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Tom’s Spanish teacher, Lorena, described the Argentinian diet as consisting of the following four meals a day.

FIRST MEAL: Coffee (the most important component of the first meal) and some sort of sweet pastry.

SECOND MEAL: This would be analogous to our lunch and is generally empanadas (meat stuffed pastry dough) and/or pizza (bread and lots and lots of cheese). Possibly a sandwich could be substituted here.

THIRD MEAL: Third meal is taken at around 5:00 pm and consists of coffee (the only thing that gets you through until dinner) and a small cookie/pastry. If you are hungry, you might eat a tostada (bread, thin slice of cheese, thin slice of meat, toasted).

FOURTH MEAL: This is the big meal of the day and is generally some combination of meat and potatoes with whatever else you may choose to eat (perhaps a salad). This meal is eaten at 9:30 or 10:00 pm. Lorena said that people go to bed directly after eating dinner during the week. (Mind you, on the weekend, it is common to eat much later.)

Lorena asked Tom what our eating schedule was in the States. He told her, with kids, that we generally tended to eat at 6:30 pm or 7:00 pm and then we would go to bed around 10:30 pm to 11:00 pm. She couldn’t believe that there was such a big gap between when we ate dinner and when we went to bed, during which she claimed she would starve.

This knowledge led us to conclude that the big steak at the end of the day in Argentina is really just a time-saver because it acts as your undigested breakfast for the next morning!!

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