Suspiro

These were a nice treat. I try out new things every now and then. These were nice. The first ingredient is  lime though. Thought that was sort of odd. I guess they are made with lime juice. They were crunchy, like a...crunchy merengue? I don't know how to describe them. Tasty though.

Different kinds of Bananas

Who knew there were different kinds? I guess I thought there were maybe just different shapes, but this one looks totally different. The skin looks different, it's a tooootally different size, and it tastes like a grapefruit! Okay, I lied there. I actually didn't eat one yet, but it probably just tastes like a banana.

-Side note, since I wrote this draft we bought yet another type of banana (let me specify, when I buy bananas, I take a close look at them, pick out ones that look good, and look familiar. My husband grabs a bunch and heads to the checkout, that's how we keep getting these different types of bananas) and the husband normally eats all of the bananas, and this type must have tasted somewhat different, because nearly all the bananas are still in their bowl, brown. Oh well. We'll freeze them and I'll sneak it into food somehow.

Life is Good

In our apartment we have this one guy, he's a worker guy, he cleans and takes care of the lawns and such. He is a really incredible guy. When we moved here we didn't get our stuff (we shipped everything we own) for about 4 months. He delivers our mail to us, and I guess at some point he saw inside our house to our kitchen, and realized we had nothing to cook with. So he started bringing us food. It was the gosh darn sweetest thing. He brought us probably three or four soup/bean dishes, and he was super proud that we were getting our first tastes of Brazilian cuisine from him. What I'm saying is he's a super nice guy.

Any time I ask him how he's doing, he's always answered with one of these:
'tudo tranquilo' -everything's tranquil/peaceful/in order
'tudo otimo' - it's all great!

So pretty much, life is as good as it can get. This guy works 12 hour shifts, rides his bike to and from work, and doesn't really make that much money. But seriously he is like a little Buddha. He's so nice. Every now and then I get a little worried about life, like am I making enough money, I'm not learning portuguese very fast, you know normal stuff that people worry about. But man, talking to this guy just sets me in the right mood. This morning I went for a swim (I'm trying to get in our pool more often, in the case that we ever end up without a pool, I don't want to regret my time with one) and on my way up I saw him and said hi. He said hi back, and asked me how I'm doing. I said 'tudo tranquilo!'. He said 'oh your portuguese is getting so good!'. I told him that I learned that little word from him and what does he say? 'Life is a school'. Buddha, I swear! This guy always makes my day.

-Side note, I found that breadfruit on the ground the other day. Free fruit, that's what I'm talking about! I waited until the next day to cut it up and it was just mush by then. Are they the sort of thing you need to eat right when you pick it? Anyone know about breadfruit?

Super yellow avocado

I can't remember if I posted this already or not, but a few weeks back we had the craziest yellow avocado. It was just insanely crayon colored yellow. Super bright. I assumed it was also just as packed with nutrients! Right? Color equals nutrients? Oddly enough, today we had an extremely green one. Like grass green. I didn't get a photo of it though. Next time.

Local

Our food is so local, it isn't even funny. Coming from the US where local is such a big trend right now, this makes me laugh. Half of the fruit we get is picked from the trees that line our streets. I just looked out the back window of our house and noticed that the factory that makes our bread/crackers/pasta is literally in our back yard. Veggies and other fruits are local. Meat is local. I've rarely picked up a packaged item at the store and not seen our state listed as the origin. And we live in a small state. It is amazing, and I think we are much healthier because of this. Brazil is so funny. There are so many things wrong, but this is something that is so so right!

A great walk in Candeias

I don't normally describe any of the neighborhoods around us as 'cute'. We live in an area full of high rise condos, so that pretty much settles it right there. They're not cute. But if you wander enough you can find houses, most of which are usually pretty old, holdouts that haven't sold their land to be developed. So they still have big trees, and don't have the 8 foot cement walls that nearly all the new houses have for protection. Yesterday I went to pay bills (here comes a big parentheses topic: paying bills  is so different here than in the US, yowza, but I usually leave feeling like I've conquered the world, so maybe it's a good thing, but, a different post for a different time) and decided to keep walking in the direction I was going, because I knew a grocery store that I wanted to go to was relatively close. I was wrong on that, it was like 2.5 miles away, but it wasn't the destination, it was the journey, right?

I ended up walking through a little old neighborhood in Candeias, which is the neighborhood just south of us. I put up a little google map for you to see. Those are just average distances...The walk must have been at least ten times longer...or maybe it was just a warm day. So anyway, I'm walking through Candeias, and wouldn't you know, it's just the cutest little neighborhood I ever did see. First I walked by this little house that had kittens. There were two old hound dogs guarding the kittens too, which was adorable. But little kittens. I was petting one that was sitting on a pillar, until a dog started barking at me, so I left. I walked by a guy sitting on the corner, and he says 'that's a lot of kittens, right?'. Right! How great.

