Going shopping

I should be eating rice and beans to save money.

Truth be told? I hate rice and beans.

I like black bean soup, and rice dishes, but really don't care too much for the two together. Maybe once or twice a week. The last pot of black beans I made had to be scraped out into the trash can--and I probably needed to put some kind of gas mask on for the removal. Rotting beans are TOXIC (and it doesn't take too much for them to go bad)!

My supermarket purchases today:

-real soy sauce (because I'm dreaming of this great pasta and veggie dish with a peanut butter teryaki sauce)
-honey
-brown sugar
-two loaves of bread: one cinnamon/raisin, the other whole wheat
-whole garlic
-sliced kind-of Swiss cheese
-the smallest brick of imported Cheddar cheese I could find (and TOO EXPENSIVE)
-mineral water
-tomato extract
-two trays of strawberries

This gives a better insight into what I survive on, besides chocolate milk and bananas.

Give me strawberries and cheese and I am the happiest woman in the world. Add in a little balsamic vinegar (for the strawberries), crusty bread with olive oil, and a fantastic bottle of wine (mead, perhaps?) and I am jetted into another universe.

I love Brazil, but I am living in the wrong culinary paradise. I belong somewhere in Europe...

Public Apology

My mother is the sort of person, who, if you are making a shopping list, needs written and detailed instructions. Not because she won't remember what you asked for. She just often remembers it...tilted. So, for example, when I asked her for tea bags, and especially Earl Grey, what arrived in my father's luggage was a brick of loose leaf Earl Grey tea that looked like a small package of illegal drugs. I could have sworn that Earl Grey tea isn't rare in the Midwest and can be found in almost any supermarket; she swore that after looking high and low without success, she finally came across this singular specimen in a middle-eastern specialty foods shop.

I've only ever used loose-leaf tea once in my life and it wasn't the best experience ever. Far from being leaf, it was more loose gratings that slid through the tiny holes of my tea strainer. Then the strainer broke and I reverted to bagged teas.

While I love my tea breaks, most Brazilians drink tea in situations of dire emergency only; teas are for sick people, not for fun. Finding a tea strainer in a country where coffee reigns might be a bit difficult...and if I remember correctly, I was a bit frustrated when I got the package, thinking I'd never be able to properly enjoy it.

But today it was cold and rainy and I was feeling a bit depressed, not to mention sick, so a cup of tea felt like just the thing to bring me out of my funk. Craving lapsang souchong (which I've never had; I was researching liquid smoke substitutes and this sounded like exactly what I wanted today), I reached for the most exotic thing in my dwindling tea cabinet: that yellow box of Earl Grey with the Arabic lettering.

Steep 3 minutes, the experts say, before removing the leaves. The water turned a delicious amber color almost instantly, and the leaves swelled up like a bit of dark green moss. The mess of leaves came out easily enough with a spoon, just a few delicate petals remaining to trail circles at the bottom of the cup.

It might have been one of the best cups of tea I've had since Russia.

Mother, I am so thankful that you love me enough to run around the city in search of tea for me...and that you followed your instinct. I'm sorry that I wasn't as thankful when you gave it to me as I am right now!

Frio

My comfort food was less than comforting. I should have known not to make food with a headache. Recipe for disaster...and I was sick most of the night.

The sudden cold didn't help either. A fierce wind blew through all afternoon and early evening, turning into a bitter winter chill. The grey sky this morning brough thunder and a steady rain, which goes well with my pallid complexion. It's the kind of day to spend curled up in bed, with a cup of hot tea and grilled cheese sandwhiches. I think I'll even splurge and spend R$7 on a can of Campbell's tomato soup before heading home today. Maybe a fun magazine. And let my body recover a little bit...

Tastes like my mother's!

Well, almost.

I woke up after my passing-out-in-a-coma-after-staff-meeting nap, hungry for comfort food. The wind was blowing and it almost felt like winter, which made me hungry for sausage gravy. Brazil has fantastic sausage but it's not quite right for this dish. And I am technically allergic to pork; I had hotdogs for breakfast at the children's home (don't ask!) and my left thumb is now a stiff little thing that refuses to join in typing up this post. So now I'm on a hunt for a vegetarian sausage gravy recipe that uses no artificial sausage products, which aren't available out here in meat-lover's paradise.

I had to do some combining, some guessing, but the end result is really good. Tastes like home. My biggest complaint is my own laziness; had I browned the TVP longer, I think it would have kept a better texture. Or maybe I should have made patties and fried them...because what I ended up with was kind of soggy crumbles in a tasty gravy. But the gravy has all the flavor I expected; a little spicy, full of sage and garlic. Because there's no pig fat in the recipe, I felt free to use liberal amounts of butter and cream. Don't fool yourself by the vegetarian title. This is certainly NOT a diet recipe!

