The food. THE FOOD. Spain is known for its production of different pork products. It’s not just a staple in their diet, it’s THE staple. Some that people will pay an arm and a leg for the different cuts and the varieties are endless. You could easily walk into a store and buy an entire leg quarter. That is just not something that we see every day in America. Everywhere you went you passed stores and restaurants that were filled with pork products. So many choices, so many varieties, so many tastes. Even more, the tastes and varieties varied from city to city. It was one of my favorite things to try as much of the pork plates as I could possibly fit in my stomach. One of the more interesting things that we did on this trip was going to a pork processing plant. With the help of our teachers, who specialize in food production, we were able to see the Spanish way of processing, curing, and cutting different pork products. It was truly incredible to go into the curing rooms and see how they were curing twenty-five thousand leg quarters in just one facility. It was an amazing educational experience just to be able to have the professors, who specialize in pork production in America, there to help us distinguish the difference between production there and here. It was truly unique to see all of the different breeds and the methods of feeding and production. It’s very different from what we see in standard practice here and most would even go as far as calling it very untraditional. Having the veteran staff that was able to give us information before and after the trip so that we had a full understanding of the industry itself.