Then, a little further down, I found a breadfruit! What's the best kind of grocery shopping? The kind where you just find food at your feet as you walk. Wonderful! Then I passed a great adorable little house that was all shaded and hidden by all their trees, and it was for sale. All of the tiles were Brennand tiles (said so in the ad), which I'm just realizing I haven't posted about. Anyway, it was cute. I almost wrote down the number. I told Toby about it last night and he asked if it was on the water. No, but it was close? Does that count?

I ended up waiting in line for 30 or so minutes, to find out the credit card reader was down, so I didn't get what I was wanting (it was flax and cashew flour, incase you're wondering. I can only find it in one grocery store). But on the way back I passed by the kitten house again and saw even smaller kittens. Honestly the smallest kitten I've ever seen. Probably no heavier than a small orange. Tiny!

So it was a good walk. Go find a cute neighborhood for yourself, go for a walk!


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This nice coconut

Is delicious. Also, on that note, we had guests in over the holidays and one guest got the first bad coconut we've bought. One out of however many we've had, I think the odds are good. 

Also, coconuts, are they a seed? A nut? A fruit?

Christmas in Brazil!

Well, we've lived here for a year now (one year this weekend, I'll try and think of a special anniversary post). We managed all the winter holidays here, a relatively American Thanksgiving, Brazilian Christmas, and  just plain old fun New Year's Eve. 

Christmas really summed up the experience. We were supposed to have 15 guests. Family, friends of my Mother in Law (she's originally from this city, so has friends still living here), that's about it. So we bought about 20 people's worth of food. Which for Brazilian Christmas means desserts. I made deviled eggs, my American contribution (people here keep asking me for the recipe. I don't have the heart to say: eggs and mayo!), but the rest was literally all sweets. There was a dish called salpicao (it is deeeelicious) which is mostly deli meat and mayonnaise, but also has dried fruits and pineapple, so it's pretty sweet. Mayo is a little sweeter here too. As is ketchup. But that's a story for another time.

We had a whole chocolate cake, cookies galore, and like a million brazilian snacky things. There is a picture below. This is for 15 people. So we're sitting around, and no one is showing up, but it's Brazil, so we're not expecting anyone to be any less than an hour late. We open all the presents, eat, and some family shows up. 3 people, so that's 7 total. We hang with them for a while, eat, chat, Christmas it up, and then they're off. We're looking at the not-dented-at-all food stash for like four hours, then we decide to hit the beds. This is like 10pm. Maybe 11pm. Either way, later than the hubs and I normally stay awake. I'm brushing my teeth, maybe already into my jammies, and there's a knock on the door. Whaaa, haha? Someone arrived to Christmas like 4 hours late. In the US you'd expect a call or for them to not show up, but this is totally normal here. They didn't eat anything. So we ate the unhealthy (but delicious) Christmas food until New Year's Eve.

Okay, end of story. I hope you all had a merry merry holiday season.

Amazon 4: Jungle Part 2

Okay, jungle part two. Stay with me. I'm almost done with these Amazon posts. I mean, unless you guys really like them. Because if you do, I could probably keep this going for years, with the amount of  pictures I took.

 Toby lost his finger in a fight with a caiman!!! He's real bummed about it. It was his favorite nose picking finger too :(

 Lunch. Well, semi-survival lunch. Sardines and mandioc.

 Hearts of palm, straight from the forest!

 Luring a gigantic tarantula out of his big hole.

 Whoooaoa! This thing was like the size of my hand, spread wide open.

 Big trees. Bat below.

 Camp number two and some fish that our guide caught for us for dinner. When we were pressed to actually catch our own dinner we didn't stand up to the challenge. But this is the same kind of fish Toby caught.

 A handstand shot together. Always better together.

 All of this is covered with water for half the year. All the way up to those tree tops.

 How to cross a river without getting wet. Okay. If you want to know that, don't ask any of us. We don't know.

 Shower time.

 Peacock bass, snakehead fish and one other kind for lunch.

Giant Tangerine

I went to the store the other day and they had these GIANT really lumpy ugly fruits. They were labeled as tangerines. I have no idea if it actually was one. I always thought they were sort of small, but this was the size of a really big grapefruit. Which, on that note, I haven't been able to find down here. I'm sure the climate is right for grapefruits, where are they? 

