This blog comes to you from the rooftop patio of Jessica and I’s apartment. It’s a beautiful day here in Buenos Aires, which is a nice break the surplus of rainstorms that seem to be hitting the area lately. It’s 75 and sunny and Jessica and I just returned from a lovely breakfast at Oui Oui. I am now enjoying some fruit Mento’s and a sparkling water while attempting to soak up some sun. Jessica and I have a new incentive to start putting on a base tan as we have just booked a week long beach get-a-away to BRAZIL! We will be departing Buenos Aires on November 19; we will enjoy our first five days in Rio de Janeiro and then move two and a half hours up the coast to a small beach town known as Buzios where we will spend the next four days.
The past week was a fun-packed one for Jess and I. Due to our trip to Mendoza, we had two rather than just one cooking class with SaltShaker. Monday marked class number four where we learned to make homemade pizzas. First on the list was the basic pizza, which is made from foccacia dough. Instead of topping our dough with cheese (which is one option) we added some rosemary, salt, pepper, and a little olive oil. Pizza number two was a grilled pizza that is made out of thinly rolled dough which is then placed on an extremely hot oven top to cook quickly. On top of this we added a little arugula, parmesan, and olive oil. Our third pizza we made was the Sicilian, or traditional pizza, which is made by adding the ingredients into the dough and then cooking in the oven. Inside our Sicilian pizza we added anchovies, garlic, and pecorino cheese. Lastly, we made a piadina, which is a pliable Italian flatbread. Similar to a pita, the piadina is like a soft flour tortilla, which is then filled with ingredients and eaten like a sandwich. We filled our piadina with grilled eggplant, tomatoes, onions, and red peppers, which turned out to be my favorite dish.
Back at SaltShaker on Tuesday, Jessica and I were introduced to the grain world. After learning the difference between the many varieties of rice, wheat, and corn we got down to cooking. First on our list was a risotto, which was made with asparagus and gremolata. Next was a creamy polenta with mushroom, and lastly we made a farro e verdure. Farro is a typical wheat grown in Italy for use as a grain food, and in this we added celery, escarole, zucchini, and chicory along with a small amount of tomato sauce. All three were very delicious and Jessica and I left with some rather full stomachs!
This week Jessica and I were also quite the movie goers hitting a double feature on Wednesday and a single show on Friday. The three movies we saw were, 'Michael Jackson's: This Is It', 'The Brother's Bloom' and 'The Burning Plains'. 'This Is It' will give you the urge to get out of your seat and start dancing, 'The Brother's Bloom' is a hilarious comedy about a couple of hit men, and 'The Burning Plains', starring Charlize Theron is a sad story of a young girl from New Mexico city who falls in love with the son of the man who has an affair with her mother. Jessica and I thoroughly enjoyed all three films and find ourselves escaping to the theatre rather frequently for a little taste of American culture.
Tomorrow it is back to the Brazilian embassy to pick up our visas for our vastly approaching trip. Below I have attached a little excerpt from each of our travel destinations to give you an idea about the amazing places we will be traveling to:
RIO DE JANEIRO:
"Say "Rio" and mental images explode: the glittering skimpy costumes of Carnaval; the statue of Christ, arms outspread on the mountaintop; the beach at Ipanema or Copacabana, crowded with women in minuscule bikinis; the rocky height of the Sugarloaf; or the persistent rhythm of the samba.
Fortunately in Rio there's much more beyond and behind the glitter: historic neighborhoods, compelling architecture, wildlife and nature, dining (fine and not so fine), nightspots, bookshops, cafes, museums, and enclaves of rich and poor. In Rio, the more you explore, the more there is.
Stunning as the physical setting is -- mountains tumbling down to sandy beaches, then the sea -- Rio was not always the cidade maravilhosa (marvelous city) it would become. The town grew up as a shipping center for gold and supplies during Brazil's 18th-century gold rush. In recognition of the city's growing commercial importance, the capital was transferred from Salvador to Rio in 1762, though the city remained a dusty colonial backwater.
In 1808, Portuguese Prince Regent Dom João (later King João VI) fled Lisbon ahead of Napoleon's armies and moved his court and the capital to Rio. Accustomed to the style of European capitals, the prince and the 12,000 nobles who accompanied him began to transform Rio into a city of ornate palaces and landscaped parks. High culture in this new imperial city arrived in the form of a new library, an academy of arts and sciences, and the many glittering balls held by the imported elite. King João's son, Pedro, liked Rio so much that when the king returned to Lisbon, Pedro stayed on and declared Brazil independent.
Now the capital of a country larger and richer than many in Europe, Rio grew at a phenomenal pace; by the late 1800s it was one of the largest cities in the world. Many of the newcomers came from Europe, but a sizable portion were Brazilians of African descent who brought with them the musical traditions of Africa and the Brazilian Northeast.
A new "low culture" of distinctly Brazilian music began to develop in the city's poorer neighborhoods. The high point of the year for both high and low cultures was the celebration of Carnaval. In palace ballrooms the elite held elaborate costume balls. In the streets, poorer residents would stage their own all-night parades. Not until the 1920s did the two celebrations begin to merge. It became, if not respectable, at least possible for elite and middle-class Brazilians to be seen at on-street Carnaval parades. Low culture likewise influenced composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, who incorporated Brazilian rhythms and sounds into his classical compositions. Gowns and costumes at the elite balls got more elaborate, not to mention more risqué. At about the same time, the first road was punched through to Copacabana, and Cariocas (as Rio residents are called) flocked to the new community by the beach.
All of these elements came together in the 1930s with the opening of The Copacabana Palace hotel -- a luxury hotel on Copacabana beach with a nightclub that featured exclusively Brazilian music. The 1933 Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical Flying Down to Rio portrayed Rio as a city of beach, song, and beautiful, passionate people. The image held enough truth that the iconography has stuck through the end of the 20th century and beyond.
In the years following World War II, São Paulo took over as Brazil's industrial leader; the federal capital was moved inland to Brasilia in the early 1960s. By the 1980s, violence and crime plagued the country, and Rio was perceived as the sort of place where walking down the street was openly asking for a mugging. For a time Cariocas feared for the future of their city -- needlessly, it turned out. In the early 1990s, governments began pouring money back into basic services; cops were stationed on city streets, on public beaches, and anywhere else there seemed to be a problem. Public and private owners began renovating the many heritage buildings of the city's colonial core. Rio's youth rediscovered samba, returning to renovated clubs in the old bohemian enclave of Lapa. Now a city of some seven million and growing, Rio remains the country's media capital, an important business center, and Brazil's key tourist destination."
BUZIOS:
Búzios (the town's full name is Armação de Búzios) sits on the tip of a long, beach-rich peninsula jutting out into the clear blue Atlantic. The sheer number of beaches close to town makes it easy to experience Brazilian beach culture firsthand. Geribá Beach is the place for surfing. Quiet and calm and very deep,Ferruda Beach is perfect for a lazy afternoon snorkel. Far from town are more isolated spots to steal a quiet moment with a special beach friend, while right in town on Ossos Beach you can sip a caipirinha at a beachside cafe and pretend for a moment you're young, rich, and beautiful. In this South American Saint-Tropez, everyone else certainly is.
Finally, on top of serious inquisitions into beach culture, there are more trivial pursuits such as diving, sailing, windsurfing, fine cuisine, and endless opportunities to shop. And at night, everyone comes to the busy, bar- and cafe-lined Rua das Pedras to stroll, primp, drink, and party."
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