Argentina - March 2002 - Tucuman

Tuesday March 05, 2002
Sara's mom

I think I lost a day?? We walked back to town in the morning to get caught up in the Internet lab. Then we went to visit the family that Sara had stayed with when she was here. She is like a family member to them. The unquiness of this trip there house is so South American. I really enjoyed thier home and thier hospitality.
We picked up Juliata in town and took a taxi cab to the grandmother▓s, aunts, nephews, more aunts, you get the picture. We entered into their outside walkway through an iron gate fenced off with an adobe wall. The main house was in the front were all the aunts lived, and in the back another quaint home were the grandma and some other family members lived The land was narrow, so the homes were built accordingly. Adobe walls, shutters on the outer windows, tile everywhere including the outside porch, granite stairs with a beautiful wood staircase bannister. The kitchen had tile from the floor to the ceiling, and the sink counter was in granite. A small refrigator was standing on a petasol a few inches in height made with the same tile as the floor. There were two front doors. Almost looked like two homes instead of one. The door to the left led into the kitchen, and the door to the right led into the dinning room. They had a long wooden table in dinning room that sat about 10 people comfortably.
When we enter the kitchen and meet everyone there, there were three ladies preparing lunch. One was fixing sandwiches, and the other two were preparing empanadas. The sandwiches are not anything like the American sandwiches. In fact if you don't know what to expect, it can be quite confussing for us. They are made up of white bread, thin with no crust. They are a perfect rectangle. Very plane with one slice of cheese, or one slice each of cheese and one of ham. Not the thing to order if you are hungry and expecting everything on a big two slices of bread with all of the toppings, however they are indeed tasty. The empaЯadas are fabouls. A pastry shell about 6 to 8 inches in diameter filling it with chopped egg and meat. They boilded the meat (beef), and put fried onions in it. I can get the reciept if you are dying to try this. Two ways of cooking this. One way is to fry it, the other is to bake it. Our hostess went all out and did both for us.
Despite my lack of language our visit was very pleasant. I could understand about half of what was being said. I am starting to get a little brave and attempting to speak Spanish, but I know it sounds awful. As they say in Argentina.... chow.