Oh, the things we did eat!

So I'm realizing that this blog is becoming a nice little procrastination tool for me...at least it's a bit more productive than picking my split ends or pulling out all of the grey hairs I recently found flourishing on my head...TMI, I know.

Anyways, I left off the last post as I was in the middle of writing about our wonderful weeks with Carolina and Jackie...SO before Jackie got in, I had taken Carolyn to see the Alvear Palace Hotel , yes Palace is included in the name of the hotel. We like taking guests here because it is number 8 on the leading hotels in the world list, it's fancy and elegant and lets us pretend that we are rich important tourists traveling through on holiday instead of the peso making ripped clothed wearing girls that we are who share a bathroom with 5 Colombianos.

The day we went there happened to be a bat mitzvah going on in the party room ( bat mitzvah crashing came to mind) so we weren't allowed to go and play in the bathroom like we had done before, BUT we got the brilliant idea to make reservations for a ritzy afternoon tea affair. Although it is a bit too pricey for Jill and I to ever do on our own, we were thrilled to have a good excuse to go. So,the day after Jackie got in, we put on our best fancy lady clothing ( which for me included both ripped stockings and boots with holes:), we put on our hotel faces (upturned noses) and went to tea.

Because we made reservations, we were escorted into a fancy room that resembled a green house with great big high ceilings, lots of mirrors and vases of flowers. We were sat at a big round table directly across from 4 Golden Girls who we fantasized about being in 50 plus years. Some girls play the who would we be out of the "Sex and the City" gals, but we choose who we would be from this table of white haired beauties. And then, we did the Sex and the City one.... We split 2 afternoon teas between the 4 of us and while we first thought that we would still be hungry when we saw the cute little platters with bite sized delicacies, we realized that this was NOT the case.

We were treated like princesses and were served platters of veggie filled finger sandwiches, little sweet crumpets with the most amazingly deliciously tart and sweet lemon curd,orange marmalade, raspberry jam with bits of raspberry, tiny delectable pieces of almond bread, cheesey bite sized tarts with tomato, beautiful desserts of mango creamy custard on a graham crackery base sprinkled with flecks of gold, a puff pastry filled with sweetened cream, a little sugar glazed fruit filled tart, a tiny moist bite of chocolate with a purple flower and of course the tea. You must look at pictures to do this spread of exquisitely delicious food justice. Here are a few of the hundreds Jill took.









Oh, and after we had stuffed our bellies with every single last bite of food, the waitress rolled out a "carton of sin" ( as Jill referred to it) piled with cakes and pies and sugar galore. It was torture and we were told to select two.

AND THEN we got little moist chocolate truffles filled with Baileys or Amaretto.

We looked around as we reclined back, hands on our bellies, on the verge of passing out from so much sugar and unimaginable yummminess and noticed that not everyone else had licked their plates clean quite like we had. And as piggish and stereotypically American as that may have been, we did not care in the slightest.

It was amazing, to say the least. look here.
http://www.alvearpalace.com/v3/index.php?secc=restaurantes&resto=tea
*anyone who now comes to visit will get to experience this heavenly adventure with us**wink wink

I don't even know how to continue on after that..

So, after Carolyn left :( with her belly full of tea, kosher McDonalds, steak and a bag full of Argentine leather purses, I took Jackie to all of the places that I had taken Carolyn to the week before AND a lot of delicious restaurants. Jackie, little Ms.Foodie, came with a list of restaurant recommendations from both friends and the New York Times and since Jill and I had cleverly stayed in for the past month in anticipation of the money we would be spending with guests, we were VERY excited to get out.

First, we went to a middle eastern, Greekish restaurant called Sarkis. It was a random night of the week and we still had to wait for 30 minutes to be seated, a good sign. But it was worth it, if for not anything else but the dessert- little honey sweetened baklavahish fingers with vanilla ice cream. Jackie got some meat covered with a white sauce that she drooled over and Jill and I got the only veggie things on the menu-veggie moosakah or however you spell that. The waiter was funny and flamboyant, asked for my number about "English classes" and it was a yummy night.

A few nights later, we went to a restaurant that was reviewed in the New York Times called "Miranda," which is a steaky parilla, but the pictures of their huge colorful salads were featured in the article. And big, colorful, flavorful salads are neither done well, nor are they really all that popular here. If you go to any other restaurante, you have the option to order a salad which is typically comprised of just lettuce, onion and tomato thrown on a plate- boring. And the one time we tried a salad where you can choose you own ingredients we thought, oh yay, make your own salad! But the ingredients you choose come by themselves, without lettuce beneath them, unless you specify that you want lettuce as well. And this then takes away from another veggie option to put on top. And then it gets too expensive and is still unsatisfying.

