Sounds Good on Paper

Month: January 2011

  • Tilcara – Taking a break from cow…to eat llama

    Normally, we would never go anywhere that was over 3 hours away on a day trip.  That would be like going from Seattle to Salem, OR or Chicago to Cedar Rapids, IA and back in a day. But, Argentina is large and it takes  longer to get everywhere on a bus.

    We made sure to get on the correct bus this time. I asked every single driver at the station, multiple times.  Poor Jeff was had to pretend he didn’t know me.

    We were the only ones doing a day trip, everyone else were college aged Argentinian backpackers. We could tell because besides backpacks, they all had mate gourdes, thermos, and guitars.

    They showed the movie Happy Madison dubbed in Spanish.  You don’t really need to know Spanish or be 21 to enjoy the movie, but it helps.

    some of us enjoyed the movie more than others

    Once we got to the town it worth a 4 hour bus ride and Adam Sandler.

    Tilcara is an amazing little town nestled in the mountains in the middle of the desert.  The backpackers and tourists seemed to outnumber the locals by about 10 to 1, but it didn’t matter.  Even in this tiny town we had entire streets almost to ourselves.

    For lunch we went to a restaurant that served “regional specialties.”     After having so much beef it was a nice change to see llama (pronounced jama) on the menu.

    We had the choice of several  llama dishes, we went with the llama casserole.

    Just having some veggies and not just a hunk of meat on a plate was nice.  The llama was tender and flavorful, tasted nothing like chicken.

    I think llama might have once been a local dish, but no one other than tourists and gourmet foodies are eating it now. It’s probably similar to rabbit. You can get rabbit in fancy restaurants in the US, but very very few people in the US are sitting down to rabbit sloppy joes or rabbit tacos at home.  Traditional or not, it was super good food on a super long but fun day trip.

  • Eating an entire cow (not in one sitting) part 8 – T Bone and Short Ribs

    There really isn’t much to report on the eating of a T Bone steak called – beef de costilla and short ribs called tira de asado. Both were delicious.

    The thing I found most interesting the atmosphere in the parilla.  We went to a restaurant called El Viejo Jack. Not only is it highly recommended in guide books and on Trip Advisor, it’s also recommended by locals.

    The restaurant itself was your basic local parilla with the most glaring fluoresent lights ever.   We’ve noticed this is pretty typical of local parillas.

    could it have been any brighter?

    It was funny to eat a delicious steak, drink a bottle of really good malbac, and have great attentive service all while feeling like we were in a doctor’s examining room.

    It was in sharp contrast to a restaurant we had gone to the night before.

    Jose Balcarse was also highly recommended by guidebooks.  It was also really good, but I don’t think there were any locals in the restaurant. Even the waitress, who spoke fluent English was from Uruguay.

    this photo is directly off their website

    One thing it did really well, besides the food was the ambiance.  The low lighting and exposed brick walls reminded me of restaurants back home.   The food at both places were amazing. One seemed really authentic, local and inexpensive.  The other – gourmet  and  touristy, but you didn’t feel like you were at the DMV.

    You can really see the contrast in the below videos.

    Video at parilla.

    video at gourmet tourist restaurant.

  • Grocery shopping in Salta

    not exactly Whole foods

    Grocery shopping can easily be an all day activity for us.

    The store in the photo on the left is where we buy most of our veggies, water, and eggs.  A very woman in an apron always helps me with the Spanish words for the veggies.

    If she doesn’t have what we need we go across the street to the man with long sideburns. He also has eggs, some packaged goods, and veggies.  Sometimes for a change I go to the nice older couple. They have a bakery but also eggs,  veggies and two pet parrots.   No matter who I go to, the eggs are never refrigerated, always come wrapped in paper, and they all think it’s hysterical we’re using the eggs for breakfast.

    6 eggs wrapped in paper.

    Next stop is the butcher for meat, cheese and also sometimes eggs.

    And then for everything else there is the supermarket.  The supermarket is pretty much like any other supermarket in the US except for a few differences.

