Cooking for my Spanish host family

When I was told I was to be cooking for my Spanish host family, I did get a bit excited. Why? Because since I have been here, vegetables have been at a minimum. Aside from the standard fare of lettuce and tomato with every single meal, the vegetables are few and far between. Finally, I would get a chance to eat some delicious multicolored goodness. We were supposed to cook whatever we usually ate at home. For me, this is a stir-fry of chicken, a mix of green peppers, onions, carrots, celery or whatever other vegetables I happen to have in stock, and of course white rice. Unfortunately, I don't cook rice without my handy dandy rice cooker, which requires you to simply add water and rice, and to push one button. Instead, I went with the Spanish tradition of bread and papas fritas to fill the starch/calorie dense portion of the meal.

As for the rest of the items, I bought them at Carrefur, the Meijer/Wal-mart equivalent in Spain. I got two things: a prepackaged set of mixed vegetables and chicken breast. Hey, it is my daily meal! There really wasn't much to the preparation. Cooking the chicken, adding a variety of spices from red pepper, salt, white pepper, garlic and onion powder. The vegetables only needed to be heated. Throwing those in the same pan with the chicken did the trick. I had to ask my host mother to show me her tiger-style of making papas fritas. Now this was a surprise: You cut potatoes and heat them in olive oil and salt. Haha. I was a novice at this and almost completely ruined them. They were only extremely salty and a little burnt. Oh well.

Her reaction to my cooking was not surprising; she loved it. She told me i knew how to use a good blend of spices. She ate all of it and didn't puke once. Overall i would consider this a success.