The world in your kitchen

Maybe I've watched way too many movies, but I believe life could be more fun if we had our own soundtrack, playing at all memorable times.

I decided to give this a try. In the kitchen. So far, I've been transported to so many places, just because I've been playing traditional songs from where my cooking was from.

Sometimes we don't have enough money or time to go on vacation or maybe just take a couple of days off, but we do eat everyday, and we can bring the world to our kitchen in a very simple way.

So, how do you do that? First, decide on what type of food you would like to prepare. By the way, this post works better if you're having a homecooked meal, it's the whole experience involved that counts. Are you in the mood for Italian, Chinese, French or Indian? I'm not a professional cook, and I don't know all the tricks, but online recipes and videos are there to help us!

Once you have decided which dish to prepare, make sure you have all the right ingredients, check the expiration date, and servings. Leave them all on your counter, including scale, knives, spoons, and whatever else you might need.

Time to be transported to another country! Go on Youtube and type: "French songs for cooking", "Italian songs for cooking", "instrumental Greek songs for cooking"..., you got the picture. You'll find many videos with these themes, some of them are 3o minutes and others 3 hours, only intrumental (my favorite!) or with singers.

Press play and enjoy! In seconds you'll immediately start feeling you are in Portugal preparing a delicious bowl of soup, or in Italy having the best pasta ever, or in India with that wonderful smell of curry, or in France while you cook and take sips of wine, the world is in your own kitchen and everybody can smell it!

Music and smells are memory triggers, when we combine them we create a whole different experience in the kitchen. Cooking something new can be challenging, and a background song can also help soothe you and create a nice atmosphere. And don't stop the music when you're done, keep playing it for you or your guests; you may be at your kitchen or dining room, but that food with that song, will definitely make you feel you are at a bistro, tavern, pub, coffee house... All of a sudden, with no big expenses, you just brought the world to your kitchen!

pst: all the pictures are mine, and I cooked those delicious foods while listening to my cooking playlist!

Why should I visit the supermarket when I am traveling?

Have you ever considered adding going to the supermarket in your travel list? 
If not, you should! 

Usually when we travel we take notes of all the sightseeing places not to be missed, foods to try, souvenirs to bring, price of admittance, just to name a few, so going to the local supermarket is totally left aside. In case you're a low bugdet traveler I'm sure that buying groceries is in your priority list, but even if you're not, there's so much to learn and know at the supermarket, and why not, snap a few pictures?!

Let me give you one example. Argentina, Buenos Aires. Hotel breakfast. Sweets. Dolce de leche! They served dolce de leche at the hotel in one of those little plastic containers and it was incredibly delicious! Everybody who goes to Argentina buys that one of that famous brand, which is, by the way, sweet as heaven, but me, on that day, went to the supermarket looking for the brand I had at the hotel. There it was! A big jar of dolce de leche that tourists didn't seem to care. I grabbed three and happily paid for them (yes, it is much cheaper than that famous brand and equally mouth watering). I came back home, told my family and friends, they told their family and friends, and I'm sure by now the dolce de leche company should have hired me as their spokesperson.

At the supermarket you are also able to see what people have at their disposal to buy, what they like the most, check people's cart to have an idea if they are healthier or whether they prefer to shop for the week or month, well, be curious about their eating habits!

In Portugal, I noticed that all supermarkets have their house brands and people prefer to buy them since they're cheaper and many of them of good quality.

In the USA, you can find many things in XXL size: large butters, sodas, cereals, cheese, bread, food that would feed many people at once, I think it's great, because it can make you feel like you're a tiny person!

In France, you already feel more romantic and delicate just by reading the products' labels, And many times, I was like, "oh, look what they have here!". 

I told you in another post that I know zero German, right? So, my visit to the supermarket in Hamburg took quite sometime for me to understand what each product was for. Equally fun, since now I know how to read the label to know if it's sparkled water or not. But, yeah, I found out the hard way.

Comparing prices to your home country can be fun too, or sometimes very sad, though I thought it was very interesting when I saw bananas for sale, and the price was for each banana, or per kilo and it wasn't cheap at all, while in Brazil we have a saying that when something is very cheap, we say "it costs the price of a banana!".

We all know that if we buy sodas or chocolate at the supermarket they will be much cheaper than at a restaurant or store, but I also want you to focus on the variety you have, not to mention what people who live there actually buy!

Definitely when my husband and I travel we always make sure to pay a visit to the local supermarket, and we have never ever regreted it! Of course, it's almost impossible to leave it without buying anything, and since we never know the country's policy regarding plastic bags, I always carry my tote bag with me! Better safe than hungry, ops, sorry!

There are only advantages when you visit the supermarket when you're traveling: you buy cheaper, you get to know new products,  you get an idea of what locals prefer to buy, you may discover something a regular tourist would never know of, you can compare to what you have in your home country, and plus, you get a glimpse of what it feels like to shop at that town!

So add to your sightseeing list: visit a supermarket, then come tell me about it, I'm sure you'll have something to tell!

Tastes of the World

Brazilian Food You Must Try

As you know I am from Brazil and I am currently living in Portugal. I moved five months ago, and though I usually cook what I was used to eating, there are some types of food that used to be so simple to get around and now I'm starting to miss them a lot. So, I'm here to share with you 15 types of Brazilian food that are really hard to get - if not impossible - in another country, and if you have never tried them, I strongly suggest you do!

