Food in Argentina turns out to be quite a different experience than I´ve had anywhere else.  Whether or not I´m being influenced by pregnancy is still up for debate, but speaking for myself only (Miguel seems to be ok with it), I´ve been fairly unimpressed with the food overall.  At home we try to eat a good mix of fruits, grains and meats in our normal diets, but here, the main staple apears to be bread.  Lots of bread.  A typical breakfast includes about 4 different types of bread (wheat, white toast, biscutes, croissants and maybe pastries with dulce de leche on them), a slice or maybe two of ham (compressed lunchmeat: jamon), a slice of cheese, and tea or coffee.  I´ve been bying my own fruit to supplement these, but the grapefruit here isn´t quite as juicy and sweet as it is at home.  Once in a while, we get some melon or mango, but for the most part, fruit isn´t served much at all - at any meals.

Sure, fruit is one thing, but the crazy schedule they have here is another.  They get up at 8am or so, and have this bready breakfast.  Then they don´t eat lunch until about 4pm or 5pm.  Who knows what they´re doing in between, but for me, that is a very long time.  Finally, dinner crowds START building around 9:30 or 10 at night, and they go to bed about 1 or 2 in the morning.  You´d be hard pressed to find anyone in a restaurant at 12 or 1pm.  On many occasions, we´ve waited until we abslutely must eat something, and end up being the 2 lonely patrons of a 30+ table restaurant.  All eyes on us - which is just great, but not really. 

Deciding on a place and finding a place to eat has been a challenge from the beginning.  Being a tourist in this country must trigger something for an Argentine, because whenever we ask about restaurants, they always lead us to touristy restaurants.  We´ve found this in all 3 of the cities so far.  We wonder if this is because they just think we only want fancy places with waiters at our beck and call, thin glass wine glasses and cloth napkins, or if they´re just trying to get business into these restaurants.  Regardless, we have been rather unsuccessful at finding the "true" restaurants of the area that I was hoping for; the places where the locals meet, shake hands, have a laugh and a beer, and eat their favorite foods.  We´ve asked bus drivers, cab drivers, pool cleaners, and even people on the street - all with the same result.  "Si, va a dos cuadras y isquierda y ya esta un restaurant" (yes, sure, go to two blocks, turn left and there is a restaurant - just for you). 

Once we´ve decided, however, the next challenge has been ordering - yes to an extent because we don´t fully understand all the nuances and different phrases on the menus - but more for the portioning.  Argh!  We just can´t get it right.  We´ve consistently failed at ordering the right amount of food.  Most Argentine people don´t get boxes to take leftovers, and we haven´t had rooms with refrigerators, so every time, we think really hard and try to order less than we think we should.  I´d say that in 100% of the cases, we´ve failed and ended up with enough food for 3 or 4  people.  Who do they think we are?  Maybe we´d eat that much if we were exercising again, but travelling like this just isn´t building up the appetite. 

One time Miguel got a steak and I got steak pieces with mustard sauce with rice and vegetables.  Sounds pretty good - right?  Well, turns out Miguel´s steak was the size of a small cow, and my meal was inundated with a greasy oily mustard gravy (not sauce), that I´m sure no Argentinian would ever eat and enjoy.  My rice with "vegetables" was instant rice with specks, no-kidding - flakes of green and orange things that may have - at one time - been part of a vegetable.  I was so disgusted by my first few bites that I just ate the french fries that came with it and we took the rest to go.  We had been watching, through our whole fancy meal with thin wine glasses and cloth napkins, the family of 6 or 7 outside the window that were selling trinkets in ther dirty bare feet.  They were sweeping the sidewalks and keeping their little "store" as clean as they could.  I was sure they had seen their share of tourists - and that they´d been given food many times in the past.  Still, we decided it wouldn´t be too distasteful to offer them our food.  We left the restaurant and took a look at the things they were selling.  All cheap stuff that looked handmade - and was mass produced to look handmade.  We asked if she "made" the basket we kind of liked, and she said "si", however when we asked what it was made from, she was stumped and finally pointed to a tree - which was definitely NOT what the basket was made from.  Still, we gave her the 10 pesos out of guilt of eating inside that restaurant, and offered our food.  She took it with no hesitation.  Although with what was in the box - I hope it doesn´t wreck their digestive systems from being such an abnormal food for their regular - probably much healthier diet.  Maybe she took one look at it and fed it to her dogs - who knows.

Other times, we´ve given our leftovers to dogs that are staying at our places, or even the stray dogs in the area (making sure each time that nobody´s watching).  Hopefully, before we leave this place, we´ll figure it out, but for now, I feel trapped inside the tourist world of food.  I can sense that there is good food out there somewhere - the food the people here love to enjoy.  It probably doesn´t include many vegetables or fruits, but I´m determined to find it, eat it, and remember it fondly.