26 November 2009

In Defense of Food

Posted by admin @ 10:59 am    categories: Food

I’ve been reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, where by reading I mean listening to on my iPod (thanks, Alex), over the past week. It’s super-interesting, although I’m trying to take it with a grain of salt. I’m not going to review it, beyond saying that I totally recommend it (it’s short) and think it’s fascinating; I’m mostly going to summarize its main tenets. Which I figure will be interesting to more than just me. It’s pretty short, I think? Although honestly I have no clue. It’s in MP3s.

Pollan’s anthem is this: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” By which he essentially says that people should worry less about the [nutritional] contents of the food, and more about what they’re eating. He begins the book with a “how things got to be this way,” talking about what he calls “The Age of Nutritionism.” By nutritionism, he’s talking about reducing food — plants (fruits and vegetables and grains), meat — to the chemicals within them: proteins, fats (well, lipids; he says fats as though they’re synonymous, but he includes fatty acids here), carbohydrates, vitamins, as though this were a meaningful indicator of what we could gain from them. As he points out (with pretty strong evidence, I’d say), this reductionist approach means that we tend to eat based on “low-fat” or “low-cholesterol,” and miss that these chemicals act in concert, generally. In other words, high fat or low fat? So what — how much, with what other foods, and how often are questions that matter a lot more.

He presents evidence (and suggests that much exists suggesting this) that the Good Things in food are ineffective when distilled and added to another food, or when taken in pill form. Instead, he suggests that what’s important is not having high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, but rather eating a diet that includes the foods that contain omega-3s. (Thus, so what if you bread artificially inseminated with omega-3s — eat the foods they’re originally found in.)

A lot of his book talks about what you shouldn’t eat, which ends up being both a lot and not-so-much, depending on how you look at it. Evidence, according to him, points towards not caring about vitamins in tablet form, with the exception of multi-vitamins being perhaps useful for people from middle age on. (Although, he also notes that the type of person who takes supplements is generally healthier — there just isn’t much evidence that these people are healthier because of the supplements, but rather because of the fact that they eat well in general.) Most importantly, he says again and again that processed foods — which he calls “food-based products” sometimes — should be avoided as much as possible. All of the things we do to prolong shelf life, to make things sweeter, to change foods; all of these things, according to Pollan, result in diminishing the benefit of the foods. Polishing rice (turning brown to white)? Bad. Grinding grain further (from whole-wheat to white flour)? Bad. Eating lots of sugar or, worse, lots of corn syrup? Bad. Corn products and soy products (that are not tofu)? Not very good. And so forth.

A lot of these things aren’t surprising, although it’s interesting to hear them put together. Many of them I knew. I still think his book is interesting.

He has some advice as to what to eat: mostly vegetables and fruits (he refers to the leaves instead of seeds of plants; I can only assume he’s grouping fruits and flowers here as leaves?). A variety. When possible, from CSAs or from your own garden or from farmers’ markets — not from monoculture farms that have less-nutritious soil which really diminishes the number of nutrients. He talks a bunch about eating traditional diets, but doesn’t really elaborate on how to start. Or, for that matter, whether people who eat foods from many different cultures — I love cooking Indian food, Chinese food, and Italian food, often all within the same week — can be equally healthy isn’t really addressed, although he suggests the answer is yes. (Hope so.) He focuses, to be fair, on eating food within its original context — eating things the way people in some culture have eaten it for a long time. I don’t quite follow his argument that this must be a good way since these people were healthy — seems faulty logic to me; I can’t imagine that every food in every diet was unilaterally good for you — but I think the underlying logic: don’t have too much sugar or salt, eat a variety of foods in a meal, and cook them according to some recipe that utilizes them best, not using fake substances as substitutes.

Anyway, the point is that this book makes me feel quite good about my diet, and makes me worry less about the fact that I’ve started drinking whole milk more often, or that I don’t eat meat too often. The only thing he criticizes that I do is snacking, and he’s right. Then again, snacks for me tend to be a fourth small meal in the afternoon — not a bag of chips here, a bag of cookies there. He also argues for people eating meals in groups, at tables, without a TV, with conversation — essentially, he’s an advocate of the Slow Food movement (which he mentions). Eat small portions, he says. Have one portion. Eat it slowly. Enjoy it. And then don’t eat more.