BUT the point of that little rant was to say that the salads at Miranda were especially AMAZING. They had thick, juicy, steamy pieces of grilled pumpkin, squash, zucchini, tomato and onion spread over multicolored pieces of lettuce, instead of wilty greenish brown. We were sitting right next to the steaming parilla (the grill) where the men were throwing giant slabs of red meat on the grill and as Jackie stopped to take a picture before we left, the cooks called us all back with them to get in a picture, right next to the meat...mmm.not.

AND on the night before Jackie left we went to La Cabrera-- a touristy , in the guide book parilla that also had a 45 minute wait on a Tuesday night. BUT this place is known for handing out champagne while you wait, but for whatever reason, we missed out on this little treat. We didn't sit down and start eating until 12ish BUT Jackie finally got some Argentine meat AND they surprisingly had the option of grilled vegetables without ANY meat, not even jamon (as many people think you eat jamon if say you are a vegetarian...?) for the silly vegetarians who live in Buenos Aires. The dishes came with a platter of a dozen or so random dipping sauces, garnishes and yummy deliciously spiced veggies. They brought out a piece of cake with a sparkler on top for my birthday and gave out lollypops at the end of the meal instead of mints. Twas a tab bit pricey, but very tasty and with a good onda. -- **Argentines describe the mood, vibe, the essence, atmosphere and the feel of a place or a person with the single powerful one worded, ONDA.


Oh, I would also like to note that even though the prices have been rising and that working for pesos is no picnic, I did buy 3 huge bunches of kale, 2 bunches of spinach, 1 red pepper, 2 tomatoes, 1 onion, 2 carrots, 1 squash and 2 bananas the other day for 20 pesos. And with the exchange rate at 3.9ish to the dollar, that is roughly $5.12. Right?

This is getting to be very long and I have yet to talk about our fabulous, beautiful mountainy trip to Mendoza aaaand my cumpleanos! That will come soon. But I have been in a cafe for 5 hours , my bottom half is falling asleep and I don't have any more money to order anything else and so I must leave.

BESOS

On a roll!

Well, looky here!

It's the very same day and I'm on to another entry! I am taking advantage of my momentum while it lasts because I can't predict when it will come again... and I don't feel like starting my articles about satellite internet just yet. I have about an hour till I'm going to power fit step aerobics dance class and I am going to try and recall all of the wonderful things that happened when Carolyn and Jackie were here...

WELL. Carolyn came first. We pulled out out the little sofa bed thing for her, moved around some furniture and threw some things under the bed to make room for her and her big bag... and I do believe she brought more clothes than I brought for an indefinite amount of time...and this is a jab at myself for packing too little, not at Carolyn. Honest.

Anyways, Carolyn got here on the last day of festivities of Argentina's grand celebration of their Bicentenario which means that no one was working and everyone in the entire city was downtown. There were special events, performances, parades, ferias, stands from every one of the 23 provincias in Argentina, special foods from around the country, talks, shows and craziness happening all leading up to Argentina's 200th birthday on March 25th. We went downtown to try and see some of the events going on, but literally, there was no room to move. The main street downtown where el Obelisco(huge tall white monument in the middle of the street) is located is called 9 de Julio and it is the widest street in the world.
BUT let me tell you, this widest street in the world was packed person to person horizontally, vertically, diagonally, upways and down and every single way you turned. I believe that the entire population of the country was on this street taking part in the festivities, as much as they could. We tried to see the light show that was happening on the famous Teatro Colon but couldn't get closer than 3 blocks away from it, blocked by trees and pushy, sweaty people. It was like being on the subte at rush hour multiplied by a million.

We learned from this experience and decided to watch the rest of the parades and shows on television from the comfort of our house, a much better decision. You can see some of the light shows, which were actually very impressive that happened on El cabilido, some government building here :http://www.bicentenario.argentina.ar/ .

Later that night, we went to our amigas, Jill and Sara's apartment with Carolyn and their friend Jess for a typical Argentine dinner. The girls made locro, a stew (traditionally eaten on Argentina's Birthday) and is typically made with chorizo, beans, corn, squash, onion etc. Luckily for us, they made one for them, with chorizo(sausage) and one for us vegetarians, with tofu...such considerate friends we have. We brought the postre, a ginormous Alfajor cake which was delicious,filled with dulce de leche, covered in chocolate and terribly terribly rich. MMM. And then of course, we had some vino... I think we had some traditional Argentine Malbec tossed in there somewhere. We watched the last parade on television and witnessed as Mrs. Cristina Kirschner, the presidenta of Argentina shake her thang on national television.

