Food

Melodie made some Brazilian lasagna for us for dinner yesterday. Our friend Nathaly has come over twice to cook with Melodie. The first time it was stroganoff and pudding, then two weeks ago she taught her how to make lasagna and this pretty chocolate cake.

Mel didn't make the cake yesterday, cause I need to get her more sweetened condensed milk. But she's made made the pudding twice and also made the stroganoff last week. It turned out very tasty, heavy cream will do that! As for the lasagna, I think we used the wrong kind of white cheese, so we'll have to fix that for next time. But we're happy to be able to take back these recipes back to the States to remind us of this time in Brazil. It's so nice that Nathaly has taken time to do this for us - so many people have been so kind to us, doing whatever they can do to help us and our kids have a great experience here. 

Other than the fun local foods, we kinda stick to things that are close/similar to the basic US food - we have ham sandwiches a lot, sometimes pb&j, lots of crackers, rice and sugar, eggs, hot dogs, frozen pizza. yogurt, chicken nuggets, salad, and lots of juice. And we try to find something to celebrate now and then with Pringles.

What other food things can I share... We're taking a break from all the hardship ice cream and nutella for a bit. I'm just avoiding purchasing Nutella at the store cause I can't resist it at home. As for ice cream, I'm just getting some for the weekends for a Sunday treat, cause Sundays are hard for the kids. They are learning Portuguese, but don't know enough to understand much at church, so it makes for a long 3 hours. As for the rest of the week though, we're into the groove now and aren't hardship-ing so much - plus the heat is gone, which I am so grateful for. I justified I had a hardship this morning though and thus gave myself permission to finish off the chocolate ice cream ~ I had to take a cold shower again (out of gas, got it all fixed now though). 

So we've all had our fair share of ice ream and nutella in April, so now we're trying to turn a healthy corner and enjoy the other delicious comfort foods Brazil has, like these beauties ~

Last time we were here in 2007 and I was feeling very ungrateful, I tried to make a list about good things in Brazil to change my attitude, and I couldn't think of anything at first, but then I thought about the avocados, and so they helped change my heart from having such a bad attitude. I was looking forward to finding these again. These ones aren't as big as I remember, might be inflated memory or might be a different kind of big avocado, but I found these at Sam's Club. These avocados are divine~ they are bit and always soft and ready and they are my new comfort food - I'm making sure I always have these on hand so I can enjoy my lunch of bread with some avocado and tomatoes with a little bit of salt and use them on salads too. Mmm!

We are looking forward to drinking tap water from any sink we want to when we get back home. They say you can't drink the water from the tap, so we bought water the first two weeks and then broke out our filter that Corey got at Scheels. I have my water filtration thing set up in the kitchen pantry, hanging from a broom stick.

And I refill all our bottles. Doesn't take too long to do.

And we have enough jugs that I just have to do the drinking water fill up about once a week. 

One last food thing ~ There is a maracuja tree by our back yard fence. There's so much plant growth, I can't tell where it starts and if it's our tree or our neighbors, but two of the maracujas fell into our yard. I wanted to show the kids what a strange looking fruit these ones are...

Cut it open, it looks like it's got some ocean coral or anemones all around the inside of the bowl, and as for the fruit inside, I like it's taste, though it's super concentrated, or maybe we just get really ripe ones? They use maracuja in puddings, jellies, and juices. The seeds kinda have a caviar/fish egg appearance or something.

The seeds are a bit crunch and the juice is really tart and sour if you taste it straight. That must be why they tone it down with milk and water

I ate it anyway, sour as it was. Kinda hit the spot and cleansed my palate before bed. Mel discovered you can just peel out the sea animal looking stuff. Now it looks like we skinned a puffer fish or something. Such interesting fruits here!

It was all sponge-y on the inside and seemed to be held on with a kind of cotton or spider looking web stuff.

(Sophi wanted to see what kind of dead animal we were holding.)

Always something new to see and discover.