I don’t really have a conclusion, other than that I think to the extent that he’s right we should be more conscious of the foods we eat, and worry less about the fats or proteins within them. And I’m curious what people think.

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23 November 2009

recently

Posted by admin @ 18:36 pm    categories: FoodSpainart

Another quick run-down:

Made dinner for my flatmates tonight: Matar Paneer (Indian peas-and-fresh-cheese in a tomato sauce) and Sambhar (Indian lentil-vegetable stew; I usually use masoor dal, red lentils, because they cook faster and are easier to find). Both were pretty good; neither was perfect. The milk burnt a little while I was making the cheese (because we don’t have a big pot, so I boiled it in the wok — not the best idea), so the cheese was sort of smokey. Which wasn’t bad, but isn’t right. And the sambhar wasn’t as spicy as I like it because my flatmates aren’t big spice fans. But actually quite fun and delicious. I assume there are lots of left overs. Although I didn’t make enough rice. Still: cooking for seven people on your own is difficult.

Last night, I went and saw this ridiculous play with Aitor, in an old bordello. It was called “Por Dinero,” and was actually 13 short plays in 13 different rooms; you picked five of them to see. We got into six through good fortune. It was really fun and the plays were on the whole quite intriguing. Interesting thoughts about prostitution and such.

I’m mostly done with my applications. Working on plunging through the last bunch, yea?

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18 November 2009

Ketchup and Burgers

Posted by admin @ 16:29 pm    categories: FoodPsychology

burger-and-ketchup

First: I just read a post from the BPS about statistics, which I thought was worth a brief mention: the post is about how even when we study psychology, we tend to ignore the people who developed the techniques — and that it’s important to think of psychology as mathematics and as something fallible, rather than just as something you plug into SPSS. Anyway, the post briefly discusses the ten statisticians some guy thinks are the most important. I knew only two of their names, but I know about the things that seven of them have done, so this post was kind of cool.

More excitingly: I made ketchup today.

Yeah, I know. You’re looking up at the picture at the top of this entry and saying, “Ketchup?” That was my thought. This doesn’t really look like the ketchup we know — it looks more like tomato sauce. But at the same time, this definitely tastes like ketchup. It’s got that tangy sweetness you associate with ketchup. It also reminds me a bit of Smitty’s Sauce*, this orange sweet-and-sour spicy sauce we put on chicken and rice. And honestly, unlike traditional ketchup, I wouldn’t mind putting this on chicken and rice. It would even taste good.

Okay, so I should start off by saying that I didn’t make this up. I got the recipe from The Homesick Texan, who I’ve probably mentioned before, since she’s one of my favorite food bloggers. And what I’ve been saying, and what I’m going to say, is essentially an echo of her post. Like: I never really liked ketchup all too much in the past, but this is wonderful. Like: I could totally eat this ketchup with a spoon. (In fact, I did eat it on a slice of bread while I waited for the burgers to cook.) I should also note that her description is lovely, and moreover that the post title is awesome: “Chipotle Ketchup Changes Everything.” (Chipotles!)

So let me back up. I came across this recipe when she posted it in April, I think, and thought it sounded interesting, so I saved it in my bookmarks. And then I made her refried beans the other day, and remembered the ketchup post. And then I came across this post about ketchup and french fries on another blog, and I decided — well, dammit, time to make ketchup. Since then, I’d been planning it for perhaps two weeks. I finally got molasses, got brown sugar, and got apple (cider?) vinegar, and so today I finally got it together, and bought ground beef and fresh bread (at this Gallician bakery sort of near me that actually has pretty good bread, unlike most bakeries I’ve found).

At around 7:30 I started cooking the onions, got out the ingredients, added the tomatoes and sugar and vinegar and spices (plus some cumin, which I can’t help but use constantly) and chipotles to the pot, brought it to a boil, left it to simmer and so forth. Went in my room for about an hour, stirring occasionally. At ten-’til-nine, I took the pot off the burner to let it cool before putting it in the blender. I mixed the ground beef I had with some chopped garlic, some cumin, some pepper, and some rock salt, and put it in a pan with a bit of oil in the shape of two patties. (I ate both — but that’s the fault of my not having any lettuce for a salad, and also the fact that it was delicious. Also I only bought a small amount of beef†, but it was a big meal.) While the burgers cooked, I blended the ketchup, and then tried it out on a slice of bread. Oh wow, really good. Really, really good.

