Feliz Día de la Patria

The 25 of May is the Día de la Patria in Argentina. It's a national holiday so businesses are closed, and my classes were cancelled. I spent most of the day reading in my favorite café feeling very content. This picture shows the café on the opposite corner of la Calle San Martín (remember the canopy of trees?).

The highlight of my day was breakfast in Café Dün Ken---the "Desayuno 1" special---which consisted of a large fresh squeezed orange juice, a large café con leche (also called a cortado), and two pastries (facturas). Life doesn't get much better.

For lunch, I made my first foray into home cooking. My principal problem here in Argentina, besides not having an oven, is that I don't have a lot of experience cooking meat and I have no recipes to follow. El Día de la Patria was the first day that I had the time to experiment at my own (very slow) pace. Plus, I finally caught a little market that sells meat and veggies during its hours of operation (actually, I made it just as the guy was closing for the holiday). I made my dad's famous spaghetti sauce from memory (yay!) and a milanesa with a fried egg on top. The milanesa and fried egg do not look awesome because I had a little problem with the food sticking to the pan, but they tasted just fine. I complemented the milanesa with a fresh tomato and a full glass of vino mendocino. The barrier has been broken, success!

But above all, my favorite part of el Día de la Patria were the pastelitos. I have been told that they are a traditional pastry of the holiday but that you can also find them at other times of the year. They are shaped in the form of a star and tend to have a little treat inside of either dulce de membrillo (quince jelly) or dulce de patatas (potato jelly?). This one from Dün Ken has dulce de patatas, my favorite. I might have eaten three.