Lunes Noche Futbol Americano

Hopes were so high at the beginning. Lunes Noche Futbol Americano. The Mauros hosted with an asado de pollo and things were lovely at the start, tasting champagnes, preparing for the Redskins to dazzle in front of the home crowd.

A new play-caller for the Redskins. Radioing plays into the offensive coordinator. Who then relays them to the quarterback. All the while the head coach can listen in. How can it fail? Two minutes into the game, four plays and one Desean Jackson (drafted after Devin Thomas!) 67 yard reverse later things were grim.

It got sad very quickly. Very sad. Very quickly. One bright spot was the fantastic announcing, at one point the announcer asked if “La integridad de Jim Zorn vale 9 millones de dollars? Eso no se.” Also, our favorite sideline reporter was in action, John Sutcliffe (pictured below), providing in depth analysis live at the game! That’s big time for ESPN Deportes.

Our favorite football word by far is captura which means sack and can often be heard exclaimed “Captura! Captura!”. Unfortunately for us this happened many times in the game with Jason Campbell getting pummeled. The evening ended on a bright note with a solid 2^nd half ice cream delivery (not pictured) the flavors of chocolate amargo, dulce de leche granizado, frutas de bosques and mousse de limon were a perfect blend. Thank god next week is a bye week (and the wedding) so I don't have to worry about the Redskins for a while!

Vino Tasting

We were very fortunate that a friend of mine from Mendoza set us up with an awesome wine tasting yesterday. We are very lucky. He has been based in Mendoza for many years and is selling us wines from his personal collection at an awesome price. His buddy Ariel set up the tasting at Sr. Telmo, a small restaurant in San Telmo. The prize of the tasting were the reds, two wines by Carmelo Patti, one malbec and one Cabernet from 1999. Carmelo is fairly well known in Argentine wine circles for making really world class wines in relatively smaller batches. The wines we tasted are at a great place right now to be opened and enjoyed, maybe in their most ideal form (although you could wait a few more years I think). The corks showed that there had been no leakage in the last 10 years, they were nearly black on the bottom as opposed to red because of the time the wine had matured in the bottle.

Both reds were delightful—big ups to the Mauros for joining us for the afternoon tasting and sharing their cultured palates with us. In the end we are serving asado at the wedding and Carmelo’s Cabernet is just way too good to pass up, it’s a full bodied wine that is very big and very delicious, it’s more than I ever imagined I would serve as a wine at my wedding. Much props to Henri for the hook-up!

El Stan Gable

It takes a while to get used to the Stan Gable. In Argentina, unlike America, it is very popular to wear a sweater wrapped around your neck like Stan Gable did in the film Revenge of the Nerds. In Argentina though you will find all walks of life sporting the varsity look. It is ideal during the spring and fall when there are hot days and cool nights and you have that added flexibility. I took some action shots of various people rocking the Stan Gable, and included one pic of the original. Enjoy.

Palermo....Argentina's newest hero

The rain poured at the Stadium Monumental last night only to see Boca's Martin Palermo save Argentina from disaster in injury time. It was a game that Argentina had to win if they want to qualify for the World Cup, lowly Peru equalized at 1-1 in the waning minutes. It took an injury time winner from Palermo to put Argentina ahead in dramatic fashion. The place went absolutely nuts. We were in the first row thanks to some excellent credentials (big shout out Craig Mauro) and Ezequiel and I were soaked through by the end of the match. Picture below-- it may be tough to see-- is Real Madrid's Higuain leaping in the air to celebrate Argentina's first goal. Nice through ball by pablo Aimar to set him up.

Choripan + Ping-Pong Afuera = A Domingo of fun!

It was a beautiful Sunday this past Sunday in the Villa Tesei neighborhood of greater Buenos Aires. As a gift to one of Ileana's cousin's kids, we scooped (holla Marshall's!) a ping-pong set sans mesa that all fits in a small bag and you can set it up on whatever table you have to play on. We had a small table but it was awesome. Out in the driveway, the crosswinds forced strategic lobs and plenty of space to return slams. It was great. Above are pics of me playing with Ileana's cousin's husband Mariano (big Boca fan).

The menu was pretty simple, Choripan-- Argentinean sausage sandwiches-- along with some chimichurri. We sampled some wine for the wedding and had some cold Quilmes. We spent the whole day there. We watched River lose (their coach resigned the day before the game). And we watched Boca win-- on a ridiculous goal by Martin Palermo. The link to the goal is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_teuEWAm_Eg

Both teams are playing like mierda so it's all good!

Fotos de Comida

It was somewhat inevitable that this blog was going to focus on food at some point, however we found the ratio of salad to beef that we were served the other night to be hilarious. The salad sort of mocks itself as a tiny accompaniment to the massive bife de chorizo. This was at "Lo de Jesus", a small parilla/restaurant here in Palermo Viejo which was very nice. We went with our friends Craig and Maya who are engaged to be married sooner than we are (big shout out!).




For dessert we went with the "Volcan de Dule de Leche" which took about 25 minutes to make, and given that it was 1am on a Monday we were questioning our order. But when it emerged from the kitchen it was well worth the wait. Mostly because it actually resembled a volcano when we shoved a spoon into it. It was solid.




Lastly my work continues on developing my salsa criolla steak sauce at home. Ileana's dad taught me how to make it and it is constantly a work in progress. The one I made yesterday is mostly carrots, scallion, red pepper, garlic, celery all chopped up very fine. I bought a Patagonian spice blend at the market and I used the pepper mill to finely ground up the herbs and stuff and mixed it into the blend. We also bought a bottle of a very homemade olive oil from San Juan and filled the sucker up. Now if Ileana will let me use the parilla we will be in good shape!

We now have a casa

Good news, this week we finally moved into a bonafide home here in the Palermo Viejo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. The place is really nice, maybe a bit smaller than we first imagined, but really nice nonetheless, it has a big terrace which will be great as the weather improves. The address is 5168 Costa Rica between Godoy Cruz and Uriarte so it is only a few blocks away from where we originally planned to stay.

Yesterday we went shopping for cotillones with Ileana and her mom for the wedding. Cotillones are like the mardi gras style party favors and masks that they use for the weddings here. Usually at some point well into the evening they distribute all these masks, hats, feathers and stuff like that and then blast some samba music and everyone dances around and goes nuts.