And then after the burgers were finished, I cut them in halves and ate them on the bread, with dollops of ketchup and nought else. I’d say they were the best burgers I’d had in years (sorry, Jacob — yours are good, but you never made me ketchup), except for Sammy’s, in Provo, Utah, which really did me in this summer with a barbecue-bacon-avocado burger. Or something like that. Still: these were damn-tasty. (And I think garlic should always be necessary in burgers.) I would recommend the ketchup.

Now I’m left with a glass jar filled with ketchup — so I guess I’ll need to make fries sometime soon. And burgers another day next week? The high acidity of the ketchup means it should last a while in the refrigerator.


* Smitty’s Sauce is a sauce my parents make that they learned when they lived in Rochester. It is (or was?) made by a restaurant there called Smitty’s. It’s this deep orange color, made with orange juice and vinegar and hot sauce and mustard (and, the way we make it, pineapple chunks and juice). This recipe sort of is like the one we use. Although it’s not the same.

† I really think you’ve gotta make your own burgers, rather than buying pre-made shaped patties. I mean, it is easier when you’re just cooking for one or two, but I think it’s generally worth it to make the burgers yourself. I wanted to buy freshly-ground beef, but I ended up being cheap and getting the meat from a supermarket, which was probably for the best.

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7 November 2009

very briefly

Posted by admin @ 13:55 pm    categories: Food

Made this today, Brussels Sprouts With Bacon and Figs, from Mark Bittman. It’s good, but not wonderful. My flatmates were really interested in what it was. I think I still like brussel sprouts best in butter and garlic.

I also had “pancetta” today, but not the Italian way; rather, fried in large chunks, with a vaguely vinegar-like flavored pepper sauce, and balsamic-vinegar-soaked mini-onions. (I don’t know what these are called.) It was. . . well, interesting. A really great flavor, but the texture was, well, way too fatty. Not again, thanks.

Went to the Fundación Juan March today. The exhibition was, well, fine. Nothing special. I loved the building, though.

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6 November 2009

the first [chai] of the season

Posted by admin @ 9:25 am    categories: Food

I made my first pot of chai today, and it turned out deliciously. I don’t have black cardamom or fennel seeds, so my mix for chai at the moment is: sugar, fresh ginger, ground cinnamon, whole cloves, whole green cardamom pods, ground coriander, black peppercorns, and a mix of black teas. (At the moment, I have some black tea I bought at the Indian stores in Lavapiés, called PG Tips, which is made by the same conglomerate as Lipton, and is a basic black tea, as well as some Lipton Earl Grey and some Darjeeling; I primarily used the first one.) I still think it’s fascinating that black pepper makes chai taste good instead of just okay.

I’d give a recipe for chai, only I never measure when I’m making it, and I think if I tried to I would fuck it up. So experiment! That’s what I do. Do be aware that you don’t want to over-spice it; it can end up way too strong.

I also made cupcakes yesterday, which was thrilling. I’d been wanting to make them for weeks, now, and this week I found a muffin tin for cheap at a dollar store. So of course I bought it (€2.40!), and brought it home. It only has holes for six muffins/cupcakes, so I think I’ll go and buy a second one so I can make 12 cupcakes at a time. It’s a nearly-worthless tin, but if it lasts me for a few baking rounds, that’s good enough for me.

I wanted to make cupcakes to bring with me to Emily’s, since she was having a few of us over, and I figured it would be nice to have something sweet. So I looked and found a recipe for banana cupcakes, since I had a super-ripe banana. And made it, changing a lot of things to the point where I feel comfortable posting this recipe as my own. And then I made a basic cream cheese frosting, which made it worthwhile. The cupcakes are eggless, but certainly not vegan the way I made them. If you want them to be vegan, use soy milk instead of milk, and make a different frosting.

