james p said:
DEAR GPOP! Don't even MENTION unpasturized milk here!!!!look on past threads FOOD AND DINING and see the responses I got when I was asking if anybody knew where I could get either PASTURIZED or un pasturized milk here to make cheese!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!YOU WILL DIE!!!!!!! I am still trying to find natural milk. I WANT GOOD CHEESE!!!!
Yeah :S I noticed...1137 posts, that's some reading.
But the fact of the matter is that once I arrived here (in '04), I was going nuts trying to find ANYTHING that I was used to, and I am not talking about just stuff you would find in a North American supermarket.
I was raised on Romanian food so It's been too long since I had cabbage rolls like my mom used to make... certain things can be substituted or adapted, other thing cannot so it behooves a body to learn to make things from scratch if you indeed miss it soooo much.
When I was a kid I remember (and loved) mamaliga (here it's polenta) with buttermilk and polish style sausage. Occasionally I can find a acceptable garlic sausage, and of course polenta is everywhere, but sadly I have a lot of difficulty resolving the buttermilk issue.
I also have ties to Greece so the search for decent fetta has lead to deep disappointment. I once walked desperately around Flores going from queseria to queseria asking if they had fetta,
them: "si...mira, fetas de queso"
me: ... ??? WTF ???... no, fetta Griega... de cabras
they tell me to try another place, repeat this 20 times- before I know it, I've walked 2 Kilometers and still found nothing. I bought something labeled "fetta de cabras" at Carrefour once, felt too squishy to be fetta, took a bite to try it and spat it out, chucked out the remainder.
The problem is that, even if there is a demand for something that is foreign to Argentines, they may try to make or experiment with it; but the fact of the matter is that - some might have had some exposure to other cultures but not enough to facilitate any degree mastery in producing it OR they're keen on making money off of something that they really don't know nothing about. Best to stay with what you know.
The really sad part is that the waves of availability (and now it seemed to ebb out of existence) is all dependent on the political whims of the day.