Rude Food

My cooking head reattached itself recently, after a lengthy absence, and inspired me to buy a book of Brazilian recipes. It was surprisingly hard just finding a kind of 'overview' book – they all seemed to be either A Hundred And One Ways To Use Condensed Milk (and believe me, that book could run to several volumes in this goddamned place. You think you're getting lemon meringue pie and it turns out to be full of sticky, nasty… but anyway.), or books by foreign celebrity chefs – Jamie Oliver is very popular in Brazil, for some reason. Maybe fat tongues are a sign of virility here.

I did eventually find a good 'un, though, and I thought I'd start with feijoada, as it's the national dish and didn't look all that hard. It's a kind of tasty stew with black beans and various bits of pig, served with rice. The recipe called for a daunting array of different cuts of pork and sausage, but the supermarkets here sell packets of assorted meat for feijoada, so all was cool. These packets come vaccuum-packed so that you can't see all the contents, so I was expecting a few surprises, perhaps a trotter or a few unidentifiable bits of pig. However, the last thing I expected was – well, I *think* it was – a tail. It gave me a dreadful turn when I shook out the packet into a bowl, I can tell you. However, I soldiered on, and by the time I had all the ingredients chopped and cooking and Dan happened to phone, it had amused me enough to get my camera out:



I was already getting the giggles when I started trying to describe it to him. Stirring the pot all the while, it seemed to take on a life of its own… every time I calmed down a bit, it would poke itself above the surface to say hello…



After this, it all got a bit Carry On: no sooner did I poke the tail firmly down again, than other things began to surface that, in my heightened state of amusement, looked extremely questionable and honestly, I had tears in my eyes by the end of it.





However, the feijoada turned out fine, although a bit salty because I hadn't had time to soak some of the meat properly. The weird thing is that everyone who’s seen the pictures has asked me if I ate the tail. Er… no. For some reason, readers, I found myself a little reluctant to excavate a negligible amount of meat from this repulsive-looking orifice at the back.



So there you go. A delicious and tasty meal; almost literally, a silk purse from a sow's ear. And if you're VERY lucky, when I get home, I might just cook it for you too.


Still to come: Trip to a Tropical Paradise! Extreme sunburn! And me as a mermaid!

World's Worst Blogger

Oh dear, where has all the time gone!? I can't believe it's only three weeks until I get back. Naturally, it feels as if I've just got used to my life as an honorary brasileira, and now I'm coming home. And the closer it gets, the more the huge gravitational pull of friends, family &c on the other side of the Atlantic is being countered by the tugging at my heartstrings of all the things I love about this country.

Living here; cycling to work and to the beach; driving round the city with the girls; shouting at and laughing with my pupils; feeling happy in the sunshine; trying to think of entertaining ways to teach grammar; drinking and dancing and eating barbecued meat – it’s been mostly wonderful and sometimes a massive headache, but I was always busy doing it and haven’t kept this blog up as I intended. So this is a little bit about what my life is like here. And a gratuitous photo of Recife beach (during a big public event, hence crowds):




Teaching..

Term at junior school ended last Wednesday and I said goodbye to my little kids. They stayed true to form till the end: this yelling maelstrom was the result of me mentioning that I wanted to take a photo of them:



...and was abruptly ended by the tears of the little boy at front right, who's just been elbowed in the face.

Naturally, when I had a photo with just the girls, all was sweetness and light...



...and the only tears were for the farewells. I'll miss them, but I suspect I'll mainly be remembered as the teacher that often had to ask them for the word I needed in order to tell them off properly – seriously. They used to love correcting me when I got it all wrong, although sometimes I stumped even them – ha!

One occasion in particular stands out – trying to get them all to sit down, I began with my customary Ham-Actors-from-Blackadder-3-style 'Rrroarrr' to get their attention, and then said very forcefully, "Todo mundo sentado AGORA! Eu não quero ver NINGUEM parada! Se alguem fica parada mais uma vez, vai SAIR da sala!". They looked mystified. Trying to improvise with Spanish, what I'd actually said was not far off "Everybody sit down NOW! I don’t want to see ANYONE bus stop! If anyone’s bus stop one more time, they’ll go OUTSIDE the classroom!".

Not my finest hour, linguistically speaking. It did calm them down for a bit though, while we all worked out together what I was trying to say.

At home…

I've only taught part-time all this time, and working for Butterbeans as well has meant spending a lot of time alone in my flat, and in fact began to wonder if that had become a bit too much this morning. After declaring war on the cockroaches with every chemical weapon at my disposal, I routed them horse, foot and artillery months ago, but have never succeeded in ridding the place of the tiny ants that get everywhere. Every so often, when they form actual columns to march for death or glory on some forgotten crumb, I defy my conscience and massacre them in droves, but mostly I just try and ignore them.

Feeling magnanimous this morning, though, as a small file of them trekked industriously across the hob, I found myself gesturing grandly at them with the stove-lighter and intoning, "You May Live". Really: I said this out loud. However, I'm telIing myself I don't *really* need to worry until they start to reply.

I've really enjoyed just pottering round my little flat though. Reading in the hammock with a cold beer to hand is one of my all-time favourite ways to spend an afternoon, and I've got through some serious tomes since I've been here, including Susan Faludi's second book, a surprisingly readable 700-page explanation of why it isn't ALL men's fault.

I frequently fall asleep in the hammock, because it's more comfortable than my bed; my mattress is made of sponge-lite(TM); a stunted, emaciated, possibly early Pleistocene forebear of sponge foam. It covers the double bed, but I can pick it up and wave it around quite easily with one hand. More pertinently, I can feel every slat beneath digging into my hip and shoulder. I only thought of putting cardboard boxes underneath about a month ago, sadly, so I'll probably come back with the beginnings of some horrible spine curvature or something, and have to take up a career in bell-ringing. I hope you'll all still be my friend. :-(

Socially…

However, life here isn't all crazy parties with insects. I've been extremely lazy about making friends, mainly because Aline's group are cool, so I've just latched onto them. Apart from saving my bacon a hundred times, from finding me a flat to sorting me out a rented fridge after I stabbed mine to death while trying to defrost it, my sweet Aline has also nagged me more than my mum ever has.



Unfortunately, her stupid firm transferred her to Salvador a couple of months ago, but by that time her family and I had adopted each other, and apart from when Dan was here, I don't think I've ever gone more than a couple of days without seeing them.

Mah bezzies: Janaina, Meire and Alice



Don't miss the next instalment: Thrilling tales of culinary adventures featuring "Mish's Genital Gumbo" - with pictures!

Oh... and I'm back on 17th July. :-)