Cooking the Argentine Way

I love food. I love reading about food (including reading cookbooks and recipes), I love watching cooking shows on TV and instructional cooking videos¹ on the interwebs, I love food preparation from chopping to sautéeing, and I love baking. I am also passionate about eating. In short, food is my favourite hobby, and having a year sabbatical I have been hoping to spend more time on this hobby. So far I've mostly focused on the eating part (see: +1.5 kg). Aside from one (successful) foray into the world of empanadas a few weeks ago, I hadn't cooked any traditional Argentine fare until yesterday, when I attended the lovely and talented Norma Soued's Argentine cooking class.

Before we moved to Buenos Aires I searched² for cooking classes, but only found classes taught in English and geared to tourists (read: expensive). A few weeks ago when I was perusing Craigslist³ I came across Norma's ad. I wrote to her to ask for more information about the class, and to confirm that she would, in fact, teach in Castellano⁴. Yesterday I went to her sunny apartment in Belgrano to learn how to make empanadas, guiso de lentejas (lentil stew), and alfajores.

I was very excited about the alfajores, as the only recipe I have seen for these delicious treats was in a Martha Stewart magazine, and it was insanely complicated (surprise surprise). I'm pretty sure it involved milking your own cow to make the dulce de leche.

Norma's class was great. She and the other student, Valeria, both speak English fluently, but since I really wanted to practice my Spanish they graciously (and patiently) agreed to speak Castellano. (Patience, for real: My brain on Spanish is Windows 98 on a 386.) We prepared all three dishes together, and everything was very well explained and hands-on. When we finished cooking, we enjoyed the delicious delicious fruits of our labour with a glass of red wine in Norma's beautiful dining room.

Taking a cooking class was a great way to further my burgeoning Spanish skillz, and happily I am now all set to make empanadas and alfajores⁵ for Ken's birthday shenanigans next weekend!

P.S. Norma also offers a Middle-Eastern cooking class that you can read all about over on her blog. I haven't taken it yet but if I do, you'll be the first to know.

¹ Before I made empanadas the first time, I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube to figure out the technique of sealing the empanada called La Repulgue. In my searches I came across this empanada video that is totally worth 6 1/2 minutes of your time if you like things that are awesome.

² I have since searched en español and found many more schools and classes that I'm interested in. Hooray!

³ Craigslist isn't so huge here. Most of the postings are for bars showing NBA games.

⁴ Latin American Spanish. Castellano:Español = English:British

⁵ Some alfajores will be filled with jam, because Ken doesn't like dulce de leche. I KNOW. [Candace: This is what is wrong with him.]

The 12th Player

BOCA JUNIORS X CRUZEIRO (LA 12)
Originally uploaded by LUCHO :9.

On Saturday between Meatfest 2009 and meeting friends for dinner (I honestly don't think I've ever been *less* hungry before a meal), Ken and I were in our natural habitat: lying on bed and surfing the internets. We'd just heard from another expat friend that he'd scored coveted tickets to the Boca Juniors-River Plate football match at the Bonbonera on Sunday, and Ken had fan-envy. The UK Observer lists this match as the #1 sporting thing you must do before you die and here we were, a short bus ride away from the stadium, sin tickets. So he did what any capitalist-loving American would do: Hit up Craigslist for people selling tickets at exorbitant mark-ups.

A few emails later, Ken received a call from an English-speaking guy (Martin) to tell us that his (non-English-speaking) friend, Uli, had tickets for sale at 500 pesos each. They arranged for an exchange the next morning, wherein Uli would come to our apartment on his motorcycle and give us the tickets and we would give him half a months' rent. I was... suspicious. I agreed to play bad cop and called Martin back to ask him how we'd know the tickets were real. He sounded nice, I guess, and sincere, and he said, "Oh, they're real, don't worry. My friend is a member of the... I don't remember the word in English, but it's the guys who are the fighters, you know, the fan section?" I hung up feeling OK about the transaction, and a few minutes later Martin texted Ken with: "hooligan. thats the word, haha- enjoy-"

I was not reassured.

We'd both read much about the dangers of attending a Boca game; about how the fans were just crazy and that a couple of years ago at this same match some fans were shot. We'd read not to bring more cash than we'd need and to leave our cameras at home. When we mentioned to our porteño friends on Saturday night that we might go, the general reaction was, "Es muy peligroso" ("it's very dangerous").

Later Saturday night Ken emailed Martin to ask him more about the logistics of the game - how we'd get in, etc. The response:

I just talked to Uli and in case you end up not understanding each other tomorrow morning he wanted you to know that if interested (cause some people are obviously not ) he'll be meeting all ticket buyers at a McDonald's in Almirante Brown St. & García Av. ( this is a few blocks away from the stadium) to get everybody inside using his friend's van. I know this might sound scary since you don't know him yet, but that's just why; I'm sure you'll end up really liking him tomorrow when you meet up.

He was right: Giving someone 1000 pesos then meeting him in a McDonald's parking lot to get in his friend's van DID sound scary since we didn't know him yet.

