Mike and Andrea send Greetings from Buenos Aires!
Mike writes;
Just before summer begins the Jacaranda trees bloom with flowers the color of lavender. Just about the time the colors fall from these trees the Acacia tree blooms with golden flowers.
Mike writes;
Just before summer begins the Jacaranda trees bloom with flowers the color of lavender. Just about the time the colors fall from these trees the Acacia tree blooms with golden flowers.
Here you can see the traffic during our morning run on an overcast day.
Andrea's cooking was a big hit. By the end of the meal the the bones were picked clean by over twenty-two guests in all. The original guest list was much smaller, but people just kept turning up with friends in tow. Finding turkeys for dinner was easy, however the traditional ham we use in the U.S. on such occasions doesn't exist down here. After some searching we found something close. Cranberries do not exist here in any form, apparently. And on an unrelated note, peanut butter is not very common here.
One sunny day at noon we met Andrea's brother near his office in an area of town called Puerto Madero for lunch.
One sunny day at noon we met Andrea's brother near his office in an area of town called Puerto Madero for lunch.
Above are photos of the street venders who are well know for their pork sandwiches (bondiola) and pork sausage (chorizo). You see hamburgers on the sign, but I have never seen anyone eating one. "Parilla" is the word for grill.
Most every house has a parilla in the back yard for cooking asado (beef, pork and sometimes chicken or lamb cooked on the parilla). The parilla at a typical home is wood fired and looks like an American fireplace with the firebox at waist height. The locals take a lot of pride in their ability to cook asado, much like an American would strive for the best BBQ. Their method of cooking is much more labor intensive than what is customary in the U.S. Below you can see Andrea's dad Miguel Angelo adding some fuel to the pile of embers he has built up. 
There are no BBQ sauces as we would know them. The meat is cooked with rock salt and served with chimichurri which is like a version of pesto however it is made with parsley. Chimichurri was unknown in the U.S. several years ago, but now you are beginning to see it in the grocery stores.
Andrea's brother Claudio works for YPF, a Spanish company who bought all the service stations and distribution for nafta (gasoline) and GNC (compressed natural gas) for the country. Here you can buy a diesel or nafta powered vehicle. Many of the taxi's and some other autos are retrofitted to burn GNC which is a fraction of the cost. Claudio was recently promoted to be in charge of GNC for the country.
YPF just built a new 27 story 'state of the art' building in Puerto Madero which opened just after we arrived in September. The building is paperless and his work station consists of a dock for his laptop and a flat screen monitor. While there is a central printer on each floor, every evening any paper is shredded. He has no telephone connection at his desk, only his cell phone. It was interesting for me to learn there is no gymnasium in the building and there were no plans for employee parking other than what little was available below the building. As an afterthought, the company made agreements with many of the local restaurants that only open at night to use their parking during the day.
This part of the city was originally used as docks for shipping. In the past decade or so the old warehouse buildings were recycled into trendy restaurants and now now apartments and office buildings are being built as well. Below you can see Andrea and I in front of the new skyline and also the older renovated area of Puerto Madero.
Above is the view of the shipping basin from Claudio's office building. The slender white bridge is a 'swing bridge' for pedestrians, designed to swing open for boat traffic. The long row of brick buildings are the renovated old warehouses I mentioned earlier.
