Ice cream thoughts

A few random ice cream-related thoughts worth noting:

This weekend we were supposed to make our several kilos of ice cream. However, because of a country-wide farmers' strike, there is no milk to make ice cream with. (There isn't much beef, milk, fruits or veggies in the supermarkets either.) The strike has been going on for a while. For the past week at 8pm each night, the locals who are against the strike have been standing on their balconies and banging their pots and pans in protest. I'm not going to get into details about what exactly the strike is about (the major news outlets have already covered it extensively) but it has pointed out two things. Firstly, that neither side has the moral or political upper hand. The fighting has been getting dirty, with paid protesters digging up dirt and snarling traffic and transport on both ends. Secondly, that it shows the deep divide between the social and economic classes in Argentina. As a broad and ridiculously simplistic explanation, the well-off neighbourhoods tend to oppose the strike, while the poorer neighbourhoods tend to support it. What does this have to do with this blog? No milk = no ice cream class.

"Cuando terminemos con este proyecto infernal hacemos una orgía de helado e invitamos a todos los involucrados para brindar" (Translation: When we finish with this infernal project we're going to have an ice cream orgy and invite everyone involved in the project for a toast.) -- S., book editor on a nightmare project, while editing raw material at 2:58 am on a Saturday morning, three days before the book's slated deadline

Cultural notes:
Banging pots and pans with wooden spoons is a very Latin American form of protest. These are called caserolazos (from the Spanish word cacerola, which means cooking pot).

Eureka!!!

We have leftover ice cream in the freezer!! It doesn't get better than this.

Jaeli

This is Jaeli, Jacob's three-year-old niece who came to visit with her mom. In this picture, she's sampling the first of many ice creams that she ate in the week she was here. Chocolate ice cream from La Volta. It passed the picky eater test, although given how badly stained her shirt was afterwards, it's hard to tell how much actually made it past the spoon and into her mouth. I wasn't there when they took this picture so there's not much else I can say.

The usual suspects, the usual sites

Seems to be a standard formula.
Sticky summer night in Buenos Aires + friends + food and drink + ice cream = good times. These pictures are from Cintia's goodbye party; she's off to Miami and nobody knows if she'll be back (including her). As usual, the ice cream was from Lado Bueno and the party was held in Villa del Parque.

Top picture: "Get your sticky paws off my ice cream!" - Ariadna
Bottom picture: what's left over when the good times wind down. Kudos to Pao, who diligently washed the plastic cups for future use. Environmentally friendly! You don't see that very often here.

A couple of notes:

+ Lemon sherbert and champagne mix: The guys really seem to like this. Theoretically, the acidity of the lemon and the bubbliness of the champagne would go well together, but this combo gives me a pounding headache every time. Plus, I think it's a waste of perfectly good lemon ice cream, but hey, it's their servings, their stomachs and their hangovers.

+Lado Bueno charges less in Villa del Parque than it does in Colegiales and Belgrano. I discovered this when that same weekend, Jacob and I took our dog for a long walk and, not surprisingly, we ended up in front of Lado Bueno. (Given that we live about 15 short blocks away from their Belgrano sucursal, it wasn't such a big deal.) A quarter kilo costs 9 pesos in Belgrano; in Villa del Parque, it costs 8. This is typical here. Despite the fact that the products are often standardized, the neighbourhood where you buy them influences the price. Unfortunately for me, Belgrano happens to be one of the more expensive zones. I ordered strawberry ice cream and regretted it; it was sickly sweet and tasted artificial. Apparently pomelo is better. The guy manning the counter said it was the best flavour they had; it's made from fresh pomelos and extract. Too bad they don't tell you that BEFORE you order your ice cream (when it's too late to trade your sickly sweet strawberry for light, citrusy pomelo).

What's with the music??

Creo que hay una ley inescrita aquí en Argentina que dice que cada heladería y/o food-related establishment está obligado a tener por lo menos un CD de Maná. No quiero que me malentiendan, a mí me gusta mucho a Maná, pienso que son muy buenos, fui a ver su recital en Velez hace un año, Jacobo es un fan por que son de su tierra natal, blah blah blahhh. Pero creo que esta es la octava vez que he escuchado a Maná hoy. Desde el norte de la Argentina hasta el sur (estoy en El Calafate ahora), todo lo que se escucha es Maná.

Me pregunto si eso significa que vamos a tener que tener unos CDs de Maná en nuestra heladería para que nos consideren auténtico.