PORTRAIT OF A SPANISH POODLE

\\Somnambulist// the breakfast issue

Breakfast oriented reflections on the things people said to me before I left…
Before moving to Spain three months ago, I was sent off with the kinds of aphoristic one-liners that are appropriate on such occasions. Having been in Spain almost three months, I now reflect…

“Nan, you’re going to fuck so many hot dudes.”
The only lover I’ve had has been food. And what a precocious nymphet she has been. Spanish food is flirtatious and bold, un-belting its trench coat with a wink and revealing its untamed world of culinary beauty to you with a grin—but, like many a sexy seductress, this hottie doesn’t roll out of bed before two in the afternoon… Meaning people here don’t eat breakfast.

This proves a problem for a girl from Portland. Breakfast, brunch, Portland. Maybe not synonymous, but pretty damn close. If each of these three words had a musical note, in succession they would have the catchy-ness of the NBC theme, or sung together, the three would build a chord most pleasing to the ear. PORTLAND LOVES BREAKFAST. For me, Portland neighborhoods are defined by their breakfast places and many of my great memories have a plate of home fries and a cup of diner coffee somewhere in the background. Nights of sex were punctuated with French toast in the morning. Girl talk took place over pancakes, throbbing hangovers nursed with hashbrowns and a Bloody Mary. None of this exists in my Iberian home.

A typical Spanish breakfast is a cup of “café con leche,” a two ounce shot of espresso with another two ounces of hot milk. That’s it. Okay, for some breakfast may also include a croissant, and if you’re a fatty, a 4 ounce goblet of orange juice. Being a seasoned 1000-calorie-breakfast eater, my first few “breakfast outings” seemed like unfunny episodes of PUNK’D. Viki, the waify, bleach-blonde mother of one of my students offered to “treat me to breakfast.” When I asked for a croissant to go with my coffee she scoffed, explaining that she “never, ever to eat food in the morning.” Pursing her lips around her third cigarette, she mumbled “All I having is… a coffee… and tobacco.”

“Dude, your life is going to change.”
I figured some things would change about me after moving to Spain, but the one I didn’t expect was my appetite. That’s not to say the size of it has changed, but rather, the shape. Breakfast is no longer the most important meal of my day, in fact, it doesn’t exist.

I wake up too late to have breakfast. This is my fault, I know. I wash my face, tame my hair enough so it looks more Bridget Bardot than homeless woman, put on a teacher outfit that makes me look “authoritative, yet approachable” (i.e. business casual with some cleavage), and run to school before class starts at 8:30. Some days I have a coffee between classes in Bar Ibiza next to the school, where you can always find a few of my fellow educators chain smoking and clandestinely ordering a float of whisky in their coffees.

Like everyone else, I get a break from 2-4 PM to go home and make lunch, the biggest meal of the day in Spain (in fact, they call it “la comida,” “the food”). Dinner is late, at 9 or 10 when you have something light like a piece of Spanish tortilla with a salad.

I no longer fuel up for the day ahead, instead I let the morning sputter on empty and recharge later (maybe this has some kind of commentary on the two countries’ use of fossil fuel too, but that’s another essay).

“You’re, like, going to come back a Spaniard.”
I will always love a full belly before noon, but for the time being, I don’t really miss it. My new eating schedule makes me feel a bit lighter and more… Mediterranean. But that’s not to say I will forsake breakfast when I return to the States… Fuck that- I’m going to eat the shit out of some Country Fried Steak, biscuits, bacon, with two eggs over medium slathered in country gravy.

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