Uli showed up at our apartment at 9 a.m., as promised. Ken gave him 1000 pesos for the tickets which we then learned was a mere SEVENTEEN TIMES the face-value of 30 pesos. He gave Ken advice on what to wear to the game (Boca colours: blue or yellow) and what not to wear: jewelry or anything that looked Richie. Since we we'd spent mucho dinero to go to the game and weren't even sure if the tickets were real, we figured, what the hell, and decided to meet him at McDonald's. On the way to the bus I said to Ken, "Do you think we should have called our parents?" He laughed nervously in response.

We arrived in the parking lot at noon sharp, waited for about an hour, and even tried to call Uli to no avail. Finally, we walked to the stadium.

The first line (well, crowd) we ended up in was for members of the club only, and we made it to the entrance only to find out that we were in the wrong place. We walked another couple of blocks, past a few choripán stands and dudes selling empanadas for 1 peso (about 27¢!) until we found the line for people with tickets only. The crowd there was calm and we passed security without incident. We found our gate and climbed into the stands to learn that the general admission seats were not actually seats - just a bunch of steps that we'd stand on for the game. We crammed in with the other fans and watched the reserve players scrimmage for about an hour until the game started.

The game start was one of the most phenomenal things either of us has ever witnessed. Just before the players came onto the field, people near us were handing out wads of torn newspaper which we would later throw as confetti. In the stands directly across from us was the Jugador N^o 12 - the fans who are the 12th player (the team has 11 players on the field at any time). It was fandom beyond any that I've ever seen, with giant banners and flags and amazing, contagious chanting and drumming. We didn't bring a camera but there are lots of photos online that capture the energy of this section. Toward the end of halftime blue and yellow balloons were distributed in our section, and as the second half began we released them into the air (and onto the field).

Boca scored in the second half, and the crowd's reaction was indescribable, and that, along with the festivities that opened the game, made the experience well-worth the money we'd spent. Unfortunately, River Plate answered with a quick goal and the game ended in a draw, which might actually have been for the best in terms of our safety walking back to San Telmo to catch our bus.

Love Me Do

Once every few months, when I find myself even more in love with the world than usual, I have a little exercise that I do when I ride the subway. I choose a person at random and imagine that I'm someone who just adores that person, and I list all the reasons that I love him or her. I think of it as a love letter to that person. Sometimes the reasons are things that I can observe, like particularly delicate wrists, or a quickness with the crossword puzzle, or a gentleness with an old person or a child. Sometimes I make things up completely, like how sweet she looks first thing in the morning, or how kind he is to my kids. It's easy once I get started, and I find myself noticing (and creating) wonderful things about complete strangers - not a bad way to start (or end) one's day!

I recently started to think about what I'd want someone to think or say if I were the subject of this exercise. That struck me as kind of a neat thing to wonder about, and I'm kind of surprised that I haven't wondered about it before - that is, for what reasons do I want to be loved? And, how do I want to be loved?

Every so often a friend will do something or even tell me something about him- or herself and I'll think, wow, I love you for that. I love you because you can't stand having your hands get wet when you run. I love you because you smell your shampoo every morning, even though it's the same shampoo you've been using for months and months. I love you because you use the same expressions my parents used when I was growing up. I love you because you act out stories as you tell them. I love you because you use regular expressions in IM.

I haven't come up with definitive answers for the questions of why and how I want to be loved, but I think that the more I can love the people around me, the clearer those will become. For now, I'll just keep practicing.

Invest Your Passion

Aspiring to blog daily about something relatively interesting (or at least, something about which I have enough of an opinion to write a couple of paragraphs) has caused me to spend more time thinking about things that fit that category. This morning's thoughts led me ask myself, "What am I waiting for?"

I've envisioned some pretty great stuff for myself and my life. I have ideas about how I'd like my living space (clean, organized, a little cluttered, crafty, colourful, happy), my food (fresh, local, unprocessed, home-cooked), my body (healthy, toned, muscular, fit), my mind (clear, sharp, uncluttered), my friendships (caring, respectful), etc. Being really explicit about my goals has helped me to accomplish some of them (OK, some were gimmes, like running a marathon which I added after I was past the point of no return in training) and I think I can continue to add to and check off the list, thus creating the life I want to have and becoming the person I want to be.

Like many of my friends, I sometimes choose goals JUST because they're challenging, (see also: Marty McFly). When I graduated from high school, I could have studied either English (creative writing) or Math in University. I chose the latter, because I thought it would yield a more lucrative career (which I'm sure it did), and also because Math is more challenging, and fewer women go into that field of study, so BRING IT. Above: "His only major character flaw is his persistent desire to show others that he isn't a coward, which sometimes causes him to take unnecessary risks."

My recent epiphany about self really got me thinking about who I want to be. This morning it became apparent to me that there are certain parts of myself that I've been repressing somehow, and certain things that I haven't been doing because I'm afraid of being judged or of doing them wrong or of failing or because I'm waiting for Something To Happen.

I tend to feel a twinge of envy towards those people whose lives have been affected by some big challenge - you know, that Something Happened - because it gives them an obvious place in which to invest their passion. An abundance of choice can be daunting, and having infinite opportunities for passion-investment can be downright paralyzing!

On the other hand, though, it's kind of exciting: What if you could do anything and be anyone you wanted? And if that's the case, what you waiting for?