fruit Archives - eatrio.net

Manguinhas – another reason to visit your local feira

18/10/2014/10 Comments/in Food and drink

Here’s a little factiod for you: while many fruits have evolved bright colours to attract birds (birds have excellent colour vision), mangoes are generally a dull greenish-red colour because they have evolved to be eaten (and therefore distributed) by fruit bats and other animals that rely more on smell than sight to find food. See? 3 years studying zoology wan’t a complete waste was it? According to my old ecology lecturer, we silly humans have spent the last 100+ years attempting to breed bright, colourful mangoes which appeal to the average human shopper.

There are mango trees (mangueiras) all over Rio. In fact here’s the view out of my window right now:

Mixing Mangoes with Milk

16/10/2012/7 Comments/in Language

After hosting Rachel’s guest post just a few days ago, the karmic wheel of blog has come full circle and today I guest posted at Street Smart Brazil! I have to say I’m pretty excited – as far as I can recall it’s my first ever guest post! I’m sure many of you will already be familiar with SSB (like all best-buds, we’re on acronymic terms now), but if not, I’d love it if you’d pop over and say hello, check out my humble offering (which will explain the image below). I think it represents an absolutely fascinating insight into one small part of Brazilian history. Not a particularly nice part of Brazilian history to be fair, but interesting how something from so many years ago still survives today. Intrigued? I hope so!

The link to follow is here: http://streetsmartbrazil.com/blog/20121015/manga-and-milk

Poisonous Mango?

The best way to drink a cacau caipirinha.

19/09/2012/11 Comments/in Food and drink

A couple of days ago I mentioned the fish that we ate on a remote beach in Bahia in the northeast of Brazil. When you’ve walked a couple of hours to get to a beach, you realise that you are basically a captive audience so if there’s only one thing on the lunch menu then you’d better hope you like it. As I said in the post, luckily for us it turned out to be one of the most delicious fish I’ve ever eaten.

On that same day, as we were waiting for the fish, a different guy came past and asked if we’d like a caipirinha. Regular readers will know I’m rather fond of Brazil’s classic cocktail and so won’t be surprised to hear that I immediately asked what fruits they have (caipirinhas can be made with all manner of fruit, not just lime). The first fruit the guy mentioned was Cacau and I stopped him right there. Cacau is the fruit whose seeds are used to make chocolate, but those seeds are surrounded by a sweet, refreshing pulp that tastes nothing like cocoa.

When the guy disappeared off to make the drinks, I expected him to return with a drink served in a plastic cup. As discussed before, this does not automatically mean it will be a bad drink and who could expect them to have anything else in such a remote location? But what he actually came back with was this:

Caipirinha de Cacau!

The Fruit Evangelist

22/08/2012/9 Comments/in Food and drink

Over the last few years I have become aware of a weird new use of an existing word: Evangelist. In Brazil of all countries it would be hard to avoid the traditional, religious sense of the word. But have you come across Technology evangelists? There are Microsoft Evangelists, Photoshop Evangelists, you name it. As far as I can tell, they are employees who spend time making training videos, running forums and generally singing the praises (hence the name presumably) of their chosen product/manufacturer.

Personally I wouldn’t much like to get stuck in a lift with any type of evangelist, though (as we’re about to see), perhaps I should remember what they say about throwing stones in glass houses, because not so long ago I found myself doing some evangelising of my own.

Luscious, juicy, Brazilian morangos (strawberries).

More Hortifruti Word-Play

12/07/2012/7 Comments/in Food and drink

Do you remember all those great adverts that Hortifruti were running a while back? They put fruit and vegetables into famous film posters using excellent word play skills. Edward Scissor Hands (Edward Mãos de Tesoura) became Edward Mãos de Cenoura, Moulin Rouge became Melão Rouge (melon) and Shrek became ChuChuRek (chuchu) – take a look at my post about it to see the brilliant film-poster adverts.

Regular readers will know I have a weakness for the art-form (yes, art-form) of the pun, but whoever worked on that advertising campaign was a genius. And isn’t it nice when smart adverts are created for a product you really like? Hortifruti is easily my favourite food store in Rio – if you’re looking for fresh fruit and vegetables and a great selection of other really high quality ingredients, Hortifruti (OR-tchee FROO-tchee) is the place to go.

After their last campaign (fruit/veg transformed into super-heroes) things have been quiet for a while. And then look what I saw this morning!

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