Week Four: Nalga Picada Intesamente

Food...more specifically meat...is something difficult to understand in another language.  I have basically been avoiding buying any meat because when I enter the section of the store with meat I get scared.  You never know you could end eating cow brains or something without even knowing it.  Meat is also kind of expensive and I do not want to waste it.  If you stop and think about it there are so many different words associated with meat and there are so many different types of meat out there.  Plus, different countries process and eat different types of meat (compared to what I am used to in the US).  

Despite this fear, I realized at the beginning of this week I was probably starting to lack protein (despite the many eggs I have been eating) so I decided to buy some hamburger.  Innocent, easy hamburger.  I was in the grocery store and I had no idea what the word for hamburger was.  I know it might seem stupid that I just don't ask someone about what meat is like in Argentina and what some of the different names may mean (I do know a few) but I just took the easy way out and decided to buy the thing that looked the most like the hamburger I am used to (and I will ask eventually).  

I ended up buying something that said "Nalga Picada Intesamente Desgrasada Novillito" (it looked like hamburger to me).  I made an actually hamburger with it and it tasted fine...not exactly what I am used to but it was good.  Then today I was using the rest to make noodles and red meat sauce.  As I was cooking I decided to get my translator out to try and figure out what that long name actually means.  I discovered that I was eating cow buttock that was intensely chopped.  I figured this out before I ate dinner and I sort of lost my appetite for a minute and broke out laughing.  I am actually still laughing about it.  I kind of love being a foreigner and not understanding anything...it presents lots of funny situations.  All I can do now is laugh and eat my probably very fatty cow buttock.  Always learning something here!

My pasta dinner with buttock cow meat!