 3:30pm. We never knew that rule when we had ordered - now I know what “lost in translation” means. :). Nonetheless with a bit of bowing and scraping, all was good, big smiles everywhere and we beat our retreat. I can only imagine what was being discussed later back in the bakery! LOL. Never knew we had almost faced the firing squad over a $5 loaf of bread!

Back at the apt, I reconfirmed our BlaBla car reservation for tomorrow’s trip to Toledo. Gotta meet this guy (ride sharing ) at 750 in the morning. Time to crash! Pictures of Paella to follow, so check back in on this post again.Read more