Don't Cry for Me Argentine Parrillada

My sister came into town on Thursday. I thought it was Friday on Wednesday, and couldn’t really tell what the date was after June 3rd, the last of the GP Junior exhibitions. When you’ve been working seven days a week, it’s hard to notice the days hat start with “s.” Starting off June with a commitment to sanity and my own well-being, I took an unprecedented two whole days off from work. [gasp]. They were glorious. Some people apply a strange term to these days of rest, and call it a “weekend.” This “weekend” thing and I are of late sadly estranged.

I would like to officially declare I’ve made out of my springtime slump. The causes are multitudinous, but can be distilled to a few greatest hits:

1. The winding down of my West Wing retrospective marathon (just 2 episodes to go!)
2. Another year of GP Junior wrapped up with a much lower disaster quotient than last
3. People reaching out from my past, resulting in A. one completely unexpected romantic encounter proving that no, I am indeed not a leper and/or invisible and B. the subject of this post.

Sometimes I like people. It’s rare, I know, but it happens once in a while.

The Williamson girls went out for a real-estate reconnaissance run on a beautiful late spring eve, and A asked me what my plans were for the weekend. My goals, I replied, were simple: eat a real dinner every day (underlying overambitious subtext to actually eat three meals each day), do laundry, and get some exercise. Our crepuscular Thursday run followed by a delightful Brooklyn Public dinner was a good portent and gave me the push I needed to stick to the plan.

At some point during the week I received a quick email from the Miami girls to schedule a very long overdue get-together. I literally have no memory of when this happened, but I’m sure the email record will prove otherwise. I put it into the back of my head, tucked away from the insanity of party planning and life at Global Partners. Eventually, I realized that I’d invited people over to my place for dinner, and that I would have to feed them something. Immediately I thought of the summertime asados on the beaches of Patagonia, the slopes of the Andes, and the twinkling streets of Buenos Aires. Forgive me folks…If I can’t actually travel, I’ll have to use florid travel-language and relive past adventures. Such is life.

Friday arrived at last, and I managed to notify my guests that we’d be eating various forms of delicious grilled meat in honor of the gaucho life. Now, were does one go in New York City to find such quantities of animal flesh? The Meatpacking District, duh!

Seriously—I know you thought it was just full of sterilized condos and anorexic supermodels, but tucked in behind Chelsea Market there’s a tiny remnant of the former industrial area. Appropriately named, Western Beef is the BBQ host’s paradise where you can walk through plastic flaps into refrigerated aisles containing 20 and 30 lb. cuts of meat, and not just beef!
The Vespa “luggage” compartment was soon stocked with short ribs, chorizo, hanger steak and vidalias for the obligatory chimichurri sauce. But carnivores we are not, and I needed some non-meat supplies if I was going to faithfully recreated the most delicious multilayered diner sandwich from south of the equator: the lomito. Onwards then! Giddyup to the market! Am I confounding my cowboy cultures? Whatever.

Leafy greens, early tomatoes and eggs fresh from Ronnybrook Dairy loaded down my backpack, topped with brioche rolls and an Amy’s epi baguette looking more like a medieval torture device than the crusty wonder of deliciousness that it is.

The girls rolled in around eight with the steak marinating happily, the chorizo warming on the griddle. We popped a bottle of Malbec, plopped down on the floor around the coffee table and caught up on the past few months of each other’s lives.

I find that it’s hard to really keep in touch with people in the city. Nobody really comes over to just chill at your apartment, and most of my friends are scattered across two boroughs. I don’t know why it takes so much effort and coordination to get people in the same place, but for me it does. Fortunately, it’s completely worth it.

The dreary winter and busy schedules had kept us apart for months, so we said our hellos over a toast while the short ribs sizzled under the broiler. The courses trotted out over the next few hours: I sliced the chorizo and baguette as we heard about A’s first year of law-school; we spooned spicy chimichurri reminiscing about school in Miami and learning about M’s new school in NYC; much girly giggling was had by all as I recounted the bizarre events of last week. We finished a bottle and I re-suited up in my cooking gear for the obramaestra.

