Gluttony and spice and everything nice

La monumental nacional de la bandera, the historic monument built to honor the designer of the Argentine flag, was shining down on us; the blue lights flanking each side and never letting us forget that we were in Rosario.

But I was not here to look at the flag monument. In fact, this nationally recognized piece of stone is five blocks from my apartment. I see it almost everyday. I was there for something much more elusive, something that Argentina has been hiding from me for months now.

Spice.

Yesterday began Colectividades, a week long culture festival in the heart of Rosario, that features food from the different ethnic groups in the city. Rosario has a huge immigrant population, and this one week of the year they meet on the waterfront in front of the monument and cook.

Most of you know that I love street food. Almost any time I am lucky enough to be in Portland, Oregon, I am yelling about how I want ¨food from a cart¨. My goodbye present from Daniel Madrid was to take me to a collection of delicious street vendors on Hawthorne and eat for two hours. I am, to say it politely, a fanatic.

And Argentina, I am sad to report, is probably not one of my favorite culinary destinations. They do asados (Argentine BBQ) well, and Churipan is one of my favorite foods, but in general, the people here detest any sort of spice. Pepperoni pizza is considered way to spicy for most Argentines.

So here I am, a fanatic of all things spicy and ethnic, in a country that considers mayonnaise a flavor. But, Colectividades was here, and I was going to make the best of it.

We descended upon the festival like Samoyeds that hadn´t eaten for weeks (Falconer family inside joke, don´t worry) searching for any South East Asian stand we could find. We ran past Peru, peeked into Palenstine, pit stopped at Lebanon. We had falafal, lamb, french fries thick with grease and salt, baclava, something beautiful and chocolate from Rusia, and still unable to find anything Thai or Vietnamese, settled for paella from Catalan.

Now, Paella is something of a religion for me. My dad has been making it since I was little, and whenever something really special was happening, if we were ever having guests over or generally trying to appear like respectable people, we hid the dogs and dad brought out the paella pan. We would talk about it for a week ahead of time, ¨Oh get ready!¨ Dad would say to Ian or I, ¨It´s going to be good!¨and we would oohhh and ahhh in delight and anticipation. When the huge pan of rice and saffron and seafood was finally placed in front of us, the table would go silent until it had been picked clean.

So it is with my family in mind that I attempt to describe the beautiful vision in front of me last night:

A huge pot so big that I could curl up and take a comfortable nap in it is boiling and frothing with rice and various spices. Two men are stirring it with gigantic metal spoons, and every few minutes one of them is throwing something else into the pot. Shrimp! Sausage! Garlic! Something I can´t recognize! Squid! Muscles! Chicken!

I got a plate. Obviously.

I shared it with two other girls, and we ate it so fast that today we woke up with blisters on our tongues and insides of our mouths.

But is that going to stop me from going to Colectividades tonight?

I think we all know the answer to that.