Out and About

The last few weeks have been full of what we like to vaguely call “cultural events” and apparently summer isn’t ready to give into fall yet.

I took in some films at BAFICI (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente).

My inner Poli Sci nerd was pleased to be able to understand the opening night film (nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar) about the 1988 plebiscite in Chile. The movie was about the campaign for “No” to keep Pinochet from ruling for 8 more years.

I also hopped over to the Four Seasons and got all fancy at Bar Pony Line for BA Food Week.

The horse in the suit doesn’t really do it for me.

In other horse-related news, there will be no more polo (of the Ralph Lauren variety) down here in Argentina. Nothing like a good old bribery scheme in customs to move things through.

“Ralph Lauren has since closed its operations in Argentina, which has unusually strict import controls and is considered a difficult place for American corporations to do business.”

Happy Wednesday.

I’m excited for…

1. This issue of Vogue when I can finally get my hands on it/ the Great Gatsby movie/ the soundtrack/ the trailer/ everything about this spectacle.

 

 

 

2. Cool mornings and warm days. If this is fall in Buenos Aires, I’ll take it.

 

3. New food blog perusing thanks to this article by Refinery29. With a title like “Dig In: 13 Life-Changing Food Blogs you Need to Know,” you’ve got me hooked.

 

4. Outside Lands 2013.

Warning, the lineup announcement video may make you dizzy.

 

Guess who’s back, back again?

I made it! I am back in Argentina with an entry stamp in my passport (so hopefully nobody will threaten to detain me this time) and lots of upcoming travel plans.

Obviously on my way out of SFO Terminal 2 I had to stop at one of the most wonderful food establishments ever imaginable and was all too excited to return to after my discovering it during my departure last July.

I had a few days in Buenos Aires to check out some things that I had on my “to do” list for last semester but didn’t quite accomplish. (I should say that my “to do” list is mostly restaurants…)

Bum around San Telmo NOT on a Sunday (AKA not being mobbed by mate and woven colorful things and tourists).

Hit up MAMBA (Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires.) Still have to say that MALBA is my reigning favorite museum of the city, but parts of this exhibit by Margarita Paksa were pretty cool.

Rorschach-like ink blots inserted over a map of the South Pole.

Cruise through Museo Evita, which I wasn’t able to see last December because, oh right, the power went out because everyone cranked up their noisy air conditioners when it suddenly became 90 degrees. I was especially interested to see quite a few of Evita’s dresses on display and was able to understand the museum a little bit more after being in Argentina for a while.

So I’d actually wear this, minus the hat.

Sweated through a class at BuenaOnda Yoga in Las Cañitas. Buena onda means good vibes, and I was definitely feeling it after some slow sun salutations and a lot of meditation.

And obviously I’ ve done some investigative eating too.

As usual, I couldn’t resist taking another suggestion from Pick Up the Fork and found myself in Centro craving a salad but without the usual heavy mayo dressing. Hello, BAKING BA.

Boom, enter Chicken Curry Salad. Almonds, seeds, curry, chicken, and a light dressing? Please.

But then, oh wait… you find out at the register why it’s called BAKING (yes, in uppercase).

I also wandered into Coco Marie, a bathing suit shop I had walked by plenty of times but never knew was hiding a secretly lovely restaurant in the back.

I think my favorite part was the witty menu (in Spanish, la carta means both “letter” and “menu”).

I’m excited for what the next 6 months have in store for me down in the Southern Hemisphere!

Cooks on Books on Books

Despite the fact that I may or may not have just bombed a midterm, I have managed to have a lovely week in Argentina involving doing what I do best: meandering around, eating a lot, and buying cookbooks. See evidence below.

Still haven’t made it to La Maison for Sunday brunch, but my spidey sense for restaurants perked up while meandering around Palermo Hollywood last Wednesday and I semi-creepily snapped this pic through the wrought-iron fence in front.

 

After some randomly very windy nights, it seems that the era of the jacarandas is coming to a close. Twas beautiful while it lasted.

 

Have recently become (un)healthfully obsessed with a very healthy salad (is that even possible) at Mooi, aptly called “El Detox.” Bring on the roasted squash, lentils, goat cheese, greens, sunflower seeds, and honey lemon dressing.

 

While taking a break from studying yesterday, I did what I normally do when I don’t feel like doing work–read food blogs. (Yes, people, that is actually how I procrastinate.)

The warm weather here in BA has me craving things like the nom-licious salad pictured above, so I scooted on over to one of my favorite sites, Sprouted Kitchen and perused and pinned to my heart’s content… until I spied a sidebar advertising her cookbook that I have almost purchased about 18397921 times. Yesterday was the day it finally made its way to my rapidly expanding collection of food photography/ cookbooks for my nonexistent coffee table in my nonexistent apartment.

 

The situation escalated started when Amazon SUGGESTED (yeah right) that given similar foodie customers’ preferences, I should also purchase the Smitten Kitchen cookbook (pshhhh, been there done that) AND that Australian gem Katie Davies’ newest creation: What Katie Ate: Recipes and Other Bits and Pieces. Oh boy, oh boy. How could I resist? (Answer: I didn’t.)

