Thanksgiving

Since I missed Thanksgiving in November, I was really craving some Thanksgiving food.
Last Sunday we had an incredible Thanksgiving meal with the Starobins, the Cohens and the Kodish-Mentzers, family friends. My mom and I made corn bread, dried fruit stuffing and apple pie. Here are some pictures of the turkey and Lily's sweet potato dish!

"Wild" life in Long Beach....

There weren't too many things alive

at the beach.... but we saw lots of

dead things! A sturgeon fish, HUGE

and unique to that region, lots of

jelly fish, and the bones of a grey

whale.

Blogging from the best coast

After a lovely week in Boston (Newton) with family

for Christmas, I finally made it back to Seattle. This

year it was great because all of the cousins were

able to come back to Boston to celebrate. (Even

Emily made her way down to Newton! Who knew

our cousins lived so close to each other)

Not surprisingly it has been fairly grey in Seattle

with light rain most of the days. Even though the

western coast of Washington tends to

have worse weather this time of year

(or year round really) than Seattle,

we went to the coast in South

Western for a couple days.

I know it's grey but this is what our

oceans look like out here! It's

beautiful in it's own way.

Some pelicans we saw hanging out

with a lot of seagulls.

A note about Mendoza

Peter's dad actually told us an interesting fact about Mendoza's irrigation. The city and province are more or less desert. The water that does come in through precipitation is filtered into these little canals to nourish the trees. The beautiful, lush trees line the streets and plazas, but there is very little drinking water.

Saturday in Mendoza

Saturday in Mendoza was really fun! Jamila and I went horseback riding through a nearby nature reserve area. Jamila had not been on a horse since she was 7, when she fell off a horse in Ocean Shores. So, this was a very special day. The weather was beautiful, not too sunny although we both got some sun, and our horses were lovely. My horse was named Bandido for his face that looks like a mask, Jamila's was Dañino, for the pain he causes to other horses. He is very dominant, I guess, but he didn't cause her any pain! We passed through the trails with our guide, Juan, who took our camera and snapped over 100 pictures! At least we have incredible documentation!

After a few hours on the horse, we went to lunch at Azafrán, a restaurant our friend Pam had recommended. We were first served an amuse bouche of salmon and mushroom. I don't love mushrooms, but it was yummy. Next, we ate a salad and then.....a petit filet. A small piece of steak wrapped in cooked spinach, mushrooms, blue cheese and philo dough. It was incredible! To top it all off, we had a molten lava chocolate cake with raspberry drizzle and clementine and olive oil ice cream. It sounds weird, but it was so wonderful and the flavors all came together. It seems like chocolate volcanoes are becoming our thing, as we have had a lot of them at various restaurants!

And then, we bid adieu to Mendoza, got on an overnight bus to BsAs and spent our last day in Buenos Aires before going our separate ways to the US.

More Pictures from Mendoza

Friday in Mendoza- Wines and Liquers

On Friday, we woke up early for a Bikes and Wines tour of the vineyard. Bikes and Wines is one of the many bike rental places that offer maps and information about the vineyard in the area. It seems like a fun idea at first and very romantic, but actually the concept of riding bikes and imbibing (obviously without a helmet) is quite irresponsible! We had a good time though. We met Louise, a woman from London, and Sherwin, a man from South Africa and the four of us biked around together. http://www.bikesandwines.com/index2EN.html
We started at La Rural, a vineyard and wine museum. We learned about the wine making process and tried some decent free wine.
Next, we biked along a scary route to Viña del Cerno, a lovely winery. There, Jamila and I tried a four-wine sample of an espumosa (champagne), young malbec (Argentina's signature wine), older malbec and a cabernet sauvignon. I could really taste the difference between the two malbecs and they were all delicious!
After visiting the vineyard, we biked to another vineyard/garden restaurant, where we began one of the best meals of my life at Almacen del Sur. We began with incredible bread with some yummy spreads: red pepper paste, grilled eggplants, mix of almonds and arugula, vegetable spread and cream cheese. Then, we ate a crisp salad with nice croutons. Next, delicious chicken wings and creamy onion dip, and some Malbec. For our main course, Jamila and I shared a tray of amazing food: lamb pies with eggplant and mint garnish, prawns with garlic stems, homegrown red peppers stuffed with hake, pork ribs and green tomato chutney and croquants of potato and cheese. For dessert, which I could barely eat, I ate an apple crisp with ice cream. It was fresh, delicious, and so motivating!!!
After lunch, we biked to Historias y Sabores, a chocolate and liquor place. We tried different sweets and savories and then went on our way.
It was an exhausting day but so much fun in the end! We ate and drank really well!

A note: Bikes and Wines is the most popoular company, and it's a bit more expensive. Our roommate Clement found Maipú Bikes, a new company right along the main drag (Urquiza and Carril Gómez) that is inexpensive and provides good bikes and even helmets! He asked that we mention it on our blog! The phone number is (0261) 4973311 and the email is maipubikes@gmail.com.