apartment potluck

Today the apartment had it's monthly potluck. I decided to stick around rather than taking a trip to Toledo, since this qualifies as hanging out with locals and chatting in Spanish =). Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures, but the food was yummy. And I learned some new cooking/food-related words in Spanish!

• Lillian made a salad with lettuce (lechuga), celery (apio), apples (manzana), walnuts, and lime juice
• Fabian made patacones - latke-like things from plantains (plátanos), garlic (ajo), and salt, fried just like latkes are fried. He also made the most amazing guacamole I've ever had - he put a ton of fresh-squeezed lime in it (and apparently Colombians mix up limes and lemons in Spanish...), in addition to leaving the avocado pit in the guacamole bowl to prevent the guacamole from turning black. He also made a red tomato-based sauce to eat with his patacones that reminded me of the red saucy stuff that you get when you add too much tomatoes to stir fry.
• Helena made a traditional Catalunyan torta (cake) that was very fluffy and rich, reminding me of the consistency of flan
• Stefany made corn-flour tortilla buns from scratch and fried chicken pieces.
• I made salat olivee, known in the rest of the world as Russian salad - a salad from boiled potatoes, boiled carrots, canned peas, pickles, and egg whites, all mixed with mayonnaise. I made this because I couldn't find a Russian store to buy borscht in to make cold borscht...

We hung out, had food, and had a generally good time. I'm glad I stayed around the apartment this weekend!