“Travel” Weeks 71-73
It was a fairly boring month, as my consumption was mostly restricted by my goal to go 40 days without alcohol for fast and otherwise eating an uberhealthy diet until the last week or so. It was also a very low productivity month. In the second week, I spent a day or two filing my taxes and made the momentous decision to set an end date to my South American adventures. It was necessary after spending a year in lockdown in Argentina and no indications as to when I would be able to freely travel again. I only needed a day or two of research to book the tickets out of Argentina and back to the US at a time when hopefully half the population will already be vaccinated. This knowledge flipped a switch in my mind making it hard to stay focused on the present. Meanwhile, I’m about to submit a paper for a summer conference and the old patterns of academic procrastination haven’t been cured by a two year post-doctoral research trip.
Days 397-427:
| Rent | 12,000 |
| Eggs and produce | 290 |
| Total: | 12,290 ARS (USD 87.94) |
When I moved into the house, the “small print” said that the rental price would be adjusted every 6 months. Sure enough, my landlord upped the price. 20% is a lot, but since Argentina and Mendoza especially is acting like the pandemic is over, there has been a fairly steady stream of tourists spending a couple nights in the house. I have the best bedroom, so another reason I decided to set an exit date was to ensure that I wouldn’t have a surprise eviction.
| Vegetables and Fruit | 299 |
| Total | USD 2.14 |
| Popcorn & Lentils @ Atomo | 110 |
| Vea | 590 |
| Total: | 700 ARS (USD 5.01) |
At the end of the third week of dieting, I was starting to crave an occasional cheat day. I’m mixed as to whether popcorn counts as healthy or not. I certainly use plenty of oil and butter to pop it, but most of that seems to stay on the sides of the pot. The Liquidation shelf of the Vea is my Achilles Heel and 83 pesos of that bill went towards three individual aljafores and a candy bar which were all marked down half off. Bananas, butter, and dried beans made up half the rest of the bill, so…
| Produce | 550 |
| Total: | USD 3.94 |
| Vegetables | 210 |
| Carrefour | 1225 |
| Total: | 1435 ARS (USD 10.27) |
For the next weekend of cheat eating, I decide to make chicken stock with on sale chicken thighs (@169/kilo), then use some of the meat for a taco salad, which I load up with cheese, olives, and corn chips. For the actual junk food, Carrefour has the same candy bar I really liked at the Vea, but it is 90% off instead of 50% off, I try some new kind of sweet biscuit (not quite cookies), and round it out with some prunes (which I will eat in one sitting).
| Grido Helado 1/4 kilo | 150 |
| Total: | USD 1.07 |
The Carrefour snacks only served to awaken the beast of my sugar cravings. I was saved by the fact that Grido upped the price of their 1/2 kilo by 20 pesos while keeping the 1/4 kilo price unchanged. It’s still technically a better unit cost to go for the larger container, but the sticker shock was enough to convince me to just go for a half.
| Vea | 485.75 |
| Bananas | 130 |
| Apples & Cherry Tomatos | 250 |
| Vegan Helado | 120 |
| Total: | 985.75 ARS (USD 7.05) |
It was a lot of running around for one day. With an uptick of banana prices at the Vea, I decided to grab those at a fruit shop which uses a bait and switch model (they advertise the price of the clearance bananas), and picked up a 2kg bag of apples and 1kg bag of cherry tomatoes from another fruit shop that is cheapest when you grab the prebagged/preweighed fruit they have on sale.
| Eggs and salad veg | 220 |
| Total: | USD 1.57 |
| Soda & Baguette | 190 |
| Pan de Campo | 110 |
| Carne (Vacio) | 770 |
| Total: | 1070 ARS (USD 7.66) |
I decided to do a barbecue on St Patrick’s Day. The office guys were going to join me, but they backed out at the last minute because they were slammed with work. It was a little rainy, but I managed to build a fire and slow roast the cut of beef (and chorizo and morcilla). The problem with barbecues is that I get hungry during the slow process of prepping the fire and slow cooking the meat, so I after a big bowl of salad and snacking on nearly a half loaf of bread, I’m not hungry by the time the meat is ready.
| Lentils and popcorn @ Atomo | 180 |
| Carrefour | 742 |
| Produce | 400 |
| Total: | 1322 ARS (USD 9.46) |
| Vea | 1730 |
| Lomoro 1/2 kilo | 280 |
| Total: | 2010 ARS (USD 14.38) |
Surprisingly, Carrefour had the best prices on bananas in the city that day. I almost never buy produce there. Even though I don’t have any plans to use it, I pick up a bag of rice. Similarly, I buy a blend of olive oil and sunflower to substitute for both my cooking oil and my salad oil as those were getting low. If only I could have satisfied my weekend sweet tooth with the 90% discounted peanut brittle.
