From asado to barbecue to…

I explained asado some time ago, the painfully slow way (from a northern point of view) of cooking meat over glowing coals. Fine when you have a group and plenty of time. When the objective is to cook something outside in hot weather, a gas barbecue grill is not perfect, but tremendously more efficient.

But the prices here are double you’d expect to pay in North America, and quality poorer, so it’s hard to justify buying one new.

You might recall we bought a used one and fixed it up.

altered BBQ grill, Uruguay

The other night, I went to fire it up, and the left burner lit up and immediately went out, as if the valve had broken. The right side hissed as if gas was coming through, but wouldn’t light. So, on to the next alternative: a single gas burner we haven’t used in years, and our largest skillet, which doesn’t have a lid (hence the pizza pan).

I might try taking off the valve and looking at it, but given the grill’s age can’t count on replacement parts. More likely the gas burner will end up inside, perhaps with a second burner. One of those projects one has to be in the right frame of mind for; hands get filthy.

UPDATE:

It’s back to looking like a plain old barbecue grill,

but under the hood it’s become a gas stove. Which means less heat inside the house!

Yes, those are bricks holding up the rear legs.

¡Un milagro!

Roughly a year and a half ago, we left Uruguay, where we’d lived at sea level, for a tour a megalithic structures in Peru and Bolivia. The tour organizer, for all his wonderful contacts and insights, does not ‘get it‘ when it comes to running a tour. I could describe several instances of his thoughtlessness, but the one that impacted us the most was insisting that we’d have no problem with the altitude.

Because he doesn’t. Because he lives in Cusco, elevation 12,500 feet (3,810 meters).

When the plane door opens, the problems begin: breathing, moving. The ‘altitude pills’ the organizer had recommended did nothing. Within a short time, my wife was having difficulty with her vision. A doctor, fellow tour-taker, looked at her eyes, went to a local pharmacy and brought her some eye drops (which he wouldn’t let us pay for!). They helped.

But throughout the trip she had trouble with depth perception, more than a minor problem when navigating archaeological sites.

macular "pucker"
Right eye above; left below

Returning to Montevideo, she made an appointment with an ophthalmologist she had the good fortune to have met several years prior. Using very sophisticated equipment, she did a scan and determined that my wife had a ‘macular pucker‘ in her left eye, basically a wrinkled area on the macula of her retina, which would obviously affect vision. And unfortunately, not something apt to improve over time.

So, a year later, we go back into Montevideo for another scan.

Looking at the output, the doctor — who speaks excellent English — lapses into her native tongue. ¡Es un milagro!

macular "pucker" improvement in a year

“I believe in miracles,” my wife replied.

Indeed.

 

Back to the beach

I haven’t been to the beach with Benji frequently since we started walking with Syd and his five dogs in the wastelands (literally) of Villa Argentina norte. Variety of reasons: conversations with Syd tend to be considerably more interesting than conversations with Benji; Benji usually gets more sustained running given all the other dogs including rabbit scout Jordy; and I don’t have to throw a stick into the waves 20 or 30 times in succession.

But from time to time I am reminded of the age-honored saying that location is everything.

As in, we encounter no cows on the beach.

This was Benji yesterday, halfway through our walk. It may be just the exaggerated olfactory experience, but Syd and both thought Benji stayed closer to us for the rest of the walk than he ever has before. Excruciatingly close. Being able to see and not smell this, I must say he achieved a remarkable extent of coverage.

After two soap bath yesterday evening, and 20-30 plunges into the waves to retrieve a stick, it was only after he dried off that our living room didn’t smell like a barn.

So, what’s new on the beach?

I have posted before about the boardwalks that were poorly designed and maintenance-free. Now in Las Toscas (we live on the border) appears one built with posts that extend vertically to a metal handrail. Progress!

Meanwhile, at the end of Circunvalacion, the boardwalk solution (B) has become unusable, while problem it addressed (A) has grown 2-3 times larger.

Seen from the other side: the boardwalk (B) is completely buried, while beyond (A) the dunes are completely blown away because of traffic through the gap.

Coming back from the beach, I note a number of wine cartons at the overflowing recycling bin — all with corks carefully replaced. Which means that someone at the recycling center will have to remove them, one by one, so the glass can be recycled.

Over the past couple months, trucks have dumped dirt at the park we pass through on the way back. Red arrows mark the vertical poles that are all that remains of the goal posts. The person who cuts the grass has carefully mowed around the mound of dirt (and rubble).

Is it to fix the field? Ya veremos — we’ll see.

Christmas bagels

We don’t do anything special for Christmas (except attend our neighbors’ lovely afternoon food fest). I mentioned to my wife that she normally hangs red ornaments on our ficus tree, at least. She reminded me we have a fast-growing puppy who probably find them great fun to attack. Good point.

We’re also not Jewish.

But in the country we came from, bagels are ubiquitous, and in Uruguay they’re nonexistent. Well, except for one place in Montevideo owned by an American. There’s a place called Donut Shop that advertises bagels but makes — well, you decide.

