Denver Botanical Gardens

Denver Botanical Gardens

Thursday, November 20, 2014

The food of the Camino

"Don't need no five star reservation. I got spaghetti and a cheap bottle of wine...."  Darrius Rucker - Alright.
We've mentioned food a few times on this blog and posted a few pictures.  We hope a little more detail will be valuable to some readers.
Pilgrims find all sorts of ways of managing food along the path.  Some choose to eat at the little cafes for nearly every meal.  Four euros for breakfast, six for lunch, and ten for dinner.  For two people this would be over $50 per day at current exchange rates.  This might be fine for a short trip, but for a 7 week adventure, it just doesn't work for us.
We ate out when we needed to, and after a particularly difficult day, we found it quite comforting to let someone else take care of us.  Most days we found a "supermercado", investigated what was on the shelves, and invented a recipe with the available choices.  Many of the albergues have kitchens the pilgrims can use.  Sometimes a meal with no cooking was required.  For breakfast and lunch we made bread, cheese, various fruits, tuna, olives, chocolate, nuts and such some of our staples.  We also often bought eggs to boil in the evening.  In cool weather these will last for at least 36 hours, and make a great high protien snack.
One of our favorite types of refuge is the Parochiol Albergue.  In many of these, all pilgrims eat together at a large table for the evening meal.  Some of the hosts appreciate help in the preparation, others handle it themselves.
Like many other aspects of the Camino, we learned to simplify our expections, and be thankful for any neccesity we found.  It has given us new appreciation for the Lord's prayer phrase "give us this day our daily bread".  We know much of the world's population is much more in tune with this concern than we normally are.
Here are a few pictures of our meals from our journey.
Charizo and Potato soup provided by our hosts in Logrono.
Lunch in a streetside park in Navarrete.
They call it "tortilla" in Spain.  It is a wonderful egg and potato dish that was our favorite when we did buy breakfast.
Best thing about this dinner was the new friends we shared it with.
Our own egg and potato concoction for supper
A surprisingly good dinner of ham sandwiches and microwave veggies.
One of the few dinners we purchased at an albergue, good but unremarkable.
Early Thanksgiving Dinner in Moratinos.
Enough to share with two fellow pilgrims.
No wine, but I did have the woman I love to share it with.

4 comments:

  1. I hadn't really thought of meals that way, but life gets very simple on the camino with many things broken down to the essentials. Thanks again for some great posts. Now, wondering if I should take a corkscrew.

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    1. Margie, we appreciate all of your comments. We wish you the best on your walk this fall. If you do the Via de la Plata, we would love to hear about it, as we are considering this route for our next Camino.

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  2. Mike and Ruth, loved reading your blog. Thanks. Hoping to walk the Portugues in 2016.

    One question that has been "bugging" me: how did the permethrin treated sheets work out?

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  3. We aren't sure whether they helped or not. We did not find any bedbugs until the last week of our camino, and we think the permethrin had lost it's zip by then. At least they provide a physical barrier, and a cloth surface that no one else has slept on!

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