happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me.....

Hola!!!

Friday was my birthday, so I have been a bad blogger.

Thursday night, our friend Pierre (he's from France) invited Zig to play fútbol with this group he found out by the Centro Atomico. After, we went to his house to have dinner.  He was here for 5 weeks, so instead of staying in a hostel, he found a guy to stay with.  He's the one on the right sitting on that white thing. This guy was ridiculous.

He is from California, and left the US 6 years ago and has never returned. He "hates" the US and wants to get Argentinean citizenship. Except he seemed to be making no efforts to immerse himself in Argentinean culture at all. He spoke only English to all the Argentinean people at his house, and had a portable radio with a screen in it so he could watch movies while he was camping. How very authentically Argentinean of him. NOT.

Anyway, he was amazing dinner entertainment. He seemed to have smoked way too much Californian medicinal herbs. A few paraphrased quotes:

"DUDE, wouldn't it be awesome if you could cross a mango and an avocado??? That would be the BEST SALSA EVER." (As dad pointed out, you can do that in a blender. No genetic modification required.)

"DUDE, we need furniture in our house (see above picture and note lack of furniture). I'm totally going to install a jacuzzi in our living room." "What about your landlord," asks his friend. "He won't notice. I'll pour the concrete on cardboard so its removable! And I can drill a hole through the wall so it drains to the outside. Its going to be awesome!"  So then I decided to try to be helpful, "Well you should find the studs in the wall so you don't have trouble drilling."  "Oh there aren't any studs. Its a brick wall."

THEN, he said "The only problem is how I'm going to heat the water." THAT'S the only problem with this plan?? Your going to try to drill a hole through a brick wall without damaging it. You own no power tools. Or regular tools for that matter.

We were watching one of his extreme snowboarding videos on his tiny radio screen.  "DUDE, wouldn't it be awesome if you could jump out of a plane in one of those squirrel suits with skis and then land and ski down a mountain. Its never been done before, but its totally possible if you had those flexible skis. You could get up to like 250 miles per hour in one of those suits!!!"

Zig pointed out later that his story didn't make any sense because the maximum velocity of a human being falling out of an airplane couldn't be more then 150 miles per hour.  I pointed out that actually, his story didn't make any sense because you would definitely DIE if you slammed into a mountain at either 120 or 250 miles per hour. Aren't physicists cute.

"DUDE, wouldn't it be awesome if you could attach jet engines to a bi-plane. Then it would be super powerful, but also INFINITELY slow!!"

What? Ok, moving on....

Anyway, Pierre made some really tasty empanadas filled with French style vegetables. They were like ratatouille empanadas. We have since recreated them in our house.  I like them better then the other kind we've been making because they don't only contain cheese. I do love cheese though.

At midnight, Zig wished me a happy birthday. All of California guy's friends heard and they sang to me!! It was really nice. Then they asked me how old I was and called me a nena (which means little baby girl) because apparently they were all 30. I'd rather be a nena then a 30 year old with no furniture in his house.

Friday was my birthday!!! Zig had to go to class in the morning, so I stayed in my pajamas until 3 in the afternoon, as I usually try to do on my birthday.  Then when Zig came back, we went to a chocolate shop to have lots of cake and use the internet, courtesy of Neil and Kris Thomas (thanks!). We had three kinds: apple tart, some flaky dulce de leche thing, and chocolate mousse.  And two hot chocolates. The waiter practically called us fat when we ordered. I forgot to take a picture until we'd eaten most of it already. Here's the aftermath:

That evening we went to one of the few non-parilla restaurants in town, also on Neil and Kris Thomas (thanks again!!). Its called Tinto Bistro and apparently Queen Maxima's brother works there (she's the Queen of the Netherlands who is from Argentina).  We ordered a kind of random assortment of things that we hadn't gotten to eat in a while. Its going to sound weird, but it was really tasty.

Appetizer: Calamari and shrimp with wasabi mayonnaise (can't make it through a meal without that mayonnaise).

Salad: I had carpaccio (mmm tasty raw meat) and Zig had ceviche.

Main course: I had seafood cazuela (like stew) and Zig had chicken curry. Random.

Look at that plating! I miss scallops.

