Kosher McNificas and Water Chicken

I didn't have any classes to fall asleep in yesterday, so I went to the Recoleta Cemetery with Molly, Daniel, and Michael (3/4 of the group I went to Rosario with).

The cemetery is like a mini-city enclosed in a walled-off block in the ritzy neighborhood of Recoleta. It's filled with hundreds of stone and marble masoleums arranged in rows, with passages through them like roads. The main areas are clogged with tourists, but things get deserted pretty quickly. Since the recession a lot of once-wealthy families have lost all their money, and while some of the masoleums are still kept up, others look like they haven't been touched in years. The glass in the windows is broken, layers of spiderwebs cover the locks, and plaster flakes from the ceiling inside. The effect is excellently creepy.

After the cemetery Molly and I went to the Abasto shopping (the Argentine word for mall) to eat at the Kosher McDonald's there. We met Karen there, the other 1/4 of the Rosario group. All three of us are extremely Gentile.

One of no less than seven McDonald's in the mall, the Kosher McDonald's is also the only kosher one outside of Israel. No cheeseburgers, obviously, and presumably the fries aren't fried in weird beef fat like the ones at a regular McDonald's. Other than that, and the profusion of yarmulkes, it seemed pretty standard.

(That's right, Nicky. I ate at a McDonald's. It's okay, though. I felt appropriately guilty.)

Last night I went over to Molly's cousin's house, where I ate some more. Sometimes I think all I do here is eat and sleep. Not that I'm complaining.

Dinner started off with wine and a plate of cheese, olives and sausage. Then it continued with more wine, grilled chorizo, plantains, salad with cheese and avocado, rice, chimichurri, zucchini salsa, and water chicken, a recipe that Molly's cousin proudly told us involves putting a chicken in a dish with water and cooking it until you remember that it's in the oven. It was slightly more complicated than that, since he also cut up an apple and an onion and put them around the chicken, and covered everything with honey and soy sauce. It's something I definitely have to try myself when I get back to a kitchen. Molly and I volunteered to help in the cooking and apparently destroyed the plantains by flattening them before we fried them, but they tasted fine to me. I ate two helpings of everything.