Vegetarian Sausage Gravy

Biscuits:

2 cups flour
1/2 t salt
1 T baking powder
1/2 cup cold butter (or a mix of butter and stick margarine, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup creme de leite (thick cream)
1/2 cup milk

Mix dry ingredients, then work the butter into the flour using your fingers, until crumbly. Add the milk and creme, turn out onto a lightly floured workspace and roll out, cut biscuits. Cook in a 425 oven for about 12 minutes.

Gravy:

Mince and saute in 2 T oil:
1/2 medium onion
3-5 cloves garlic

Add:
1/2 tsp each mustard seed, coriander seed, cumin, thyme (ground or whole)
1 T sage
1 tsp salt
black pepper and/or cayenne to taste
(any other spices you might have on hand that you think would taste good)
1/2 tsp soy sauce
a couple drops of worstershire sauce
1/2 cup TVP dry
1/4 cup water

Let simmer and dry out a little. You want some of the TVP granules to stick to the bottom of the pan and get almost burnt; this is going to give "flavor" to the gravy. When the TVP mixture is how you like it (check for seasonings), sprinkle about 1 T flour and a scant 2 T butter over the whole thing and stir. Let brown a little more, then add milk to reach the thickness of gravy you prefer. Serve hot over biscuits.

A "Typical" Day in the Office

-Wake up, in stupor.
-Take a shower, avoiding electrocution while banging on the electric showerhead so it will "catch."
-Hand wash laundry while simultaneously reading the internet news, washing dishes and preparing breakfast.
-Scrub kitchen clean, including stovetop. Yuck.
-Clean rest of house, remove cobwebs. (It's been a while.)
-Work on office responsibilities and writing assignments.
-Check email 16 times.
-Play solitaire and organize a mountain of papers.
-Take out the trash. Wish there was recycling in this neighborhood.
-Watch in horror as computer goes into blue screen of death, followed by black screen of confusion. Reload. (Prayers are successful and nothing seems to be lost!)
-Pray for an Apple laptop. Curse HP and Windows Vista.
-Verify that I did not fail my class in Research and Consumer Behavior due to absences. Passed!
-Make lunch, marvel at how beans burn in a pressure cooker when there are still 3 cups of liquid remaining. Rinse lunch, cook some more.
-Bible study and contemplation time, followed by a nap.
-Hit snooze button on the cellphone post-nap to pray: 8 minutes for each person. This is not procrastinating...
-Begin answering interview questions for a local indi-mag. Try to be succinct in Portuguese.

And...now I'm getting ready to host a dinner at home with some friends, but thankfully the guests are bringing the ingredients. I'm not in a mood to go to the supermarket today...

Thinking about friends

It's hard to keep up solid long-distance friendships. And with my horrid tendencies towards procrastination, things get complicated. That's why I feel so blessed that in this last month, I've been gifted with at least one email or phone call from someone dear and beloved every week. Surprises that appear out of nowhere, from the depths of a friendship that seemed stalled because of circumstances but comes bubbling back to life in the space of a few well-chosen words and some wise questions.

It makes me miss these people all the more, the fact that no matter what the geographical distance or time that passes between contacts, our bonds don't seem to have lessened. We still find ourselves thinking about the other at odd hours of the day, while waiting for the traffic light to change, choosing canned goods at the supermarket. They appear in our dreams and in the songs that play on the radio. I read their letters and emails with tears in my eyes. The happy, nostalgic kind of tears that don't sting, but water someplace green and jungle-like in my heart. The kind of tears that leave me feeling fuller, more alive than before they were sliding down my cheeks.

Thanks, friends, for making my life bigger, for plying me with questions, making me think and dream and ponder, for sharing about your lives in perfect, diamond shard fragments that make me feel so very, very close even when continents separate us. You are so precious to me...

Short and Sweet

I’m too bogged down in homework and other projects to write extensively on the blog, which is why I haven’t posted anything about my father’s visit to Rio (which was wonderful) nor my recent weeks playing house parent (enlightening) nor my trip last weekend to a tropical paradise (to recover from all the craziness). But here are some pictures from that last one, a sort of teaser until I can post some words to go along with them. It was a great private retreat, one I desperately needed. And it exceeded my expectations!


View from the breakfast table.


The view out the bedroom door...


Oooh...fried squid rings, chuchu with a mustard-bechamel sauce, salad and rice mountains. Delicious!


My "can this GET any better?" face.


These are some of the rocks at the private beach I kept sneaking off to...