In a veritable grand finale of an evening, I sliced tomatoes, toasted brioche, layered la quercia prosciutto lettuce and provolone, fried eggs, seared steak and finally served up three perfect lomitos as we moved on to the present and future of our lives. When it’s been a while, you need at least four courses to catch up before you can get a discussion going and really talk about anything interesting. Luckily I think we had five, including a decidedly un-gaucho peach pie. Aah, Argentina, the truth is we’ve never left you. You’re far too tasty to forget. It’s good to know that I can remember Buenos Aires and my little Odyssey in the company of friends and have it truly a fond memory. I think that means todo anda bien.

Spending a whole day with food, zipping around town on a sunny day running errands, running in the park under the elms, and then making a meal into an evening of friends and debate is pretty much the best part of life. On a night like this, feeding the people you love is as far removed from the elemental necessity of ingesting nutrients as the end of the earth. It’s tragic that some people treat the process of shopping, preparing and sharing food as a chore. That kind of attitude brings hint of tears to my eyes, and there will be no crying here, that’s for sure. Life is good here as the sun warms the east coast and summer begins to stir.

Cafayate: The Back Country

Salta, while linda, is also still a city, and as I learned from our friendly historian it is important to change your perspective to seek new definitions. There are so many forms of beauty, the cosmopolitan, the urban, the historical, the academic, and you find different types of beauty in all of these contexts. In our travels, we have seen much of the structured, human-created types of beauty, but what we had not yet experienced was rural beauty. In this vein, a daytrip was in order. Our slightly limited time schedule lead us to choose Cafayate, a small town about 180 km south of Salta.

We dragged ourselves out of bed at an ungodly hour to catch (just barely, because D forgot his camera in the apartment) the 7:00 bus to Cafayate. The bus transverses a local commuter and tourist route, highway 68, which is famous for its scenery. As we passed out of the mountain valley of Salta Capital, the first golden rays of morning gilded the lush surrounding land. We whizzed by horse farms, sprawling plots of unknown green leafy produce, and the occasional wild area. Gradually, the valley sucked the water out of the land; as we climbed higher the abundant trees and bushes disappeared, replaced by steep ochre slopes.

I struggled to stay awake through the Quebrada de Cafayate, a prehistoric valley created when the Andes pushed a prehistoric sea out of the middle of South America. Even though we returned later that afternoon with a guide, I’m glad that I got to see the hillsides lit up in the early morning.

Half dead by the time our bus pulled in, we found that the town was dead too. A smattering of tourists strolled through the tree-lined central plaza, and we soon discovered that there wasn’t much more to the town of Cafayate than that. An overly enthusiastic tour organizer accosted us not two blocks from the bus station, and at that point I wasn’t in the mood to think coherently nor make decisions. We ate a tranquil breakfast of local bread and goat cheese in the shade, and then made plans. To my dismay, the very same obnoxious tourism agent was the only one recommended at all by either of our guides, and the office actually looked reputable. We booked spots on the one tour of the day and then walked down the approximately nine square blocks that comprise the town.

The one “not to be missed” spot in the guidebook was an intriguing icecream store. Cafayate has a burgeoning (or perhaps just struggling) wine culture, and one special store makes granitas from Cafayate’s two wines. Excellent, a great way to pass the noon hour. We grabbed a table in the shade and I began to savor my truly delicious cabernet sauvignon granita. Since it was a slow day, the owner came outside and sat with us. “How cute!” I thought, we’re having a provincial experience; chatting with the purveyor of these fine comestibles on a dusty street in windswept Cafayate, Argentina. The conversation was fairly mundane to begin with, and Dave got to practice his Spanish a little with someone other than me.

Then, in a less than congenial turn, he told us “You know there are bad people out in the world. There is a lot of evil going on.” Umm, sure? Nod and smile, nod and smile. Actually, it was pretty difficult for me to get in touch with the evils of the world on a sunny afteroon in a quaint sleepy town. Not wanting to be rude, since we were eating his icecream and sitting in his café, we put up with another twenty minutes of less ambiguously directed malice: according to him, unemployment didn’t exist, only lazy (aka poor/indigenous) people; the Muslim/Arab community is the embodiment of evil on earth (he wasn’t clear on a distinction); Jews are bad too, for uncertain reasons; Hitler and the Japanese Kamakazi bombers inspired the modern proliferation of jihads; and the world in general is going to hell. Well, that was uplifting. So much for my endearing icecream maker.