We took Carolyn to the famous and world renown Kosher McDonald's, remarkably the only other Kosher McDonalds in the world outside of Jerusalem. It is inside of a huge mall or "shopping", as they call malls here, (yes they made this present continuous verb into a noun) and Caro got a hamburger AND chicken nuggets. We also took her to a kosher parilla, traditional Argentine restaurante with beef, bife, chorizo,lomo,lamb, vaca and more meat. There are a very different kosher Parillas in Once, where many of the Jews in BA live. The first one we went to was called Mama Jacinta where Carolyn drooled and gobbled up her big cheap kosher steak as Jill and I watched her and ate a potato omlette, tortilla espanola and mashed calabaza (pumpkin, there wasn't much else on the menu. Oh, yes and they did have hummus which we usually have quite a hard time finding in other places.

In addition to treating Carolyn with kosher meat, we went to the Evita museum, the Holocaust museum to china town, the MALBA, we went to the ferias, bought some Rodocrosita jewelry which is Argentina's national stone -it's a pretty light pinky color, she bought her family some gifts and I also started buying some souvenirs myself. We decided that the longer we stay here, the more the prices will most likely rise so why not take advantage of doing touristy things with our touristy visiting friends? The only downside to buying presents for all of you back home is that we get so excited with the gifts we've bought but still having to wait all this time to bring them back to you!

I led Carolyn all around the city on foot, making her pretty little feet tired. We had our daily cafe con leche at a number of cutesy cafes and Carolyn fell in love with medialunas, flaky, doughy, sweetened croissants that are sold EVERYWHERE and anywhere in this city. I also dragged Carolyn with me to the bilingual school where I have been volunteering, Escuela del Mirador. The kids asked her questions about where she was from, Carolyn drew an interesting sketch on the board of the United States and we read them a story about a mouse and his manners when he asked for "cheese, please." There was, however, one particularly embarrassingly funny question...

A little girl raised her hand and said with a huge smile on her face... , "I have a crazy question...Have you seen Alicia en la pais de las maravillas? (Alice in wonderland) I said "Yes", because I had and THEN she goes on to say, " Oh well, your hair kind of looks like the Mad Hatter's!" And then she giggles along with the rest of the class.
Good. One of those moments when you realize how wonderful it must be to be young and naive and not know what you are saying...

Sidenote because I left and came back and now my mind is somewhere else..

Argentina had a game today with Grecia and when a game is on EVERYTHING closes. I was walking to the subte right as the game was starting and no one was on the streets. There were hardly any cars, no one was in the subway station and almost every single store was closed with a sign on the door saying it would open after the game. It's acceptable and probably expected that you will leave the office, close down and pay attention to nothing else but the game. I got on the subway and as I was walking up the street I stopped at a little cafe inside the station. There must have been at least 100 people crowded around the cafe, faces forward and intensely concentrated on a small television in the corner. People woooed at the same time, awwed at the same time and screamed at the same time. It was like a superbowl party in the station (times a hundred), and then every other cafe I passed along the way had the same exact scene.
Thank goodness they won, 2 to 0, or I would have been scared to walk home.

Yes, we still know we have a blog...

Well, as you can guess and clearly see by the dates of our blog posts we are not doing a very good job of updating this blog. Obviously, there are some good reasons- being busy,being vegan, going to step aerobics, living life, watching Glee, having Carolyn and Jackie visit...but why not just get down to the good stuff to begin with:)

Looking at the last post that covered our wonderfully warm and beachy week away in Uruguay seems forever ago and believe it or not, we went again to Uruguay just yesterday to renew our visas once more. That means we have been here in this country away from home for all of 180 days. That's a lot. It's one of those things the either seems like "oh, but it feels like so much longer" OR maybe I've just never thought about what 6 months really feels like before.

Since that last trip to Uruguay where we spent all of our time tanning and on the beach, it has gotten cold. At least it's not that terribly biting bitter cold that no matter how many winters you spend in Boston you never get used to is, but compared to the 70, 80 degree weather we were consistently loving, we have now been greeted with winds in the 40s and 50s. And it has been the most confusing and disorienting thing to look at the month on the calender and see the crunchy leaves outside and have to put on the heater before going to bed. I keep thinking that Hanukkah and Christmas are right around the corner and that in no time at all Starbucks will start using their red snow flaky holiday cups any day now, but of course this is wrong. We are now regretting flaunting our sunny, warm weather to all of you back in January, February and March because now, the tables and the seasons have turned and we are wearing scarves, boots and gloves. Guess we can't have it all.