1. Fresh coconut water: love it or hate it. I love it! There's nothing more tropical than drinking coconut water from a coconut, and the ones you find at the supermarket do not - really! - taste the same. After jogging, at the beach, on a summer evening, nothing beats cold fresh coconut water.

2. Cocada: talking about coconuts, cocada is a sweet made from coconut  and sugar and there are many variations of it: simply white, with burned coconut, with passion fruit, with condensed milk, and they can be really soft or a little harder, as if you grated the coconut meat and then glued it back together. It's sweetly yummy! Kinda hard to explain what they look like, so here's a picture:

3. Fruit salad with gooseberry syrup: ok, so far you know that I love fruits and sweets, so if you have ever tasted Brazilian fruit salad and on top of it you poured gooseberry syrup (maybe a plus of condensed milk?) you know what type of God's nectar I'm talking about. If you prepare fruit salad in Brazil you will probably use every and any fruit you can find: orange, papaya, banana, apple, pear, pineapple, cherry, kiwi, melon, watermelon, grapes, strawberry... you got the picture, right? Oh, so healthy! Here comes the gooseberry syrup! Just enough for you to have your own fruit syrup at the end.  

4. Coxinha: now this is a Brazilian favorite: coxinha. At all birthday parties you will find this finger food which is filled with well seasoned shredded chicken. It's finger licking good! Oh, sorry, this is already taken...

5. Brigadeiro: Brazilians usually say that money can't buy happiness, but it can buy brigadeiro, which is pretty much the same. This classic chewy chocolate truffle is getting new creative versions and all of them are incredibly delicious: strawberry, pistachio, coffee, passion fruit, with wine, nutella, oreo... Blame it on the condensed milk!

6. Cheese balls: in Portuguese we call it bolinha de queijo and it is as popular as the coxinha. I am not kidding, I can eat a 100 of them and not feel guilty at all. The good news is that they are easy to make, so I'll probably prepare and fry a batch of them any time soon.

7. Cheese bread: this round bread is made with manioc flour and the cheese goes in the dough mixture. It's light, healthy, rich and we are all proud of this Brazilian deli. At breakfast or as an afternoon snack, we never say no to a batch of pão de queijo hot from the oven.

8. Feijoada: eating feijoada is not just eating a dish, it's preparing yourself for an occasion! Usually, we have all the family together for, let's say, Sunday lunch, and the hot pan of black beans is the main course. The original one takes different types of sausages and pork, however, nowadays there's also a vegan version of it. Feijoada needs to have a very thick well seasoned bean sauce to be eaten with white rice, shredded kale, slices of orange and cassava flour mixture, which takes us to the next item.

9. Farofa: a well roasted cassava flour mixture with some olives, pieces of egg, little cubes of bacon, some spices, just plain or what have you, may make you forget about your main course. Gosh, how I miss farofa!

10. Tapioca: once you start eating tapioca, specially in the morning, you just won't want to go back to eating plain bread anymore. Tapioca  is a starch extracted from cassava root, used not only in Brazil, but also in Japanese cuisine, for example. It's healthy, light, nutritious, easy and delicious. You can quickly prepare it on a frying pan, with no oil, and fill it with anything salty or sweet. There are other types of tapioca, to make pudding, for example, and the type you use to prepare one, can't be used for the other. They are both good and addictive. Come on Brazil, let's start exporting some tapioca mixture for all the tapioca fans out there!

11. Honey bread: sweet honey bread, filled with dolce de leche (or caramel or brigadeiro or coconut) covered with milk chocolate. Do I need to say more?

12. Caipirinha: I think I don't need to introduce you to the worldwide known Brazilian drink caipirinha. Cachaça, the spirit used, is really expensive in European countries, so it's not a drink I can appreciate very often, but it's possible, I'll just spend four times more than I would in Brazil. So, if you're visiting Brazil, make sure you try the original one, made with lime, but also try the ones with strawberry, clementine, kiwi, lichy...just don't drink and drive!

13. Stuffed crab shells: made with sautéed crab meat, coconut milk, palm oil and bell peppers, this appetizer that we call casquinha de siri is one of my favorite appetizers to order in a restaurant. It's very tasty and it really opens up your appetite. I've never dared to make one, and now I wish I had in order to try cooking stuffed crab shells abroad.

14. Pastel: this fried pastry is commonly seen at the farmer's market in Brazil. We like it so much that we even eat pastel with nothing in it. We call pastel de vento, "wind pastel", but usually the fillings are made with cheese, ground beef, pizza, shrimp or heart of palm. You're not supposed to do this, but many times I've substituted a meal for pastel.

15. Sugar cane juice: and what's the best thing for you to drink when you order pastel at a farmer's market? Sugar cane juice! It doesn't get more Brazilian than that! It's purely sugar cane that goes into a pressing machine where you're able to get the juice from. That's it. Then, you can mix some lime juice with it and enjoy it cold. Though the color is not very appealing, if you are a sweet tooth, this is the juice for you. 

Food is something that brings memories and emotions, and when you're living abroad, just the fact that these types of food aren't at an arm's reach makes you want them even more. In case you're visiting Brazil, take notes of all my suggestions and go ahead and try them. Then, let me know which is your favorite!