… and other adventures in shopping

While Steven thoroughly enjoys the meat here (and is happy to tell everyone about how good and inexpensive it is – It is really good and really cheap ), other food items can be a bit more difficult.

For instance, if you are a vegetarian and are tired of eating broccoli or occasionally cauliflower, you may be in trouble. Summer fruits are abundant and delicious, especially melons, peaches and berries, but the vegetable quality and selection can be a little sad. Sometimes, at Jumbo, the big grocery store, items are packaged with the label “buy and eat,” They aren’t joking and it’s not because they’re approaching their sell-by date. Everything is always approaching its sell-by date. Veggies here just don’t last that long. Could be because they aren’t super modified for looks and portability over taste, but you really can’t shop for a week and expect to be eating fresh food,

That’s why Steven – yes, Steven!! – was excited about Brussels sprouts, a food we hadn’t seen here. We had just about resigned ourselves to stooping to frozen veggies and had discussed the merits of defrosting the broccoli before roasting or putting it in the oven frozen. Frozen peas are one thing, but frozen broccoli, boy have our standards dropped.

As an aside:

We often hear the sentence, “I wish I could do what you’re doing,” but this life takes a lot of compromise (including frozen veggies). For instance, last night at an Indian restaurant, my glass of wine was only mediocre! But seriously, flexibility is key. You’re not going to find what you’re looking for. You may have to cook with a dull knife or try four or five fruit and veggie stands before you discover one you like.

OK, back to the shopping. Cheap meat, bad veggies and now for the next discovery: Very expensive imported foods. The Jumbo offers delicious, fresh pasta for about $3, but if you want a box of Barilla, check the limit on your credit card, because it’ll set you back $8; Sriracha, $10; Old El Paso salsa for tacos, $12; Belgian beer, $10 a can; you get the picture.

Part of the adventure comes from finding what we want or substituting what we can get for what we would buy otherwise. Today, I made tomato sauce because they just don’t have big jars of Ragu, or any other brand, here, and if they did, they’d be megapricy. Last time I did this, we discovered a pouch of tomato sauce that was kind of halfway to premade. Just add onion and some spices (and plenty of garlic) and you’ve got a big pot of gravy. Not exactly home cooking from the neighborhood, but it’ll do.

We often hear the sentence, “I wish I could do what you are doing,” and we love it, but you have to understand that it requires a lot of compromise. For instance, last night, we went out for Indian food and my glass of wine was only adequate. The horrors! Just joking, but you have to adjust to making substitutions, not being able to get what you are used to, or ordering something and having it be completely different from what you pictured in your head. Here’s a great example: When we have the tomato sauce you will read about shortly, we like a little parm and if we eat milanesa, which is quite like chicken parm, we like a little mozzarella. Given that we don’t have a shredder, we look for preshredded cheese. We got some that looks like those and has the same texture, but they’re not. You get what you get.

Back to shopping: To summarize, veggies are a challenge, fruit less so. But if you want anything that’s not from around here, you may have to dig deep. Jumbo makes delicious fresh pasta for about $3, but if you have your heart set on the blue Barilla box, that’ll set you back about $8. Sriracha, $10; Old El Paso salsa (yuck!), $12; a bottle of Belgian beer, $10.

I spent an hour slaving over a hot stove (OK, it was less than that and the AC was on) making tomato sauce because giant jars of Ragu (that’s an example, yes, I know Ragu is awful) are not a thing here (or really anywhere else we’ve been except the U.S.). Last time we wanted pasta, I accidentally discovered a pouch of tomato sauce that was halfway to good gravy. Just add onions, spices and whatever else makes you happy (for us that’s mushrooms and a lot of garlic) and, Voila! OK, so it’s not exactly home cooking from the neighborhood, but who’s counting?

When we went to eat the tortellini, it looked suspiciously dark for cheese. Turns out we recognized the word queso (cheese) but not whatever word signified that meat was also involved. Oh well. Luckily I had soy and spinach milanesa to substitute at the last minutes. The joys of not understanding at least a quarter of what’s going on around you.

When it comes to restaurants, we are also in the dark. Will the Indian food be Argentine spicy (which means not at all), tourist spicy (maybe a bit more) or authentically spicy (gut burn)? At Taj Mahal restaurant, where we dined Saturday night, we ordered the food picante or hot, and it was a good thing, because I would label it medium. Maybe Steven didn’t need the giant bottle of Stella to ease the burn (Steven ALWAYS needs the big 1L bottle of beer). Oh well, he managed to drink it anyway and the food was yummy. Better than we would expect from Indian food in Buenos Aires.

Last weekend, we accidentally went to a Michelin recommended restaurant. Well, we didn’t accidentally go there, but we didn’t know it was Michelin recommended. The restaurant, Niño Gordo, bills itself as a mix of parilla and Asian food. I had an oyster mushroom dish and tofu vieggie dumplingsWe enjoyed it, but they didn’t have what was on the menu and the menu itself was very limited. Good food, fun atmosphere, don’t need to go back, is my review.

Our next stop will be Mendoza, where our focus will be on wine and the Andes. We’re really looking forward to it!