We fled the scene as soon as another customer came into the store, waving frantically and sending hasty “Ciao’s” in farewell as we escaped. I guess you can find bigots all over the world.

Lunch around the deserted central plaza was much more pleasant: a perfect Argentine light meal. My first real lomito, the mother of all steak sandwiches, was fantastic. A medium flank steak cooked on a grill with all the fixings: cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, a fried egg, mustard, and aioli. Whew. It proved to be excellent fuel for our afternoon hike out into the country along highway 68.

We piled into a van with 14 other nature-loving tourists (4 more people were shoved in the tour guide’s brother’s car that drove along behind) to a series of puntos de interés (points of interest) along the road that would eventually take us back to Salta, clean showers, and a comfortable bed. Apparently, it was “no problem” catching the bus midway, we’d have “plenty of time” to see the last landmark, and everything would be fine. That was before five of us credulous tourists were sprinting down a rocky gully out of the Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat) after the last bus of the evening, which was slowly moving down the road without us. But I get ahead of myself.

An incredibly energetic but oblivious guide lead us through beautiful country full of geological wonders, while warning us in very rapid Spanish not to touch the dangerous shoe-puncturing cacti or we would be sick for 28 days in a hospital, if we weren’t already dead. 15 seconds after this warning, a small middle-aged French woman tromped on one with her army-surplus boots. Clearly, she missed that. I appreciated the knowledge and exuberance of our guide, but doubted his sincerity. One man, a fellow Argentine, mentioned that he was trying to start a cactus garden at home, and the guide immediately offered to dig up some specimens and mail them to him. Generous, yet strange. Our group was a little large to really appreciate the scenery; there were constantly people’s heads, feet, or arms in my scenic pictures, but I got over it.

We sloshed barefoot through mudflats to see a swallow rookery in red cliffs, walked on the ancient seafloor through crumbling sandstone valleys, crunched crystallized plaster in our fingers, and watched the clouds turn the mountainsides from dusty brown to blood-red, dark olive to vivid green, dull sand to bright gold. The mineral-rich area was filled with copper, iron, and sulfur ores, which gives the land dramatic swaths of color. At times the land on the horizon was flat as a board, stacks of earth that lay still for millenia; in other places, the layer cake of rocks and minerals twisted like bunched fabric or jutted up from the ground in jagged angles. We zipped from site to site in our van and auxilary car, piling in and out like clowns in a circus with the guide all the while enthusiastically yelling “¡Vamos, señores turistas nacionales e internacionales!”

I knew that there was a schedule to the tour, as we were planning on meeting a bus at the end, but I had no idea how closely it was being followed. As a French couple (who could speak Spanish, as opposed to the crazy small lady) lingered over a vendor of hippie necklaces at “El Anfiteatro,” (The Amphitheater) an echoing canyon, our guide’s mood altered slightly from manically excited to slightly worried. I dug my watch out of my pack and saw that we had about 20 minutes until the bus was supposed to be at our next geological site, the Garganta del Diablo. We scrambled up a rock face, saw the Devil’s throat, although I’m still not sure why it’s called that—we didn’t exactly have time to wait around for our guide’s commentary—and sprinted the last 200 meters down to the road to catch the last bus back to Salta as the sun sank over the mountains.

Five of us tourists joined the young mothers with babies, tired farmers and construction workers, grandmothers, and other local travellers on the colectivo, the municipal bus which runs from Cafayate to Salta and points between. I think everyone on the bus had a long day, regardless of their daily activities; everyone was ready to sleep. We grabbed some hot and juicy empanadas at the bus rest stop, gobbled them down and nodded off to the swaying of the bus winding its way back around the mountainsides back to Salta.

I was pretty pleased with our first outing into the country. It was not exactly what I had expected, but the day gave us a glimpse into rural culture on several levels. The transplant icecream maker turned out to be more back-country than the indigenous people living from the earth. Our first organized tour was pleasant, and went relatively smoothly; the change of scenery was excellent, exactly what we wanted. We saw strange and beautiful things out in the country. On a tactile level, felt good to walk about on the earth again, instead of on bricks, asphalt, or concrete.

