(A)'merica

Coming home:

I know I said, "home is where you tell yourself it is", but I was feeling nostalgic and perhaps a little bit too prolific for my own good.  The truth is, home is where you can eat double chocolate peanut-butter brownies:

Or a big bowl of oatmeal with Maple syrup and blueberries whenever you want to.

The hardest thing about making a place your home is having to leave it.  So, here I am, back in the United States of America and thinking of all of my homes and the families I left back in Buenos Aires.  I'm glad to be back, of course - that is only natural.  

Especially since too much of a good thing - any good thing - can become a bad thing. 

Traditional "parrilla" 

Take our Sunday evening asados, for example.  Sure, there was something wild and satisfying about slicing chorizo, with the crispy charred grill marks, and stuffing it into a beautifully soft, starchy chunk of pan común (ie. french bread) torn right off the loaf and slathering salsa golf (ie. a variation of Thousand Island Dressing) or chimichurri over the top and calling it a "starter".  

"Choripan" - typical street food literally meaning "chorizo-bread" and consisting of exactly that (bread, sausage and in this case some miracle working chimichurri).

But, all good things must come to an end, even if it is just for a little while.

And you have to learn to restart and reboot; which, isn't always easy either.  At the very least it gives you the equivalent of the technical "blue-screen" mode, during which you have to decide whether you're going to confront change and soldier on, or burn-out completely and totally with no more than a little spark and that stinky burning-rubber smell your last crashed CPU gave off.  

Learning to be flexible is important - and a highly sought after quality by employers (also important) - so let's just try and be positive about this folks.  

 

I mean, after six months of wallowing in the 5 major Argentine food groups on an almost daily basis: beef, empanadas (meat and pastry), pizza, ice cream, dulce de leche; how bad can a two week cleanse really be?  

I'll tell you: apple-kale-banana-parsley-smoothie bad, that's how.  

From the States with love and pureed vegetables,

Sarita