Today, we made a long overdue addition to the sidebar of the blog. No longer are you limited to reading just Michele’s tweets, but now you can also find mine there as well.
Twice the entertainment! Twice the fun!
(I’ve saved the ridiculously lengthy story of how I put multiple twitter widgets in a WordPress sidebar for my own blog.)
Whenever our land line rings in the house after 10:30 or 11:00 pm, I always shout, “It’s China calling” before answering the telephone.
Why would China be calling me? Because the girls are taking their Mandarin lessons from a school in Beijing!
The marvels of modern technology are spurring very interesting businesses. There is a school in Beijing called eChineseLearning. They offer one-on-one classes at a very affordable rate, the catch is, you use video over Skype to meet with your teacher.
So twice a week, the Zs park their pale butts in front of my MacBook Pro and answer a Skype call from Beijing for their Chinese lesson. The teacher has a whiteboard behind her for drawing characters, she interacts with Zoe and Zelda using props and games, and she also writes words in the Skype chat interface using both pinyin and characters.
I was skeptical at first, but it’s really almost exactly like one-on-one tutoring. A side benefit that we didn’t anticipate: because we are using Skype in our own home, there are no other time sinks associated with the lessons — no transportation to another location, no showering and getting dressed nicely, no straightening up for an in-house tutor…it’s great!
Lastly, I must wax enthusiastic about my FAVORITE online Chinese dictionary. They present clear, large characters (both simplified and traditional) that can be played over audio if you aren’t sure how to pronounce the word. There also are animated stroke-by-stroke videos for how to draw every character. Wow.
This is our go-to parilla, blessed in all of its food, probably because it is located underneath a church just off of Libertador. We learned about it from a commenter who used to live in Argentina. This place is truly a mainstay for us. The meat is wonderful, they have a ginormous salad bar, the prices are reasonable, the atmosphere is classy, it is not touristy, there is seating for smokers as well as non-smokers (not really a plus for me, but you smokers will be happy). The only knock would be the desserts, which we have learned to avoid. Go out for helado afterward.
If you have friends or family in town and want them to experience old-world Argentinian service in a classic parilla, this is where you should bring them. Ian used to live in the building next door and would routinely witness VIPs arriving, such as police escorted buses bringing the national fútbol team to eat at the restaurant. The meat we had here was truly wonderful, and we were very pleasantly surprised by their caprese salad (astonishingly fresh vine-ripened tomatoes). The service also was well executed…all in all we quite enjoyed it. More good news, they have recently expanded, so it’s a much easier to gain a seat. In the area of the dining room where we enjoyed or meal, all of the patrons appeared to be Porteños.
This parilla in Palermo Soho would receive my vote for most overrated in the city. It is in every guidebook and is overrun with tourists. Pictured above is the lomito, which I ordered, and after Zelda tasted it she announced, “Mommy’s meat is watery.” She was right. As you can see in the photo, they have flashy presentation, but it falls flat when it comes to execution. Each main course is served with various inedible condiments, including peas in some sort of a mayonnaise sauce, a ketchup-mayonnaise sauce, an onion relish, a bit of hearts of palm, garlic potatoes (uber garlic flavor), and carrot and potatoes in mayonnaise. We disliked all of the condiments and hated to waste the food. Every table also receives a round platter filled with more circular little condiment bowls containing other small dishes, most of which we disliked as well. I would have much preferred to get rid of every little condiment bowl on the table and eaten an ensalada mixta instead. The servings are HUGE, one could easily split an entree between two adults. On the plus side, they end your meal with a nice flute of champagne!
In order to combat my all too common tendency to swear a blue streak, I have cemented a deal with Zoe and Zelda. For the next month, every time I curse, I owe them 5 cents (they were savvy enough to make sure we were talking $US coinage).
The catch is that they have to witness the swearing and they have to track it with their own log sheets that they design.
They embraced this task as if they were in hall monitor heaven! They were both very thorough about cataloging what constitutes a swear word. It turns out, this was important because they like to indicate which curse word I have uttered on their log sheets (I have no idea why). Happily, they only know four curse words: the a-word (ass), the s-word (shit), the f-word (well, that speaks for itself) and the b-word (bitch, which I only use as a substitute for “whine,” such as, “quit bitching about…”).
