We had a great time ringing in the New Year in Spain! Not only did we have family visit us all the way from Minnesota but we also participated in a unique Spanish New Years Eve tradition. For those of you that are Modern Family fans (we are total suckers for the show!), you will be able to recollect the episode when Gloria eats grapes on New Years Eve. When I first saw that episode I thought it was totally scripted or an odd Columbian tradition. Well little did I know that the tradition actually started in Spain in 1905! When grape growers in Alicante, city in Southern Spain, thought they could cut down on their large grape surplus by selling grapes on New Years Eve. So with one grape surplus a Spanish tradition began and now every Spaniard spends the first 12 seconds of the new year stuffing their face with grapes. Awesome! We were in! Our friends and their families invited us over for dinner to try some traditional Spanish cuisine. We had a great time enjoying delicious Spanish ham, cheese, white asparagus, pork tenderloin, soup and the best of all prawns from Huelva! Cris' dad gave us a demonstration on how to eat the little creatures. First you take the head off, suck out the "head juice" (ha! not sure what other term to use here!), then take the legs and shell off, and enjoy. They were seriously delicious!!! A sweet prawn and the "head juice" was awesome! Never in my life did I think I was going to be sucking prawn brains out but it was totally worth it. Delicioso! Our tiny grapes! Ha! Our hosts clearly didn't want us to fail our first time eating grapes on New Years! A couple of minutes before midnight we turned on the TV and watched the clock on the Casa de Correos building in Madrid strike midnight. Then on each chime of the clock we all ate grapes, one by one, until all 12 of them disappeared! Yay to good luck in 2014 for all of us! Traditional Spanish turrón for desert! Thank you so much for a wonderful evening and making us feel right at home! Muchas Gracias!!!!
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