My First Argentinian Asado

I have been in Argentina two weeks and already I want to start writing my blogs in Spanish, but I will hold off in fear of possibly alienating everyone who doesn´t read Spanish.  However, stay tuned for my poetry to now be written in both Spanish and English.  That will happen on my poetry blog which I will let you know about in another couple of posts or so.

The Argentinians are beautiful people and I am also starting to meet people from the neighboring countries of Paraguay and Bolivia.  The warm heartedness of the people are expressed in many different ways including men greeting men with a hello kiss, including the police officers on the street.  Imagine in Estados Unidos seeing a policeman in New York, Chicago, or LA kissing another man on the street to greet him hello.  Its just one of many parts of the culture here that is unfamiliar to myself. But I am starting to understand how it all works, and becoming more familiar with the customs in my new life.

Tonight was a very special experience.   I was invited into the home of some friends who had made a barbecue on their terrace and when I arrived they had meat all over the grill, including chorizo, blood sausage, and several different cuts of beef.  Clearly, I was not familiar with what I saw, but I knew that coming hungry tonight was a good idea.   In fact my eating habits have changed and are now more in line with the way people eat down here, especially the times that they eat.  So, I have been eating breakfast at a regular hour, and then a very tiny lunch, and then a dinner later than I would normally have eaten back home.

The traditional asado has very healthy meat.  In fact, I know the beef and the meat I ate was very good because after eating a lot of meat, I didn´t feel full, and I didn´t have that strange feeling after having eaten meat back home.  It must be the way the cows are fed here, grass fed, and it must be just the over all quality of the meat.  I felt really good after eating and did not have a meat hang over.  The past couple of years back home I have dramatically reduced my meat intake and was mostly a vegetarian except for a very rare occurence when I would have meat.

The way it works here in Argentina is that the meat courses role out in an specified order.  Basically, it goes from the lower grades of meat to the higher grades of meat as the evening progresses and the wine continues to be poured and the plates are made of wood.  The plates are these flat round pieces of wood, with a groove and the edge where the juice from the meat goes, and the plates are wood which allows for easy cutting.  So, everyone pretty much has their own cutting board with their own deal in which to savor your meal and use your utensils accordingly.

At this particular barbecue or asado in español, we started out with an appetizer of chorizo and empanadas.  Empanadas are served everywhere in Buenos Aires.  You find every Tom, Dick, and Sally sell empanadas.  Literally every single block in Buenos Aires you can find a restaurant and also a place to buy empanadas.  They come in all flavors and sizes, including carne, vegetables, queso, y papas with spinach.  I love the empanadas.  In the states you can think of them as kind of mini calzones, but the empanadas don´t really have cheese in them, unless you ask for the cheese, and the dough is much cakier than the pizza type dough of calzones at home.

So the empanadas and the chorizo was the first course.  This was the part to whet your appetite and get you ready for the meal.  The main meal included a nice cabbage salad with tomatoes.  The cabbage is a nice way to have a salad, but the cabbage wasn´t as heavy as a normal cabbage, and I almost thought it was lettuce until the host told me it was col, or cabbage in ingles.  There was a nice vinaigrette with a bit of oil as well mixed into the salad.  So here you have this rather small round wooden place with your meat and your salad and your meat sauce which was kind of hot sauce with some other cilantro mixed into the home made sauce for the meat.  As the cuts of beef rolled off the asado, each one a bit finer than the next, and the typical Argentinian rolls which are long round rolls, that I have actually never seen before.  In Argentina, they do not sell loaves of bread anywhere in the panaderias, but rather rolls of different sizes and shapes and pretty much the same consistency.

It was a lovely meal, and it lasted for many hours.  The course of the dinner went from about 7pm till midnight.  The conversation was mainly in Spanish the whole night with some English mixed in to appease the English speakers in the room which included myself and another woman also from Estados Unidos.  I was able to catch bits and pieces of the conversation as the evening wore on, and it will be nice in the future when I can actually understand what people were saying, but I am able to get by and get general glimpses of what is being said, and I enjoy the challenge and appreciate the light.

The final course of the meal was the dessert.  It was a traditional pastry that you find here in Buenos Aires, along with strawberries, and a new dish that I haven´t seen before.  You find it in many of the stores here, but I don´t even know the name of it yet, but will update you in a future post on the exact name of this delicious desert, its kind of like a pudding or jello all combined into a new consistency of something else served with a nice soft cheese that I have already bought once at the market that I am pretty much addicted too.  Its kind of like a cheese with more of a cream cheese texture but heavier than that.  So it is very tasty.