The hot shower and comfortable beds in seemingly cosmopolitan Salta comforted our tired bodies at the end of the three hour bus ride and the long climb up the hill to our apartment, an apt reward for a dusty day among rocks and cacti. It was a short jaunt, and good warm-up for what would come next in our journey as we continued on northwards, further from the glittering city lights of Buenos Aires and the bustling streets of Salta into our first new country: Bolivia.

Salta La Linda

When you enter the town of Salta, the eponymous capital city of the province, a poem greets you on Rt. 9 in the same bright green and reflective white of U.S. highway signs:

Salta La Linda
Esta es mi Salta viajero
Cuando llegas por el Portezuelo
Parece que bajas del cielo
A este Valle de Lerma
De Castilla y Perdiguero

Salta the BeautifulThis is my Salta, traveler.
When you arrive at the Portezuelo,
It’s as if you’ve stepped down from heaven
To this Valley of Lerma
Of Castilla and Perdiguero.

And the sign has it right. When you drive through the pass, verdant mountains give way to a large flat valley where the white city of Salta, Argentina rests peacefully under sunny skies. I, of course, didn’t see this beautiful view when we arrived, because it was 7:00 am after a 12 hour bus ride. Fortunately, the apartment we rented was nestled comfortably on the Portezuelo, the south side of the mountain, just a few minutes’ walk from the panorama.

Salta is a bustling city of 100,000 residents which bridges several important cultures in Argentina. There are a few wealthy people who probably own houses in Buenos Aires and drive BMW’s; some true gauchos, the Argentine wrangler and rancher; and the northernmost extreme of the country still shows traces of the great Inca empire, whose fingers reached here in the 15th century. This mixture of cultures makes a salteño, as the local residents prefer to be called.

Finally we had a real shower and to our utter surprise, maid service! I awoke bleary-eyed at 10 the morning after our all-night bus ride and had trouble understanding that the woman outside wanted to clean our apartment and give us fresh towels. The next day we were better prepared; we planned an excursion to the Cerro de San Bernardo, the mountaintop behind our house.

Armed with cameras and water, we started up the winding highway that curls around the mountainside accompanied by a few dozen other salteños in search of a hard workout or a trip with the family. After two hours of hiking amidst tamarisk trees, bromeliads, and blazing sun we arrived at the top. We could have taken the cable cars up, but that would have cost money that was beyond our slightly stretched budget. In any case, the journey up was worth it, if exhausting. We rewarded ourselves with a café con leche at the lookout cafe, perched directly above downtown and looking out into the green hills beyond the city limits. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon. Also included in the quite popular mountaintop park was a gym with free weights, a playground, an algae filled neon green waterfall, an antique silver exhibit (closed), local handicraft vendors, and several more miradores, or overlooks.

On the way back down, we took the traditional stone staircase of 1070 steps and the 12 stations of the cross illustrated at various stopping points. My jelly-like knees, not accustomed to tromping around mountains, were pretty tuckered by the time we reached the end. Unfortunately, the steps came out on the southwest side of the mountain, and our comfortable beds and chairs awaited on the southern slope. Valiant souls, we attempted to pick our way through the streets, but this section of the town lay outside our puny guidebook maps. The street that seemed to go in the direction that we wanted ended abruptly in a pile of grass and construction material, but we were determined that this was the way home. Then the path that lead through the brush ended too, and there we were, traipsing about the mountainside with only a vague idea of how we were going to get both east and down to a shower and fresh towels. We picked our way through the remains of a brush fire, trespassed on the water treatment facility, and slid down a 20 meter rock face, just barely making it back before dark.

We slept well that night.

Not daunted by our perhaps foolish daring on the mountainside, we chose for our next adventure another destination outside the city limits. The Mercado Artesanal (Artisan’s Market), so our book told us, lay just outside Salta on bus routes 7, 2, or 3. Excellent. A plan. We hop on bus 2A and for maybe five minutes it’s going in the right direction. Then it turns right and goes north. And keeps going north. Hmm. Our indulgent bus driver set us on the right path, and luckily the bus that we happened to board had a circular route. For our next try, we board 5A (N.B. 5A was not one of the options listed in our handy guide.) which has a promising sign on the front: “Mercado Artesanal.”

