empanada festival? i'm in!

Some may question the sanity of driving 1200 kilometres for a weekend of empanadas. Those people are obviously not empanada lovers.

An empanada is a wonderful concoction of dough and stuffing. Realistically, every culture has one - pyrogies, dumplings, pot-stickes, sfihas, pasties (straight from northern Michigan) - and they're all delicious. Argentina lays partial claim to the empanada (Colombia and Chile also have their own versions, I'm told, and I'm sure it can be found in other parts of Latin America). When we found out that there was a festival devoted solely to the empanada in Argentina, we simply had to go.

More below the break (it's a long entry!)

*Added later (because I forgot!) If you want to skip the words and see the pretty pictures, there are two galleries up on Flickr - one of Tucumán and one of the festival.

A few weeks ago, Chris and I boarded a bus and rode 17 (!) hours across the country, headed for a small city named Famaillá in the smallest province in the country, Tucumán. The bus itself was fairly comfortable, nothing like the tiny sardine cans we rode once or twice in Asia (and potentially face as we head north up the continent). No, these had the option of full layout bed-seats (though we chose semi-cama, or, um, half-bed? Lean-back seats) with meal service with free booze (again, we were cheap and brought our own. Meals, not booze.) We watched the landscape whip by, changing from urban advertisements and streets to the Pampas (prairies of Argentina) to desert (filled with strange cactus trees - the bottoms of trees with giant cactus leaves!) to foothills. Surprisingly, there were no babies crying, no couples making out the whole trip, no loud parties on board - it was quiet. Nice and quiet.

San Miguel de Tucumán is a great little city. (Little in comparison to Buenos Aires, that is - there are still three-quarters of a million people there.) It's big enough to have the conveniences and advantages of a city, yet small enough to feel like a town. I can't confirm this, but I don't think many foreign tourists visit here - it's north of the traditional wine region (known as Mendoza) that is the biggest tourist draw and a little south of the more 'traditional' northern area (called Salta). It is known as the cradle of the country, as it was here that the declaration of independence was signed.

History aside, we had a great time exploring the town, especially as the empanada festival, touted to be three days of empanada-eating madness, actually turned out to be two evenings and a full day. No problem - more time for exploration. There's the Casa de la Independencia, a really nice big park, beautiful churches, nice restaurants, a couple of markets, a nature reserve nearby, and lots of beautiful mountainy areas to climb up and paraglide over and do other mountain-related activities. Which we did. The nearby nature reserve was a great way to spend an afternoon, and as it was so quiet, we had our own guide and could take as much time as we wanted. There were numerous local dishes in restaurants that we wanted to try - caña-based (cane sugar) candy and dishes, humita (crushed/puréed corn with spices boiled in a corn husk), bombas (deep fried dough surrounding meat or cheese), tamales (meat and corn dough boiled in a corn husk), locro (a meat and bean stew), and local wines and beers. We spent our entire trip looking for one dessert - queso con miel de caña (cheese in cane sugar honey) - and finally found it our last night. It's a few strips of rather bland white cheese with liquid cane sugar poured over top, sometimes with nuts. It was good, but not quite everything we had built it up to in our minds. Quite a lot of delicious food unique to the area, however.

And then, the empanada festival. We were a little uninformed about the entire thing - the tourism centre in Tucumán had a photocopied flier that contained no times or locations - but, thanks to the friend who started the whole ball rolling, we found out how to get out there (there being the actual location of the festival, Famaillá). We also found out that the festival was not three full days of empanada-eating (in retrospect, my belly thanks God), but two evenings of partying and eating and drinking and a day of competition, partying, eating, and drinking. In light of this, we didn't attend the second night, choosing to explore the city of Tucumán at night.

The empanada festival was a garishly orange (thanks, sodium lighting *edited after, thanks Warren) mix of lung-rumbling music, the delicious smells of meat and dough and corn and candy wafting through the air, and people everywhere. People selling, people buying, people eating, people dancing, people waiting in line to pay to use a dirty bathroom. We got red carpet treatment for most of the night - walking around with the organizer, getting full explanations about what was happening around us, meeting the local politicians who were schmoozing for the upcoming election, and taking advantage of free food and drink. My guess is that all this was because we were from far out of town and doing a story on the event (apparently they bought our flimsy story of needing five people to write a story). It helped that we were all really enthusiastic and everyone spoke Spanish (to some degree).