 

The checkout cart ended up also including Todd Selby’s second book, Edible Selby, (based on his NYT column of the same name) which is chock-full of photos and doodles and stories.

 

 

Now all I need to do is make it through one more exam and get cooking! Looking forward to testing some of these recipes out when I’m home for the holidays!

 

 

Día del Emprendedor and Dashi

Here comes another alphabet-friendly post!

On Thursday morning, I headed to 2 morning sessions of an all-day conference celebrating Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Remember that show Lie to Me? Pretty cool, right? An Argentine anthropologist who was consulted for that show and specializes in non-verbal communication gave a presentation all about body language at the 4th Annual Día del Emprendedor in Buenos Aires.

Get this: he used “nuestro amigo” Obama as a case study! Those crow’s feet have sure gotten more pronounced!

This free conference was in a beautiful and relatively new school smack dab in the middle of the city: UADE.

 

Dinner on Thursday night called for some bomb sushi at Dashi. Pictured below is a tsunami roll with a glob of wasabi that really actually was that large. Warning! They weirdly gave everyone their checks at midnight as the place turned back into a pumpkin AKA they turned all the lights on and put all the fish away…

 

 

Yesterday, some meandering around Palermo led me to the Argentine equivalent of the Anthropolgie home section: Pehache 1418. This place was stuffed with candles and couches and tea cups and cute signs and journals (I bought one which says MENTE LOCAAAAA on the front cover). I snapped this illegal photo (shhhh) just to remember how perfect it all was.

 

 

Happy weekend y’all!

 

Springtime!

Ironically just a day after I made a “Falling into Fall” board on Pinterest, BOOM here comes the sun (cue the Beatles music and your Ray Bans and erethang).

The change in the temperature has got me feeling a little funky, but I couldn’t help by being struck by all these colors and flowers in the past few days.

 

Fruit basking in the window of La Cresta.

 

 

Flowers!

 

 

A massive strawberry shortcake in the display case at Smeterling.

 

 

Now just look at that meringue!

 

 

 

A random rainbow pole. I dig.

 

 

May or may not have stolen one of these.

 

 

More awesome graffiti in Palermo.

 

 

Happier than a seagull with a french fry eating my fro yo from ZOG after a long day of work, reppin’ J.Crew like the East Coaster I have somewhat become, and people watching on a sunny day.

 

Here’s to a lovely weekend!

On Frida in the Bathroom, Social Entrepreneurship, and Breaking Bread

Today’s post is coming atcha from Bartola, a place in the vein of Casa Mua, Mooi, Pani, and all places very feminine and delicious and full of beautiful women eating dessert. It’s so hip in here I might never leave. Oops.

Here is my view from the corner table I have been staking out for the last 3.5 hours.

The whole place is full of really unique art, but I think this one in the bathroom is my favorite.

How can you not love this quirky doodle-y menu with cats and popcorn hearts?

An absolutely delicious chicken sandwich and ginger lemonade. Consumed around 2 PM.

An enormous and refreshing licuado of banana and blueberry. Consumed around 5:30 PM after I realized I had been monopolizing a corner table for 3.5 hours (sorry I’m not sorry).

Whilst nomming and people watching, I’ve also been working on a map of all the entries for a recent Ashoka Changemakers online competition, “El poder de los micros y pequeños emprendimientos.”

This challenge features a $10,000 USD prize financed by SAP for individuals with the most innovative strategies to help emerging entrepreneurs and small businesses to grow in marginalized communities. The map isn’t ready yet (it’s taking a while…), but you can read the entries here and vote for your favorite finalists starting October 22!

Aaaand last but not least I have one more cool thing to share! Every day receive an email from GOOD which features a few sentences about something really innovative and exciting that someone in the world is doing.

If you don’t know what GOOD is, their mission statement on their website is just wonderful, “GOOD is a global community of, by, and for pragmatic idealists working towards individual and collective progress.”

Anyhoo, in my The Daily Good newsletter the other day, the featured project was A Global Dinner Party to Save the World.

Basically the idea here is to sign up to host a dinner party on October 5 as part of a globally synchronized brainstorming session to talk about one of six challenges: data, poverty, the environment, health, or design. After some nomming with friends, you tell The Feast (the organization organizing the event) what you came up with. There is no prize for coming up with the solution to change the course of humankind, but rather a little bit of inspiration and incentive for meaningful conversation at the dinner table. What a lovely idea.

How Time Flies: 1 Month Check-In

This post is coming at you from my table at Mooi (surprising nobody) which is currently full of broccoli tarta, ginger tea and my laptop.

I can hardly believe that I’ve been here a month. These weeks in BsAs continue to tick by at lightning speed between class 3 days a week, my architecture class, my internship beginning soon, exploring museums, eating at extraordinary restaurants, meeting and making friends, reading in cafes for 4 hours, and more. I feel so lucky to be here and am learning a lot about how I function in a big city with large chunks of free time. I also have learned how much I appreciate just sitting with a person and talking to them for hours in a restaurant without any pressure from the waiter to leave or the impending doom of hundreds of pages of reading to do hanging over our heads while we complain about how tired we are. Essentially, although I’ve had quite a few bumps in the road health-wise this first month, I’m thrilled for what’s to come.