This expedition went smoother than the last one; we had a pleasant afternoon walking through stalls of textiles, metalwork, and other local crafts. Llama goods were predominant. We then went across the street to the fake Mercado Artesanal where other vendors showed off artesanía of dubious provenance. Somehow I don’t think that local indigeous craftspeople have nylon tags that they sew into finished goods. Yet despite its inauthentic products, the rip off Mercado was almost as interesting as the real thing. It’s amazing the crazy shit that people produce for toruists.

To cap off a bustling day we returned via bus to the city center to visit one museum before things closed down. We poked our heads in the Museo de Arqueología de Alta Montaña (MAAM), the High Andes Arqueological Museum, and were directed upstairs to the 3rd floor. There we paid a whopping 10 peso entrance fee apiece and went into a hyper-air-conditioned exhibit of Andean artifacts. Most of the display cases had to do with child sacrifice in the Inca empire; interesting, yet not exactly an all-encompassing narrative of pre-Columbian history. Half of the tiny museum was closed for repairs, so we finished our tour in about 10 minutes, even having read all the informative placards.

We were about to throw in the towel and head for home, rather unimpressed with the MAAM, when the small library on the 3rd floor caught my eye. I hesitantly ventured in to have a look around when an elderly man asked us if we wanted a brief history of Inca culture. Sure, I thought, it couldn’t hurt. There didn’t seem to be that many books, so he coudn’t possibly keep us there for long in such a perfunctory library.

Two hours later, when we signed the guest book and headed out, I began to fully comprehend the wealth of information in the library. Interestingly enough, the knowledge wasn’t in the shoddily laminated photographs, the well-worn book covers, or the few glossy coffee table books scattered on the shelves. The historian, Rubén, was the greatest asset that the library had.

Rubén invited us to sit down across from him at a formica table built for 10. I later learned that he had purposefully chosen not to sit at the center of either long side, nor at the head or foot of the table. He explained that in the tradition of Inca culture, the symbolism of placement is very important. He wanted us to feel welcome, and not as if he were the leader or most powerful person at the table. We were there for a conversation, for learning, and he did not want to appear imposing. At first, the discussion was much more one-sided, with a brief explanation of Inca symbolism and holy imagery.

Then, Rubén began to speak more holistically about Inca culture, and the influence that it still has in many people’s lives. In our first few months in South America, we came across very few indigenous people. The Spaniards pretty much wiped out Argentina, leaving the country open for European settlement. Now that we’ve moved further north, some of the things that the historian had to say make a lot of sense. It was fascinating to hear talk of unity and progress from a bookish old man in a museum; his advice about looking for similarities in people, rather than differences, was a sentiment that caught me off guard. I have tried to do so in my travels, but I confess that at times I feel more of an outsider than a compañera or hermana. It is difficult to blend in when all eyes notice the blonde hair and pale skin that marks me as different. One would think that after living in Miami and being a minority in the workplace I would be more prepared to look different, to be the odd one out, but I haven’t been. Salta was a transition for us, moving from the Big City to the Country, from westernized society to the Old World. Rubén’s advice about traveling and communities has been invaluable to me. I needed a brush up on my grade-school knowledge of American (not just US) history, and I needed to remember that one of the best tools the human mind has is its ability to change perspective. An active citizen of the world must constantly reevaluate his or her perception of the world, because it is most certainly not the only possible interpretation. You’re supposed to do this when you travel, yet at times it becomes difficult: habits are hard to break; there is comfort in routine and familiarity. In order to get to know new places, I’ve learned that you have to open your mind to different people and different points of view.

A lovely new perspective, worthy of Salta la Linda, is Rubén’s description of the Inca concept of time. I don’t think that it is particularly revolutionary, nor will is transform my way of life, but it is something different. The way he described the passage of time is that the past lies in front of you and the future behind. Puzzling? Paradoxical? Perhaps. All shall be revealed. As one walks forward, one uses history, prior knowlege, and one’s ancestors as the foundation for your path. Thus, you go up and around supported by your past. Eventually, though you never see it, you reach the future when you flip over again. It’s a bit like being on a mouse-wheel, but it’s you that’s turning, and not the wheel. An upward spiral. It’s quite different than the convenient time-line modeled in history books. For Rubén this paradigm is patently obvious. “You can’t see your future, right? Then why should it be in front of you? It is behind.” Of course, it all makes sense now.