I tried to show how big it was with our ipod smallminibabysize. I don't think it really shows it that well. The top was pretty hilarious too. Very lumpy. Shoulda taken a video.

Amazon 4: In the Jungle Part 1

Okay, the amount of posts I have is getting ridiculous. Post 4, part 1? Haha. And 40 pictures in one post? Hot dang, this is too much. I will try and downsize. Okay, I cut out a few pictures, but there's still a lot. Sorry about that. So much good stuff! How could I get rid of any of it?

 Okay, I know it looks like I'm cutting down a tree in the rainforest, which sounds like a really awful thing to do. But the shelter we built will stand for like 10 years, said the guide. So it's something that's going to stick around. And get used a lot.

 Sturdiness test. It's sturdy enough for me. But when you attach 6 hammocks...things are different.

 Checking the height.

 We used the part of the tree where the branches come out (don't know the name of that part. I would call it the crotch, but it seems like there must be a better word), and then added extra security with jungle vines.

 Check out that home!!!

 Did you know you can start a fire with two batteries and steel wool? Part of the expedition was learning how to survive. So learning to make fire was part of it. Using batteries and steel wool sort of seemed like cheating (if I were surviving, what are the chances of steel wool and batteries coming up?), but it's how our native guide chose to start the fire. We challenged him to use the flint, and he made that work too. As far as making fire without tools, I guess I'm still in the dark.

 Good thing there weren't any food and safety people around. Washing chicken in the river... probably not the most sanitary thing ever.

 Using the water pump again. Our guides brought two 5 gallon jugs of water to our camp. But to our second camp we hiked for about 7 hours. We didn't bring those large jugs, because it would have been a little ridiculous, but I wonder, if we hadn't had our water pump, what would we have done? Not hiked?

 Super fun fact: we brought a gun for protection against really scary animals like jaguars! Just being somewhere where you need to bring a gun for protection (okay, our old house in Atlanta doesn't count) seemed very exotic to me. If we hadn't only had 3 bullets I might have protected myself from this giant beetle.

 Yum, dinner. Piranha stew and chicken.

 No one told us about the amazing variety of crazy looking fish (I mean, come on, look at the expression on his face!) we would find in the rivers. So when Toby caught this one, with just a piece of line and a hook, we were terrified. What a crazy fish! Doesn't his facial expression remind you of Eyore? It's like a big frown. Like he's saying: Well, I guess I got caught. Oh well.

 Toby wasn't excited or anything to have caught the largest fish of the trip so far.

 Large fish. Small guide.

 Unfortunately, this was not one of the nights we had to provide for ourselves, so this big ole guy got thrown back in.

 Okay, see what I mean about fishing with just a line? Brazilian fishermen crack me up. Just a line!

 Cachaca shots for dinner. And maybe to disinfect our stomachs.

 The bathroom.

 We went on a night tour and fish were jumping in the boat by the dozens (okay, maybe 10 total). I dont' know if it was the light or what, but seriously every other minute another fish jumped in.

 Time for bed! Bug spray it up!

 For about an hour while we were getting to sleep we were terrified the whole shelter was going to collapse. The guides said that it had happened before. One of us would get in and be fine, then the next person would get in their hammock and the first person would be sitting on the floor. Every time we added more weight we had to readjust the hammocks. Then when we were all about comfortable one of the larger branches that was holding us up snapped, so we all got up, fixed that, readjusted again, and finally slept.

 Fried bananas and coffee. What cracks me up about this is that our guide actually measured the coffee. In the middle of the jungle, I don't care how much coffee you put it, just throw some in!

 Check out that ant hill! Of course, again, our guide was really small, so he probably makes it look a lot bigger too.

 This fine specimen was called a Monkey Comb. Our guides said that when you hear the 'ooo-o-ooo, ee-ee-eee!' in the jungle it's the monkeys scratching themselves with these. Unfortunately I didn't hang on to one. Would have come in hand after all the bug bites.

 Speaking of bug bites. This is an ant...nest? Ant house? Ant shelter. Whatever. They said hey, put your hand on it, let the ants crawl all over you, then smush them all. They smell when you smush them and it acts as a bug repellent. We all did it, no ant bites (but still tons of bug bites, so maybe it was just a joke to see if the gringos would do it) but you had the horrible feeling that bugs were crawling all over you for a while afterwards.

Bamboo jungle whistles, incase we got lost.

And the last thing. So because it was survival they taught us how to find food. Food being grubs. They live inside these certain coconuts and you get them out and eat them. They tasted sort of coconut-y. Which was I guess pleasant. I could think of worse things to eat if I were starving.