Estancia (1st weekend of October)

Family, holidays, and preparing for the baby have occupied most of my time for a bit, but everything's on track now, so onward with the Argentina stories!

The asado lunch described in the October 9th post was at an estancia just outside of Buenos Aires. Estancias are traditionally cattle ranches with large houses that have been passed on from generation to generation in the same family. These days, though, they serve as bed and breakfasts for tourists who want to see the rural side of Argentina. Often, they're still working ranches, but much of their business becomes maintaining guest rooms, serving meals, and offering some sort of "authentic" entertainment (like horse-back riding).

Chad and I went to a family-owned estancia. The hour-long bus ride to the nearest town (Lujan) and the cab ride out to the property were less than thrilling, but they were worth it when we stepped out onto the grounds.
The main house was original construction from the 1800s, with stucco walls and vaulted ceilings inside. There they had the kitchen, the dining room, a bedroom for guests, and a room with a long conference table for guests who needed a meeting space. If you peaked into the green doors at the corner there, you could almost always find the owners, the cook, the cook's toddler daughter, and the four dogs relaxing.

Right across from the main building was a guest building that was added later, but it was still from the late 1800s - early 1900s. It had the same stucco walls, even higher vaulted ceilings, and it was decorated with all sorts of family heirloom nicknacks everywhere.

Antique mate mugs, crucifixes, lace needlepoint, silver bowls, dried flowers, and black and white photos were in every corner, so you almost felt like you were sleeping in some family member's bedroom. They kept a fire going in the fireplace the whole time we were there. Even though it was late spring in Argentina, the big stucco rooms were actually a little cold, so the fireplace was a great place for reading and warming our feet.
But the coolest room in the whole place? The library! The main library room was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that held antique Spanish classics, and there was a beautiful wooden rolling ladder - that they don't allow guests to play on... The entire library wing held over 40,000 books, most of them extremely valuable editions. The owner said the books were worth more than the rest of the estancia put together.

After the tour of the property, they served us asado (we were the only guests staying that weekend, so we had our own private lunch, as you saw in the October 9th post), and then we wandered the grounds a bit. The craziest thing - you know the calla lilies that we pay like $8-12 a piece for? They grow wild in Argentina! The estancia's sheep grazed on grass and calla lilies. Well, I think they were sheep. They kind of moved like a cross between a sheep and a dog...

Then we rode horses - yes, imagine a 6 month pregnant girl on a horse. Well, you'll have to imagine because we don't have any pictures, but Chad and I did indeed ride horses. It took a little convincing for them to hand the reigns over to me, but we described our experience with horses, that we had both ridden from young ages and such, and they let us out onto the ranch property by ourselves. We rode (mostly walking) through the cattle, and the dogs tagged along with us. The only bad part was that Argentine pastures have shallow ponds of standing water in them, which means they're giant breeding grounds for mosquitos. So, you had us, arms exposed, around dusk, walking our horses through mosquito land. There were definitely times we had to trot just to try to outrun the mosquitos, but in the end, we probably had 4-5 dozen bites each. It's a good thing we didn't get malaria or something. But it was fun. =)

Sadly, it turns out that Chad was massively allergic to something in those fields. By the time we were back in our room, he was pretty much dying, except not from the deliciousness of homemade dulce de leche this time, from blocked sinuses and a thumping headache. I gave him sudafed and allegra, but it was too late, and he was down and out for the rest of the evening. So, I ate dinner in the main house with the kindle. The owners and cook pretty much left me to myself because they didn't speak much English, and I didn't speak much Spanish. Then, the kindle and I spent a few hours by the fire and went to bed.

We left mid-morning the next day, so we had a little time to eat breakfast (tea, coffee, little toasts, and homemade jelly) and walk through the woods behind the house before heading back into town.

Where have I been for 2 months?! Well, sadly, I left my camera cord in Nashville between trips, and posting is much less fun without pictures, so I just didn't post at all. A little mean of me to leave you hanging, though!

What am I doing now? Well, I'm back in Nashville and decking the halls of our little duplex. Since I have to be in Nashville for Christmas, I'm making family come here to celebrate, which means this is also the first year I've ever actually been able to decorate for Christmas. That means I'm stretching my creative muscles to accomplish all sorts of feats, like this advent wreath. What was at one point a plain wreath, glass candle holders, last year's candles, pine cones, canned fake snow, and unshatterable ornaments is NOW an awesome advent wreath! Once the goods were purchased, total prep time was 20 minutes.
Christmas Project #1: Advent wreath - success!

