Love your food, love yourself

Dan:

Food: It may seem that I’ve been slacking a bit on the Argentine food descriptions. If you’re reading this blog hoping for descriptions of strange and interesting local edibles, I’m sorry for that. One reason is that nearly every Argentine restaurant has a similar menu, so having seen this menu a few times, we are finding less to write home about. But the real truth is that we haven’t been eating all that much Argentine food. My wife has taken her new job as full-time hausfrau quite seriously. In addition to her studying, Lou does all the cooking, cleaning and laundry (by hand). She has been going to great lengths to create food that pleases her pallete, and I’m a willing beneficiary. We are probably the only people in South America to have had lentil stew, jambalaya, fajitas, and sweet and sour green beans this week. Certainly the only ones in Argentina.

Speaking of yummy, spicy food; in Argentina there is none. None. We wanted to make salsa last week (never mind that there are no tortillas or chips) so we went to the mercado central to buy some produce. We still needed cilantro and chiles, and those weren’t sold at our local produce shop. Anyway, at the mercado, we asked a lady if she had any hot peppers. Here is how the rest of the conversation went:

“Why?”

“We want to make some food.”

“But why do you need hot peppers. They are no good.”

“We’re making Mexican food. We like hot peppers.”

“But you’re not Mexican, are you?”

“Uh… no”

“Chilean people eat that stuff but in Argentina we don’t eat it. It’s bad for the mucous in your stomach. It will kill you. Why don’t you love yourselves.”

(nervous chuckling. “Is she serious?”)

“Why don’t you have a steak with a little fat on it, maybe some nice salad? You have to say ‘Today I’m going to decide to love myself. I’m not going to eat these things anymore.”

Etc. for 2 or 3 minutes, waiting for the punchline from the kind bilingual veggie señora, a punchline that never came. She was speaking in earnest. We thanked her for her concern and found that the guy at the next veggie booth had some hungarian-type peppers. Good enough for our makeshift salsa.

I guess one lesson learned from living here is that we should appreciate the grocery diversity in our country. A few years ago I thought it was pretty funny how quickly Dave consumed the chips, salsa and hard cider I brought to him in Japan. Now I understand. Here I am, undergoing the first time in many years I’ve gone 3 months without ramen noodles or microbrews. Bless the big box grocers of America, from Aisle A to aisle Z.