On the Road to Find Out

I’m back in Buenos Aires, and as is the custom, I have headed over to Nacho’s for my usual spot on the terrace. The last time I visited Nacho he had made a special dinner of boiled cow’s stomach (mondongo). This time he had gone for something a little different. There was some polenta in the fridge he had cooked 4 days ago, decided it was too salty, added loads of water to it, and then left. It had a strange consistency. He fried it in a pan until the bottom was black, then served it up. It was better than the mondongo. The next day he apologised. I can’t complain though, apart from his culinary skills the guy’s an absolute legend, who has always been more than happy for me to come and use his house as his own whenever in town.

Yesterday we tried to make dulce de leche. It didn’t work out quite right, ended up more like caramel, hence the naming as caramelo de leche. But it’s got a label, made by Los Balconcitos (the little balconies), it’s both worthless and priceless, and is 100% energy. Not bad! Here’s the end product:

That guy really can’t help but close his eyes when the camera flashes.

I’m currently staying in an apartment in Palermo Hollywood (this is it’s official name but someone had a go at me yesterday for saying it. Apparently it’s a bit pompous. He much prefers Palermo Viejo. Maybe that’s what I should go with) in Buenos Aires.

My roommate is a guy called Alaric. He’s from the US (though if you ask him where he’s from he’ll say New Mexico. I think he’s trying to hide his roots!). He spends all day in bed. Although to be fair I should write; he spends all day in his bed, with his girlfriend. Normally they have the door open so I get to see into their world. He works away on his laptop while she lies there. Sometime they close the door. I can only imagine what they get up to then. Scrabble maybe. It’s normally followed by a shower so they must be pretty heated games.

The best thing about living in an apartment here though is the portero, which is basically a janitor. It’s taken me a while to get used to kissing him every time I see him, but other than that this guy is an absolute gem. Every question I have he has an answer. He knows everything. And he fixes everything double quick. Only two days ago did we have a leaky tap. Problem was solved in about 10 minutes. He does keep insisting I need to strengthen up though, mainly through buying polenta. I think maybe he’s on the polenta marketing board or something.

It’s impossible to ignore the portero’s advice though and so I have bought polenta. No immediate effect yet but I am hopeful.

(Oh yeah, and days of grapes and honey. This is the Spanish version of Days of Milk and Honey. I think maybe they’re forgetting the versatility of milk. Although thinking about this you can make wine out of grapes. You can’t make alcohol out of milk and it does go a bit funny after a few days (unless you have a magical Ecoworks fridge) so I might have to rethink this. Umm…)