Halloween!

31 Oct 2011

The celebrating of Halloween in Spain has been more of a recent development. According to one of the teachers at my school, it is only within the last five years that Halloween has caught on--even then only in the subdivisions. Even so, not many people dress up, and trick or treating is typically only done within people's subdivisions. There also isn't a lot of variety in costumes--most kids dress up as a witch, a ghost, the devil, etc.

Instead of celebrating Halloween the traditional way (with costumes, trick or treating, etc), I decided to bake and later I went shopping.

One of the foods I've missed the most since arriving in Spain has been bagels. I know that sounds weird, but the only type of breakfast I usually eat is a bagel with cream cheese. However, you can't find bagels in any of the supermarkets or bakeries--I've looked. In fact, I looked up the word for bagel in the dictionary and it doesn't really exist. They can be called: tipo de panecillo which means a type of bread roll.

So I decided to try to make them in my apartment. Ultimately, they turned out alright. My bagels are very pretty but they taste like real bagels. This was a relief because I didn't have measuring spoons for Tablespoons or teaspoons so I had to guess--which is not what you want to do while baking.

They weren't that hard to make, and I think that I'll get better at it over time. I'll post some pictures of the next batch--hopefully, they'll look more like bagels than the ones I just made.

After finishing the bagels, I decided to make tacos and chilli. The tacos were a snap, and so I moved on to the chilli. I had some difficulties with the chilli because some of the ingredients were hard to track down and so I had to substitute. For example, I've looked in more than one supermarket, but I can't find any chilli powder--so I had to substitute with something else. All in all, the chilli was a bit of a fiasco. I used a heavy hand with the spices, and it ended up being way to spicy.

After I finished cleaning up the kitchen, I went to the mall in order to finally buy some boots. I've been looking for a pair for a while now, but I haven't been able to find exactly what I wanted. I managed to find a cute pair in Joyca. Although they were a little expensive, I'm hopeful that they will last longer than if I'd bought a cheap pair.

While at the mall, I was surprised to see that Christmas stuff is already up. In fact, in AlCampo, they had already taken down all of the Halloween stuff in order to put out Christmas things. I know that Christmas decorations go out early in the States, but usually Thanksgiving serves as a bit of a buffer. Since they don't observed Thanksgiving here, I guess this means I can officially listen to Christmas music now!