Adventures of a Gringa in Rio

heaven

To ease away from that terrible entry yesterday, I will say that today was the best day in recent history.

I had summer hours at work, and left early. I got lots of delicious salads in a take-out box from Whole Foods and ate them in the park, watching all the crazies go by. Then I met up with an old college friend who I haven't seen since graduation, and we caught up in a much-needed catch up session. From there, I headed uptown and went out to dinner with my mom, her friend, and her friend's daughter who's my age. We went to one of my favorite restaurants, Victor's Cafe, where I managed to consume a mojito, two glasses of sangria, a huge fish and platano mash meal, and a coffee in a little over an hour (and nearly puked about an hour later, but only nearly).

We all went to see "In the Heights," which was the greatest thing I have seen in recent history, and I'm too tired to write about it yet so that will come soon.

what I plan on eating my first week back in the US

1. New York Pizza
2. Dill pickles
3. Kosher hot dogs
4. Cupcakes
5. Macaroni and cheese
6. Sourdough bread
7. Dolmades
8. Non-condensed Campbell's Soup
9. Cheddar & Swiss cheese
10. Fresh bottled milk

I don't plan on eating:
1. rice and beans (unless the beans are red Goya ones)
2. scrambled eggs
3. chocolate milk

I may gain 10 pounds, but I don't even care. It will be so worth it.

The Latest Restaurant Craze: Cone madness

As with other rapidly growing cities set on being the coolest around, Rio goes through a lot of food trends. The latest: cones.

The restaurants are sprouting up like weeds all over the city. You can eat the following in cone form:

• Mexican food -- guacamole available
• pizzas (shown above, right)
• desserts (left, above) -- I can't describe all the flavors or I'll drool on the computer
• sushi rolls
• Middle Eastern food -- falafel and hummus available
• seafood

Sign up to my RioGringaConsulting mailing list to find out where you can eat cone confections at the hottest new cone restaurants! I'll send you an update every time I post tips to "What's New in Rio" on my consulting page, which can include anything from restaurants to bars to fashion to the coolest place to be on the beach! Sign up by leaving a comment here!

The very long overdue Salgados: Part II

Many moons ago, I shared with all of you the basics of salgados. Today we're going to examine the EMPADA.

An empada is basically a little quiche that people eat between meals. There are tons of empada cafes all over Rio, and I imagine in most major cities as well. They look like this:

And they each of course have an individual wrapper because god forbid you touch food with your hands. Though usually smaller than a cupcake, you can special order larger sizes, which are called "empadoes."

If you'd like to try empadas while in Brazil, I recommend this place, which is great and has a huge assortment, and has branches all over the country.

Here are a collection of just some of the fillings you can find in an empada:

• Apple
• Banana
• Chocolate
• Doce de leite (dulce de leche)
• Romeo and Juliet (Cheese and guava)
• Chocolate and nuts
• Cheese
• Cheese and onions
• Dried eggplant
• Chicken
• Chicken and requeijao (a ghetto sour cream)
• Heart of Palm and requeijao
• Dried tomatoes
• Crab meat (kani) and chives
• Ricotta cheese and spices
• Chicken and heart of palm
• Heart of palm
• Bacalhau (a type of fish)
• Salmon and lettuce
• Sausage/Pepperoni (calabresa)
• Cheese and calabresa
• Requeijao and calabresa
• Calabresa and spicy filling
• Shrimp
• Shrimp and requeijao
• Dried meat (think shredded Slim Jim)
• Dried meat and requeijao

Fruit Seduction: Round 3 (or 4? or 5?)

Hortifruti.

Damn you, Hortifruti!

So today I made my weekly pilgrimage shopping trip to the temple of fruit, where I bought my usuals, tomatoes and cucumbers and passion fruits and starfruits and a huge amount of guavas and  some imported peaches. Today I had not one but two new finds: seriguelas and a pinha.

Here are some seriguelas. They have a weird, sweetish, squnchy taste with a big pit in the middle. According to this handy dandy Portuguese-English fruit dictionary, it's known as a red mombin. Right. Apparently, it grows in Mexico and throughout South America and is also eaten as a dried fruit.

Next up, we have the MYSTERY FRUIT. Whose name I forgot somewhere between grabbing it and stumbling into my apartment.

The check-out person rung it up as a "pinha," but I distinctly remember it having a different name when I picked it out. A pinha (or fruta do conde) has fatter buds, and looks like this. What is this??! (And how do I eat it?) Help!

What is going on??

Last night, I witnessed to of my most favorite annoying people ever in one setting: the guys from Panico TV, the comedy show that invented the Crab Dance, went to LA to stalk down Britney Spears. And found her.

First, they went to a bunch of celebrity houses to ask where she lived; they actually got someone to come out of Demi Moore's house and point them in the right direction. When they finally found her house, they came across the huge group of paparazzi waiting to chase her down and amazingly, there were at least half a dozen Brazilian paparazzi. One of the Panico guys was like, "No we're not even kidding that all of these guys are Brazilian." One of them let the Panico guys ride with him while they chased down Britney, and just when Britney emerged, one of the Panico guys tried to "give her a present." It didn't work, but the episode continues next week. Can't wait.