There were two lanes of people traffic with the insides of the lane packed with people selling ponchos, magnets, belts, sides of beef, mate gourds jewelery - a full representation of an Argentine feria. On the outside of the aisles were the ranchos - the little restaurants vying for your business, often run by previous champions - the earliest we had was the 1989 champion (this was the 28th year of the competition). We visited, ate, talked, ate some more, watched some bands play (the big-wigs we had been talking with were all in the VIP section - maybe we shouldn't have wandered off!), waited in line for the dirty bathrooms (the girls all voted this place as having the worst squat toilets of all time), drank some wine, and ate some more empanadas. Leaving at three in the morning doesn't inspire confidence in catching the bus; luckily, a taxi agreed to take us back to the city.

Sunday was competition day. As we walked in, one could notice that the locals had kept up the Argentine party tradition the night before - there were people "dancing" in the aisles holding great mugs of beer and people nodding off at tables with food in front of them (this was at noon). The competition for Argentina's Best Empanada, however, was not well-advertised. Luckily, one of our group was astute enough to notice a crowd in one of the ranchos, and we walked into preparations for the contest. Our reporter caught an organizer and before we knew it, two of our group (Layne, the writer, and Christine!) had been offered judging positions and I was allowed free access with my camera. Huzzah to pull! The other two of our group eventually made it in too as observers later on.

All the women started with the same ingredients - meat, eggs, white and green onions, oil, broth, flour, eggs, butter, traditional spices - at the same time and went about manipulating them into miracles of deliciousness. I watched the whole process through a lens, from chopping and cooking to mixing and mashing to dough-making and empanada-creating. It was neat seeing how much variation could be created with these limited ingredients - some had large chunks of egg as opposed to small, some didn't include the egg yolks at all, some cooked the green onions instead of including them raw, and of course the different amounts of spices. All the women wanted to win and it showed on their faces and in their empanadas.

As the creation finished up with the last repulges (twists in the fold of the empanada to keep it closed - they're judged on these!) being turned and the empanadas heading off to the ovens, Christine and Layne were tutored on how to recognize a good empanada. Of course, each judge has their own tastes - some like juicier empanadas, some like a little more salt, others like lots of egg - but there are certain things (like repulges) which have certain standard levels, I guess. Christine later found out that there was a touch of corruption (or at least a very vested interest) when the person who was helping her told her how to vote and to give the best marks to the contestant this woman was sponsoring (why was she a judge with such an interest?) Ah well, eso es la vida.

Judging was great, as it involved eating lots of empanadas! How can that be bad? The funny thing was that the judges didn't eat that much empanada - with 12 contestants, that's a lot of empanadas! It's like judging wine, I guess - you don't want to be loaded by the time the last ones come around. Plates were placed on the table as empanada repositories - just like spittoons at wine tastings, as a matter of fact. Some judges had their own organizational systems for re-tasting later on, others relied on first impressions for their grading. I got second-hand empanadas for the most part (hey, they gotta be eaten), though a few contestents made extras for people other than the judges.

When the time came around, the points were tabulated, the cooks stood around nervously, and the last empanadas were downed. There was a short ceremony, a few tears, and a winner after everything! As I mentioned, there was a bit of bias from what Christine reported, though walking around, I saw many scoresheets (and tasted her empanadas) and she made out pretty good in general - a deserving win. Hugs everywhere, local media asking questions (my first press scrum!), and people taking pictures with contestants. Afterwards, the party continued on with more empanadas, more beer, and definitely more people.

One small item that kind of marred the event for me was the fact that last year's champion was left out of the celebrations and had to set up her stand on her own outside of the rest of the festival. Apparently there was some misunderstanding with one of the politicians, but her empanadas were some of the best I had tasted.