I have a feeling that this trip, I will need to do quite a lot more thinking about my past in order to start working on my future. Having epiphanies about how little you know is not extraordinarily exceptional: humanity’s ambivalence between insignificance and dominion is part of modernity. What was extroardinary about our visit to the museum was that it filled me with a sense of purpose. With a calm but solid certainty, Rubén told us that it wasn’t chance that brought us into the museum, and that not everyone is willing to hear or lear about different cultures. I was beginning to feel a little directionless, even aimless in our travels, but to have a stranger look me in the eye and tell me “You have a purpose” was pretty heady. Even if all Rubén told us was that we should listen to other people and share our views along the road, these simple things were now embued with meaning, with significance. That simple fact gave me bit of comfort and made me feel less frivolous, less of the dreaded “tourist.” Trite, perhaps, but it made me feel better. We are engaged in a task of making connections and finding interesting places, which seems a whole lot more rewarding than being “on vacation.” I now have a mission, a task; not only do I bring commerce, luggage, and incovenience: I bring ideas, curiosity, change, and possibly understanding.

¿Qué linda, no?

Y Cordoba...?

Hmm. On the road. Our epic journey around the Southern Cone kicked off with both bang and bust. We made it out of our apartment, said goodbye to Borges and Palermo with one last meal from the pasta shop. The owner gave us a smile and free dessert, totally making my day and making up for the unorganized and less-friendly real estate company. Empanadas in hand, we taxi-ed over to the Estación de Omnibus with an elderly gentlman who remenisced about childhood language lessons and British accents. Not a bad way to leave the city.

Our bus ticket ended up being not one, not two, but THREE TIMES more expensive than either guidebook predicted, and I have a sinking feeling that all subsequent trips are going to be similar. I refuse to believe that the price of gas and travel has gone up that much in the past six months, and maintain that we are beings screwed in some way that remains unexplained.

Riding high in the second story of our Bus-Cama, we left Buenos Aires after the sun set and drove on into the night. Sleep was fitful, as can be expected, so the glowing sunrise woke us up somewhere in the countryside. The entire skyline was aglow with oranges and purples, but I just didn't have the energy to enjoy it.

A much less cheery taxi driver drove us to our hostel at 7:00 am this morning, supposedly dumping us off a block away. Try 5. Then, the room that we had reserved over a week in advance, and had received not one, not two, not three, but FOUR irrelevant follow-up confirmation emails was not there. Instead, we were given a room with a "private bathroom" read: strange partition with a 3.5 inch metal door which only opens from the outside. It's like showering in a safe, only it's meant to keep you in. I chose to douse the floor of our dormitory-style bedroom with water rather than be interred in a watery lock-box. Then, my shower ran out of cold water, scalding my tired body at 10:00 am when we finally were able to check into the hotel. Córdoba Backpackers Hostel is NOT on my list of favorite places right now.

The only minutely redeeming quality is the Wi-Fi connection...but it's only available in building #1, across the fucking street from our room! Ridiculous.

The city of Córdoba itself, much like its European counterpart, is a mixture of University town and old cathedrals. The Muslims and Catholics built the old one, but the Jesuits built the new one. It's a pretty city, smaller and a little less classy than the Capital Federal, but it grows on you.

In need of a pick-me-up after the disappointing morning, D and I hopped over to the mall for a little 007 action, just in time to catch the Argentinian premimer of Casino Royale. Loved the new Bond, loved the action, thought the styling was cheesy and trashy. What kind of Monte Carlo croupier would wear a satin vest embroidered with playing cards? We're not in Vegas here.

We followed our North American dose of pop with South American culture, visiting the small but interesting Regional Museum of Bellas Artes. Not a bad finish to the day, in which we went tragically over budget for the first time.

