Day 167 – Sunday 5th March 2006
A pretty quiet day all in all, my hostel was a decent place for just hanging out and doing nothing, so I took full adavantage and had a lazy Sunday. most of it was spend chatting to the English folk in front of the TV, before we headed out for some Sunday night drinking action, which turned out to be a 5am finish. Nothing spectacular happened, but I had my first drink from a pint glass in a long time.
Since I have been away I reckon I have cooked meals about three times. Thats not bad going. Its also a lot of restuarants. I honestly don’t see the point in cooking when I can go to a restuarant and eat for a couple of pounds including a drink. However in every hostel I go to I see people spending ages cooking up their meals every night and sitting down to what looks like a bland load of stuff on a plastic plate. I have often thought that I couldn’t possibly cook for much less money than I can go buy a meal for, so I decided to put this to the test. I had been eating steak and mash with a litre of beer for A$14 in the local restaurant so I went to the supermarket and bought a steak and some potatoes and some peas just for good measure. In fairness it came to Q8 without a beer which prob would have been A$4, so I saved A$2 by buying the stuff myself. Thats about 40 pence.
Then I had to spend an hour cooking it and using the shite potato masher in the hostel, so I ended up with steak and lumpy mash, eaten off of a plasitc plate. Then I had to wash up. What a ball ache. So now I draw my conclusions:
1. I would rather spend an hour walking around the town looking for a decent restaurant which is serving what I want for a decent price than spend an hour going to the supermarket, buying the stuff, cooking it and then eating it off plastic plates.
2. Argentina has great food. Why bother cooking for yourself?
3. There are any number of restuarants, the excuse that none of them has what you want is pure crap.
4. Unless I am really really hard up, I will continue to eat in restuarants. And besides, if I am so hard up that I cant afford to eat, I’ll go home and get a job.
