COMIDA. YES.

So, to keep on rolling with our look at day-to-day aspects of my seven months, and counting, here in Uruguay, it´s time to talk turkey. Except not literally; I haven´t had turkey since I don´t know when...they don´t do turkey down here.

What they DO know how to eat, though, is beef. Uruguay and Argentina make Texas look like a wimp when it comes to beef consumption and, as much as it pains me to say it, the beef here is better than any I´ve had back home. Why? Because they don´t fatten up the cows with nasty feeds and pump them full of hormones and chemicals. They let their cows be cows - they eat grass out in the pasture, and apart from vaccination against anthrax, they don´t at all tamper with the cow´s biochemistry. This is beef the way God intended beef to taste, in other words. As for preparation, asado is prepared over wood coals, slow-cooked to delicious perfection. The cuts of meat here a bit different in the U.S., but similar. Generally speaking, if someone invites you over for an asado, you´ll be eating cuts like short ribs and brisket...basically what you´d get, in slightly different form, at a barbecue back in Texas. If you want a steak, you can get that, too - bife de lomo is basically a filet mignon, and bife de chorizo is a sirloin. It´s also unthinkable to have an asado without chorizos - sausages.

Of course, no asado is complete without getting into things that the average estadounidense probably would NOT eat - organ meats. There´s morcilla, which is blood sausage/black pudding; it tastes, kinda-sorta, like liverwurst, but a little sweeter...I use it to make dirty rice. Chinchulines are also popular - small intestine. I have eaten this once, and while the flavor isn´t bad at all, the consistency is iffy...the outside part is chewy enough to remind one of an inner tube. I´m not quite sure what´s on the inside of the chinchulín, and I may not want to know, but it´s alright - if you can get through the rubbery part. I have yet to eat riñones or hígado (kidneys and liver, respectively) at an asado, but they´re popular as well, and one of my friends has told me that riñon is his favorite cut at an asado.

As for non-asado Rioplatense foods, pizza and pasta dishes make extremely frequent appearances at the dinner table, as a very high number of Uruguayans and Argentines are of Italian descent...so, in other words, I have fit in QUITE well on that front. Fideos con tuco (pasta with red sauce) is eaten about as often as spaghetti with marinara sauce by the average family in the U.S., if not more so. Pasta dishes, on the whole, are pretty comparable; the pizza, however, tends to be different, and much closer to its Italian roots than U.S.-style pizzas. In Uruguay, pizza común typically comes without cheese - it´s the baked dough and sauce. The sauce, however, is so flavorful compared to the Norteamericano version of it that it doesn´t matter, and besides, this suddenly turns pizza into a pretty healthy meal without all the fatty cheese. Pizza with mozzarella, however, is still pretty common, and for people willing to spend the money, ham, veggies, etc. are normally available as well, plus some decidedly different toppings such as palm hearts and salsa golf (mayonnaise and ketchup mixed together). A decidedly Uruguayan part of the pizza dinner is a little something called fainá; it is a doughy concoction originally from Genoa (like many Uruguayans and Argentines) made from chickpea flour. I love the stuff personally, and am a big fan of pizza a caballo - eating a piece of pizza with a piece of fainá on top.

So, what´s for dessert, then? About ANYTHING with dulce de leche. This is a type of caramel made from putting together some milk and some sugar and then cooking it down to brown, sticky, gooey wonderfulness. Flan, that most Iberian of desserts, is pretty common (topped with dulce de leche), and sweet rice (arroz con leche) is quite popular, too. Cakes of all shapes and sizes, again very often involving dulce de leche, make frequent appearances. And then there´s the alfajor. This is basically the world´s best idea, ever. You take two cookies, normally soft sugar cookie-esque ones, put lots of dulce de leche in betweem them, stick them together, and then sprinkle shredded coconut on them. You can also dip them in chocolate, use different kinds of cookies, etc. And they´re all good. My personal favorite permutation comes from Minas, about 2 hours on the bus from Montevideo - they put cinnamon and nutmeg in the cookie dough (giving it that nice, autumny, pumpkin pie-like flavor), and instead of the coconut, they use a type of marzipan to create a sugary layer around the cookie.

Of course, no write-up of food around the Rio de la Plata would be complete without a mention of the empanada. Empanadas are bigger in Argentina than Uruguay, but we still eat them here. This is basically a turnover - you take your dough, put a filling in, close it up into a half-moon shaped pocket, and then bake it or fry it (I prefer them baked). There is a place not far from my house that supposedly has about 50 varieties of empanadas! The classic is ground beef with spices, chopped olive, chopped hard-boiled egg, and raisins, but ham and cheese, spinach, chicken, seafood, etc etc etc are easy enough to find, too.

Are you amazed yet that I have still somehow managed to lose over 20 pounds???