What about all those Argentina pictures? Ah, yes, not to worry. I will post stories from Argentina, just as if I were still there. Give me a couple days to sort through my pictures, but here are a few events you can anticipate:

A peak into the French Embassy, a sight seldom granted by the gov't
Our weekend in Santiago during Chile's big victory over Columbia
A vineyard tour in Chile
A tour of downtown Buenos Aires
A culinary tour of Argentine food
A tour of the Casa Rosada ('Pink House,' equivalent to our White House)
Tango show in Buenos Aires
A weekend getaway to the beaches of Uruguay
The US Ambassador's residence
The only form of natural beauty I enjoyed in BA (it's a surprise)

Asado Lunch

Last weekend, Chad and I ventured to Lujan an hour outside of Buenos Aires to stay at an estancia, which is like a ranch. Many estancias advertise themselves as relaxing, bed and breakfast sorts of getaways, except the focus is on lunch. They typically serve asado, a series of different cuts of meat that have been slowly cooked on a grill or over an open fire. They also usually serve bread, sides, and a dessert, so you have one giant, delicious meal. I'll walk you through ours.


We began with classic South American carne empanadas. Chad and I have eaten a fair number of empanadas in Buenos Aires, so we've become trained in the ways of discerning the best. These empanadas had very good crusts, flaky, with a slightly crisp outer layer, and enough substance to hold the empanada together after being bitten into. The meat filling was pretty good, but it was mostly ground beef and lacked the spicy sauce and potato chunks that many other high quality carne empanadas have. So, satisfactory, but we didn't devote all our stomach space to empanadas.


Our first meat course was chorizo and morcillas. Chorizo is a spicy sausage, although South American chorizo is not as spicy as Spain's. This chorizo was quite tasty and had a lovely grilled crunch to the exterior. Morcillas are blood sausages, which both sound and look gross to me. It's made by cooking blood with some sort of filler, such as ground up pieces of pork and breadcrumbs. Most other countries have a version of morcilla. In Germany it's blutwurst; in the UK it's blood pudding; in Asia it's blood tofu or red tofu. I didn't even try it, but Chad assured me it was gross.


They also brought out salad at the same time. Well, they brought a bowl of lettuce and tomatoes, a bowl of spinach, a bowl of shredded carrots, a bowl of purple cabbage, a bowl of sliced radishes, a bowl of arugala and onions, and a little tray with olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, and half a lemon. I hadn't even realized how much I'd been craving a good salad. I had four helpings of salad, polishing off the bowls of lettuce, spinach, and carrots. This is a picture of Chad's salad, and you can't even see have the radishes on his plate. The oil/red wine vinegar/lemon combo was excellent - a great way to cut the fatty taste of the meat.


Then they brought what they simply called "asado." I'm not entirely sure which cut of meat this is, but it was de-double 'e'-licious. With the bone in and fatty juices all marinating inside and the crisp layer of charcoaled goodness outside, we definitely ate our fill. I will say it wasn't the most tender cut I've ever had, but, man, it was dripping flavor. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if they had just plucked the cow right out of their own pasture two days beforehand. I could almost taste the cow's willing sacrifice. (Weird, I don't care.)


For the final course of meat, they brought us what tasted quite similar to the previous course, but there was no bone. Chad and I agreed that this meat didn't have quite the same "bang" as the previous, maybe because of the lack of bone, but it was still tasty. We knew that we would have to preserve the last of our stomach space for desert, though, so we ate of this course sparingly.

Rich custard, a fluffy layer of meringue, drizzles of chocolate, and a bowl of warm dulce de leche with which to smother it all - oh.my.goodness. Dulce de leche is like a heavenly version caramel. Carmel is already wonderful, but imagine caramel dead, purified, and resurrected in heaven. That's dulce de leche. Or if you want to go Platonic, dulce de leche is like the Form and caramel its shadowy image. I realize that doesn't totally work because I'm on earth, so I couldn't have actually participated in heavenly things or Forms, but roll with the metaphor. If you've had "dulce de leche" from a can or plastic container or in a latte, that's not the real deal. The real deal comes from Milena, the genius cook at the estancia.

See? The dulce de leche actually was so good that Chad passed onto the next world. His last words were, "This dulce de leche is so good it's killing me. I'm dead." I brought him back, though, don't worry.

And, that, my friends, is a 2 1/2 hour asado lunch at an estancia in Argentina.