We traveled about 90 minutes to Lugo, Spain, where they were holding a festival of sorts. There were amazing rides keeping all of the children happy. This one was my favorite. The kids were having SO much fun!
They had the usual festival foods like popcorn and cotton candy, but the cotton candy had different flavors like orange and mint... we chose strawberry. Yum!
They also had lots of pastry, in true Iberian form! Look at this stand! It is choc-a-block full of different baked goods!
They also had your standard prize games. You know, the.. knock 'em down, hit the target, throw the dart sort of challenges. My companions decided to try their hand at racing camels. Alas, it was someone else that took home a gigantic pink dog.
All of this was pretty standard. No real surprises here, right? Well, that´s just the start. Mixed in among these ordinary stands were ones I had never seen before. One type of stand was really popular. It was a form of bingo, whose rules none of us could figure out. It was a HUGE stand filled with different prizes, but they were things like kitchen appliances, mops, and household items! It was such an unlikely collection of things to find at a fair, but like I said, it was very popular. The bingo cards were everywhere!
Even better was the ham stand. Although I could not tell what you needed to do to win, this HUGE stand was filled with chunks of proscuito as prizes, and the man was singing some chant about jamon (ham) that none of us could understand. Unbelievable! I couldn´t imagine walking around all night carrying a cow thigh!
Ok, of all of this still pales in comparison with the last detail.
As we walked around the fair we all started getting hungry. As we walked, the most delicious smell wafted through the air. We followed our noses, and this is what we saw.
There was stand upon stand, one after the other selling exactly this... nothing else! They had enormous barrels full of steaming, delicious broth, full of these guys. They reach into the barrel with a long hook and lift one of them out of the brew, slopping it onto the cutting board. Then they actually use sheers to snip each tentacle into little discs, throwing the head (and other extraneous parts) back into the water. The finishing touch is to season with salt and pepper and a spiced olive oil. Stick some toothpicks in it andit is ready to eat!
I couldn´t believe it. But you know what, Pete?
It was delicious (it rather tasted like chicken!).
