United nations - São Paulo

International Day - all photo credits to Rainy Russ, except as noted

My kids attend a very small private school here in São Paulo. It is not as well-known (or large) as the American school or the British school or as many of the other Brazilian private schools here. We were looking for a small English-speaking school for them that would provide a bit of diversity (tough at a private school but the public schools are not where you send your kids here, if you can avoid it), allowed them to be in separate classrooms (they are twins) and provide a good education. 

Through luck or skill, we found everything we were looking for. It is a wonderful school in a labyrinth of converted houses--the latest addition is a pretty nice artificial turf soccer field created from crushing a neighboring house. We are particularly lucky because the parents of the grade my kids are in are a tight group--and the kids are too. 

Yesterday was International Day, an event held only every two years at the school. While I have some minor complaints on how the event is run (costs are covered by the parents, not the PTA or the school), I was reminded yesterday just how lucky my kids are to attend this school. For seven hours yesterday (yes, I was there for all seven), my kids played, danced (gangnam style, of course), ate, visited and learned from 23 country stands. 

And these stands were amazing--the food, the decorations, the happy helpful people inside. Some countries enlisted help from family if they were the only representatives of the country at the school--Taiwan in particular was amazing. Only one mom involved, and her mom did the cooking early in the morning, they had a lion dance that the whole school loved, and at the end of the day, she was just as friendly and energetic as at 9 am! Australia was also a parent team running the whole show--at one point I passed within grabbing distance and ended up with an Australia tattoo on my arm and a yummy cake in my mouth.

It was impossible to try all the foods. After I set up the USA (we had a college football tailgating theme--how American can you get?), I did a visit around to the other stands. Ceviche from Peru, pasta from Italy, curry in India, wine in France, beer in Belgium and sausages from the lederhosen (sp???) wearing folks in Germany--by 11 am, I thought I was going to POP! Which didn't stop me from eating more when the sweet Japanese kids came over to the USA with little boats of sushi, and then the Brazilians with brigadeiro sweets. 

And through all of this, I chatted a bit with a couple of high school kids attracted by the Michigan helmets and Northwestern banners at our stand.  I tried hard to convince them away from Notre Dame (kidding, folks, kidding, not really). Smaller kids came by to try on the helmets and have their pictures taken. The chili, cupcakes and chocolate cookies disappeared. A special thanks to Sophie & Theo's Cupcakes which donated red velvet cupcakes that were a smash hit! One South African man came by asking for Southern Food (I don't even know what chitlins are but he did!) and fortunately we had the red velvet! The only thing that did not disappear was the cornbread--we've learned that local tastes run sweeter and the cornbread was a little stuck in the middle--neither sweet nor salty.

So, here's a little photo essay. I'm so proud of my school. 

A tiny tip of the USA, Dominican Republic and Mexico

Vegemite anyone? Set-up Australia

Brazil hard at work!

La Belle France

Germany with a sushi visitor from Japan

India and henna tattoos (my lone photo here)

Pakistan

South Africa

The lion dance from Taiwan

USA! Chili anyone?

Venezuela

Churrasquinho de gato (Cat barbecue) and other street food - São Paulo

Not my photo. Not even a Brazilian photo. Trust me, you do not want to google cat barbecue images.

Leaving the Palmeiras stadium on Saturday, there were a number of what are called "churraquinhos de gato" or cat barbecues. These are run by street vendors who bring in a barrel or a small charcoal grill and barbecue up some questionable meat on spits and sell them for R$3 (less than US$2) for the famished football fans. Remember that stadium food is limited to hot dogs, chips and popcorn. One can work up a mega appetite from singing songs about pigs for two hours. 

The churrasquinho de gato is not, most likely, really cat or dog for that matter. It is third-rate meat and I would suggest that the cleanliness of the barbecues is a bigger carrier of bacteria than the meat. I have personally never braved one as I am not known for having an iron stomach. On the other hand, the food that people were selling out of almost-kitchens in their cars was almost tempting. 

Just open up your trunk and you're ready to go...oh, don't forget the aluminum foil on the back window to keep things warm!

This red hatchback was doing a booming business of pork sandwiches with fresh fixings. Those three red containers on their sides on the top are ketchup bottles on their own shelf--this lady can wield them like six-shooters. The line was long but moving quickly. Two cars ahead had pizzas laid out on a board across the back seat and trunk. These are all authorized vendors, by the way, and I do love their independence and the freshness they seemed to have. 

I did not, however, brave them.

The Silence of the Pig (warning: graphic content) - Brodowski

A cute happy baby pig. Not the one in this story.

