Now it's time to talk about the food! So much to say, so many dishes. The first thing I'll talk about is my normal eating schedule.
10:00 a.m. Wake up and eat yogurt with cornflakes in it, trix cereal, or an apple with tea or coffee.
12:15 p.m. Eat a large lunch, normally consisting of a combination of some type of meat, rice, potatoes, corn, salad, coke, and water.
4:15-4:25 p.m. School snack time. The snacks are the same each day of the week meaning if it is a Monday we have medialunas (croissants), Tuesday these really dry biscuit things, Wednesday a large slice of bread with cheese, Thursday the biscuit things again, and Friday a medialuna with a cream in the center, all with a cup of tea or juice
6 or 6:45 p.m. (depending on the day) We have merienda when we get home from school, which is just your average after school snack of cookies, fruit, toasted bread with dulce de leche, or anything else your hungry for with some mate, tea, or cafe.
9 or 10 p.m. is normally when eat dinner. Dinner is normally not as large as lunch because it just isn't as important in Argentinian culture. So normally it's something like pizza with coke, leftovers from lunch with coke, empanadas (cheese or meat) with coke, or some other type of meat of course with coke. Then after dinner is desert which is usually ice cream, cake, or cookies.
*Note this schedule does not include the many M&M's and other various candies I eat between these meals
Now that the eating schedule has been broken down we can talk about the cultural foods of Argentina. The most important food in Argentina is the MEAT! If you do not have meat in a meal the only possible reason is that you found yourself in a vegetarian house hold, or all the cows, chickens, and pigs in Argentina died of some swine flu like epidemic. The Argentinians love their meat and I can see why. AFS even strongly discourages vegetarians to apply to go to Argentina.
Cooking meat is also a BIG part of the culture. Sundays are normally the designated asado days. Asado is pretty much BBQ but so much more. Almost every house has one of these. It's your own barbeque grill built into your house! Perfect for gatherings no matter how big or small. And the results are amazing! No offense to my father, but I don't know if its the meat here or the way the cook it but it's probably the best cooked/seasoned/tasting meat I've ever eaten. I like to think of it as that really expensive juicy, red, and really flavorful steak on a menu at a 5 star restaurant that I've always wanted to stuff in my mouth but have never been able. Legit all the meat I eat here makes my mouth water, have mouth spasms, and words just can't describe how good it is. During asados, there is usually 3 or 4 types of steak or other meat cooked on the grill and we eat it with bread, or mashed potatoes, or salad.
Another important food item is the empanada. Empanadas are little pastries stuffed with either meat or cheese. There are also empanadas that are filled with cremes, jelly, or dulce de leche.They are eaten before parties for lunch, during futbol games, for dinner. They are pretty much the chips or fries of Argentina, and rightfully so.The last staple of my daily diet is dulce de leche, or as I like to call it, the other nutella. In Argentina they have dulce with EVERYTHING. On pancakes (which I successfully made this morning), bread, cakes, cookies, tea, etc. It is amazing and I love it.
There is so much more food here that I have yet to try. And much to my mothers content, I have been eating and trying everything put in front of me. I know a surprise right! I even had ham and cheese pizza yesterday following an onion pizza, and she says I never try new foods.
The rest of my week was pretty chill. On Thursday I went and saw the Salta Orchestra perform and they were really good. I didn't love the songs they played but they preformed them well non the less.
Next week I have no school on Friday for some reason I didn't understand in class, but I'm not complaining. I'm also going to Cafayate, which is in the north of Salta. It is supposedly a big wine country, so that should be fun, and I know my dad is jealous :)
One last thing of interest I should post about is my class. This is just a quick thing, but I think it's funny. So here I'm in senior year, and like in the US we order our senior shirts, except here we order hoodies. So, every day, and I mean EVERY day, we spend at least one or two class periods discussing possible designs, colors, if it should be reversible or not, and other stuff like that. Some people get really into, especially when we finally decided on the colors red, white, and blue, I wanted red, white, and grey because it was a lot better and didn't look like the french flag but whatever. One girl shot up out of her seat and started yelling a million miles per hour about how the colors were "que feo!" and I only caught I few words like "ugly" "idiot" "stupid ugly", I was actually terrified. In the picture below, taken on Thursday, we spent about 70 minutes between two different classes figuring out the style and colors and voting on different things. These diagrams are also in a facebook group, drawn out in a persons notebook, as well as on the board. Its a big deal and it is hilarious to watch.
Also Disney movies are so much better in Spanish, they are way funnier. Except the music is better in English. They should combine them with the Spanish words and English songs that would make them perfect!
Chau for now!
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