Five Secrets to Living Like a European in the US

What elements of la vida española do I apply to my daily life in the US?

1. Eat toast every morning. I remember in the pre-departure briefing for my study abroad program, there was this footnote about how many spaniards eat toast for breakfast. I remember being sort of surprised because toast just seemed like way too little food. Toast is something you eat with scrambled eggs.*

In reality Spanish toast for breakfast is more like a sandwich. Ham and cheese are involved. I resisted the Spanish toast breakfast for years and years, but now I have a slice of toast with avocado and cheese every morning.

In fact probably 60% of our meals are Spanish food, lentejas, patatas con carne, pescado con patatas, pisto, coliflor con huevos, huevos con papas, etc. (We also make chicken salad, barbecue pulled pork, spaghetti bolognese, nachos, and pizza from the American side of the menu.)

2. Live in an apartment. (I like having a a super who comes and fixes things, don’t have any interest in a yard or stairs inside the home, love the playroom and pool and gym, it is a good life. But it is a bit unusual to live in an apartment with a kid in US, and certainly during covid it might have been nice to have an outdoor space. But I like walkability, which leads me to:

3. Taking daily walks / living in a walkable place. When we go for a drive we joke we are taking an American walk. It really depends on the locality, some places in the US people think it is very strange if you take a walk just for fun. In one city we lived in, literally the only people who took walks were expats living in US temporarily.

4. Bakery bread. Kind of an obsession, I don't like pan de molde aka supermarket sliced bread, has to be bakery bread. Always a challenge to find good bread that doesn't have a lot of sugar in it. We also buy bread probably every other day, which leads to:

5. Shopping for food daily...well, this stopped with covid when we started doing grocery delivery. 

*I like eggs for breakfast, and love the pincho de tortilla y pan breakfast on the menu in Madrid, but I've not seen eggs on an andaluz breakfast menu (unless in a tourist zone, and then it's the full english breakfast which is just way too much food.)

Rolling shopping carts, a staple of life in cities in Spain and the US