12 grapes for the new year

Have you ever wondered how our Spanish friends have passed the last few days? Pablo shares his New Year's Eve with us:

On New Year's Eve, we usually have dinner with the whole family and wait for the countdown! We're not only watching it, we're part of it! 
Indeed it's tradition, to eat 12 grapes when the clock strikes midnight, one for each toll and second. Whilst the new year is entering, we think about a resolution and congratulate our family members and all people we meet and know. After the “family” celebration, most of the young people go partying until the day after. Of course, after all this eating, we cannot go to sleep without having a special breakfast, “churros con chocolate caliente” (some sort of hot chocolate with greasy pastry to dip in)!

 

In Madrid, the 31 of December in the afternoon there is a popular marathon, is not a regular race, is much more funny, thousands of people running through the town on a 10km course and all the streets are closed for this race. Most of the people are dressed up with original and funny costumes, and what could be better than saying goodbye to the year than running? In my family we're often participating in that run anfterwards, we're mostly following the “main tradition” and have dinner and all of the mentioned above and below.

 There is no proper typical food for a New Year's celebration. Our dinner is more or less like the Christmas dinner. But we certainly drink lots of wine, champagne and sparkling wine (in Spain also known as Cava). We start dining with an appatizer: pieces of lamb, spanish ham, olive oils, the famous tapas and so on, followed by a hot soup, to fight the cold of December! After that we start with the "real" food: meat (usually lamb), and many typical sweets called polvorones (a kind of heavy, soft and very crumbly spanish shortbread made of flour, sugar, milk, and nuts).



by Pablo