Away from BA

So I have been to rural Corrientes, and while there my group and I were severely broke the entire duration of our stay, so we didn't get to branch out food-wise, and instead ate salami, cheese and bread for the whooole time! I have sworn off each of those ingredients for a while...

I just recently came back from Punta Del Diablo in Uruguay; it is an extremely quiet beach with not much else going on, which was perfect. There, i had some more money. There weren't many restaurants around, but i found this empanada place by the beach that i frequented. The lady would roll out her own dough right there in front of you with a roller, stuff it with your choice of innards, then fry it and serve it up. This was my first fried empanada so far and i really didn't mind it! I had a fish and cheese one and ham and cheese, both pretty good. Down the road a bit i heard there were more empanadas filled with mussels, but that didn't interest me much. While there I also bought a bottle of Medio y Medio, which is some special Uruguayan wine. A friend told me and raved about it back in the states, making me promise to try it while in Uruguay. It was very sweet and good tasting, and had a bit of a fizz to it; though I could not tell you what it was a combination of! Not good enough to lug a bottle back to the states, but nonetheless good to try it.

Coming back to Buenos Aires I have eaten homemade locro from the family whose house i am sitting; they made me a large tupperware full before they left and it is filled with corn and peas and tomatoes and potatoes and meat and deliciousness. I also plan on making a smoothie tomorrow; none of the many I have tried here satisfy my smoothie craving! I also had homemade pesto pasta, instead of eating the store bought stuff, and this was much better, as i had thought it would be! And i fortunately but unfortunately got my hands on an enormous bag of Reces Peanutbutter Cups on my way back from Uruguay, so I have been munching away at those quite a lot! I have been trying to bring them into school so everyone else will devour them...

Funky Food in Iguazu

This past weekend I got to see the most water I have ever seen in my life. Iguazu Falls in Missiones, Argentina. I say the most water I have ever seen,because it was literally everywhere; the sky, the trees, my shoes, and the river. It down poured while we were there, which just added to volume of water being thrown off the edges of the earth. Mind boggling experience. What was also out of the ordinary was what I ingested one night at our hotel. Cow tongue. I ate cow tongue! The only reason it was gross was because, well, it was cow tongue. Other than that it really didnt taste that bad! A bit odd, but mostly just like pork. Another item I ate at the hotel was eggs, scrambled eggs, NOT hard boiled eggs. This is the first time since arriving here that I ate scrambled eggs! I was quite happy. I also had one of each of their deserts there, including flan, a cake that looked like flan but was more marshmallowy, and an assortment of other cakes and unlimited fruit salads! I loved it all.
When our group arrived at the estancia the first day, we ate this item that resembled fried dough, but was much much lighter (only a thin crust of bread, puffed up with air in the middle and doused in sugar), and it was delicious. The meat we are there was good as well and was actually cooked slightly redder than i am accustomed to seeing here in Argentina and was a nice change of pace. I was also able to try terere, which is yerba mate, but cold and uses yellow or orange juice instead of water. I enjoyed it and prefer it over hot yerba mate.
Over all it was a very enlightening trip!

Pre-Midterm Week Food!

Yes, my life is currently being categorized relating to school and their lovely 'midterms.' Sunday, Mothers Day, I went out to eat to a lovely restaurant with a warm feel. I had been stuffing myself all day so I got their house salad, which came in a large tortilla bowl with their house dressing(first creamy dressing i have seen in argentina!). It was delicious. I followed it up with a beer. Quillmes of course. Monday I ate at the house and my host mom made breaded chicken. I love chicken so i loved this meal. I ate salad with it, which had cucumbers and hongos in it for a change!

Ugh! The other day after school I went out to eat with three of my guy friends. We went to a restaurant and I ordered a sandwich. A salad was ordered, something with lobster, and matambre. We were all guessing at the menus for the most part. Well. Our food finally arrives and I am handed my (safe) sandwich, and the three others are all served the same plate, filled with this horrid looking meat they call matambre. It was disgusting looking yet hillarious that they all got the same gross meat. To create such 'meat' they had to somehow smush chicken and beef together which sounds gross on its own, but to top it off they then managed to slide a slimy hard boiled egg into the middle! One finished it, the others poked and played about with it. All the while i was trying to ingest my perfectly fine sandwich yet was having quite some trouble getting it down because their plates looked soo disgusting!!! I now know to NeveR order matambre. Ever. Gives me shivers just thinking about it. I hate hard boiled eggs which also doesnt help!