If you click on the photo above, you will see on their log sheets that I already owe them 10 cents, which was for the use of the f-word and the s-word. In all fairness, I said these two swear words yesterday when Zoe dropped a knife off of the stairs from the second floor that flew, point down, through the atrium, at an alarming rate of speed right past my ear, which was attached to my head on the first floor! I’m starting to wonder if she did it on purpose to provoke swearing… .
Okay, we’re not really technically on TV, but our video interview for ClarÃn was posted online, along with an article that was also in the print edition of the paper, all of which served to give us the same feeling as being on the tube!
Our interview was conducted by two Columbia School of Journalism grads named Sandra and Karen (from Mexico and New York, respectively). They are currently working on an internship for ClarÃn (one of the big papers in Buenos Aires). Originally, they were pursuing the hot rumor around the city of the mass exodus of financial weenies leaving NY and coming to Buenos Aires because it’s so affordable. But, as they began digging…and digging, they could find nary a financial person seeking refuge in the warm bosom of Porteño hospitality.
What the hell does that have to do with us? Well, what our two intrepid scriveners did find were expats that had relocated to Argentina in advance of the crisis (as the financial meltdown is called here), which is where we came in!
Follow the link above to see the interview and read the article in Spanish. (It’s kind of funny with Google Translate!)
We have been wanting to enroll the girls in some tennis lessons here as an alternative to the soccer and baseball that they miss back home. As a part of that, we checked out various tennis clubs in Buenos Aires.
One such tour was of the Vilas Club, as in Guillermo Vilas, as in the totally hot tennis player women thew themselves at many decades ago. (I thought he was cool in my preteen tennis fanatic days, but my heart belonged to John McEnroe.) Well, needless to say, the Vilas club is as slick and good looking as its namesake was in his heyday.
The staff very nicely shepherded us around the immaculate clay courts, beautiful restaurants, lovely gym, and gorgeous grounds. At the end, they hit us with the price. I credit my workout schedule with keeping me upright.
Let’s just say, for a family that only wants a few hours of tennis lessons a week for the kids, it was a bit steep.
The positive result of our Vilas Club meanderings is that we now have a whole new inflated metric against which we judge all expenses. We can happily commit ourselves to any and all activities by noting, “Hey, it’s much cheaper than the Vilas Club!”…like we were ever actually going to join in the first place.
It has taken us about a month to transition the kids to our new worldschooling schedule:
06:15: Get up for school.
07:15: Leave for school.
12:15: Pick them up from school.
14:00: Worldschool begins.
17:00: Worldschool ends.
18:00: We eat dinner.
20:00: Bedtime for the Zs.
The basic idea of the schedule is to secure the girls enough rest so they can be happy little non-growly citizens of our home. “Hooray, we have achieved our goal.”
But this Friday night, Tom saw the downside of “hooray.” It seems that our daughters have acclimated to our weanie American schedule so completely that they can no longer make it through a regular Argentinian meal!
Poor Tom has been dying to go out to a genuine restaurant (which means it opens for dinner at 8:00 or 8:30 pm) for the last few weeks. Unfortunately, it is pretty much out of the question during the week, or we ruin the aforementioned worldschooling schedule. Tonight though, he managed to wrangle Zelda and I out the door (Zoe was at a sleepover) for the real deal. After wandering around our neighborhood, we ended up seated at a nicely decorated little joint staring across the table at a passed out little girl who had completely lost her appetite and her ability to form coherent sentences.
Tom is now in mourning over the loss of eating out at nice restaurants as a regular family option in our lives, probably even on the weekends. But, he is perking up over his new plan: attempt finer dining at lunch on the weekends instead!
I’ve witnessed my first robbery here in Buenos Aires. I was sitting at a cafe (inside) next to the windows overlooking the sidewalk tables on a street-corner in the neighborhood of Palermo.
A nondescript young man walking by on the sidewalk snatched a purse from under one of the umbrella-covered sidewalk tables, and then ran off to a motorcycle that had just driven up to the corner and was awaiting the thief. The absconder, once he had the purse in hand, really turned on the jets and managed to execute quite a leap onto the back of the getaway motorcycle.