With a good dinner inside of me, and a good night's rest (on cardboard pillows, damn you Cordoba Backpackers), everything should be happier. Can't wait for Salta!
I miss Bs. As. already

Adventures in Dining, Take III: AKA Thanksgiving

On our way home from the pasta store one night, we came across a market with fresh lettuce. Entranced by the prospect of a fresh green salad, something I had not had in weeks, I immediately grabbed a head of greenleaf and some delicious baby radishes to go with it. While I surveyed the flora, Dave gravitated towards the fauna. A scribbled sign in half uppercase half lowercase letters read “Hay corDero PATAgONICO.” “We have Patagonian lamb.” One thing that I have learned is that when a small neighborhood restaurant, cafe, or market has a sign saying “We have ______,” it is generally a good idea to try the _______.

Still skeptical, I came over to the other register after purchasing my veggies from a tired looking middle aged woman. Dave had expressed his desire for the lamb, and was trying to figure out what cut to purchase. We almost ended up with a full rack before we understood that he couldn’t cut it up into smaller pieces. After a little chatting, we settled on what he called the ribs and flank, somehow containing the loin. Whatever the heck it is, it can’t be bad. “This is the tastiest part, I promise,” he assured us. “It’s what my wife likes to have for dinner. It’s got the most flavor.” Well, with those recommendations, I was willing to give it a go.

We put the marbled mass of meat into our fridge and forgot about it for 24 hours. While it defrosted, we called our families for Thanksgiving lamenting the absence of turkey, then planned the next day’s activities: a foray into Palermo Alto and the Museum of Decorative Arts.

After an early morning yoga class and an hour walk, we arrived at the Museo fairly exhausted. What I expected to be a catalogue of furnishings and functional decoration was actually just some rich family’s mansion that had been preserved since the 1940’s. Full of Japanese and french ceramics it was, but a museum it was not. Not much to learn, not much to read about, and opressive guards hovered over us through every room. Come on people, I’m not going to steal a vase, break an urn, or get my greasy fingers on a painting. Give me some space! Dave said that their hyper vigilance was due to my new hot dress, but I remained unconvinced. The female docent skulked about behind me as well.

Tired, hungry, and not a little bit disappointed, we began to pick our way back through smaller streets to avoid the clouds of bus exhaust that shimmer ironically in the afternoon glow, in this city of buenos aires. Then suddenly through the pristine window display I spied racks of the one thing that could counteract disappointment and despair: chocolate truffles.

The purveyor of said delicacies was one Agatha Chocolates, a small enterprise in Alto Palermo. It was the truffles that brought us in, but we left with more than a box of chocolates. Two individually wrapped mousses swayed home in a cardboard pyramid to accompany our Patagonian friend. We chatted with the manager/owner/baker for a while, and D got to practice his Spanish. A week later, she not only recognized us, but asked how the lamb turned out. Ten points for nice people, I say. She even remembered which desserts we had tried, so that we could have new ones on our return visit. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t remember her name.

Refreshed by the expectation of our upcoming meal, our steps were much more lively on the last leg of our walk home; we waited anxiously for the elevator that would bring us up to our 6th floor mini-kitchen so that we could get started.

I took the lamb out of its wrappings, mystified by layers of marble whiteness. Through the middle of the cut of meat was a cylindrical mass of solid fat that was so thick I assumed it was bone. When my knife went through it, I decided that I had better reevaluate my cleaning strategies. Lamb is a meat that has until now remained outside my culinary repertoire. This is probably due to the fact that it is difficult to obtain good quality meat, and that it’s not exactly mainstream in American culture. Since the Indians and Caribbeans love it so, it must be good.

This lamb was an experimental foray into the world of sheep meat, as well as an impromptu anatomy lesson. One thing that I love about cooking with meat is that it forces you to pay attention to the way that organisms are structured; how they move; where bones and muscle meet; and what part of the body you’re trying to cook. Upon unwrapping the baffling tube of fat, I discovered a kidney. Not quite daring enough to try riñon, I decided that the offal had better remain in in the hands of professionals. Once I navigated the labyrinth of ribs, loin, and flank, we decided that simple was best: salt, pepper, and oil. The only ornaments to our main dish were a couple of garlic cloves stuck in what seemed like appropriate locations and a couple of potatoes thrown in the roasting pan. The whole shebang went into our oven.