Banana-Spice Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

  • Cider Vinegar
  • 1 1/2 cups milk, preferrably whole
  • 2 1/4 cups flour
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 tsp. coriander
  • 1/8 tsp. cayenne (optional)
  • 1 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 ripe banana
  • 1/2 cup neutral oil (not olive oil)
  • 1 stick butter (approximately 120 grams)
  • 8 oz. regular cream cheese (one container)
  • up to 2 cups of powdered sugar (azucar glas)
  • Method

    1. Preheat the oven to 350° F (170/180° Celsius). Take out the butter and cream cheese and allow to come to room temperature. Ideally, you’ll do this an hour or more before.
    2. Warm the milk slightly in the microwave (just so it’s not cold), and then combine cider and milk in a bowl and set aside. The milk will curdle over the next few minutes.
    3. Mash the banana well.
    4. Stir together the dry ingredients, including the spices. (That means flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda; also cayenne and coriander.)
    5. Add the liquids and stir until smooth.
    6. Ladle or pour mixture into a muffin tin lined with cupcake papers. If not using cupcake papers, butter the molds before using.
    7. Bake for around 22 minutes. Check to be sure they’re done by using a wooden toothpick. Alternatively, you can make this as a cake; cook in a square pan for around 35 minutes.
    8. Let cool, and make the icing.
    9. For the icing, stir the butter and cream cheese together. Once mixed, mix further with a whisk or (better) a hand blender.
    10. Add the powdered sugar a medium amount at a time, mixing it in after each addition. Taste occasionally. You can get by without adding fully two cups.
    11. Spread frosting onto cupcakes. Eat.

    I only made six cupcakes, and then had to run to Emily’s; the rest I baked as a small cake. I think the cake was possibly better — more moist — but the cupcakes were pretty damn good.

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    3 November 2009

    looks like another food post: hummus, walnut-figs, and american breakfasts

    Posted by admin @ 9:02 am    categories: Food

    food-hummus-cheese-figs

    This is my lunch today. Essentially everything on here is exciting. The goat’s cheese is simple, and ubiquitous, but a really good, strong cheese, not like the plain flavor of the goat’s cheese you get in the States. The hummus is exciting because I made it yesterday; they don’t sell hummus here. It’s actually really good. (Recipe, abbreviated: heat 3 Tbsp. olive oil in a small pan, and add 4-5 chopped garlic cloves; sauté until aromatic but not browned. Meanwhile, puree 16-20 ounces of garbanzo beans (chickpeas) in a blender/food processor with some of the water they came in, 2 Tbsp. Tahini, at least a Tbsp. of lemon juice, some salt and some cumin powder (say, a teaspoon each?). Let the garlic cool, and then add to the rest of the ingredients. Puree until smooth; add water in spoonfulls as necessary to thin.) The hummus and cheese actually shouldn’t go together, but they jive pretty well; two strong flavors playing rather than fighting. I wouldn’t've wanted anything else on my sandwhich.

    Today, I took the metro home, but got off a stop earlier, and did some shopping. I found a muffin pan which is a bit small, but may work fine (for €2.40, so no big deal if it doesn’t). And I found a dried fruit and nuts shop, which was exciting. Not because I’d found one — there are tons of ‘em here, all with signs that say Frutos Secos, which really means both dried fruits and nuts — but rather because of how packed this one was. (Thus the link to a streetview image of it.) I went in, bought some dried apricots (not cheap, but not pricey either), and got talked into buying drief figs and walnuts as well — the guy told me you rip open the figs and stuff them with walnuts. Now, I have no clue, but it’s certainly tasty to do that. So I did. Have been doing.

    I updated the burritos entry to show a photograph of them. The next morning after making them (or maybe Sunday morning? I’m not sure), I decided to make an American breakfast. So I made bacon, and then fried potatoes with garlic in them, and made eggs. And then ate them with some of the leftover refried beans. It occurred to me, though, that this wasn’t really all too accurate as an American breakfast. I’m not sure what it needed. Toast? No beans? Cream cheese? That’s okay. It was delicious.

    breakfast

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    31 October 2009

    there is no good way to say this

    Posted by admin @ 6:30 am    categories: Foodpeople

    food-burritos

    Since it first occurred to me on Monday, I spent this week really wanting to make tacos. Burritos, whatever. With flour tortillas filled with rice, beans, a salsa, cheese, lettuce. That sort of thing. Keep it on the simple side, maybe.

    Except of course when you cook the sort of thing where there’s so many individual parts, it’s hard to keep it small. So I had two helpers. In terms of the eating, at least. (And they made some guacamole, which was a grand addition.)