So she asked the food processor and bread-object specialist (that would be me), to make bagels.

First attempt at homemade bagels

Obviously I’m low on the learning curve, but they were delicious with cream cheese, smoked salmon,1 organic tomatoes and red onions.

Plus, always a treat in Uruguay, the taste made us feel we were somewhere else, somewhere one has a choice of tastes. Restaurants are gradually getting better here, offering variety. One nearby puts the old Uruguayan standbys like chivitos and milanesas under the heading, “Lo de Siempre,” the ‘always available’ stuff. I take that as a good sign. But I can still have fun tormenting recent North American arrivals by asking them what’s their favorite Thai restaurant in Uruguay.2

1 unfortunately from Chile, but that’s all we’ve got

2 I haven’t been, but expect Konichi-Wa Sushi y Asian Gourmet is not really Thai

Self checkout

A few days ago I was in the Disco supermarket here (yes, the one with the shopping cart idiocy), and was surprised to see that they’ve installed four self-checkout stations. This is old stuff up north, but not thirty years old as the Uruguay jokes go, so maybe the country is catching up faster?

When I went to the wait-for-a-number cashiers, I noticed there were six (seven?) instead of the previous four. Well, that’s good. Except the new number-display is farther away and the numbers appear to be smaller. I couldn’t make out which cashier to go to. No problem; the appropriate cashier waved his arm. He also thought it was amusing.

I asked him when all of this happened.

“Two days ago,” he told me.

Disco supermarket self-checkout
Ready attendant, but no one to whom to attend

Which pretty much explains why nobody was using them.

Fast forward to this morning — Christmas Eve, and the predictable jam-packed shopping crowd — and suddenly quite a few people thought these were an OK idea. Myself included.

 

 

Sad, pathetic people

Generally, I try to keep things here upbeat. But walking daily in a sprawling area whose owner or owners are unknown, that is sometimes difficult.

Consider this: from one day to another, a dumped load of furniture and windows appears in the middle of nowhere.

open air dump, Uruguay

They could have left all of this near a trash container. They could have left some of it near a recycling container. Instead they just dump it carelessly. In fact, I would argue contemptuously, since they managed to smash at least one of the windows.

open air dump, Uruguay

It’s not a spot where other stuff has been dumped. There are several of those. No, just a new, random location.

Update — per Syd comment. I took a marker with me on our walk today. The person who did this might pass by again, might not. But anyone who does will read it:

cerdo humano, Uruguay

“Left by a human pig.” Play on ser humano, which means “human being.”

 

The bug

Walking dogs yesterday, we got into a discussion of bugs, as in garden variety. Syd and Gundy had a bunch of green spiders, and he wondered what they were, and whether they would hurt his tomato plants. He also mentioned a long green beetle with long antennae with balls on them. They were all over the blackberries, but apparently not harming anything.

Returning 45 minutes later, within a few meters of his front gate, returning, one landed on his arm, as if to say, “Welcome home!”

strange little beetle, Uruguay

Kind of cute. I guess.

 

 

Expo Cannabis 2017

Uruguay “sort of” legalized marijuana at the end of 2013. Being a place where free-market is generally considered a bad thing, and government somehow a creator of wealth, the experiment has proceeded with predictable ham-fisted bureaucracy. The government controls all production, licenses growers and buyers, limits the amount they can buy in a month, etc. At present there are maybe 16 pharmacies (all in Montevideo AFAIK) where one can buy marijuana, and they have had their bank accounts closed because of the ham-fisted and arrogant United States federal government. This echoes the contradiction between state and federal laws in the U.S.: marijuana is legal in California and Nevada, but if you transport it across the border you’re committing a federal offense.

However, there is good news: Hemp Planting to Triple in Uruguay. And the Expo Cannabis has gone from rinky-dink three years ago (according to Syd) to quite impressive.

Expo Cannabis 2017 display map

As you might guess, most of the crowd was younger than yours truly.

The first display inside the door showed a variety of products including hemp oil, and dog care products that Syd really wanted to buy. Not for sale? It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the display was for the Museo del Cannabis Montevideo.

Flyer for Montevideo, Uruguay Cannabis Museum

Nearby, a display of plants.

Examining marijuana plants, Expo Cannabis in Montevideo, Uruguay

We quickly noticed a number of booths had hydraulic presses. We were a bit mystified, then watched a demonstration of extracting cannabis oil with heat and pressure — far safer than using toxic solvents, which then have to be boiled off.

Extracting cannabis oil

Many booths were selling seeds and growing apparatus, and the government was there with a booth where you could register with the authorities. Several booths centered on medicine and healing, as did a number of the presentations/panel discussions.

Uruguay marijuana sign up

I started asking questions about seeds when I saw “AUTO“ in some of their names (autofloreciente). Fascinating stuff.

handouts from Uruguay Expo Cannabis 2017

My only regret is that I didn’t ask more questions, because in the car on the way back, discussing what we had seen, we had plenty more.