The evening included someone from Montevideo, Uruguay.  Montevideo is about three hours by boat from here, but if you try and drive its a long way because of the Rio Plata which goes many miles up into Argentina.  So, you have to cross the river by boat, and then get in a bus to keep moving along.  One of these days I will visit Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, and Bolivia, all neighboring countries of Argentina.

A nice night was had by all, and I was extremely happy to have the opportunity to participate in this new experience of the asado.  If you ever get a chance to come to Argentina, I know you will experience the beautiful Argentinian people and their way of entertaining with a beautiful creation of epicurean delight.  Stay tuned for more food adventures along with other experiences I continue to have in my new place of life and living.  I am very fortunate to continue to have these opportunities in my life and I am happy to share these experiences with you.

Food and Grocery Shopping in Buenos Aires

As mentioned in earlier posts this is a HUGE city. Its like living in New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, and other big cities on planet Earth. There are 12 million people in greater Buenos Aires. The place I just moved from, southern California has 20 million people, but its spread out and lots of people live in houses with yards etc. In the Capital Federal section of Buenos Aires its mainly high rises and densely packed humans.

One of the big advantages to this is you DEFINITELY do not need a car. In fact, you don´t want to have a car. I am assuming, that the people that own cars in BA are people clearly with means, but there are a lot of cars here, actually there are cars every where unfortunately. Imagine a world with no cars. There were no cars in Isinlivi, see my earlier post from Ecuador. That was way out in the rural Andes of Ecuador and if you saw a car once a day it was a big deal. But any way, back here to Argentina.

The food is really nice. I am enjoying picking up a bit of fresh produce each day after work on my walk home. And not just fresh produce, but also fresh meat and chicken, fresh bread, fresh chocolates, fresh cheese, etc... This is a cooker´s paradise, and I have been cooking up a storm, no pun intended for those who know me as Storm.

One of the main items I have been cooking is the produce stores actually cut up the vegetables for you and put them in a package. So, they all sort of cut up vegetables in all sorts of different varieties so by the time I get home I just throw it into a stir fry and I am up and running. No need to cut all of the vegetables when I get home and put the waste in the compost. Yeh right, no compost in the big city, but out in Placitas we have a nice compost pile and we also have a nice compost pile in Silver City. In Silver City I throw out the compost every day and then at night the deer come and eat up all of the compost. I know that because in the morning there is usually fresh deer droppings. Enough about the droppings and on to what is hard to find here in BA.

First of all there is certain stuff I have just not seen. In fact the guide books mention this as well, and it appears to be true. This was not the case in Ecuador, I am obviously talking about peanut butter. I have not seen it any where, if someone reads my blog and knows about a place in Buenos Aires to buy peanut butter please let me know by posting a comment.

Also, mayonnaise is really expensive and probably not that good. It comes in a teeny weeny plastic bottle, probably enough for a couple of sandwiches and it costs, get this, about FOUR dollars. Also, it appears that potato chips are very pricey as well. A huge bag of chips at Trader Joe´s is like three bucks, here a tiny bag of chips is over four dollars. So those are just some of the items I have noticed so far in my short almost two week stay in Argentina.

Today, after a two week search I found a really good source for hot cereal, especially instant oat meal. You know in the states you can find Quaker Oats in both the traditional and instant variety, well here I found a small shop at 1928 Vidal in Belgrano that sells a nice mix of hot cereals for a very reasonable price. So, I plunked down 10 pesos and got me a really big bag of instant oat meal, and I will be all smiles for many, many mornings just before spring hits here south of the equator.

On a side note, since I am in the big city, I haven´t seen the southern cross yet, one of these days or nights I will emerge from the big buildings and head out into the country and hopefully see the southern cross. More later on food stuff, but for now that was a good start about food.

Exactly one week in Buenos Aires to the hour

I arrived here exactly one week ago at about this time, around 9:40PM. Here we are one week later and I am still in a complete dream. I am still not sure I am here, in fact my dreams at night have been so vivid and bizarre that I wonder if it is a function of the fact that I am dreaming twenty four by seven. I discussed this with someone down here and they said enjoy it because soon you will be back to your own life. A friend of mine is now in Death Valley and it seems she is experiencing the same thing, only her world is at one hundred and thirty degrees each day.