    The primary thing I made was refried beans, which I’d actually never made before. I used a recipe from a food blog I really like, The Homesick Texan. Now, I usually make this sort of meal with mashed kidney beans, which I guess is technically along the same idea as refried beans, but I figured I’d follow her recipe pretty closely.

    I went to the butcher near me and bought something that may or may not have been salted pork. Was it pork? Definitely. Was it salted? Unclear. Anyway, you don’t eat it; you just boil it with the beans. Which I did, after soaking them all day. I also got bacon from my butcher, which was pretty delicious; I need to get thicker slices next time, though. I actually think I bought pancetta, which is more or less raw bacon, for the first thing; I also think the bacon I bought was prepared differently than in the US. But I’d never bought bacon that wasn’t pre-cut; it was strange to have him take a cured hunk of meat and slice it for me.

    The best smell of the evening came within the first twenty minutes of cooking the beans, while the pork cooked and the beans began to soften. Delicious. Really, really.

    I also softened some red and green pepper slices in a pan, bought cheese and lettuce, made pico de gallo, although without coriander/cilantro (I only found it at the Corte Inglés, for more than it’s worth). And then rice and guacamole. And delicious.

    I should add that pico de gallo, which literally means rooster’s beak, is that chunky salsa made with tomatoes, onions, garlic, lime juice, and a jalapeño or two.

    Anyway, I think that’s more than enough blathering.

    I also went out last night, after dinner, with Mateo; we wandered down to Lavapies and found some interesting bars; we ended up at this place called Bodegas Lo Maximo where some girl saw Mateo’s Tufts shirt and started talking to him, leading to about half an hour of fairly enjoyable conversation with this American girl and her Spanish maybe-boyfriend-maybe-flatmate, and this other Spanish girl they were with. (Elsa, her. Alvaro, him. Marian, the Spanish girl.) I don’t understand how this sort of thing works. I’m quite bad at picking up on things. If I had been Mateo, I either wouldn’t've heard her calling me over, or I would’ve been awkward and said hi and then walked away. Then again, it’s not like it was a thrilling conversation. I guess the point is more that I find the way some people seem to draw these sorts of interactions interesting.

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    16 October 2009

    Scoville Scale: On Chili and Chilis

    Posted by admin @ 7:33 am    categories: FoodSpain

    So a few days ago Musa posted a link to a chili recipe, which sounded kind of delicious. So, well, I made it.

    Dregs of the Chili

    I’ve got to say, it was hard finding all of the ingredients here. For one thing, they don’t do black beans in Spain. They didn’t even pretend to sell them in Carrefour (admittedly, it’s a Carrefour Express near me); I finally found a package of dried black beans (because a can of ‘em would be too easy) at an Eroski supermarket. And of course, they don’t call beans frijoles here, but rather alubias. Actually, finding chipotles wasn’t too hard — I just went to El Corte Inglés and looked in their (fairly large) Latin American section. (They also sell black beans.)

    Of course, I don’t know if I’ve ever cooked with dried beans before. I soaked them for like four hours, and then boiled them for half an hour, and they still ended up slightly hard; I looked it up and one would think that this would’ve done the trick. They didn’t taste bad — just not soft like I kind of think you’d want in a chili.

    The main problem, however, was the chili peppers. I went into a few grocers’, and finally found one that sold hot peppers. The recipe calls for 1 red pepper, 1 jalapeño, and 1 habanero. Well, I wasn’t seeing habaneros, but I saw those green peppers that sort of look like jalapeños (I realized later — they’re serrano chilis; these are the ones I would buy in bulk from H Mart and use for sauces at school). So I got two of those, and I got two of the chilis the guy at the grocer said were the spiciest, although he didn’t know which they were. Looking at wikipedia, I think they were Thai Peppers, which means they’re actually less spicy than the called-for Habaneros. (Sadly, I left my chart of Scoville Units at home. I’m not kidding.)

    Anyway, the point is that I wasn’t using the hottest chilis possible, but I still ended up with a very (very) spicy chili. I shared it with Juliette and her boyfriend, Sylvain, and I think all of us enjoyed it but wished it was less spicy. (Today I ate it with yoghurt, which makes a big difference.) We ate it on a cornbread I made (my flatmates seem to be really impressed by baking — even something as simple as cornbread), which at least turned out exactly as it should, without measuring cups.

    End of the cornbread

    I did buy a measuring cup, though, today. Hooray!

