Friday night, Sue and I went out to a restaurant that we thought was Indian food, but really turned out to be mostly Thai. The food was good, but not what we expected (I guess I hadn’t really thought about it, because I was surprised when I read this). We had tried to get reservations as about half a dozen other places before we settled on this restaurant but couldn’t get in anywhere we looked at. It is strange, in some cities it seems you must have a reservation to get in, others, it seems less important. We are still trying to figure out which Buenos Aires is. Anyway, we had a very nice meal and Sue made reservations at a bunch of places over the next few weeks, which is nice because then we don’t have to have the inevitable where/what are we going to eat.

Saturday night we had a BBQ in our apartment with our friends Marco and Barbara. The grill is known as a parrilla, the occasion is called an asado and the person who cooks is an asador . So, we hosted an asado on our parrilla and Marco was our asador.

The parrilla uses charcoal and wood for fuel. You build a very hot fire in the back corner of one side of the parrilla, then once it is good and hot, you spread some of the coals out the rest of the grill and cook the meat (and eggplant) over the spread-out coal. The asador continuously adds charcoal and wood to the fire in the back corner and spreads the hot coals out under the meat. Our parrilla is indoors on the top floor of our apartment and is roughly 6 feet long and 3 feet deep (on the order of 2 meters x 1 meter). The whole process takes about four hours. (Luckily, the company was excellent, so the time passed quickly).

As asador, Marco insisted on bringing everything we would need, so he arrived with charcoal, wood, wood shavings (olive wood to add extra smokiness), and about 10 pounds of meat. Remember, Sue is a vegetarian, so that meant there was somewhere around three pounds (1.4kg) of meat per person. He brought chorizo, short rib (which are called asado de tira), and flank streak (vacio) We (that is the imperial we, meaning Marco) started the fire around 6:30 p.m. and we hung out by the pool, talked (I even managed a decent amount of Spanish!), and watched the master at work.

About 10:30, the meat and Susan’s eggplant were ready and we sat down. First, we had the chorizo, which Marco had cooked then butterflied to get them crispy on one side. Next, the short ribs, and finally, although I could barely eat anymore, the vacio, which is the real star of the asado. (I have to admit that, even as a vegetarian who hasn’t eaten meat in more than 20 years, it smelled delicious). They were all perfectly cooked and absolutely delicious. Sue had her eggplant, which were a vegetable, so yawn, who cares 😉. We finished up about midnight and had nearly the whole vacio and about half the ribs left. Yummy leftovers!

We cleaned up and then retired to the living room and hung out and talked until about 2 a.m.

Sue and I woke up bright and early — 7:30 a.m. on Sunday full of energy and ready for the day. Only kidding — we slept until about 10:30 then did almost nothing all day. For me, a combination of a late night and severe meat belly. Luckily, by lunchtime I had recovered and tucked back into the vacio as a “side” to my usual lunchtime salad. It was even better the second day.

I didn’t get any pictures of the short ribs or the chorizo or us eating, because I was too busy stuffing the unbelievably delicious food into my mouth.

One quick funny story from last week. Our apartment has a washing machine, but no dryer. This isn’t a big deal for our clothes because we have ample space to hang them to dry on a drying rack. The sheets and towels are a different story. After trying once to get them washed and dried, we decided to take them to a lavanderia. Sue dropped off the bag of sheets and towels and came back and said “Not doing that again, it costs $70!” (Ay, did I feel bad about that.) Well, once again operating in a foreign country in a foreign language lets us laugh at ourselves. Sue returned to pick up and pay for the washing. She started counting out 70,000 pesos, and the woman in the lavanderia said “No! it is 10,000 pesos” or about $10! (Ay, did I feel dumb.) Life is just full of little surprises when you don’t speak the language.