Today, while nearly melting/fainting on the Metro, I waited forever to get a ticket, since today was the first work day where they switched from paper tickets to plastic electronic ones. Now, the single ride plastic ones are only valid for 48 hours (this is to prevent the scalpers from reselling tickets outside the stations, which they do everywhere), but they have new multiple trip ones that should be nice and convenient. Albeit, without a discount.

I had one class, and then I waited and waited for my new student today, only to find out a) she was in a meeting and b) my boss forgot to tell me there wouldn't be class today. Yay.

I purposely had a big lunch before I went on my weekly pilgrimage to Hortifruti and it worked! I spent half as much as usual, and purposely bought things that don't spoil quickly. My latest discovery: the JAMBO.

The jambo is related to the guava fruit, with a white crunchy inside. I'm pretty sure I've seen these growing in the park near my house, and since they were R$4.99 a kilo, they must grow locally. To me, it looks like someone mated a strawberry, a pomegranate, and a melon, and for some reason decided to give the mutant spawn a Swahili name. It tastes spongy and sweet, with a rose-like tang. It's bizarre, but delicious.

Today I also discovered another new fruit, but at a whopping FIFTY reais a kilo, I was like, no thanks.  It's called a granadilha, which is related to the passion fruit and kind of looks like one. It's native to the Andes, but also grows in Brazil, Argentina, Central America, Africa, and Australia. Granadilha season is the fall, which is now, but why the hell is it so expensive?

The granadilha starts out like this...

And grows into this.

more fruit seduction

My friends, I made another trip to Hortifruti. Three types of tomatoes, some plums, two passion fruits, four guavas, a box of figs, and a box of persimmons later, I came across this.

In Brazil, this is known as a "kino" fruit, but everywhere else is known as a kiwano fruit (cucumis metulferus). It grows in south and central Africa, Israel, New Zealand, parts of Western Europe and apparently the US. (WHERE in the US, might I ask?)

Here's another version of it:

It's known as an African cucumber and an oval-shaped melon with spines and cucumber-like seeds. It has a taste apparently somewhere between a cucumber and a kiwi.  It is eaten raw as a dessert.

If you happen to be wandering around Africa and see one of these growing in the wild, do NOT eat it. The wild breed of kiwanos are toxic to mammals and can cause vomiting and diarrhea.

Luckily for me, the commercial breed is edible, and when I bring myself to slice it open, I'll let you know what it actually tastes like.

correndo atras...

This is what the inside of the dragon fruit looks like. I finally broke down and ate it last night. It tastes like a kiwi with all of the tang sucked out. It was a bit odd, really.

Please check out my new page, Rio Gringa Presents: No Bullshit Tourist Services!

Me and Eli have been working hard on the consulting biz for the past two days. Now we are off on a special mission, and I'll let you know how it goes...

food makes everything ok

Today we set the clocks back an hour, and the "hora do verao" is over, meaning it gets dark at 6:30 instead of 7:30.

This makes me mildly panicky because
a) it means less time with light out, which means less time to be outside and less time to feel slightly safer walking around

b) it means it's fall which means it's almost winter which means my time to leave is slowly but surely coming.

This has begun to worry me, this whole having to leave thing, but I've been repressing it as much as possible. Which is probably bad, but whatever.

Last night, Eli and I went to a restaurant I've been meaning to try for awhile. The chef is Brazilian but studied in Paris and combined her love of Brazilian home cooking with fine cuisine. I had fresh fish with ratatouille, mashed plantains, and crunchy, spicy farofa. Eli had some sort of steak stew with roasted mushrooms and fancy rice. We also got these yummy chocolate roll desserts with maracuja sauce. The ambience was probably one of the coolest things about it, set in a house from the early 1900s with retro furniture and a huge exposed brick wall. I got some great wine though they had some delicious looking cocktails.

Want to know where it is?

Also, on the way home, we ran into a hip hop night in a random building, with a guy free-styling rapping in Portuguese in a performance space and a graffiti artist painting on canvasses outside. It turns out an evangelical church sponsors hip hop nights. Can we say weird?

This was my favorite graffiti painting:

Rachel Recommends: Frozen Starfruit

The perfect recipe for the lazy. Buy starfruit. Slice. Place in freezer. Voila.

Also, FYI:
5 starfruit in Rio: R$2.99 (US$1.70)
1 starfruit in New York: US$1.99

the return of the infamous Brazilian hot dog

If you recall, at the beginning of January, I taught you all about the Brazilian hot dog.

Now, I have photographic proof. This one, however, lacks the hard boiled egg and potato chips, but you get the idea.

Hortifruti always gets the best of me

There are certain stores in which I am most likely to make impulse purchases: shoe stores, stores with handbags, and Hortifruti. During my second trip to Brazil, Eli and I went to a food store and I spent maybe half an hour in the produce section, marveling at the fruits and smelling them and poking them. Later, when I moved to Rio, I discovered Hortifruti, an upscale grocery store that specializes in produce.
Note: I love. Love. Tropical fruit.

