In my old life, a typical weekend would involve work. Baking. Watching Euro-movies on my laptop in the background. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In my new life this weekend, there was work… there was A LOT of baking. There was watching Euro-movies on my laptop in the background. AND THEN… there was a baptism?

One of these things is not like the others, I KNOW, but do you remember this?

When I arrived in Calgary at the end of October, the little bean had grown to this:

And now, she’s a WHOLE KID! In honour of her jettisoning her original sin this weekend, by mom’s request, I baked a vanilla cake with lemon curd and vanilla bean frosting that read, “Yay yay, Sia’s baptised today”, and then 12 cupcakes with a lemon centre and 12 plain vanilla—all with a baby foot on them. I did it because Sia’s a baby (and has feet), but the more religious amongst us preferred to see something divine in the decoration. I was told not to ask, lest the conversation devolve into politics. (!!)

ANYWAY: for my new best friend, Sia, I spent a ton of hours in my new kitchen (which I haven’t learned to love yet)—but I will do anything for my best friend. She’s that awesome, at just 5 months old…

and it’s her party, so she can pick at the fondant if she wants to… (ick, baby! Please don’t eat it!)

I *love* this kid. Funniest, most easy-going bébé I’ve ever seen. Currently the best person I know.

So I guess my life is kinda the same, but long live the differences!

This is not a trip recap.

That will come later… however, 83 days ago, I wrote a post by (almost) the same name. And since then, my days have changed.

I also had a lot of ideas about how my trip would go, and it hasn’t quite been what I expected… Now that my final week has been up-ended by Marcella’s sudden departure, I’m mentally packing it all in RIGHT NOW. I’m relocating to Andrea and Ivan’s on Saturday for my last few days, because though I love time to myself and being on my own (and would have been great had Marcella gone to NY anytime earlier in my trip—better than great since I would have asked her to bring me a couple of staples!!), I’d just rather be with friendly faces as I say goodbye to my home of the last 3 months.

(my “big move”—from A to B… 16.5km, but an eternity to drive in the omnipresent SP traffic…)

I had had a vision for my trip that I’d read a ton… and that dried up somewhat. I found myself enjoying TV on DVD, or even all the English language channels with Portuguese subtitles on Marcella’s TV. I’ve never owned a TV, myself, so this has been a nice, little novelty… it’s not that I don’t love to read, mind you, but reading and writing were my all-day, every-day for so many years that this is REALLY like having a break. But do you know what the biggest factor is, in terms of why I haven’t been reading?

I lack a suitable chair for it.

I’m pretty sure that makes me the Princess and the Pea.

(source-)

But when I go out with people who I know won’t speak any English to me, I bring my Kindle and get some reading in. So I AM still in the process of reading a book about physical limits, which I still mean to write about later. But I didn’t read all the works of Jane Austen, or any more historical fiction (to say nothing of not having written a WORD!). But I DID start reading The History of Brazil and The Penguin History of Latin America. I guess you can’t take the Historian out of the girl, after all.

I also had a vision about how much Portuguese I would learn. Well, my language book SUCKED, as I’ve mentioned before. Totally and completely. And that torpedoed some of my desire to learn—so I’m at a point now where “eu entendi mais ou menos” (I understand more or less), but that’s worth nothing considering I never had words when I needed to make them. Which is too bad, because there was an absolutely adorable guy at the gym that I would have been VERY happy to chat to. But I only speak the International Language of Smile, so grins were about as good as it got. Please don’t ask me about his abs. I can’t even talk about it.

But since I wrote that first “what do you do all day” post, there *is* one thing that has come to take front and centre in my daily life, making my slack-assitude in all other things more understandable: I LOVE THE GYM. Holy smokes, how has anyone stood to be AROUND me for the last 4 years?!? I am positively charming when I get a good hefty dose of endorphins every day (and I mean EVERY day). It’s been downright inspiring, and now I have new plans. Yay. But don’t ask me about my plans, because everything is a theory until my plane touches down in Vancouver next week. THEN, then I’ll pay the piper.

