Tag Archives: market

Food for Thought

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The husband and I dated for a short time before I moved to Mexico to live at the orphanage.  On date nights prior to leaving, I insisted on over-ordering & cleaning my plate in an effort to consume as much food as humanly possible.

Did I think the orphanage would not feed me sufficiently?  No.  But would they provide me with The King & I Thai and an delectable array of spicy chili pepper sauces?  Unlikely.

i.e.  We fell in love over mass quantities of food.

Indian.  Chinese.  Noodles & Co.

I can only imagine that he turned a blind eye since we were still in the honeymoon phase.  In hindsight, regularly seeing me in the food-coma-fetal-position and hearing the words “Don’t touch me” couldn’t have been all that appealing.

Fast forward to our first Taco Tuesday this past week.  My “slobbing down” of the rice and beans was referenced by my husband while we were en route home, along with the phrase “we may not have made it this far”.

Thank goodness we were steering clear of Chipotle prior to my departure.

In my defense, I’m a big believer in equal portion sizes for all, and we were sharing.  It is clearly not relevant that the man is one hundred pounds heavier.

I’ll conclude with random collection of iphone pictures.  I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that a good number of them are food-related.

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Açaí with a sense of humor.

Eggplant marinara, slow cooked and made from scratch.  Like most things here.

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Relishing the fresh produce.

The husband’s first attempt at homemade taco shells.  Not a proud moment.

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Suco de melancia com hortelã/Mint watermelon juice.

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Fresh market herbs.  Total cost R$4 (about US$2).

The magazine section at Liveria Cultura bookstore.  People stand here for hours reading.

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We have a written agreement that any time I accompany my husband for football at O’Malleys, I am consequently gifted chili cheese fries.

I have so far opted against the egg flied lice.

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Two things I adore:
1. Holiday decorations
2. Miss Amy Utecht in Berlin.  BEST CARE PACKAGE EVER.  Love you.

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Saturday morning breakfast:  Watermelon juice.  Coffee.  Mango w/ lime & chili pepper.

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In disbelief the TOMs are still alive & kicking.  The torrential downpour in Rio really did a number on them.

Watching a cattle auction.  On television.  With a Lady Gaga soundtrack.

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Sucos Copa Lima, site of my Thanksgiving Lunch.

A chaveliera (key maker).  Making friends with these guys since the husband lost his keys… for over a week… in his backpack.

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A little visit in Rio to the Gringo Café.  I’m not too proud to admit I went here by choice.  Or to say that I ate both large bowls of straight carbs by myself.  (Insert food-coma-fetal-position here.)

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We have been puzzled by a fast food chain in Brazil since we arrived.  It’s called Habib’s, and it’s logo is under the Coke emblem.

After a good amount of beer this past weekend, we wandered in and all of the boys ordered a drunken “Bib Dog”.

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Saturday morning, organic market at Parque Agua Brancas, a short walk from our apartment.

Have we seen the peacocks before?  Yes.  Have I taken pictures already?  Yup.  Will I continue to do so each time we visit?  I’m leaning towards probably.

After snapping a few photos, I turned around to my husband shaking his head.  Apparently, I looked ridiculous with my phone out next to three little girls (half my size) all doing the same thing.

Whatever.  Peacocks are delightful.

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Love.  Collection of Brazilian peppers for R$2 (about US$1).

Despise.  Quail eggs.  Who eats these?  I would much prefer they hatch and fly away.  Save the baby quails!

Still reading, eh?  That can only mean one of two things.
1.  You are my parent.
2.  You have mistakenly stumbled upon my blog and need to be redirected.  It’s okay, you’ll make it out alive.  But you’ll never get the past four minutes back.  Your best bet is to click on the red ‘X’ in the corner of your screen and start from scratch on your homepage.

I’m sure at some point, I’ll run out of things to write about.  Either that, or my posts will continue to get longer and more bizarre.

Either way, love and hugs from SP.

Making Friends

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While living in Mike and Dede’s basement during the month of July, we plotted our fast approaching life in Sao Paulo.  My husband and I had dreams of quickly settling into our international surroundings with an abundance of trendy Brazilian friends.  We would attend cultural events, host elaborate dinner parties, and speak Portuguese in an educated (yet unpretentious) manner.  Our new best friends would marvel at how funny we were, and how quickly we picked up on the nuances of the language.

We quickly abandoned those delusions upon arrival.  Instead, we settled on staring at the four walls of our hotel room and not being funny at all… just the two of us.

With my broken language skills, this is the best I can do so far.  Meet my new friends:

Mauricio.  He’s my egg guy.  I don’t buy them yet, because we have no pans.  But we have made a deal… HE will sell me eggs on Fridays and I can claim rights to an ‘egg guy’.  Mauricio found out where I’m from, and now each time I pass by he waves frantically and shouts “Oi!  Minn-EE-soh-tah!”

