Electrical Work, International Food, and a Big Juice Mishap?

This week was pretty chill after the busy travel of last week.

Remember how I bought the new microwave that didn’t fit the outlet, well our super sweet Portuguese teacher and her husband came over and rewired the outlet for us. Those of you who know me, know that I usually have no problem tackling an issue like this myself, but given we are in a foreign country, I figured the prudent thing to do would be have a Brazilian handle it. Last thing I want to do is burn down our renter house. Besides, Sonia’s husband, who doesn’t speak much English and whom we only know as Mor, short for amor (love), was so excited to teach us, so it was a win-win.

Mor is a 75 year old psychologist who is still working with clients. He loves junk food and sugar, which is in stark contrast to Ms. Sonia, also 75, who calls all the sugar and junk, veneno, which is Portuguese for poison, and works out at the gym three days a week. He’s so laid back and she is very, let’s say, opinionated. These two are a hilarious pair when they are together.

The outlet swap was pretty easy and he was extremely grateful when I rewarded him a big tall glass of Guaraná. Sonia refused the offer, of course.

The housekeeper was back and Trev got to see what I meant about how she cleans. He snapped a couple of pictures of how she moves some of the furniture around every time she comes.

Mason was excited about our latest grocery trip. We went to the nicer grocery store (Pão de Açúcar $$) for special ingredients I was trying to find. We knew from checking it out on our date night a few weeks ago (yep, that’s the kind of crazy life we live) that they ran a sushi special on the weekends so we promised Mason we would get him some.

The start of the trip didn’t go as planned. First off, Trev is never excited about spending money on non- adventure-y type stuff. So, to go to the, what I call the Brazilian Publix, wasn’t something he was super excited about.

However, Ms. Sonia, had given me an avocado from her own tree that she, herself grew from a seed/pit. Avocados, here, are not like avocados in the states. These avocados are huge. Check out this size comparison. This is from a store but the one she gave me was large like the one on the left; good, a little sweeter than usual.

This big avocado was screaming guacamole, which screams tacos, which screams a trip to the nice grocery store to look for sour cream, cheddar cheese, and good produce. Who knew a single avocado could incite such screaming.

We realized when we got there that we needed to be a “club member” to get the special deals. Everywhere here likes getting all your personal information. So I went to sign up at customer service. I tried using my limited Portuguese but soon found it to be too limited. No one here spoke English and my phone, which only works half the time, wasn’t working today, go figure. So the lady called another guy over who didn’t speak English but had a cellphone so we could try to translate that way, then another guy came over to try to help, and then another lady came over to help translate but she asked me if I spoke Spanish and I told her no (I only know a little more Spanish than Portuguese so that wasn’t a path even trying to go down). So she couldn’t help either. I felt terrible. I had four employees trying to help me get signed up to be a member to get a 20% discount off the sushi, among the other deals. I told them I was so sorry for the trouble, which, that, I can say in Portuguese and I’m actually getting pretty good at saying that, unfortunately. They were very patient and all got a pretty good laugh at the situation.

Just so you know, sour cream does not exist in Brazil, at least where we live. So I got greek yogurt and limes to try to make some. Cheddar cheese is hardly ever found and it is expensive when you do find it. We found something called cheddar cheese, but upon tasting, had the taste and texture of American sliced cheese; not at all like cheddar. Oh well, with our stress of getting a membership, trying to navigate the different types of ground beef, and trying to find the other ingredients I needed, like jalapeño peppers, which required several conversations with employees, we were ready to check out. On a side note, they didn’t have jalapeños either. I had to buy some other random pepper instead. No idea where it stands on a heat level. Trev said it looked more cayenne than jalapeño but we went with it anyway. Trev was so over this outing by this time.

Since we were in the city, we decided to try to find the new location of the gelato place for the boys. Google said it was just 4 miles away. Well, someone forgot to tell Google about the one way streets that you can’t cross over, so our short little detour become rather involved. But in the end, we found the place. In case you were wondering, no, Gelafrutti doesn’t open until 12pm. All that trouble and no ice cream, which was fine because we had yogurt and raw fish in the car anyway.

The next day, I tackled taco day. I had to make everything except the tortillas and tortilla chips from scratch. For you cooks out there, that doesn’t seem like a big deal but for an open-a-package-and dump-kind of cook, it was a lot. I made a big mess, but I did it. The results: Sour cream was disgusting; it was too sweet even with vinegar added. I’ve never tasted such sweet greek yogurt. Salsa, wasn’t bad. It needed more onion and salt, less lime zest, and Trev likes it chunkier. I would totally make it again with those tweaks. Guacamole was good, being a sweet flavor it also needed more onion and salt, would definitely make it again. The mexican rice was pretty easy and tasted good. I just burnt the bottom. This gas stove stays pretty hot even on the lowest setting. We were just careful to eat the rice off the top and it was great. I will never spend the money on that “cheddar” cheese again. Taco meat was ok; not the normal seasoning taste we’re used to but it was totally edible. I just need to add way more seasoning next week and we should be fine.

I’m not complaining, as I love travel, but one thing to think about is that it is mentally fatiguing doing simple tasks in a foreign country that you do everyday at home; converting currency, measurements, working to communicate in another language. If you travel, just be aware of that, take a deep breath, and roll with it.

Since it was a pretty routine week, the only other two things to talk about for the week are weather and juice. We actually got rain this weekend. We haven’t had rain in nearly two months and everything was so dusty and dry, we needed it. Which, brings us to juice. This dumb thing of the week wasn’t me this time. At lanche, which is snack time at the end of the day, the kids get juice and usually bread. They love getting the juice, as they are only allowed water throughout the day. And when I say juice, it really is more of a fruit flavored sugar water in my opinion. I brought the ‘littles’ up from the playground to help Mason set up snack. When I entered the kitchen, I was greeted with the squishy sound of my feet walking onto a tile floor completely covered in orange liquid, a shocked intern, and an embarrassed Mason. There was SO MUCH orange juice on the floor, I immediately set about squeegeeing the juice towards the drains, and completely forgot to get a picture. Oh, how I wish I had gotten a picture before we started cleaning! You have no idea how much liquid those water dispensers hold until you see the stark contrast of the orange juice on that white tile floor. Apparently, Mason (who said he was ok with me posting this) was getting the juice out of the cooler, placed it on the table, started popping out the legs on the bottom, and when he reached to grab the handle he dropped the dispenser in the process. Sticky orange sugar water spilled ALL over the floor. It took a long time to clean up. We knew we needed to make more juice, as the hot, sweaty kids from the playground and soccer field were impatiently waiting for their cold, sweet, nectar of relief. So I made more, and as I was finishing making more, Joy came in with a whole other dispenser of juice. She too had made more. Now we had double. I was using the water from the tap, as I had seen Maria do. Joy was outside getting water from the water fountain so we didn’t see each other making more. Good grief… but in the end, the mess got cleaned up, the kids got juice, and Mason got a big helping of good hearted teasing.

We are very excited about what’s happening next weekend.