April Fools!!!

All of these global farming issues and rising food prices have been on my mind a lot lately. We, as people of this planet, need to come to terms with what is at stake in the future. This troubles me to say the following, heh, I mean look at the general topic of this site. Perhaps all of us meat eaters should lower our intake a bit. Maybe, and this troubles me even more, we should just find the strength to do away with eating meat all together, as united people of this lovely green & blue planet, one step at a time. Then, some countries would not have to be pressured to export grains to feed the cattle or any other live stock in another country. This needs some more thought…

April Fools!!!

-Well my plans to update the design of this site and a few other things have been squashed for the past three weeks due to my ISP screwing over all of its customers down here with connection speeds slightly better than what I had with Compuserve back in ‘93. So while I’m sitting here flushing money down my crapper because I can’t really work and waiting for the new ISP to connect–already a week late, you’ll just have to put up with my foul mood.

-Thankfully none of that farm mess happening up north has affected us much down here. Sure the shelves that hold milk and flour were filled halfway for a few days but beef was always in good supply. Felt just a little guilty filling up homemade flour tortillas with marinated flank steak or carving into a fat colita de cuadril while everyone up Buenos Aires had to dine on pasta. Ok, nothing to laugh at but why not add a little levity to this horrible situation. Hopefully this mess is will be sorted out. Was quite saddening last week to see thousands of liters of milk being dumped when there are tons of schools with no funds to buy milk or bread for their students no matter what the agricultural situation is.

-This past Thursday, a post over at Serious Eats’ Slice inspired me to finally give the 24-hour slow rise a shot for pizza dough. I’ve heard about this method for years, it’s a key to great bread, but just never really followed through with it. Not sure why, maybe because I never plan for pizza, it’s just a spur of the moment craving on any given day; and it has to be made or ordered on that day. So, after reading that post and the comments that followed, I jumped out of my chair and got to work. Actually from the start I liked this method. No warming water. No 5-15 minute wait for the yeast to start burping away in its warm bath. Just mix, knead, and toss in the fridge. Come Friday I was quite happy with not having to do all of the previous tasks. Although I pulled the dough out of the fridge two hours ahead of time, it was still quite cool to the touch but I could wait no longer. However, as the author mentioned, the dough was notably much more pliable and easier to work with than same day dough. Into the oven the pie went with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and a split of half ham/half cantimpalo. (My wife always has to have ham pizza….) No pizza stone at the moment so this was pan pizza. A few minutes before removal, a sprinkling of minced fresh parsley and garlic.

Wow, what a difference in both taste and texture from what I normally make. Granted, the dough should have been kneaded a bit longer and pulled out of the fridge earlier but, still, the crust was quite robust and fluffy. I believe this method will be the norm from now on.

On March 16, the New York Times published a piece titled “Argentine Nights” by Denny Lee that pretty much hit the cliche bullseye on Buenos Aires mainstream media topics such as tango, expats, arts, music, restaurants, and hotels. While skimming through paragraph after paragraph, I asked myself: haven’t I read this before?. Something about how expat artists, musicians, and designers have finally released Buenos Aires residents from the confines of their culture-less lifestyles. As if until the expat stampede arrived, everyone dined on Malbec and steaks while stomping their feet to Gardel singing away on a phonograph tucked into the corner.

Then it hit me.

Washington Post’s “Expatriate Games: Travelers Are Heading to Buenos Aires for the Culture — and Staying for the $250 Rent”

Newsweek’s “The Capital Of Cool: Hip, happening Buenos Aires is luring writers, artists and musicians from around the world”

What did they rehash?

That David Lampson moved down to Buenos Aires to write sitcom material. Amanda Knauer sells her line of handbags at Qara. Gavin Burnett came down to DJ. Niceto Club’s Zizek and Grant Dull. Bohemian living and Prague in the 1990’s. How everything is so cheap. Now, I’ll give the ‘ol gray lady some credit, they did quote and reference other expats but isn’t the overall theme quite similar to the other articles? I’m not saying that the aforementioned people–who I greatly respect–or lifestyle topics should be ignored since they have already been covered, but come on, put a fresher spin on them if you do. This piece reads as if all research was performed through e-mailing and web surfing. Journalism has fallen into the crapper folks.

One more thing, are there no other super cool hotels, clubs, and restaurants other than Home, Faena Hotel + Universe, Olsen, and Niceto?

After an unsuccessful attempt of asking an Argentinean restaurant to reveal their secret chimichurri sauce recipe, Linda Cicero of the Miami Herald turned to her friend Belen for a version that is probably much better. You can view the recipe that Linda came across here. One that uses the boiling water method, a common method that I need to write about one of these days.