    Milk and yogurt come in cartons and boxes, but also bags.

    bag of milk
    bag of yogurt

    The yerba mate aisle is huge.  This entire aisle – all the way to the end-  is for yerba mate.

    how many kinds of yerba mate can there be?

    The most beautiful part of the grocery store is the shelf after shelf of dulce de leche.

    Yum!

    You can even get a one pound bag of dulce de leche.

    heaven

    Then there are the products that make us uncomfortable, like this brand of rice/pasta.

    does Diana Ross know about this?

    And then there are the products that make us laugh because we’re immature.

    this is a sponge.

    Can you ever have enough assy power?

    this ones a stretch, but we'll laugh at anything.
    Who wants a barfy?

    clothes for child zombies

    And then there is this mannequin. This is not in a supermarket, but I still think it’s funny and slightly frightening.

  • Eating an entire cow (not in one sitting) part 7 – cow heart

    We chose the restaurant Monumental for our next beef adventure.   We chose it for several reasons:  it’s near our apartment, has outdoor seating, looks like a castle.

    I had planned to eat mollejas (sweat breads also known as glands) but the waiter was completely freaked out that I was ordering only sweatbreads for dinner.  He didn’t think this was an appropriate dinner. I didn’t either, but assumed they’d be inedible and I’d be going out for dinner #2 at McDonalds afterward.

    He suggested corazon which is beef heart.   I was little apprehensive so we also ordered lots of wine, a “ensalada Americana,” a backup pork chop and I made sure Jeff was ordering a big enough steak that I could mooch off him if needed.

    The heart really wasn’t that bad.  It sort of tasted like a weird cut of steak. Now the salad, on the other hand, was totally weird. Lots of corn and white stuff which was either the worst cheese in the world, or a strange vegetable.

    My favorite part of dinner was observing the family next to us.  It was past 11:30pm and an entire family including a baby, toddler, and nanny were enjoying dinner.  At around 12:30am we had to go home, we were yawning, but the family was still on dessert.

  • Salta – going to the gym

    You would think going to the gym would be sort of the same everywhere you go. Sure, far off exotic lands don’t even have gyms, but you would think any place that has a gym that you can join as a tourist must be about the same.   But, there are some things at my gym that are different.

    The first thing is the name. I just don’t think a gym in the US would be called XX anything.

    The second thing that is different is that in the US, I don’t  kiss anyone at the gym.   Here, there is a lot of kissing.    First chance to kiss is when you enter. You go and check in at the front desk.  The woman behind the desk always greets me with a very welcoming “Hola Sherillllll.”     Some people lean over and kiss her, but I opt out.

    Then I sort of stall while I wait for Maximo to come over. Maximo is the “on duty” gym trainer.   He’s a really sweet, very ripped Argentinian that doesn’t speak any English.     He comes over, kisses me on the cheek, gives me a half hug then asks me how I am.  I always say fine. I then forget how to ask him how he is, so I just sort of nod. Then he asks if I’m “tranquila.”  I always say yes which is a lie.    I’m never ever calm because  I’m always trying to remember the Spanish words for things and who and when I should kiss.

    There’s only one elliptical trainer at the gym, and no one but me ever uses it.  It may be an antique. I feel like if I ever got my heart rate up to 150 on it the entire thing would collapse.

    Another thing that is different, there is a picture of Jesus in the corner.

    In between helping people, Maximo drinks yerba mate from a gourd.  If I am doing something really incorrectly he helps me with my form, usually in a series of complicated pantomimes and grunts and nods from me.

    The first time I worked out I thought Maximo had the best job ever.  All the women at the gym come in and kiss and hug him. All the men shake his hand, ever single of of them.

    By the end of my first workout I realized the down side to Maximo’s job. He also has to kiss every woman goodbye at the end, or shake every man’s sweaty hand.

    I try to wipe my face off as much as possible at the end of each workout, but I can tell you there have been times when the poor guy has had to cheek kiss me while I was dripping sweat.

    If I’m unusually sweaty, I wait until I see him busy helping someone, I run to the middle of the gym shout, “Ciao” then bolt out before anyone can kiss me.  I’m sure it’s considered completely rude, but that is the good thing about being a foreigner. No one expects you to do it completely right every time.