So what *do* I do all day? Well, for the last 5 weeks, it’s been steadily creeping towards spending between 2 and 4 hours at the gym—but when it hits 4, it’s always because there are a couple of social breaks, and some serious kinesiological discussions that take place as the day progresses… I’ve said it before, but what I love about Brazil is that there are a serious number of awesome females lifting a LOT of weight, so even when we chat and linger at the gym, this is interspersed with a lot of iron. LOVE IT.

My days now revolve around gym time—and while it’s not for everyone, can I just go on the record saying that I’m sleeping on an air mattress, and yet I have no more back pain, no daily headaches, and no trouble sleeping. Win, win, win, and that’s all because of weight training. And as an added bonus, on the days where I do some sprinting intervals and lift, lift, lift, it means that I’ve totally earned going home and having two or three of these little beauties:

Pão de Queijo [Cheese Bread---yay! It's gluten-free!]

These are ubiquitous in Brazil, always served warm, and so, so good! They come from the state of Minas Gerais, so the cheese used in Brazilian Pão de Queijo is Minas Gerais cheese. Marcella tells me she used Gouda when she made them in France, and I think an accent of something sharp mixed in there would make a good thing even better. Once you start mixing up your cheeses it takes it away from pure Pão de Queijo as nature intended, but THERE ARE NO RULES. Go wild, and let me know what works for you.

(source)

You need:

• 500g tapioca flour
• 300ml milk
• 50 ml vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 500g cheese, grated
• salt, to taste

You must:

Place the flour in a large bowl. In a saucepan, heat the milk and oil to the boil. Let it cook for about 15 seconds, and then remove from the heat and add to the tapioca flour. Stir to combine at first, and then use your hands to combine completely.

As the dough cools, beat the eggs slightly and begin adding them to the dough, alternating with the cheese and kneading thoroughly to incorporate the cheese as evenly as possible. (If the dough is too dry, you can beat another egg lightly and add parts of it to bring the dough together.)

Section out bits of dough, make balls of the desired size, using oil to grease the palms as necessary. The dough can be baked immediately at 220°C (450°F) for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown—or freeze the balled dough, and then bake from frozen later.

And now, a photographic essay in honour of Pão de Queijo, ’cause it’s THAT good…

(Marcella’s interpretation of “put the eggs in a warm place to bring them to room temperature”)

(oh yeah, it’s all coming together…)

(just before the egg and cheese is added…)

(have you ever seen someone remove the membrane from the yolk, or is Marcella really part nuts?)

(action shot! A bit o’ egg, a bit o’ cheese…)

(and after a whole lotta kneading, the dough is ready—nicely marbelled with cheese)

(and roll into balls—we like little Pão de Queijo, so just a bit bigger than 50 centavos…)

(and bake, bake, bake!)

(till puffed and golden brown!)

serve warm… and just try to stop!

One post, two big happies. I dare you to make some Pão de Queijo!

Yay! Marcella’s on vacation! That means she’s home in the daytime and we’re adventuring a bit.

On Friday, the exterminators came and said “OK! Now leave for 4 hours!” (Their paperwork said 6, however—interesting discrepancy!)

And so we went to the supermarket. And another. And we got cement to close up the GINORMOUS hole in which the MAN-EATING COCKROACH CORPSE resides. And then we went to lunch at a new resto (notable, because Marcella doesn’t like new things: when we go out she says, “this is what we eat here.” Or, if I’m cooking at home she’ll say, “I don’t like lentils”. And if I say, “maybe you don’t like how you’ve had them in the past, but these are really good! Try them!” she says, “no. I don’t like lentils.” )

So our lunch at Le Pain was special.

(source) It has a nice, quasi-French atmosphere (if the French name didn’t give it away…). I had a burger. It was… good. Marcella had tartare. She thought hers was excellent. And then there was dessert:

I didn’t partake, but Marcella got a little square tart, and, OH MY GOD, those are BLUEBERRIES!!!

Blueberries are “cold-weather fruit”, so there aren’t any to be found in Brazil. Except on Marcella’s tart. Too awesome. I managed to take a couple of pics of Marcella’s food, but when I tried to get a pic of their dessert case, I was told, “não possa”. I tried playing the dumb foreigner card, but I knew what it meant: CANNOT.

Oh well.