Anyhoo, enough with the diary entry. I’ve got some images from you acquired over the last few days.

First, I’ve received some requests (hey Dad) to feature things on this blog other than food. So, how about an update concerning my class at Centro Cultural Rojas?

This course that I signed up for (Arquitectura de Buenos aires: De la Aldea a la Metrópoli) has about 30 people in it and covers the period from the foundation of the city up until the 80s.

During the first class, the professor showed us some hilarious images of what European painters thought Buenos Aires looked like and then fast forwarded to some photos of the city as we know it today being constructed.

This photo was taken in 1937 and shows the construction of Avenida 9 de Julio. It is one of the widest streets in the world, with probably about 6 lanes going each way.

I sadly took this photo from Wikipedia, lo siento, but I don’t have a helicopter to get up there and show you how many cars can fit on this street at once.

Assorted Pensamientos

I would first like to share some photos that haven’t graced the pages of Middway yet, but that I feel deserve to be known by the ever-expanding group of lovely people who are reading my blog (thanks, guys!).

1. The Eva mural

This mural of the one, the only Eva Perón is located on Avenida 9 de julio and was installed last summer at the request of the one, the only Cristina Kirchner for the 59th anniversary of her death.

As I learned from this handy dandy article, this work of art was inspired by this mural of Che Guevara in La Habana, Cuba.

2. This thing

I know what you’re thinking. I know what I’m thinking. It’s the same thing. It could be abbreviated into 3 consonants.

This lovely lady was part of a very strange exhibit called ”Cuando los porteños tenían otras cosas en la cabeza” (when people from BsAs have other things on their heads) at El Museo de la Ciudad. My museum companion and I made the very novice mistake of believing that museum claiming to tell the secrets of the history of the city would be legit. But lo, there was one exhibit, and it was about hats. Just hats. Hats on hats. Hats on hats on hats.

I would next like to refer to this scary article I just read in La Nación about whether it is safe to eat fruit from trees growing in public parks here.

Coming from someone who needs an inhaler twice a day to not keel over from the poor air quality and humidity, this freaked the freak out of me. Just FYI for all your Midd kids here with me who think is Vermont in the fall and we can pick apples and eat them in Adirondack chairs and smile at the leaves.

My best day in BA

I know this is an ambitious title for today’s post. However, after quite a nasty streak of quilombos, I just read and walked and Instagrammed and nommed to my foodie heart’s content.

Thanks to a wonderful blog called Pick Up the Fork, I decided that the day’s mission would be to check out Baraka Restaurant in Palermo Viejo. I don’t think any tagline could be more intriguing than “Receta Familia, Corazón Sufi.” Yes, I am THAT person who will plan their day around a restaurant. Get on my level.

After successfully taking the colectivo within a few blocks of my desired location, I hit the streets when OUT OF NOWHERE HERE COMES THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GRAFFITI EVER. Wouldn’t even call it graffiti really because graffiti can have like a “Oh hey I’m an angry unemployed youth” kind of feel to it. This stuff was beyond words, though I love that this one did have words because it says “Dream that you can.”

I was quite annoyed when I realized that Facebook finally was herding me into the world of Timeline, but mwahahahah guess who has the coolest cover photo in the Southern Cone right now?

I could see this being a really cool tattoo, for all y’all tattoo people out there, whoever you are.

So…when can I move in?

After standing in the middle of traffic (don’t worry Mom, I am writing this post and therefore did not get hit by a car) to take multiple pictures which have NOT been Instagrammed in any way in this post, I finally approached Baraka. You might be thinking “Meh, looks pretty sketchy.”

Basically the interior was too dark to take photos without appearing even more American than I already was, but the menu was full of curries and teas and stewed chicken and olives and homemade bread just as I had hoped.

One thing I love love love about Buenos Aires is that nobody ever pressures you to leave restaurants! I usually feel uncomfortable taking up a table by myself if the clock ticks a minute past 2 hours, but not here. I stayed at this table and read about nations and states and nationalism (in Spanish) for a solid 4 hours.

Once I decided that I needed to leave, I met up with a friend and continued wandering through the neighborhoods of Palermo Soho, Viejo and Hollywood (maybe?). Can’t really tell them all apart, but know that they are awesome because they have boutiques and food and street art.

My spidey senses weren’t feeling content with anything we were stumbling upon until BOOM this place happened. Nucha. Based on the description on the door, “Reposteria Artesanal,” I knew it was going to be a good life choice. (That’s GLC for short.)

Let’s just say that this was the first trip of many. This is why.

Homemade. Mini. Alfajores.

Middle aged ladies feasting. I really just wanted to put on an invisibility cloak and steal one of these towers.

Coconut bar with dulce de leche for me, boysenberry cheesecake for my friend, homemade dulce de leche and chocolate cups for us both.

May I pass you a tissue for the drool escaping from your mouth right now?