So when I step into Hortifruti I always try to prepare myself for the rush of cool air and tantalizing fresh fruit smell. I try to just stay away from the regular food sections, which are mostly fancy and organic brands with even a small scattering of prepared food -- very luxurious for a food store here.

Today, though, I lost control. I had gone in with the purpose of buying just a few different fruits but then, I wound up buying:

• three grapefruits
• fresh-squeezed OJ (which I plan on freezing into orange juice cubes. Mmm)
• Alfalfa sprouts
• four small apricots
• four starfruits
• string beans
• one cucumber
• three guavas
• four papayas
• honey packets
• pitaia, also known as Dragon Fruit

So I just got totally overwhelmed by the fruit and was feverishly piling in starfruits and guavas and then I saw this:

So I stared at it, and poked at it, and smelled it, and put it back. It just looked too ridiculous to be edible. I put a few other things in my cart, and then I stole another glance at the funny-looking fruit. I had to have it. It was the most expensive fruit I bought, R$5.69 for just one. Considering though, that I spent under R$35 for so much produce (about US$20), I thought I did OK. Since I forget how much fruit costs at home, at least I thought I did ok. In any event, you CANNOT get fruit like this at home. I may go broke because of fruit.

I got home and looked at the receipt and saw that this fruit is called pitaia, which in English is called Dragon Fruit. According to Wikipedia, it comes in red or yellow, and is a type of cactus! It grows in Mexico, South America, Vietnam, Malaysia, Israel, and China. The plant it grows on is known as moon flower, since it only flowers at night.

You can only eat the inside, which some say tastes like kiwi, and others melon. It is low in calories and high in antioxidants. The fruit is used to make juice, desserts, or wine, and the flowers are used to make tea.

I might need to stare at it and poke it a little more before I venture a knife near it. It's just too beautiful!

i get decadent when i'm not working. this is a problem

Yesterday I was pretty lazy, and didn't work on the stuff I wanted to do. I did, however, get started at least, by going to the Atelie Culinario Cafe at the artsy movie theater, which was packed with people doing work, reading, studying, and having creative meetings. It's just a good ambience to get the creative juices flowing. I was really in the mood for a decent, Cozi-like sandwich, which I got for the bargain price of R$15, albeit with no salad or chips or anything. Cozi used to have a sandwich a lot like it, but this one was brie, pears, walnuts, and honey. MmmMMmM.

At night, I went out with my American friends to celebrate their last night in Rio before they go back to Salvador, and they brought two other American friends and we went to the champagne bar Ovelha Negra. It's like an old English pub, but they only serve champagne and yummy food. We had 3 bottles between 6 people and it was dandy, and we only paid around R$14 each (we got the bargain bottles).

Now, despite having a fever, Eli is going to work and I am heading out to get my hair cut (cue horror movie music). I have not had luck getting my hair done abroad--the worst was in the DR when the lady literally wouldn't stop cutting and I flipped out. In Buenos Aires, I was sitting next to a girl getting a full on rocker mullet and I sweat profusely the whole time in fear that I was going to get some form of the infamous Argentine mullet.

Hopefully I'll have better luck here.

UPDATE: So I went to a little salon on my street, and a silent lady cut my hair. It was one of the weirdest hair cuts I've ever had. First, she rinsed my hair, but didn't wash it, and then proceeded to rake a comb through my hair which reminded me of when I was 5 and my Dominican babysitter would do the same thing. I told her I wanted a trim and showed her about the inch and a half I wanted off and she whips out this strange little hair trimmer that looks like a comb with little razor blades in each tooth. Then she proceeds to use this little instrument to cut, angle, and layer my hair.

At first I was a little freaked out, especially when she didn't seem to be stopping, but then she went to put the trimmer down towards the end of the haircut and it fell and broke. Weird. So then she used a scissors to even out the ends. It was the exact opposite of what my hairdresser at home does, since she uses one of those little trimmer things to even the ends and layer my hair. Then after she evened the ends, she fluffed my hair a bit, but didn't dry or style it. "R$15," she said. So I paid her US$8.50 and was on my way. I've had better hair cuts, but I've definitely had worse.

Then I rewarded myself at the ice cream cafe down the street with a creme-filled donut and their version of a Starbucks Frapucchino, which was a lot richer and served in an old-fashioned milkshake glass with tons of whipped cream and cinammon. And they heated the donut so the filling singed my tongue--and they also gave me a knife and a fork to eat it!

The constant renovations on our building are in full swing, and this week it's putting some wax coating on the front patio, so that you can't get in through the front door. However, we don't have keys to the service entrance so we may get locked out later. Oh the joys of Brazilian rentals.

Brazilians eat the most disgusting hot dogs I've ever seen

New York hot dogs are the best. You can eat them with mustard, ketchup, relish, or all of the above. It is simple, and delicious.

Here is what Eli had tonight on his hot dog:

• mayonnaise
• peas
• corn
• raisins
• green olives
• one small hard boiled egg
• cheese
• bacon
• sliced sausage
• diced tomatoes
• hot peppers
• onions
• a touch of ketchup

And this was minus the potato chip sticks that usually get piled on top.