In an attempt to illustrate what life is like in Argentina for our friends and family who have never traveled abroad, I am going to do a few posts about minutia in the way things work.  We usually ignore all of the subtle little differences when we are talking about our life outside the U.S., but I thought we might be able to paint a better picture of life here by paying attention to the little things.

This is our kitchen.  Please ignore the post-it notes – I labeled everything in an attempt to improve my Spanish vocabulary. Notice the gas stove/oven. Notice the box of matches and lighters on top of the microwave. Unlike most of the gas stoves in the U.S., we have to turn on the gas and then light the burners/oven. It is similar to the stove we had in Italy except that for some reason we can’t use the oven and the stove at the same time.  When you have the oven on you can light the stove burners, but after about a minute either the oven or the stove burner goes out.

Here is a close-up of the dials on the stove.  I have highlighted the one for the oven.  Notice anything different from those in the U.S.? Yup, there is not any type of temperature gauge here – no way to know what temperature the oven is, or keep it that way. Even if you did have an oven thermometer you would still have to manually monitor the oven to make sure it wasn’t getting too hot or too cool and turn the gas up/down accordingly. While not really that interesting, this is all necessary background information in order to appreciate the fact that I made cornbread the other night.

I bought what looked kind of like masa or some sort of corn meal in Barrio China the week before last so when John made pinto beans the other night (also found in Barrio China) I had to try cornbread.  I didn’t have a measuring cup, nor measuring spoons, nor baking powder (just baking soda), nor proper corn meal, nor a temperature gauge for the oven, but I did it anyway.  I improvised – a little of this, a little of that, light the oven and stick your hand in to see how hot you think it is and presto, an hour later we had cornbread.  It turned out more like corn cake because of the fine grained corn flour, but it was really good. Now, I wouldn’t try a soufflé or anything else requiring exact temperatures, but for most things estimation is fine.

Speaking of baking, there aren’t many baking supplies in the grocery – no cake mixes, very small bags of flour, no yeast, no baking powder, etc. Baked goods are usually purchased fresh from one of the numerous bread/pastry/sweet shops on every block. There are so many places to get fresh baked goods that I imagine it’s rare for them to be made at home.

Next up: plumbing.