My lunch

Rather than throw in random shots on the street, seeing that I didn't actually go anywhere today, here is a nice shot from home. Hmm, what's all that yellow stuff? No, it's not curry (I'm allergic you know) - it's dendê! Palm oil, the main main staple of all foods Bahian. Without it acarajé, abará, and the Brasilian version of Montezuma's revenge would not exist (I'm taking votes on names for it - be sure to participate). This scourage of the digestive tract is a heavy heavy yellow/orange oil that come from crushing up those little red berries on African palms. It also makes us all fat, since we like to use it so much in so many dishes. This one I ate today, on my nice gasoline sign table, is called muqueca. It's usually made with tomato (none of that here, I'm allergic), green pepper (also not present for the same reason), onion, some kind of meat or fish, and tempero verde (a garlic and green herbs mix we use to season everything). You eat it over rice, which I did here. Also on my plate is a goolash type thing called pirão made from some of the caldo (juice, gravy, etc whatever you want to call it) from the muqueca, and below it is pumpkin, also a typical favorite here. That wierd blackish thing near the top of the plate was what Neta called "chicken surprise" - chicken with plantain bannana in the middle, and it was actually pretty good.

An interesting thing to note - all this European influence makes us eat with a knife in the right hand and the fork in the left. Not how I grew up eating, but much more efficient, I have to say. It should really be adopted in the States, where people are less inclided to wash their hands before they eat, but end up putting their fingers in their food to get it on the fork.