BUT the past few weeks at least have been filled with fun, friends and food;0) ( I can't attempt to remember everything that happened since that last blog entry, but I will try...it will most certainly be out of order, but you won't be able to tell the difference anywho)

So we've had some visitors since the last time; first Dom and Ian came from Boston to spend about 2 weeks strolling around the city and revisiting Ian's favorite spots from when he studied abroad here back in Spring of 08. Since then, he informed us just how much the prices have shot up in pretty much every way; from grocery stores, clothing, restaurants to public transportation (the bus or bondi as those Argentines like to call it used to cost 80 centavos and now, it's up to a minimum of 1.10) We weren't too happy to hear about this especially as the prices continue to rise.

BUT with the boys here, our first visitors of our time here(!) we went to some delicious restaurants we had yet to try and browsed around the city to museums, the Recoleta cemetery and all of weekend ferias (the ferias are still one of my favorite aspects of the city-- In Pittsburgh or Boston you have to wait all year for one or maybe two specific weekends in the summer or autumn for an art fair to come into the city, but here they happen every single weekend in at least five different barrios around the city )

We also went with them to one of the oldest neighborhoods in BA, called "La Boca" which translates to "the mouth", because it sits at the mouth of the river Riachuelo. It's a very touristy, very tango-y, very colorful, very small and very sketchy part of town that we saved to go with some boys and someone who had been there before. Everyone will tell you stories of people getting mugged while taking pictures of the brightly colored houses along el Caminito ( the main touristy street) but as long as you stay on that main road, it's fine. The reason behind all of the random brightly colored houses in this area is when Italian immigrants settled there in the 1900s they didn't have the money to pay for enough paint for their houses, so they had to use random scraps and leftover paints from wherever they could find. The mish mash of paints and materials produced the rainbowy mixture that is so famous today! It was pretty but very very small and touristy... I think we were there for just about a half an hour or so.







Que mas?

As far as working and such goes, Jill has been busy busy busy working up a storm at Spanglish doing all sorts of marketing, schmarketing, tweetering, creating new business ideas, being creative , practicing her Spanish, designing mascots and doing victory dances for Argentina after winning futbol games in the Mundial, the world cup ( She can be seen on facebook as Senor Spanglish doing one such dance...not to be missed)

I have still been teaching good old English in the mornings ( when my students decide to show up) and on some afternoons. As much as I like my students and their cute little mispronunciations, I can't help but complain about getting up at 7 every morning in the cold and dark to teach for one silly hour. I have been somewhat of a grouch about this for some time now and am working on my attitude;)

I also have been writing nonsense articles online, in English which as Jill recently informed me is called SEO ( search engine optimization) writing. Yes, you probably already knew this and I did not. How many months have I been writing these articles without knowing the technical name for what I was doing? Well, let's not get too hung up on these trivial details... Anyways, they are silly and the only good thing about them is that they pay me in dollars and when translated into pesos, I'm practically making millions...:) Don't be believe me? Well you shouldn't.

Anyways, it's a fine job for now and our main source of income BUT once again, it is in English and as I am already teaching in English, I am getting a bit frustrated with all of the English in my life here in this Spanish speaking country and am constantly looking for ways to fix that...I have the cooking channel , Gourmet on in the background at all times hoping for some new words and a better accent to seep into my head in the meantime.

Also these articles, as much as I don't like to put the blame on other things..(achem) has been a main culprit behind me not writing in this blog. Because when I spend all that time thinking of how to write about satellite TV, home security systems and recently, hearing aids (oy) my creativity has been wiped away and my mind is only left with phrases like "Look into the wonderful new ways that technology can help you," or "You can't afford to let your home go unprotected, get a home alarm system today!" Although, I will admit I did get a bit excited when I found one particular article I wrote about Leonardo Dicaprio and satellite TV on a Leo Dicaprio fan website. No my name is not on it, thank goodness so don't go looking for it. We'll see how much longer I can keep this job up for.

Anyways, I am going to split this entry and all of the news from the past 2 months into a few different entries so it looks like I am doing more and so you don't feel overwhelmed will my nonsense;)

Besos