It was a great way to end my 'living' time in Argentina (though I won't really be leaving the country per se until the end of January) and a great way to start a trip. Viva empanadas!

catchphrase

If you like shouting, I have the game for you, and it's called Catchphrase. I've played this game many times before - it was a favourite in Taiwan - but never bothered to write about it despite the comedic material it has generated every time. It's pretty simple - there's a timer and a plastic circle that tells you what to describe, and you have to describe it without actually mentioning it. Kinda like Taboo, really, but it's also combined with hot potato. There's lots of shouting and nervous excitement (hence my nickname for the game - The Shouty Game), but it's really interesting to see what people say to describe a word. Some of my favourites from last night include (names not included to protect the guilty):

A: It's not a square, and...
B: A square!

The attempted description of Al Capone in three parts as AL CAP ONE (she got credit for creativity and resourcefulness, though).

A: OK, you have boys, they are your.... uh huh, and you have more than two of them, and they're yours, so you get...
C: My bunch of sons!
B: My genetic sons!

Every time I have played this game, I have ended up crying from laughter. Even better, there's no real limit to number of players (even numbers make it a lot easier, though you can play with odd numbers) - you can break it out if you've got four (two teams needed) or fourteen, it just goes around the circle. If you only buy one party game this year, buy this one.

new blog! new book! new new new!

Like I need another distraction away from this blog, but Chris and I have started a new blog over on wordpress (I gotta say, it runs pretty slick) called A Taste of the World. I wanted to get it going before we leave so that we can use it as a record of what we eat as we travel (and hopefully recipes we find as we go). We also wanted a place to share recipes that we have enjoyed - after all, we've gotten so many off the web in the first place.

Secondly, our book that we've been working on for what seems like FOREVER is finally done and ready to order (and we've even had a few orders already!). It's available on the blurb website and takes about two weeks to get to your house from the day that you order (in our experience). It was certainly an experience - we learned about layout, limitations, and the fact that sometimes you can't have what you want. My only regret is that we didn't start earlier, as with only a short time, we were forced to use the templates, something that we occasionally couldn't give us what we wanted. I also learned I need to take photos in both landscape and portrait mode to better fit what I want sometimes. The next one will definitely reflect these lessons!

Lastly, I think I've finally found a new web site to sell cards and pictures. There's nothing up yet, but I like the community already. It's called RedBubble and seems pretty cool. I'll hopefully have stuff up within a week.

Don't worry, web site, I still love you. I'm not abandoning you, really!

so they loaded up the truck and moved to beverly

While updating the the other blog, a blog post popped up on the fact that by next year, a full ">half of the world will live in a city (here's a link to the orginal article). Having lived in SE Asia and South America, I've seen this first-hand, especially in the latter. I think it's bandied about that something like 70-80% of the population of South and Central America already lives in a city, and it's very apparent when you're down there. Stories about the favelas/villas/shantytowns are becoming more numerous even in North American media. Issues around shantytowns have become even more politically charged - the last time the mayor-elect of Buenos Aires ran, one of his platform planks was to bulldoze all the shantytowns, a message that reverberated well with the very wealthy voters (this time there wasn't a word mentioned about it).

I'm torn about urbanization. I love living in cities and all that they offer. The only type of city that I haven't lived in, really, has been a town or smaller - Regina was 150,000 when I was growing up, Ottawa (combined megacity) was a million, Kaohsiung was two million, and Buenos Aires was around 13 million. Obviously, the bigger you get, the more there is to offer in terms of variety in everything - food, entertainment, history, places to live. However, I've also gotten a good share of the bad side of living in the city - pollution, heat islands (Kaohsiung was notorious for that with little to no green space in the city proper. At least Buenos Aires has parks), noise, crime, crowds, visual ugliness - the list can go on.

My work right now basically requires a fairly large population in order to support me unless I were to get lucky - small towns don't need as many English teachers. Especially two - being a couple makes it a bit tougher to teach in small places. I'd love to have a job like some people I've met down here have (maybe in a decade?) - freelancer with clients that email you assignments that you do wherever you want. I'd live in a large town/small city if I could have that.

