el día feriado de San Martín

Leaving the city! Argentina is known for their bbqs or "asados". Its like an all day event where food just keeps coming and coming and you drink wine with family and friends. Sooo luckily, we got invited to one on Monday! Monday was a holiday in honor of General San Martín, so 10 of us went down to Ro's dads house in the country right outside of Capital.(Buenos Aires is the name for the province and the city, but the people call the actual city, Capital Federal.)It was so beautiful!!

Their house is on this old estancia which is kind of like an old plantation- minus the slaves. Usually on an estancia theres an old mansion with a little side house for servants and horses on a huge huge piece of land basically, with trees and hills, really nice. Now, Its a gated country-club type neighborhood with a few houses spread out on the land. Very cool. Luckily the weather was super nice because the day before it had been freezing and raining, but now it was sunny with blue skies. They had tables set up outside on the terraza and the vines hanging above us provided a little bit of shade from the sun.

So... the food starting coming... all day long it came. First we started with Venezuelan arepas with ham and cheese. An arepa is kinda like a tortilla mixed with a biscuit made from special Venezuelan flour.

Then Ro's dad came home and lit up the grill. When I say lit up, its not like you have a little gas thing and you just light a match. But, theres this whole "make the coals" process and you have them in a pile on one side and then you move them to the other side to cook with and thats the side you put the food on. You put the food on the grill and you wheel the grill down towards the coles depending on how close you want the food to the heat. Theres a process to it. While the coals were heating up, we took a walk through the neighborhood and the fields. There was all sorts of nature going on- cherry trees, lime trees, pomegranite trees, kumquat trees.

When we got back her dad was ready to go, he had everything on the grill! Red peppers, provoleta with oregano (its really common down here to grill a big circle of Provoleta cheese), squash, sausage, vacio which is like the side by the ribs, filet mignon, morcillo- I have no idea where that comes from, there was pork, blood sausage- not a fan, and then sweet bread which is funky, its this weird texture and I think it comes from the glands of the cow. Oh! and I tried tongue!! Cow tongue - it was soaked in oil and some kind of herbs and you just pick one out of the bowl and thats it! Ew, it wasnt bad - just the thought of eating the tongue of a cow was too much to handle. So was the idea of eating cow glands- that was odd.

This is me, unsure about eating "the tongue":

He served us in rounds, started off with one thing gave everyone a little piece and then brought out the next thing as it was ready . Way too much food, most of us called it quits and just drank wine . But the dad loved Bryan so Bryan never told him to stop putting food on his plate haha I think he ate 3 times as much as I did. The bbq part lasted a couple of hours. I wish you couldve tasted the pork. Good is an understatement, great is too... Then we took another long walk. The asados really are just like all day eating events split up by long walks so your food digests easier.

We got back and sat around the fire in the living room. Thennnnn round 5 came and it was dessert and coffee. Mmm dessert. It was so good- since they're argentine, everything had a little bit of Dulce de Leche in it. Its like, when in doubt, add Dulce. After that Ro brought out this big box of old Argentine song books and gave one to everyone, apparently they sing a lot. It was like a book of Christmas carols, but instead of carols they were old old Argentine folk songs. Her dad brought busted out his guitar and we sang songs for a couple of hours. haha seriously, jammed. It was fun, intersting. The Baros family never sings in circles, so it was different Everyone knew the songs already except me Sol and Bryan so we just read the lyrics.

When I thought it was all over, round 6 came- mate and pastries. Mate (mah-tay) is a very popular drink down here. The people drink it allll the time, its very common. Its a hot caffeinated herbal drink that you drink from a hollowed-out squash shell. You put the herbs in the shell, put in your special straw that keeps out the leaves, add hot water and sugar.. thats it. One cup is used for the whole group, you drink your portion, add more water and sugar, and pass it to the next. The leaves have so much flavor that its pointless for everyone to get their own.

The asado was so much fun, a very very Argentine experience. haha I know everything Im doing down here is an Argentine experience, but the asado was a more traditional thing, ya know. Oh! and Winston got to come :) I think he ate more meat than I did and he ran free through the fields, so Im sure he probably had the most fun out of everyone. We went back later that night and I woke up still full the next day :)

This is a video of Ro's dad singing: