Quite some time has passed since my last “From The Past” post, so I decided to jump back into the news archives at Google for any interesting articles that may have been missed or added since. With this latest search I found that Argentinean asados might have been a somewhat popular topic back in the early 1960. I have no concrete proof of this of course, since I was born a decade later, but due to the number of articles found, asados were at least a novel curiosity at the time. The interesting topic to note are the repeated descriptions of how peons-a term still used to this day in Argentina in regards to those who work on estancias, consume their roasted meat by biting and slicing off morsels of meat. The tradition dates back to the era of the gauchos and how they roasted and ate freshly slaughtered cattle with nothing more than their trusty facónes, or gaucho knives. For the journalists who witnessed this act during their journey to Argentina, it must have been quite the spectacle.

This week’s “from the past” brings you a piece from…
“Across The Cordillera Of The Andes, And Of A Residence In Lima, Other Parts Of Peru, In The Years 1823 And 1824” by Robert Proctor, Esq.; Published in 1825.
On inquiring what could be had for supper, I found that a sheep had been killed, and as [...]

This week’s “from the past” brings you a piece from…
“A Mining Journey Across the Great Andes; With Explorations In The Silver Mining Districts Of The Provinces Of San Juan And Menzona, And A Journey Across The Pampas To Buenos Ayres” by Francis Ignacio Rickard; Published in 1863
Having unloaded the mules, and given them water, [...]

(After snagging an edition of “Carpenter’s World Travels: The Tail of the Hemisphere – Chile & Argentina” by Frank G. Carpenter (You can view a photo from it here), I’ve developed an interest in how Argentina was viewed, in the days of old, by travelers, journalists, and writers. Particularly on the subject of asado and [...]