Wednesday, April 9, 2008

El Feria de vinos, cavas, licores y alimentos tradicionales de Valencia

Last week there was a week long celebration of Valencian alcohol and food. Needless to say I was drooling. This food festival was similar to the one I went to in Requena, but a lot bigger. There were over 100 stands with much more selection and only the whole shin-dig was only1 0 minutes from my house. ¡Vale!

First off, I want to put an end to the notion that Europeans—not in the U.K., I’m talking the Spaniards, Italians, French—don’t get as drunk as stupid Americans. I saw some sloppy, sloppy Spaniards. There were broken glasses, songs and even a few seagull sightings!

(To clarify: Seagulling is the action of feeding your family, friends or enemies by hand. It usually involves food but can be applied to beverages as well. A full seagull involves noises—a la the animal—but a seagull is a seagull even without the CAW!)

Anyways, people were getting wasted. Not only tipsy, but absolutely wasted. There was a group next to us of 7 or 8 thirty-somethings seagulling bottles of Moscatel--a sweet Valencian after dinner wine. I don’t blame them; the stands were dolling out samples of delicious wines and liquor like water and once you got hungry, there were more stands with cheese, meats and sweets. By the end of the night all of my friends had sufficiently sampled as much as possible and ending up singing old American pop songs, having drinking contests with the locals and getting free bottles from the closing stands. Absolutely delicious.

I should have some more photos of the event but after a while I was more interested in sampling as much as possible than taking pictures. Also, the free bottles didn’t help.

Some Fotos:

The drunken masses.



The cheeses



The meats



The Arrop I Talladetes. A traditional Valencian dessert made by submerging cooked strips of pumpkin in a boiled, syrupy goo. It tastes as weird as it looks, and it looks pretty gross.


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