    Anyway, judge for yourself as to the pepper:
    is this a Thai Pepper?

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    10 October 2009

    cooking: Spanish chocolate-chip cookies; Spanish stir-fry

    Posted by admin @ 15:27 pm    categories: FoodSpain

    I’m totally lying. Neither of these were Spanish. They just aren’t quite normal.

    The only worthwhile thing I did today, besides spending a little bit of time looking at universities and emailing professors, was cooking.

    I went to the supermarket at El Corte Inglés today, the huge (expensive) department store, because I wanted to get some things that they didn’t sell at Carrefour, which is in and of itself a monstrousity. (Although the one by me is a “Carrefour Express,” and smaller than many of them.) I bought baking soda (which was by the spices, rather than being anywhere near the baking powder, which is with instant puddings; at Carrefour, they sold baking soda with cosmetics), and a bunch of chorizo (which, by the way, is the best kind of sausage I have ever had; I’ve known this to be true for years, and it’s nice to get it easily here), and a few other things (like a Weissbier, and some cheese).

    After lunching at 16:00 (yeah, I know), I decided to make cookies. We had a baking sheet, of the sort that fits into the oven, but it was filthy and as though it was mostly used as a drip pan, so I went out again and went to the chino (yes, that’s what they call convenience stores here; yes, it’s racist) a block away and bought steel wool, as well as a few other cleaning things I’d been wanting, and cleaned the sheet pan so I could use it.

    Now the thing about making cookies is that I don’t have a measuring cup here, much less one with US units on it. Nor do I have a scale. (I’m going to buy one or the other before the end of the month, I’m sure. I just need to find my way to the supply store I read about a few days ago.) So I was kind of doing these things by eye. Google told me that 5.3 shots were a cup, so I found a drinking glass that was roughly one cup. All in all, I think I measured things pretty well. They don’t sell brown sugar here, not in supermarkets, so I used white sugar only; I didn’t have vanilla extract, either. And obviously, I chopped up a chocolate bar to make chips. But otherwise, I had everything I needed; the dough tasted more-or-less right. But when I made the first batch, they were crispy and flat, more like a sort of butter crisp. Very tasty (except for the ones that were burnt), though. So I lowered the temperature, and none of the rest of the cookies burned — but they were all flat and crispy.

    I looked at Clotilde Dusolier’s awesome list of conversions and equivalents, which she made when she was writing a cookbook for release in the US, and she says that a half-cup of butter (1 stick in the US) is equivalent to 113 grams of butter. But I’d used a full thing of butter here — 250 grams — so 20 grams extra. Which wouldn’t be that bad, except that I’d probably used less flour than I should’ve, and so the cookies were melting into crispy messes. Delicious crispy messes, but nonetheless.

    At 21:30 or so, I made dinner. I was going to make a stir-fry, and I put up rice in our rice-cooker (yes, we have a rice-cooker; hooray!), and then I realized that my mushrooms had gone bad. I had an eggplant, but a stir-fry can be two items, but never just one. So I fried the eggplant with garlic and onion, added an egg, and then chopped up a bit of chorizo and added it in. It actually ended up being really tasty atop rice, with a bit of soy sauce. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised, but it was a nice unexpected outcome.

    Very good. Russel is playing Passion Pit, so I’ll leave you with the video for the song he just put on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVstHPhaJ6M

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    25 June 2008

    Alquiler!

    Posted by admin @ 23:27 pm    categories: ArgentinaFoodSpanish

    Tonight I went and saw “Rent” at Konex, which is the same place that La Bomba de Tiempo is at. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I went and saw “Rent.” Shuddup.) (I went to that again on Monday, with Natanya, her brother, his wife, and her brother’s wife’s friend, Shawna.) The title is still “Rent,” even though everything was in Spanish.

    It was pretty cool to watch. I’ll admit that ten minutes after it ended, everything repeated in my head was in English. It’s weird to see this show in Buenos Aires, though, where the theatre was just a theatre, and not, you know, Broadway. The acting was good (I really liked the guy who played Collins, and Mimi was pretty good, and I pretty much will always love Maureen), and the singing as well. But I mean — I guess it just felt like going to any theater production, aye? Not like going to see a Musical. And I kind of liked that.

