one of the favorite seafood dishes is made
of codfish cooked in a delicious sauce of red and green peppers flavored
with garlic. In Valencia you would eat "paella" made of many kinds of
shellfish, chicken, ham and rice flavored with saffron, a yellow spice
which grows in Spain. Paella is made in a big round iron pan over a
charcoal fire, and the little clams, shrimps, pieces of chicken and
everything else that makes it good are tossed in, a handful at a time,
until the whole dish is ready to be served, right from the pan it was
cooked in.

Most families have a big lunch, at about 2 o'clock. If the weather is
cool, this is very likely to be a pot of stew, or "cocido." Depending on
what part of the country you are in, this cocido might be made of fish,
lamb, beef or chicken. Whatever the meat or fish may be, the cocido also
includes all the vegetables that grow in the garden at that time of
year. It's apt to be flavored with garlic, sweet Spanish red peppers,
and perhaps several spoonfuls of sherry wine.

In the hot summer weather in Andalusia, people eat a delicious cold soup
as their main dish at lunch, and sometimes at dinner too. This soup is
called _gazpacho_, and it is made with Spanish olive oil, vinegar,
tomato juice and ice water. Very fine bread crumbs help make it thick,
and little pieces of fresh, cold tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers,
olives and onions float on top.

Everybody in Spain eats a great many "churros." Churros are something
like doughnuts, but they are twisted into odd shapes and fried in olive
oil until they are crisp all the way through, not just on the outside.
They are very fine for breakfast with hot chocolate, and they are also
good with sugar sprinkled on them as a between-meals snack. Another
snack is almonds, grown right in Spain, and shrimp the size of your
little finger.

Some of the foods the Spanish children eat are the same ones their
great-great-great-grandfathers and mothers ate, too. Mostly, the houses
where they live are also very old--as old as the holiday customs that
haven't changed in hundreds of years. These old ways and scenes are some
of the reasons Spain has been called "the land where time stands still."

Only just now is this old Spain about to become modern Spain. New roads,
railroads and airfields are being built to help people get around the
country faster and to send food from farms and seacoasts to markets in a
hurry. All over Spain you hear the sound of ha