More Foood

Back in Buenos Aires, back to buying food in the grocery store, and eating homecooked meals. Two nights ago we had meriluza fish for dinner. Fish is not my favorite but it was okay. It was very thick compared to the last fish dish I had here in the house, yet it was breaded just the same as before and I ate this dish with ketchup as well. Cauliflour was the side. The other night she ordered us pizza, simply cheese, that came accompanied with olives-yuck!-that i discreetly picked off. I went out to lunch the other day and got pasta with pesto on it, which is one of my favorites here. And especially since every time i try to order red sauce, it tastes like ketchup. For example I went to Uruguay on Friday and got spinach-filled ravioles with red sauce; the ravioles were good, but the sauce was not. I ended up eating most of my neighbors chicken instead!
Drank liters upon liters of sangria this week, which is odd for this is my first time tasting it (it is now my new favorite drink!), finding out it is very easy to make and a perfect summer sun drink. Yesterday I went to a friends homestay and we cooked food and made pico salsa, and fruit salad and cheese and crackers. We tried to cook chorizo and bife on the outside grill but the flame was uncooperative so we ended up grilling the last leg of it on the stove instead.

Food in Puerto Madryn!

I was lucky enough to be able to take a trip to Puerto Madryn, Chubut this past long weekend, staying there from Saturday to Tuesday, and enduring a twenty-hour busride to get there. On the bus they fed us loads of alfajores and bread chips, way more than anyone needed (even for breakfast!) along with cold sandwiches and a plate that resembled lasagna with spinach added. It was OK.

While in Puerto Madryn I ate huge shrimp which were quite tasty. I also took part in an asado that our hostel was preparing one night. It was delicious and contained many many different kinds of meat with various cuts, such as: bife angosto, bife de chorizo, chinchulin, entrada, matambre, chorizo, morcilla, pechuga, patas y cerdo were all accounted for. There was so much meat and so much to choose from! Accompanying this platter was fried eggs, salad, rice and potatoes. Twas a very filling meal!

We went out to eat a few times and I actually got to eat bacon once! I ordered a toasted sandwich with various meats on it with some lettuce and cheese added ontop; quite good. Had some fantastic desserts there as well. One of my favorites was an enormous brownie platter, topped with nuts, cream, vanilla ice cream, and dulce de leche with a daquiri on the side. Yummmmmy!

Food Journal 3

I ate the usual this week, some meat and salad and bread. I went to a cafe and ate some scrumptious bready sugary wonders and drank some great orange juice. But the big thing was I took a trip to Mendoza this week and ate some different dishes than I would normally at home here.

On the trip I made mac and cheese from ingredients i found in the grocery stores, and prepared it in the hostel. Another night we went to Monkey Cafe and got Salads and empanadas. I got the Monkey Salad. which came with no lettuce, chicken, palm hearts, tomatoes, eggs, and avocadoes. I asked for lettuce and no eggs. They brought the salads out without tomatoes, without chicken, and with eggs. Once we finally got them back with the correct ingredients the chicken looked like it was from a can and tasted a bit tuna-y. I also ordered a daquiri drink assuming it would come as a frozen strawberry drink; but when I got it it was a large, strong drink, but was not colored red, but orange from the orange juice and lemon juice they mixed together. Lots of rum was added and a lemon garnish. Not quite what i had in mind! I ate various fruit while there, and many cookies, of course. Nothing too special.


We went on tours and got to visit an olive oil place and taste the oil and olives and mustard on bread. We also got to taste special coco and cafe dulce de leche, along with other assorted jams, such as jams with wine and whiskey incorporated into them. Special liquors were offered to us, with very interesting and unique flavors and mixtures, for example one was mixed with actual roses in it.

Moving onto wine, we were lucky enough to be able to tast just about every type of wine there was in mendoza! Or so it seemed. We drank quite a bit of it on the tours, mostly red wines but of course some whites as well. They were all very good with very different tastes to each of them. I drank red beer as well which wasn't as bitter as i had thought and actually quite good.
We hiked the Andes Mountains one day and got fed lunch-they gave us (gasp) ham and cheese sandwiches, orange juice, and alfagores-which were to die for! Speaking of alfajores, at the bus station on the way home I got a Giant alfajore; the biggest ive ever seen, larger than my fist, covered in coconut flakes and stuffed with dulce de leche. YUMMMMMM
Another awesome drink I had was unbelievably pure Andes Mountain water! Directly from the stream!! No water has ever tasted soo goood.

Food Journal 2

This week I have eaten many forms of milanesa en mi casa. My host mom has cooked it using differnt kinds of meat, such as pescado- it was long and thin and breaded and tasted very much like chicken. I ate it with ketchup and salad.

There was a beef milanesa, which was thin and breaded as well, but was my least favorite out of all of them. It had a lot of fat in it and was extremely chewy. Lastly, we had a breaded pork milanesa as well; it was okay and definitely better than the beef! I also ate a meat slab that was tasteful yet chewy, and had large bones still in it; I would have to say the ratio to meat to bones was about even, so it wasn't a very filling dish. Today we had a form of maccaroni and cheese; it was round saucers of pasta, with salsa rosado on it and i am assuming cheese as well. It was very yummy and served with breadsticks.