Food and Drink
While Asturias is especially known for its seafood, the most famous regional dish is fabada asturiana, a rich stew typically made with large white beans (fabes), shoulder of pork (lacón), black sausage (morcilla), and spicy sausage (chorizo).
Apple groves foster the production of the traditional alcoholic drink, a natural cider (sidra). When Asturian cider is served, it is poured in a particular way, El Escanciado: since it is natural and bottled without gas, the bottle must be held above the head allowing for a long vertical pour (requiring considerable skill and accuracy), which causes the cider to be aerated when it splashes into the glass below. This gives it a pleasant "zingy" taste. The glass is passed around and everyone drinks from the same glass. After drinking most of the glass, it is customary to splash a little out onto the ground, as a way to clean the glass of any lees for the next pouring.
Asturian cheeses, especially Cabrales, are also famous throughout Spain and beyond; Asturias is often called "the land of cheeses" (el país de los quesos) due to the product's diversity and quality in this region.
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“There is no instant of time when one creature is not being devoured by another. Over all these numerous races of animals man is placed, and his destructive hand spares nothing that lives. He kills to obtain food and he kills to clothe himself; he kills to adorn himself; he kills in order to attack and he kills to defend himself; he kills to instruct himself and he kills to amuse himself; he kills to kill. Proud and terrible king, he wants everything and nothing resists him.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)
“Men should not labor foolishly like brutes, but the brain and the body should always, or as much as possible, work and rest together, and then the work will be of such a kind that when the body is hungry the brain will be hungry also, and the same food will suffice for both; otherwise the food which repairs the waste energy of the overwrought body will oppress the sedentary brain, and the degenerate scholar will come to esteem all food vulgar, and all getting a living drudgery.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They who drink beer will think beer.”
—Washington Irving (1783–1859)