Before I get started, I have to warn folks. I personally wouldn't read this if I was vegetarian, a huge fan of pigs, or hate the thought of animals actually being killed to be eaten rather than showing up in plastic wrap at the store. I felt ill when my husband showed me the photos (again, that is an "actor pig" above--not the real one). But there are photos here and graphic ones. Real ones. Nasty business.

Okay, so stop reading if you hate death.  Or guts. Or both.

Now, all four of you who are left with me, what is wrong with you? No, just kidding. My husband, as you know, grew up with a weekend farm where animals were raised to be food. There are still chickens and Angolan hens, but the days of the rabbits and pigs are gone. A lot of work goes into these bigger animals. One of the biggest treats that the family makes every New Year's Eve is the suckling pig. Leitoa. It is a work of art that requires very slow roasting over a period of days. If the skin is not crackling and crunchy, you did it wrong. And yes, Vlad's family will judge you for it.

When we lived in Miami for six years, Vlad made the suckling pig himself. It was not easy to find it there--we had to travel across the city to the one butcher who had them. You had to order in advance, and most of the time, they were much larger than the coveted small ones. However, I will say that the pigs were already dead when we went to pick them up. I think you see where I am going.

On Friday morning, my husband invited our sons (age 6) and his parents to go with him and the ranch manager to the pig farm that was around 20 minutes away. I wondered why he did not specifically invite me but I was pretty happy with an hour free to enjoy talking with Nonna (94 years old). I didn't ask Vlad many questions but I had assumed that they were going just to pick up the pig that had been killed prior to their arrival. No.

Two hours later the family came back with the pig. My son Nico was the last to exit the car and he came running over to me with a plastic bag in his hands. He says to me proudly (oh, so proudly) that he got the brains. The what? The brains. Did I want to hold them in my hands like he had? And proceeded to try to pour out the brains on my hands. 

Now let me take a minute to tell you that I really try to be an open-minded person especially around my kids. They love spiders. I would kill every last one I could find. They think cockroaches are cool and want to hold them. I can't even kill them because I hate the squishy noises they make. I hold down my immediate need to vomit when they show me the beasties that they find. I don't even make a face. I say "cool". I take them to the spider and snake museum. But I had met my Waterloo: baby pig slaughter.

Okay, so the brains. No, I did not hold them. I did remark how interesting they looked. Then Vlad took out his cell phone to show me all the photos from the visit to the pig farm. This is where you need to turn away and not see the photos if you are squeamish; you cannot take back seeing them.

First they went to pick out the pig. I swear my husband had a photo of the cutest group of little baby pigs that I have ever seen. They picked out a pig to die!! Aaaagghgh! Okay, see, if I had to kill my own food to survive, I would be a vegetarian. Yes, I would. No, maybe I could kill a chicken (but those feathers are a PAIN!) but cow meat and pig meat--OUT!  Bunnies? Don't even think about it--of course I can't do it anyway after having a pet bunny named Amber.  I could kill a fish. If it wasn't cute or look like Nemo. I won't share the baby pig photo. Suffice it to say, that pig was cute.

At this point in Vlad's story, I literally felt nauseous. I am not a farmer's daughter, clearly. My husband and his parents and the kids are looking at me like I've grown two heads. Of COURSE they had picked out their own pig. You want the chubbiest one. Ugh. Then my mother-in-law proudly told me that she hadn't let Nico and Lalo watch it being killed with a really huge knife. So there's that to be grateful for.

Then Lalo washed the dead pig.

Then the pig farmer (who is wearing quite a chic shirt and hat combo, no?) started the cutting open, the gut taking-out, the slicing and dicing.  So maybe one of the twins will be a medical doctor like their older brother Pedro currently in his third year of medical school and practicing giving stitches on cow tongues. Also a true story. The stomach of iron was the missing link for me to get into surgery.

Apparently the farm cats show up pretty soon after a kill and they were quite literally swarming about the guts on the ground.Yeah, in case you think this is operating room cleanliness, let me just get that out of your head forever.

Kitties in blood

And because if you've stuck with me this long, I'm pretty sure you can handle it, here is Nico with some pig brains for you. Want to hold them?

So a week later, I am able to write about this but on the day of the killing, I sure didn't want to hear about it. I am sure I fell in my kids' estimation that day. To them, this is all a part of the natural order. The circle of life. They dug right in when the pork was served. I did too. Frankly it smelled good. It tasted great. Please don't ever make me do it myself.

Dragon sauce - Brodowski

Here is what my husband got when he asked for some Tabasco for his fried food snack at the Haras (horse farm) near Ribeirão Preto. He should know better; he's Brazilian.  A huge soup bowl of homemade peppers came out--you can't tell from this photo but that spoon is big. This bowl would probably kill you. A drop of its oil killed my taste buds for most of the evening.