I actually thought the best part of Le Pain was the atmosphere: I forgot I was in SP for awhile, as I sipped a lovely café com leite and enjoyed the greenery brought inside:

(Can you see to the right of the man in my picture? There are BUSHES on the floor! AND behind the booths! And photos of Paris on the wall!) The sun was shining in a way reminiscent of a nice, Canadian fall (actually, a harbinger of the cool, wet weather we’ll be having for a week…), and it was absolutely lovely to simply sit, and take it all in…

We capped the day at Bràz, a pizza joint in the Higienópolis part of town, where I was without my camera when I went for dinner with Andrea and Ivan. BEST. PIZZA. EVER. I’ve requested it for my last supper and will properly write about it then, but for now, they’re having a festival where everything—flour, tomatoes, cheese, toppings—has been imported from Italy, and it was TO DIE FOR. So good, I had it twice—Marcella dropped me off, went to the airport to collect her sister and boyfriend, and got stuck in deadly traffic coming back, so while they were supposed to join us for dinner, they arrived at midnight, just as Andrea, Ivan and I were leaving. But the travellers and Marcella were hungry, so Andrea and Ivan went home and I went back in for another round—though I confess I restricted myself to a caipirinha or two the second time. Still delicious…

Two dining wins in one day? I could get used to this!

I’m not the hugest ice cream girl around, but this trip has given me the chance to get back in touch with a childhood love.

I remember being thrilled by pistachio ice cream when I was growing up, but because it was green more than for the taste. I *think* the brand we had growing up was Parlour—it had stripes—but I can’t find anything on the web that looks like the image in my mind. Did I dream it? Well, Parlour doesn’t make pistachio anymore, either way—so maybe I did.

Marcella promised me the “best pistachio ice cream EVER” when we came to Brasília, but first we had a birthday party of insanity (all Saturday—there might have been Samba. And I *don’t* dance, right?) and Father’s Day breakfast and a lie-in most of Sunday… but when the sun became less oppressive and we could go out comfortably, however, we committed. It was 6.30pm. It was dark. And crowded. And since I had, in the summer of 2008, had the “best gelato in Italy” in Reggio Calabria with my friend Angela, this felt like a bit of déjà vu and I wasn’t quick to take photos at first: how many places can be the best, after all?

Well, Saborella wins… *something*.

We actually ate our pistachio round in such rapture that I *still* didn’t think to take a photo until Marcella went back for her Round 2, this time of plain yogurt:

(I’m super-proud of this photo, taken with an ISO of 1,000,000: it was DARK! But it WORKED! And in line, up next to the palm tree in the middle, you can see a tall thin figure in a polka-dot shirt… that’s Marcella.)

And this is Saborella—a storefront in the Asa Norte of Brasília, nothing spectacular until you see that it’s the busiest place for 5 km… They serve a lot of the Brazil standard flavours (lots of fruit, as you can imagine), but Marcella recommends the pistachio, yogurt, and mascarpone (which they were already out of that night. Boo). And two of those three, I do, too.

As you can see, the servings are small and the cost relatively high (this *is* Brazil…), but SO SO worth it.

See?

That’s the look of rapture, ladies…

And now, some other sights of Brasília. My impressions: I like it. It’s got more open spaces (and about 1/6th the population) of São Paulo, it’s got a lake!!!, it’s got really friendly people, it’s got an interesting layout (designed by Juscelino Kubetschek, and built for the purpose of getting UNESCO world heritage designation in the early 1960s). It’s got some nice architecture on the governmental esplanade, but… it also looks really communist, kinda run-down (even in some expensive real estate), and it’s the dry season, so there’s a lot of brown.

BUT: there’s also grass. And I’m SO EXCITED! I’ve missed grass and all green things during my time in SP!!

GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!

And in other news, I visited the non-denominational Temple of Peace (Templo da Paz). It seems to be in existence to honour the world’s largest crystal (21kgs!), from a place nearby that has a strange preponderance of crystals. To visit the crystal’s energy, you must remove your shoes and walk the black path in and the white path out. And then you can drink the “energised water” that’s been bathed in crystals (or something). What am I talking about? Check it out, below…

Peace is nice, but this still had a twinge of the cult-like. Observe:

BEHOLD THE CRYSTAL.

And, the bonus round of a red flower, my obsession:

Today marks 8 weeks in Brazil. I feel absolutely no need to achieve anything. Except maybe dinner. Happy mid-August to you!