La mona albaceteña: Horrors brought to you by Fat Thursday!
Hello! It's Fat Thursday here in Spain, locally known as Jueves Lardero! The sort of equivalent to Mardi Gras in France, for example. This is a festivity that usually overlaps with Carnival, and precedes Lent. The general gist of it is that it's a time of debauchery and eating a lot, in preparation for Lent's much more strict eating.
Of course, Lent itself is not really much of a thing anymore, but it doesn't mean people will pass on an opportunity to eat some very self indulgent foodstuffs.
In Spanish, the "Lardero" of "Jueves Lardero" means, uh, lard-adjacent, to put it in a way. Pork. It's a time to eat greasy pork food, specifically. This is normally also joined by egg, with some places (like Catalonia) having things like egg sausage omelette. I'm actually from there, and while my family didn't partake in the salty food side of things, I do remember eating things like this "coca de llardons", which is actually a sweet with things like pine nuts.
Most of the country has just a variety of sausages and bread instead, just... Well, not too different from just eating a hotdog. You could find some fun (and just very filling) foods across the country that would make for a fun meal to celebrate with other people.
But Albacete (and Castilla-la-Mancha) takes it a step further. I am going to let the horrors marinate with this image, first:
Now. That's... bread. Bread with sprinkles and a boiled egg in the middle, eggshell and all. This is one of the staples of Fat Thursday here, and no, people aren't exactly worried about how strange this mix is or the fact that maybe having your food in contact with eggshells seems a bit unhygienic but maybe that's the Catalan in me complaining
But worry not! This is tame compared to the hornazo. For, you see, the manchegos have materialized a 5am craving into a meal. Presenting:
This is pretty specific to Castilla-la-Mancha, and if you ask me, it may have been the reason for Don Quijote to go mad. Because. What the fuck. Basically, folk from Albacete decided that if the point of Fat Thursday was to prepare for Lent, well. You could just optimize. Go make a bread and stick essentially anything in it. Chorizo, sausage, peppers, eggs (eggshell included), and... Fish. Just whole fishes. Head and all. Let everything be consumed by the mass of bread as you shove that in the oven and get yourself nightmare fuel in a meal.
This is the point of the post where I would try to make a funny little conclusion or just like state a fact that somehow reduces the horrors of this meal, but... No, I literally have nothing for you. Best I can do is just further the horrors with this uncooked hornazo. Enjoy!