The truth is, it takes a long time to go through 2 kg of apples, so I had been starting to cut them up, toss with cinnamon, sugar, and oats and throw in the microwave for a perfunctory apple crisp. Two uncontrollable desires governed my shopping on the weekend. One, I wanted apple pie and two, I wanted to make my own granola. So, I made a individual baked apple dumplings inspired by the Foodwishes recipe. At the Vea, I went nuts picking up a 1kg of rolled oats, shredded coconut, white sugar, brown sugar, butter, and flour. Stocking up on all these baking supplies with 5 weeks left in Argentina was bad enough, but there also happened to be an irresistible sale on chocolate bars (6 for 679 pesos), which only is available once in a blue moon. Finally, how could I make mini apple pies without some vanilla (and dulce de leche) ice cream to accompany them.
| Contact lenses | 1300 |
| Almonds and chickpeas | 280 |
| Carrefour (again!) | 950 |
| Total: | 2530 ARS (USD 18.10) |
I don’t usually go to supermarkets three days in a row, but I realized I was out of laundry detergent. I also needed a new notebook and some sort of filling to finish off the six leftover empanada wrappers after making the apple pies. I settled on cheese since I could get all of those things together at the big Carrefour. It came out expensive because I saw a 10 pack of disposable medical-style triple-layered with metal insert face masks (499) at the checkout. With the almonds on hand, I made my granola on Tuesday. My attempt to make oven-baked banana chips did not work out well, but the granola was very delicious and very fattening.
| Beer, Butter & Milk @ Vea | 755 |
| Onion, garlic & red pepper | 70 |
| German-style brotchen | 180 |
| Osobuco & herbal drink | 345 |
| Total: | 1350 ARS (USD 9.66) |
I have clearly transitioned back to a food-oriented way of life, but it is hard to follow what I am doing since I often buy things in advance, or plan meals based on spontaneous purchases because something looks good at the supermarket. For example, Vea usually has the worst prices on cheese but I saw a good looking chunk of parmigiano at decent price, so I picked it up on Sunday. This suggested I make pasta, so I was thinking about the family recipe for beef-tomato sauce and using some of the beef for empanadas. However, when I decided on queso cremoso for those, I had to come up with another plan for using the parmigiano and settled not only on making a fettuccini alfredo, but attempting to make fresh noodles (Tuesday’s lunch). Still wanting to work some meat into my diet, I was inspired to make a big pot of goulash because I had also recently purchased a new package of paprika.
Meanwhile, as I was about to reach my 40th day without alcohol on Sunday, I was stocking up on whatever beer was on sale–which happened to be Budweiser and Stella Artois (Noir).
| Salad veg | 70 |
| Total: | USD 0.50 |
The advantage of front loading all the shopping for my burst of kitchen inspiration is that I only needed to get a few more vegetables to make a couple salads and last me through the weekend. Furthermore, with the reintroduction of alcohol on Monday, I had decided to try something invented by the Paulaner monks hundreds of years ago–a beer fast. Some people do the entire period of Lent with only beer for nourishment. I wanted to try it for four or five days. Thus I need beer on hand and no food in the house.
| Four happy hour beers | 750 |
| More beer | 170 |
| Total: | 920 ARS (USD 6.58) |
The first day of the beer fast was…interesting. I had calculate that on average, one could drink 3 liters of beer and still be running a starvation level calorie deficit, but 3 liters is quite a lot to consume, so that was roughly my target. It was pleasant to slowly nurse a liter over a 3 hour period in the afternoon, but going out for happy hour drinks was a bit of a mistake because I was left with quite the hangover the next day and no chance to self-medicate through greasy, carb-laden foods.
| Patagonia and boullion | 400 |
| Total: | USD 2.86 |
On the last day before the change in weekly offers, I figured out that Atomo had relatively better price for Patagonia, which is basically the premium Argentinian craft brand. Beer seems to be the most flexible priced thing in Argentina with prices going up every time I blink, such that it is cheap to get a pint for under 200 when I used to be able to find 90 peso pints.
| Antares | 400 |
| Total: | USD 2.86 |
I ventured out once again to try out a new (to me) bar for happy hour. Ordering barley wine was a mistake (or blessing in disguise) and I left shortly after 8pm when I would have otherwise tried to squeeze in a 3rd pint of either the cream stout or the porter.
| Vea | 698 ARS |
| Total: | USD 4.99 |
Despite not drinking so much, I was still woken up in the middle of the night and unable to fall back asleep. Though that often happens if I drink alcohol, I couldn’t rule out the possibility of hunger. I was feeling a bit better when the sun came up, but ultimately to prospect of going 2 more days without food was too daunting. So, I swung by the Vea, picked up a “Korean squash,” a sack of potatoes, tomato sauce, a whole grain baguette, and a couple bottles of wine (for later). Then I proceeded to make a congee with rice and half the squash in order to nourish myself and take it easy on my digestive system. The funny thing is that introducing solid food back into my diet made me feel lightheaded than I was before, so it was a day of rest for me. Thus, ends the experiment to try a beer fast, which lasted 3.5 days or 84 hours. I’m still taking it easy because I am looking forward to a barbecue on Easter Sunday.
The cost for this month came out to be exactly the same as last month, or $196 despite the extra $14 in rent and $9 for new contact lenses. I guess even the splurging out I did the last week or so was more reasonable than what I did over my birthday weekend. I fully expect my next month to be expensive, as I buy souvenirs and live bigger as I come closer to the end.
Running Total: 6906.09 USD (RMB 45355.7)
Daily Average: 16.17 USD (RMB 106.2)