Lucia.  Sweetest lady you would ever like to meet.  Most of her product is either pre-cooked or prepped vegetables that can be popped in the oven with a chicken breast on our newly purchased pizza pan.  We like to spend our time together playing a little game called ‘Market Vocabulary’.

Okay.  I don’t know his name.  But I want him to be my friend.  I walked by this car repair shop with a camera slung over my shoulder.  He began to dance and shouted… “I will dance until you take a picture!” (In Portuguese of course.)  I stood there for a couple minutes to see if he would.  It was very impressive.  HE KEPT GOING.  So, in an effort to let him rest (and not be responsible for any injuries inflicted by that power tool,) I took a picture.

Lastly, I introduced myself to a woman carrying a yoga mat the other day.  (No picture since I was taking time off from being creepy.)  Turns out she’s an instructor around the corner and invited me to join her the next morning for a class.

It was absolutely NOT your typical yoga class.  Since I couldn’t understand most of what she said, she took the liberty of physically altering my positions.  I spent a good portion of my time hanging upside down from the wall attached to some jury-rigged contraption.  The rest was spent being adjusted and properly aligned touched a lot.

On that note, I’m off to study Portuguese.  Happy Fall to you Minnesotans… will someone please drink a pumpkin spice latte for me?!

Week In Pictures

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So I have to admit, this post is more like ‘two weeks ago in pictures’.  I’m a tad behind.  A few things have me digging through old fotos… moving to our new apartment & starting a part-time remote gig with Secondhand Hounds (I have been begging them to hire me for months and I am super excited they finally gave in.)

Amazon meets SP.  I have to wonder if this was the city’s intention as they planted this tree?  The trunk extends at least two feet into the street.

 Typical day: coffee, fresh pressed caju juice, podcasts, STUDYING.

Awesome little market find.

And by awesome, I mean this would be so cool in my bedroom if I were a boy… and if I were four years old.

Variety of roasted and toasted delectables at Praça Benedito Calixto fair on a Saturday morning.

Emporio Alto do Pinheiros… expansive shop with every brew imaginable, Bamberg microbrewery, and a cozy patio area with restaurant service.  Brilliant.

Wall. Of. Beer.

Named Brigadeiro after the ‘national truffle of Brazil’ this pretty little townhouse is filled with endless sweets, coffee and plush couches.  Honestly.  What could be better?!

Wikipedia tells me brigadeiro is made out of sweetened condensed milk, butter and cocoa powder.  Also, that they can be ‘found at any kind of party’.  This is all very good information to know.

Now that we are coffee connoisseurs, we sniff grounds and drink like this.  (Can you tell my husband still hasn’t ready the blog?)

Did I mention this place has tortoises, birds, and bunnies?  Meet Cafe & Chantilly (translation, whip cream.)  We watched them follow each other around for all of twenty minutes.  I have a new dream people.  It includes two best friend bunnies living in the guest bedroom.

Piraja inside…

 and outside.  They serve the most incredible sun-dried tomato meatballs with pumpkin.

Would you like some head with your beer?

For years whenever I heard ‘seasonal fruit’, tricolor cubed Perkins fruit came to mind.  No longer.

MMA Wrestling was on every TV in Sao Paulo.  In an attempt to gain in popularity here, they are making the fights very accessible to the public.

Even in this little quaint bar… which proceeded to make us both happy.  Really though, I would prefer to be watching it at Colin & Sam’s place like always back in Minnie.  Partially because it would be Colin listening to my husband’s detailed explanations of MMA strategy, but also because we miss them like crazy.

Which brings me to my final point.  We are somewhat homesick.  Surprised?  You probably shouldn’t be.  This is hard.  Most of our friends and family thought we were nuts for coming down here in the first place.  Others showed excitement for us, but were secretly glad it wasn’t them taking this plunge.  Perhaps some of you were genuinely exicted?!

No, we don’t drive in bullet proof cars.  No, I have not been kidnapped (yet.)  Life is good here.  We eat fresh delicious food on a regular basis.  It is currently winter and the temps are consistently in the seventies.  Our apartment is much too big for us and very nice.  We go for walks often and have never felt in danger.

Yet, making friends is a slow process.  My husband used social networking for the first time this past weekend to make a new friend from Miami.  We met him for Sunday football and likely smothered him with attention to the point where we won’t see him again.

In the meantime, it is your emails/FB messages/skyping/comments on the blog that keep us from feeling too lonely.  So, thank you… for everyone who has kept in touch with us.  Eventually, we will have friends again and you won’t need to worry quite so much.  But for now, it is so good to hear from you.

xoxo, April & Husband