We also had pink champagne, as is my birthday custom. At the end, they brought us dessert with a candle in it! They didn't sing though, for which I was glad.

Another example of some fancy plating.

They also provided crayons for coloring on the paper table cloth.  I drew a flower!

Saturday, we went to a party that had nothing to do with my birthday but Zig said we could pretend that it did. It was at a house near Lago Gutierrez, which is very pretty.

The party was a hamburger asado. Look at all those topping options!! Most of the sauces contained mayonnaise of course.

We discovered that you can also buy LARGE bags of mustard and ketchup at the average Bariloche grocery store.

Yes, that bag is in fact the same size as the brita filter behind it.

All of our friends from the Centro Atomico were having this party so they could do "Amigo Invisible" which is like Secret Santa but not at Christmas.  We were not involved in the present giving because we weren't here when they drew names. It was really fun though and a good way to practice my Spanish because they had to describe the person they were going to give the gift too and everyone had to guess.

After they gave all the presents, the manly men played fútbol. I was told it was boys only. I'm sure I was heart broken. Zig tried to get me to hold his beer though, so I drank it. I'm nobody's beer girl.

Sunday morning we finally made my birthday cake. Red Velvet, my favorite!  Nicholas helped me find where to get red food coloring.  It took two tries.

First Attempt: Epic Fail.

Our oven heats from a fire in the bottom and has no temperature gauge. Also, I didn't use enough food coloring and we only have a clear cake pan. We had to scrape off all the sides because they were so badly burnt.  Also, we have yet to find buttermilk in the grocery store, but Cooks Illustrated says you can use 3 parts plain yogurt and 1 part milk.  We also have yet to find plain yogurt except for Activia, and I didn't want laxative cake. So we used vanilla. That may have contributed to the problem.

 Yuck.

Second Attempt: SUCCESS!

Even with poor buttermilk substitution, this cake was a vast improvement! I used ALL the rest of the food coloring, so it came out quite red. Zig and I ate half of it by ourselves and then has some people over to eat the rest. I'm a bad sharer. Once in Prague, I hid an entire cake under my bed so I didn't have to share. It was the famous St. Mark's Methodist Church Mrs. Massey Valentine's Day Banquet Coconut Cake. Aunt Suzanne mailed it to me. They wouldn't have appreciated its significance anyway.

 Zig got me candles and sang happy birthday!

Also, we lined the pan with tin foil so it only almost burned on the bottom. I outsmarted the oven.

Here’s a picture of Helga being weird.

 

 

Monday, after our major cake baking success, we decided to make banana bread. It didn’t even take two tries! Mmm tasty.

Monday afternoon, I went with Graciela to visit the community center where I will volunteer every Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon while I’m here. My first day was Tuesday, so I brought crepe paper flowers to make. There are four kids ages 9, 11, 13, and 13. We decorated the classroom!!
 

Apparently, crepe paper flowers do not take long enough to make.  When we ran out of activities, the 9-year old girl started giving me a hard time. For example, “Where do babies come from???” Ask your mother. “How old are you?” 23. “Jovencita!!” Your 9 years old!! Ridiculous.  Then she started calling the 11-year old girl a nena. She also figured out that if she talked fast enough, I had no idea what she was saying.  She’s quite the character.

If anyone knows of any crafts that will entertain 9-year old little girls for a full hour and a half, please let me know.

Last night, Zig and I decided to do some food related research for when my parents come.  As food related research can be a little expensive, I charged it. They had salmon which is my favorite food and I haven’t had it in ages and I got spoiled with good food on my birthday and you always want pictures of food and Zig made me do it!! Thanks mom and dad!

We had venison carpaccio, which was... gamey. Venison is a Lake District specialty apparently.

 

It actually wasn’t fantastic. The salmon was kind of weird. The restaurant wins though for looking like a hobbit hole.  I think I have a picture of the outside up on one of my earlier posts. Here’s the inside:

Dessert was pretty awesome though. Mmm chocolate.

Tomorrow our friend Dayna from Rice is coming to stay with us. She’s been living in Rio. We have an excuse to do some touristy things!! We’re going to a hippy market on Saturday and probably hiking some places the rest of the week.  We’ll see. I’ll take plenty of pictures.


Chau!