Brazil is not known as a particularly spicy food country. It has a range of peppers that go from biquinho (which my six year olds snack like grapes) to the excruciatingly hot ones like comari. Tabasco is now available almost everywhere here but I feel like a tourist when I ask for it. I do prefer the homemade peppers and their many different styles of being served. I generally try to stick to just drops of the pepper oil and let my husband sweat the peppers themselves.

Most tables at simple restaurants in Brazil are set with a container of paper napkins ("paper" is an exaggeration for the oily things that only serve to wipe the food across your chin rather than absorb it), a salt shaker, a toothpick holder, and a pot or bottle of hot peppers. Forget fresh ground black pepper (here known as "pimenta do reino" or kingdom pepper)--that's only at the chic restaurants in the city.

Little hiding places for yummies - Ribeirão Preto

This is going to be my first post of four on food in the interior of São Paulo. Much like in the US, there is a whole new level of "comfort food" (and drink...but that's tomorrow) in the interior of this country. This is the fried chicken of the Dutch Essenhaus in Michigan. This is the deep-fried butter of the Iowa State Fair. This is not to show your medical team about how you are doing on your diet.

The above picture is an "escondidinho". This means a little hiding place. You can hide many things under a layer of mandioca (yucca), or if you prefer it could be potatoes or mandioquinha (errr, don't know how to translate that one. Neither does wikipedia--it is NOT in between a carrot and celery. Seriously now, people). By the way, mandioca has quite a few unpronounceable synonyms depending on which region you are in.  In the northeast (where this dish is originally from), mandioca is known as "macaxeira" and may also be known as "aipim." There are about four more synonyms in wikipedia, all of questionable faith.

Back to hiding things. The most famous "escondidinho" is "escondidinho de carne" and under the layer of yum is dried beef. Why does this all sound yucky in English? Not sure. But I will carry on. The "escondidinho" above is of bacalhau, or dried cod, and is not my favorite. In fact, you could hide bacalhau under a large brick and my sniffer would detect it and reject it. Bacalhau is not my thing. Here it is prettied up by some nice olives and potato slices. I stole an olive and passed it on...

Tomorrow, we shall discuss the Territory of Chopp.

Escondidinho de carne. Recipe and photo here: http://mdemulher.abril.com.br/blogs/anamaria-receitas/2012/02/18/escondidinho-de-carne-receitas-deliciosas/

Health Food It's Not - São Paulo

Here's the view from my seat at the bar at the local padaria. This is where I spend a half-hour while my kids do capoeira, the Brazilian martial art, at an academy across the street. There is absolutely nothing like the local padaria, which is roughly translated to bakery, but is really so much more.

At a smaller padaria like this one, breakfast is whatever can be grilled up--including my favorite pão na chapa (grilled French bread and butter)--as well as assorted baked goods. Some of the bigger ones have breakfast and lunch buffets with fruit and salads. In this picture you can see some coxinhas in the warmer in front of me--these are hot chicken-filled pyramids of fatty goodness. And you can't eat one without the spicy sauce.

And the coffee, ah the coffee. All of them have the giant espresso machines that serve up strong espresso, frothy cappuccinos (which include LOTS of chocolate here in Brazil) and any variation you want. Now if you want a plain old American type coffee with milk, you have a bit of a problem in how to describe it. Some say it is a "carioca" (coffee from Rio) or "americano" (that's a bit obvious) but in the end, you will probably have to describe it to your server and they will ask you about what kind of milk, frothy or hot. Possibly the best-kept secret of Brazil, though, is the fresh orange juice. Fresh squeezed from a speedy machine--I can hear the sound of its grinder now. Zip, zip, zip and a huge glass of orange juice sits in front of you. Delicious.

A padaria is probably most closely related to the old American diners. Quick, no-frills service, good basic food, and reasonable prices. Maybe a diner mixed with a convenience store since all padarias have a small section where you can buy milk, and a few necessities for your pantry, as well as a full baked good section with elaborate cakes and fresh bread.

It's also a great place to hang out if you are eating alone. It usually has a bar (where I am seated at this photo) and then lots of casual tables where you can linger for long periods of time, reading your paper or letting your kids spread jelly on the walls (that NEVER happened. Never. Okay, once).  Padarias are mostly open from early morning until early evening--we have the largest one in São Paulo near our house and it is open 24 hours. At lunch or dinner time you can get a great steak, eggs and french fries to soothe your arteries. Salads need not apply (okay, yes, they do usually have some, but it's not the specialty).