The people here have been very friendly and my Spanish has gone up one notch out of probably at least one thousand notches. I am now able to write a bit easier, and not so scared to do it. Luckily, during the day I interact with people who are all speaking Spanish to one another and although for the most part I have no idea what they are saying, at least I catch a word or two in each sentence and if I am real lucky can have a sense of the conversation. In the stores, people blab away at me on various and sundry topics and I really have no idea what they are saying but I nod politely like I do. Every once in a while I get up the nerve to say,

Estoy lento, por favor hablas muy despacio.

They look at me like I am loco, and continue on speaking really fast. Welcome to the Spanish world. Later on in another post I will start to discuss in depth the similarities and differences between Ecuador and Argentina but suffice it to say there are some very big differences.

For me, one of the gigantic differences is that you can drink the tap water in BA, and possibly in other parts of Argentina as well. Although I haven´t been to other parts of Argentina so I don´t know that for sure. I have been drinking the water now for five days and I feel pretty good. In fact, the water may even be better here than at home because they may put less stuff in the water, who knows. A friend of mine back home in New Mexico would pull out her pH paper and let me know where it falls on the scale. She has the ability to make acidic or basic water now by way of a cool new ionizing water machine.

Any way, because the water is potable out of the tap, it makes for a lot safer eating conditions as you cruise around and eat at the local restaurants. When we were in Ecuador it was always a big gamble every time you went out to eat because you never knew whether or not you were going to make it an hour or two after leaving the restaurant. But here, because water is so mission critical to all cooking, you are in much better luck eating out.

In fact, I have been buying a really nice package of shredded vegetables each day and bringing them home and having them for dinner. There is at least one fresh vegetable stand or kiosk on almost every corner in Buenos Aires. And they all pretty much sell the same thing, and for me this is truly fantastic. Also, on almost every block is a store that sells bread and good cookies. Compared to Ecuador the cookies here are AMAZING, and I know good cookies. In Ecuador the cookies were EXACTLY the same in every Panderia, where as here, the variety of cookies and cakes is beautiful. Its more like Paris then Cuenca.

The people all have a look that I can appreciate, and basically I have been here one week and I have not seen one FAT person, seriously no one. Its amazing how healthy looking the people are here at least from a weight perspective. Its refreshing to see that people care about their health and how they move around on the planet. Without getting into political or social commentary, the obesity is not healthy, and its very expensive as well. So, this is a very positive aspect of Argentina and more specifically Buenos Aires.

This is a very big city, and when I say big I mean very dense, dense, dense. Its like New York City, in fact its like Manhatten. People every where, cars every where, not a place you can turn with some peace and quiet. Big buildings every where, there isn´t a spot in this town where you can go and not see a big building.

Perspective is so interesting in life, and Al Einstein got the relativity theory really correct. When I moved to Pasadena from Placitas, New Mexico I was in shock. After living at the end of a dirt road off the grid with our own well, when I arrived in southern California I couldn´t believe the density, and for almost two years I was usually just shaking my head. Well Buenos Aires makes Pasadena look like Placitas. So there you have it, its all relative.

Not real sure what winter weather is like here, but I hope the past couple of days are more of a sign of what its like than the first couple of days I was here. I am now walking around in a short sleeve shirt during the day, and a light jacket at night. No more hat, gloves, and neck warmer like last week. But I assume it will get cold again and I will be back into that routine at least for about another month or so.

Again, this is a big city, and the density is really thick with cars and people. Surprisingly it doesn´t bother me too much in the short term, but for the longer term I am not a Manhatten type of a person. Also, in South America a friend of mine said they don´t really have heat, and he is correct. They have these small space heaters in a big room that sort of heat up a space kind of sort of, but not really. When we were up in the mountains in Ecuador at eleven thousand feet in the Andes, they actually had wood heat in a small fire place that did work, but that was a rare case of heat, and clearly that heat took a lot of work.

There are many signs that you are in the Latin world down here, but I won´t go into all of them right now. But my eye is better tuned having lived three months in Ecuador. I think the transition from Ecuador to Argentina is a good one, as you are less surprised by what you find and you aren´t surprised by what you do find.

Happy Sunny Day in Buenos Aires

So, its still not been a week since I have been here, its only been about four days and already I am starting to get into the groove a bit. Today was the first full sunny day since I arrived. After all its been a cold winter here, and to have a day like today in BA was really good news for me.

Unfortunately, I arrived here with ZERO warm clothes, not too sharp on my part, I think I already mentioned arriving into Santa Fe in early November back in 1985 with only shorts cause I thought I was going to the desert and it snowed on us. Well I feel the same way now, even though some of my friends told me to take warm clothes, sweating back in NM in 90 degree weather didn´t put me in the right frame of mind to pack my winter clothes for South America, and so I didn´t and I have been cold for the past four days.