Stunned silence reigned in the restaurant as the two-wheeled vehicle sped off. Every woman in the place, inside and out, clutched their purses to their bodies for the rest of their meal.
Grillmaster Tom brings you this recap.
Sunday is the traditional day for asado in Argentina. As parties go, this one has a pretty simple formula: start a fire, grill up a big pile of meat, hang out with family and friends for the afternoon, and eat until you are no longer able to move.
Our current apartment comes complete with a beautiful parilla, and we’ve hosted one asado already. But, on that occasion, my duties involved nothing more than making the salad, since our friend Dani expertly handled all of the grilling. For various reasons, I had not yet taken the helm of the parilla. I had not yet assumed the role of asador.
(To my mind’s ear, “asador” is always said with great drama. Think “matador” and say it with a flourish and, perhaps, a stamping of your foot.)
Why the hesitation to grill?
For one, you can’t start grilling until you’ve got some meat, and I’m intimidated by the butcher. Even in the US, I never looked forward to buying meat. I would often go marching up to the meat counter, recipe from Cook’s Illustrated in hand, and explain that I was looking for a specific cut. (Cook’s Illustrated has very strong opinions on which cuts are best for their recipes.) The butcher would then tell me they didn’t have said cut and look at me like I was crazy for asking.
And, that was in English! Here, I get to do the whole song and dance in broken Castellano and pantomime.
Furthermore, I’m totally spoiled by my gas grill in the US. Press a button and you’re ready to cook ten minutes later. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a push-button parilla. Oh no, you’ve got to go all primitive and caveman-like and get a fire started using nothing more than matches and a bag of charcoal.
Since I had no kindling, no lighter fluid, and little experience, I was concerned about my fire-starting skills. Could I really set the charcoal ablaze with some scrap paper and an empty Fruit Loops box? At first, it didn’t look too promising. Zoe offered to help by throwing dried leaves onto the top of the fire, and while that pleased the inner pyromaniac in both of us, it didn’t make the slightest difference to actually getting the charcoal lit.
In the end, Zoe saved the day. She spotted a few dead branches caught in the tree that overhangs our terrace, and using a rope she got at a knot-tying demonstration, she was able to lasso several and pull them down. We broke up the branches, created a little teepee of twigs, and pretty soon we had a roaring fire going.
With that problem solved, I started grilling. And, I didn’t really know when to stop. As the photos show, for just a family of four, I grilled a lot of meat. (We call that having an asado, Ian-style, since he started the family tradition of buying way too much meat for the occasion.)
The results from my first outing as asador:
* Chicken. Perfectly done. Mostly due to Michele’s brining and her expertly prepared wet rub of cumin, lemon, garlic, olive oil and chilies.
* Bife de Chorizo. (New York Strip Steak) Sadly, these were a little over-done. In Argentina, they would call this level of cooking a punto. They definitely were not jugoso (rare). Obviously, I was paying too much attention to chowing down on the chicken at the time, and not enough to my steaks still on the grill.
* Pork Roast. This was the wild card. I’m not even sure what cut of pork this is, and since we were all too stuffed with beef and chicken to eat any more, we just wrapped it up and put it in the fridge. Hopefully, it can form the basis of a leftover dinner later this week.
All in all, not too bad for a first attempt.
Zoe’s 4th grade classmates have the most fabulous parents, who collectively save our ass on a regular basis as we muddle through the ins and outs of school: parties, musical instruments, school supplies, field day, hockey equipment, transportation problems, holidays, etc.
On the birthday party front, these amazing parents mobilize and collect $25 pesos per classmate per party, giving the total cash haul to the birthday parent to spend at their discretion for something big that the birthday child actually wants.
When the fabulous fourth-grade parents discovered that Zoe’s birthday occurred over the summer holiday in December 2008, they banded together and raised her gift money (and the kids made her a card too), which they handed off to us last week. It was such a lovely belated birthday surprise.
The result, she got a Star Wars Rogue Shadow Lego set, which she spent all weekend putting together! (The actual craft she assembled is pictured above with space background.) She adores it.
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