Eat Rio Blog - Page 67 of 106

Desafinado

19/08/2012/19 Comments/in Art and culture

Some of you may remember that in March this year I went to London for a couple of months. It was my first taste of a real winter in 3 years and I felt almost instant saudade for the warmth and sunshine of Rio. Perhaps as a result, I found myself listening to Brazilian music as I stood at chilly bus stops, or shivered my way between the train station and my office.

During my time in Brazil I’ve made a few musical discoveries that have come as revelations. The first was when I discovered ‘A Tábua de Esmeralda’ by Jorge Ben. It’s a brilliant album – unusual, very accessible and made me realise that not all Brazilian music has to sound like samba or bossa nova. I wrote about it here.

But back in London I had a new album on constant rotation.

Chega da Saudade by João Gilberto.

Word order can important be

14/08/2012/9 Comments/in Language

I’m no language expert (in fact I’m closer to the ‘Clueless’ end of the linguistic spectrum), but as far as I know, the Romance languages (such as Portuguese) tend to use a different word order to Germanic languages (such as English) when combining nouns and adjectives.

For example, in English we would say “the red car”, whereas in Portuguese they say “o carro vermelho“. In German: “das rote auto”; in French: “le voiture rouge“.

This may sound like the kind of thing that trips you up and leads to mistakes, but personally I found that I adjusted quite quickly to switching the word order. It probably helped that before Portuguese, I had spent some time learning Spanish, and during my school years (several æons ago) I occasionally attended French classes…

Sound like Yoda you will. Well, kinda… Apparently academic syntacticians have analysed Yoda’s speech and found what they describe as “object-subject-verb” word order. Nice way to justify your research grant guys… Source

However it isn’t only nouns and adjectives that change places. And depending on what you’re trying to say, sometimes it’s better to use the Germanic order!

Go Dilma!

10/08/2012/28 Comments/in Musings

In general, the British don’t go in for all that whooping and hollering when it comes to politicians. Of course there are a few whoopers and hollerers out there, but most of us tend to feel a tinge of regret when choosing to support a politician. We choose Politician X because, having weighed up the options, we’ve decided that he or she is the least bad of the bunch. Certainly not as bad as Politicians Y and Z. But that doesn’t mean we’re about to start waving flags and having parties.

With that out of the way, I can now say that it seems to me that Dilma (let’s get the pronunciation right – it sounds like JIL-ma) has done a pretty decent job since coming to power. I’m not going to pretend that I spend huge amounts of time reading hundreds of in-depth political pieces (my Portuguese level is closer to João e Luiza vão à Praia), but I’ve formed this opinion based on a few factors.

There are a lot of images of Dilma out there, not all of them flattering, but I like this one for the fact that it looks fairly natural – less like one of those awful, staged campaign posters.

Misto Quente

08/08/2012/10 Comments/in Food and drink

I love cooking. I love eating out too. I love discovering new food and I even enjoy shopping for food (the only form of shopping I do enjoy…). I am not a ‘foodie’. Urgh! Maybe this is just me, but foodie makes me think of some pompous bore endlessly questioning the ‘provenance’ of this and the ‘sourcing’ of that. You know, this kind of thing:

I’m all for locally sourced, seasonal food and all that, but there’s a time and a place. If you find yourself interrogating guests who bring food to your BBQ/Churrasco (“…are those sausages organic?!), it’s time to ask yourself a few questions…

Not being a pretentious food obsessive (well, hopefully not all the time!) means that I am free to enjoy the unsophisticated, deliciousness of Misto Quente (in the Carioca accent this sounds like Meesh-toe Kayntch). ‘Misto’ means mixed, ‘Quente’ means hot.

I have discovered all kinds of exotic ingredients and dishes in Brazil, but Misto Quente is pretty down to earth. Two slices of toasted bread, ham and melted cheese. In Britain we call it a Ham and Cheese Toasty. Here in Brazil you can find Misto Quente practically everywhere.

It may not look pretty, but let me tell you, this particular Misto Quente was amazing! It was a chilly morning in Ibitipoca National Park, Minas Gerais and we were suffering the obligatory hangover of New Year’s Day, made worse by a bad night’s sleep in a tent. Hot, crispy bread, salty ham from the hotplate and melting Minas Frescal (locally sourced cheese!) made this a winner!

The end of the market!

07/08/2012/5 Comments/in Language

People have different tolerance thresholds for mess and untidiness don’t they? For some people, the limit is a little dust on the shelf and a couple of dishes in the sink. Others will live quite happily with mould growing on half-finished cups of tea sitting under their bed (naming no names!).

Has someone been watching too much TV? Source

Some people who know me may be surprised to hear that in our house, I’m the tidy one. This is annoying as it means that in ‘The Cleaning & Tidying Game’, I always crack first. But not without a little complaining first!