I was not sure where to find warm clothes, I clearly wasn´t going to buy them in a store, that would be too much. So I flailed around a bit for the past couple of days walking the streets thinking about what to do. Today was the day where it all came into place. Early in the morning for the first time I found a bank that would accept my ATM card so I was able to get some cash and then I went on a big shopping spree for some warm clothes.

I walked the town of BA in search of the stuff I needed. Besides picking up two really nice Spanish novels at a used book store, I also figured out the key as to where to buy stuff. As I walked the city of BA I started to discover that the big parks, and there are lots of parks in BA have some really cool flea markets and vendors selling all sorts of stuff from clothes, to shoes, to food etc. This was my big bonanza. I had found my warm clothes and now I was happy.

Another interesting note about Buenos Aires, is I thought there were parts of the city where there might not be BIG buildings. But I walked for many hours today and every where I went there were big buildings, EVERY WHERE. Not sure when this city was built up, but I assume it was prior to 2001. So, just like New York City, there are big buildings everywhere I went. But it was a sunny day and I was happy.

Chapter Two Has Begun in Buenos Aires

So, here we are part two. I decided to take a detour and spend time living in Pasadena, California. I was in Pasadena from October 28, 2008 until June 30, 2010. It was exactly 20 months, and I had a great time living in southern California. The highlight of my time in Pasadena were all of my friends that I made via poetry and haiku. It was a wonderful experience.

After six glorious weeks back home in New Mexico, I am now living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I have just arrived and I will be chronicalling my first days and impressions here.

After having been away from Latin America for over two years, getting back here is incredibly exciting and incredibly scary as well. Its a lot of emotions all mixed in one. The major difference is on this journey I am by myself and on my last journey I was with my best friend who decided to stay home this time and follow my adventure remotely. I don´t blame her, living in Latin America is not for the faint of heart, and you have to really WANT to live here to be here.

So, here I am back in a place where I don´t speak the language, and struggling to understand the basic things that people are saying to me as I buy a bottle of water at the grocery store, or I try to exchange money at the bank.

The first day has been a whirl wind of emotions, all of the old stuff comes back and all of the new stuff awaits me with open arms. Nothing like diving in head first.

Its cold here, not real cold, but way colder than Pasadena, and I have not been in any type of winter for years, as I even skipped my winter before Pasadena living in Ecuador. Luckily, I am half way through winter, and this is NOT a real winter, but cold enough to say wow, it is cold out and the heat is on in my place of residence.

In November 1985 I arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico with short and T shirts, thinking I was going to New Mexico where its always warm. I arrived in Buenos Aires with no hat or gloves or long underwear, not even a sweater. It was so hot in New Mexico and I was in the mind set of shorts and maybe a T shirt, maybe not, that the concept of packing a hat and gloves never crossed my mind, well maybe it did, but I didn´t put two and two together.

I walked all over Ecuador with a hat and gloves and never used them because we were on the Equator, and so here I thought I didn´t need it either. But as we flew over Bolivia and I looked down at the gorgeous Andes and the towns of Sucre and Cochabamba I realized we are way south and not in North America, but in South America the further south you fly the colder it gets.

Buenos Aires is nine hours south of Miami. Its about 4500 miles or 7000 kilometers south of Miami. The first island you fly over is Cuba and then Kingston, Jamaica, and then on into the western part of Venezuela and then over Colombia, the Amazon basin in Brazil, and then the Andes of Bolivia and on in to Argentina. The most amazing part of the flight is seeing Bolivia and the Andes. Simply breath taking and gorgeous. Especially the huge river valleys that flow out of the mountains and down into the valley of Bolivia.

Aerolineas Argentinas is an excellent airline, my flight was not very full and I got to have an extra seat to myself. I believe it was close to the longest flight I have ever taken in my life. Its about 12 hours from Buenos Aires to Sydney Austrailia and about the same distance to Madrid, Spain. So, it was fun flying the whole time south, south, south. We only flew one time zone east, so all most all of the flying is south. Its another three hours to the the southern tip of South America approximately. So, basically, Antarctica is probably a few more hours from there, but some one can correct me if I am wrong. Its cool to basically just fly south, with no east west component to speak of. Its the first time I had ever flown that far in a north south direction and only moved one time zone.

The planet is a fascinating place, and flying around is a luxury, I appreciate this trip very much, and will continue to remember how lucky we are to have the things we do.

More about Buenos Aires as I learn my way around the city.

Stay tuned for the next adventure.