What about you out there? Where do you live, how big is it, and do you like that?

the colours! or ryan redux in autumn

This was the first North American autumn that I've experienced in four years and I must say I rather enjoyed it. Prairie autumns were always dumps of a few leaves and lots of cold, if there was even an 'autumn'. A friend of mine who moved out to Ontario loved (and still loves, to my knowledge) the fact that four seasons appear rather than the much-joked-about snow, mud, and construction. I did get to see some southern hemisphere autumn when my family came to visit - Mendoza is filled with sycamore trees that turn bright yellow and Buenos Aires has some Canadian Maples (that's what they call them, it's sweet) that they've implanted, but it's not fall like in Eastern Canada and US.

Unfortunately, this year was extremely warm (can I say that?). Actually, I loved the warm weather, but everything must have its price and this one was missing the gorgeous colour changes that come each October. With everything I've seen in the last couple of years, I'm more than willing to blame problems caused by global warming. There's been a lot of weird weather in Argentina this year as well, making people here surprisingly receptive to the idea of global warming. It's coming, people.

All that aside, it was a great fall time. Squash, fresh apples, pumpkin pie, turkey - all the good food that comes with autumn was there for the first time in a very long time (you have no idea how expensive turkey can be abroad). Family all around (I even got to meet some new cousins!) makes for pleasant times, too.

I don't know what the goal was in starting this, but I'll finish by saying I like autumn! I'm an autumn fan! Go autumn!

blogería

One thing that I love is translating things literally. I know it's wrong, but that doesn't stop me. One area that I always do this, even if I know the Spanish without thinking about it, is with types of stores.

In Spanish, if you add -ería to the end of a word, that means that it's a store that's in that business. It's like we might add -ery or -ist (though -ist is for the person, not the place)in English to bake to get bakery. I just add -ery to everything to obtain hilarious results. Here's a list for posterity with side comments:

• panadería (bakery)
• carnicería (butcher)
• droguería (druggery)
• frutería (fruitery)
• verdulería (vegetablery)
• semillería (seedery - this is usually a gardening store or greenhouse)
• gomería (no, they don't sell gomers as my brother would like to think, but tires - a tire is una goma
• cervecería (beerery)
• cevichería (a cevichery - ceviche being a quintessential Peruvian dish made from fish cooked without heat in lime. Delicious)
• jeanería (a jeanery. Yeah, they don't have a new word for jeans. They're pronounced hey-an, though, as they start with a j)
• quesería (cheesery)
• ferretería (one of many types of hardware stores. This kind sells tools. Another sells electrical equipment. And there's another one, I don't know what distinguishes them)
• librería (office suppliery? Not a library, as you may be led to believe)
• papelería (papery. Only paper, not office supplies)
• zapatería (shoery. zapatos = shoes)
• inmobilaria (unmovablery. it's a real estate agent - they sell unmovables! I love this one)
• peluquería (hairery - barber shop. Chris says to her, because the root sounds more like the word for wig, it sounds like it should be wiggery. I like the idea of a wiggery.)
• joyería (jewelry. damn, that's a real word. well, it's a jeweler's place)
• cerrajería (lockery - a locksmith's)
• marmolería (marblery. I just saw this today, all he does is make things out of marble. Makes sense, I guess)
• rotisería (rotissery. mmm. Sounds good)
• jugetería (gamery. Actually, a toy shop)
• heladería (ice creamery. Christine's favourite)
• fiambrería (deli meatery)
• santería (saintery. There are stores where you can buy anything religious you might need. These are those stores.)
• sanitería (sanitationery? Wait, that sounds like very clean office supplies. By the looks of this, I think it was a bathroom kind of store.)

Speaking of thing with different names, town here sometimes have names that we would not do in English. I mean, being from Saskatchewan, I have almost no street cred with which to poke fun at places with strange names (the only place with less cred is Newfoundland. I mean, Joe Bat's Arm?), but these are names that we just wouldn't use in English (which is why they're in Spanish, I guess). Dates are common: July 18th, May 25th, July 9th. There's a town in Uruguay called Peach and another one called Thirty Three (for good historiacal reason, it was a group of 33 patriots that started the fight for Uruguay's independence).

So, to conclude this episode of things elsewhere are weird in my head, what's the strangest place name you've ever heard of?