    Following Krista’s suggestion (was it hers?), I looked at the website, and followed the directions there about getting a discount: I went to the ticket office at 17:00 (actually, I got there at 17:20; I had to take a taxi to make it on-time because I showered first and lost track of the time), and wrote down my name and email and DNI, and then at 17:30 they had a “drawing” to give out the 16 free tickets they give out each night. Only, I mean, it was a drawing in name only, since there were five of us there, the other four in a party together. I got drawn first.

    Which meant that, come 21:00, I sat in the middle of the front row with a $20 peso ticket (I’m not sure how much other tickets are), and the other folks sat on either side of me. This was mildly awkward, since it was a young woman, her (boy?)friend, and her parents, but it actually turned out to be fine; the woman sat next to me, and talked to me a bit. She’s a theater student here in Buenos Aire, but from Entre Rios (the city; how’s that spelled?), and she’s apparently going to Orlando in a few months to work at Disney (not sure what she’s doing). And she knew some of the folks in the performance, which was fun. We talked exclusively in Spanish, which was cool to be able to do, but slighly limiting.

    In any case, “Rent” was a good time. It was essentially exactly the same as when I saw it in New York for probably 10 times as much, except the words were in Spanish. If I sung along in my head, which I [quasi-ashamedly] could do, the English words were still there, and the intonations were generally quite similar. But there were definitely points lost and words lost. I’m not complaining too much — there have got to be lost words in a translation of a musical, Jesus (speaking of whom, I got talked at by this woman at a bus stop on the way there, for like fifteen minutes, about the Bible, and she just babbled on in Spanish) — but I guess I’d say that it turned it from a musical with clever rhymes and clever syntax into a musical with just good music. That’s not entirely true, perhaps, but I think in general the meaning was retained without the simplicity, and sometimes it didn’t sound as good. (“Glory” drawn out sounds a lot better than “Gloria,” I promise you, and Mimi’s “And she looked good” in the final scene was gone, and a lot more like that.) And while perhaps we’re all limited by knowing the English version better, this woman and her parents agreed with me on this, and they spoke fluent Spanish. (We discussed it during the intermission; they had the movie & the CD of the English version at home, and apparently the father really likes it.)

    I am convinced of these things:
    (1) The guy who played Angel was good, but his dance scene was kind of lame, compared to past ones I’ve seen.
    (2) Maureen’s monologue was good even in Spanish (although they repeated “saltar de fe” [leap of faith] more than “over the moon,” as in the English version), but I still think the best version I ever saw was Miriam’s, at TiP.
    (3) “Without you” sounds a lot better than “Si no estas”.
    (4) The “Contact” scene, when Angel dies, was holy shit way more scandalous here, with guys just in briefs humping women at the front of the stage. Maybe I’m wrong and was just closer to the stage.

    Anyway, a fun time was had by all, and I am glad I went and saw that, and glad I got to sit in the front row. Even if I then had to eat leftovers at home because all the restaurants were closed by the time I got out at 00:30. (Leftovers weren’t bad. I took the rice from yesterday that I didn’t eat earlier today, and fried it with two eggs and some of the tofu. Which was, technically, silken tofu. I was silly and confused “pasta de soja” with tofu, and it does look the same from above, but, errr, maybe “pasta” means paste, but paste is not tofu. This is sort of like when I ordered “pan de pizza” thinking, hey, a pan pizza, and got just the baked pizza dough, with salt and oregano and nothing else. Which was actually delicious. Anyway.)

    I’ve been thinking a lot about gerunds, in any case: I feel as though we use them a lot more in English than they do in other languages. I rarely hear someone saying “Yo estoy [haciendo algo]“, but in English “I’m [doing something]” is common parlance. And, when I think about it, a common mistake in people learning English is to say, “I go to this place,” when we would say, “I am going there.” I’m unsure about this — I don’t know if I’m wrong when I say, “Estoy trabajando en FLENI,” if I should be saying, “Trabajo en FLENI” (and is it “en,” or “a”), or if either is fine. In English, I could say, “I’m working at FLENI” or “I work at FLENI,” but sometimes I feel as though Spanish uses gerunds less, and would be more likely to interpret gerund-use as expressing immediacy.

    And then I wonder whether maybe the case is just that I use gerunds more than the average bear in English as well, and that my confusion is based on being more self-aware of my language use. Anyway, weigh in, folks.

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