A moment, please, for our oven. The poor thing was already in its death throes when we arrived in the apartment, dropping the bottom drawer the first time we walked by it. When we opened the door to heat up a delicious tarta from the bakery, a screw snapped out of its holder and the door handle clanged to the floor. Our landlord rather nonchalantly told us he would fix these things, but I was skeptical. A day or two later, the knob that controls the oven temperature cracked while we were trying to turn the heat down. By the time we were ready to cook the lamb, the oven had three settings: pilot light (press in metal rod with leatherman pliers while waving lighted match over tube pouring out gas), high (metal rod turned 180 degrees to absolute minimum gas output), and inferno (any other setting).

Not having had much experience with the testy oven, I tried out the lamb somewhere between hot-as-hell and inferno, planning to reduce the heat and slow-roast the small piece of meat. Seven minutes later, beckoned into the kitchen by the hissing sound of boiling fat, I tried in vain to cool down the oven, but all that was left of the controls was a metal rod connected by...metal wires...to a metal fucking oven! You don’t have be a superb physicist to remember that all of these objects conduct heat. With two dish towels, the pliers, and every single open window, we managed to save the lamb from what I thought was utter ruin. An undetermined amount of time later, after cooking in undertermined thermal conditions, I trepidaciously removed the still searing pan and set it on the stove to rest.

Meanwhile I prepared the first green salad we’d had in nearly a week, delighting in the cool crispness of the radishes in the sauna that our kitchen became after roasting the lamb. We had no sauce save some apricot jam that we were using for toast, and no time to prepare anything fancier; the trip to the museum pushed our dinner back into Buenos Aires time, so we were starving.

D hastily cleared the table of our bags, notes, and books, lit the candles and we sat our weary, dusty bodies down for dinner at last. I am often amazed at how the simplest dishes can produce the most splendid and complex flavors. The lamb was rich, flavorful and for lack of another word: meaty. It wasn’t overcooked, despite the crispy outside, and the sweetness of the apricots was perfectly complimented with the occasional crunch of a a salt crystal or the sporadic clove of roasted garlic. There was silence for a few moments at the table, accompanied by various mumbles of surprise and pleasure from greasy lips as we savored our lamb and gave thanks to the small fluffy beast in Patagonia who made our meal possible.

When we could eat no more, we refilled our glasses, took a break with a salad, and relaxed for a while in contemplation of the third act: dessert.

The pyramid came out of the refrigerator, and we unfolded its sides to reveal an oval of dark chocolate mousse with brownie crust and a short cylinder of mascarpone crowned with a huge blackberry. It is difficult to describe how incredibly happy it made me to have a dessert worthy of our lamb, for truly thes were divine. Not only were the mousses rich and fluffy, but each had in its center a complementary fruit coulis. Sour raspberry to compete with the dark chocolate, and sweet luscious blackberry to sink into the delicate italian cream.

Satisfied now from our gastronomic exploits, our belated Thanksgiving came to a close. It was truly a providential meal, thrown together from supplies and courses that we stumbled upon, or would never had found if it had not been for someone’s friendly advice. We had many people to thank that day: the gregarious butcher, the designer of the all-purpose-ever-useful leatherman, and the Agatha lady. Indulging in a little tentative self-congratulation, we also thanked ourselves, for daring to pack up our lives and leave ourselves open to the possibility of such a dinner. Not every day of our journey was or will be fantastic. There are times when nothing seems to meet expectations, but those moments tend not to last, or they are destined to be conquered by other more memorable pleasures. In this case, as it often is for me, the meal turned out to be our neighborhood’s way of making up for an unexpectedly disagreeable day. M.F.K. Fisher had it right: “At the end of the day you know fate cannot harm you, for you have dined.”

It was a foreign Thanksgiving, not on the last Thursday of November, but celebrated with the very best spirit of our very American holiday. An appropriate mix of cultures, styles, and flavors for this particular year. The sense of providence that the evening produced reminded me that I truly have much to be thankful for. I am on an adventure, running around the world with someone I love, and the people that I love back home will be there when I get back, so I can’t get too lonely.