Cooking Class and Argentine Birthday Party

Friday was an amazing day/night!

After finishing spanish class we went to a cooking class taught at one of the best cooking schools in Buenos Aires. We learned how to cook for four straight hours! 

We started off by making empenadas- for one simple empenada is a lot of work!!

We learned how to cut onions, tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers really small put them into a pan and cook them with the ground beef and some sort of corn. Then we wrapped the empenada skins around them in cool designs. 

We had to cut every vegetable into tiny pieces!

Then we cooked everything together

You can really see the detail/hardwork that goes into one simple empenada

The meat empenada stuffing

Teaching us how to put the empenada stuffing we had cooked into the actual empenada with cool designs!

We then cooked steaks yumm. 

SO MUCH MEAT

We seasoned it only with olive oil, salt, and pepper and it was so delicious!

We made two different types of desserts 

A three layer cookie with double layer of dulce de leche filling and a merengue top..WOW

Our second dessert- gooey dulce de leche filling wrapped and then eventually fried

Making our desserts!

The finished dessert! YUM

And like all cooks...we eventually had to clean our mess...

At the end of the class we were presented with certificates saying we had mastered the "Argentine Cuisine". It was a cute last touch to a 4 hour cooking class!

Us with the head chef!

Getting my certificate...very important moment

"This is more important than my high school graduation" -Roberto

 That night was the best night yet! Our mom invited us to join her at her dinner party. At first we were hesitant and were not sure if she actually wanted us there but after she insisted we come we were excited! It was me and Jenna, Gioia and her boyfriend, and another couple. The entire time they were talking about their 26 year old son, showing us pictures of him and raving about him. We started off with appetizers in the living room and the most amazing Malbec wine I have ever tasted. We then moved to the dining room table where the chef had prepared a meal of fish, creamed spinach, and mashed potatoes. All the while we were taking glasses of wine to the face! It was delicious! Right before dessert we heard a knock on the door and to our surprise it was their 26 year old son they had just been raving about! (we think this was a total setup). We end up having dessert finishing 8 bottles of wine between the six of us and then sit in the living room for coffee when she opens two more bottles of champagne!! CRAZY.

The dining room table set up for our dinner party...sadly the only pic from this epic night

The son's name was maximo and was reallllly nice. He would speak in broken english and we would speak in broken Spanish. He invited us over to his friends birthday party which we ended up loving! We walked in all 30 people stopped talking and stared at us as he said "Welcome the Americans!". It was hilarious and we ended up staying at this party drinking amazing white wine sangria and playing drinking games until 4am when we left to go to a club til 6am! What a night! And unfortunately no pictures...