The Tapa Mystery Explained (no it doesn't mean "lid")

So, for all of you Texicans who don’t know what a Spanish tapa is you don’t understand you are missing experiencing one of the greatest things about being Spanish/of Spanish decent.

Tapas are small but flavor-packed Spanish mini-meals usually eaten between main meals to power the Spaniard through the day and nocturnal lifestyle. Even just three of them can be enough to constitute a fourth meal. This is acceptable, since the Spanish are known for their mini-meal mania. Breakfast is a mini-meal, followed by fruit mini-meals and tapa sittings until lunch around 2 p.m. or dinner at 10 p.m.

Tapas come in as many shapes and sizes as their literal meaning – lids. All come with a tiny slice of baguette-style bread at the bottom of a tiny tower of food kept together by a tiny wooden stake. Included you’ll find anything from freshly-sliced tomatoes, chunks of swiss cheese, bacon, shrimp or even pineapple served cold and always fresh.

While they might be very nice to behold atop a counter or behind a display glass, on your plate the pretty little thing can very quickly become a mess. Without the wooden pick to hold it in place the food heap slips or squishes off the bread and waits for you to retrieve it with a finger or bread crust. But Tapas are much like Reeses, there’s no wrong way to eat them.