Appearances

   It happened to me again.  Yesterday.  I popped into the bakery in the village.  On the upper shelf of the display case:  four beautiful slices of fresh banana bread with walnuts wrapped in clinging plastic wrap to both protect and display.  Beautiful.  I bought them, along with the bread which had been my original purchase, and we hurried home.  We waited impatiently while the tea kettle did its job and the tea pot did its.  Out to sit in the gentle sun of autumn late morning for fresh, hot tea and beautiful, lush banana nut bread. 

      One bite for each of us told the story:  not banana nut bread with walnuts adding crunch to the sweet, slightly gooey, rich texture.  This is bread.  Plain and simple.  Multi-grain bread.  Bread. 

      Worse, these are not walnuts, but chestnuts!  Ever had chestnuts?  In my opinion, they are bland  but with a mealy texture.  Flavorless but leaving a bad taste in the mouth.  Of course, others do not share my opinion.  They are adored by many people in Europe and lauded in that Christmas song.  Chestnuts, or castanhos as they are called in Portuguese, have been added to the bread adding insult to my injured taste buds.

      What to do?  I heaved the two half slices—each one minus a bite—over the fence.  We took the other 3 slices in their lovely, deceptive wrapping to our friends Pete and Ros who have professed their love for castanhos.

      Portuguese pastries are like that.   They look light and flaky or rich and gooey but are quite often rather dry and not very sweet. 

      Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, John Lennon and many, many other people have written clever maxims on the disparity between appearance and reality.  That doesn’t mean the lesson is learned easily.  Next time I’m in the bakery, I’ll look more closely at the tempting wares, but you and I both know that one day soon I’ll buy something that looks completely different from its reality.  We keep doing that, don’t we?

Shucking Oysters

   If we'd drunk the medronho (Portuguese moonshine) first, this would make more sense.  Two drunks doing something crazier than usual.  But we didn't.  We bought a dozen fresh oysters in the shell and brought them home.  "Google 'shucking oysters,'" Richard recommended.  I did.  Asian guy says it's easy.
   1.  You need an oyster knife.  Problem:  we don't have one.  We have a cheese-spreading knife (too blunt), a good paring knife (too sharp/dangerous) and a less-than-great paring knife that will have to do.
   2.  Hold the oyster in a wet towel to keep it from slipping and to protect hands from the knife and the sharp edges of the oyster.  Richard decides we will use Ove Gloves (one of the best inventions of the 21st Century).
   3.  Find the little groove on the oyster and insert the knife.
   4.  Slide the knife around between the bottom and top shells and open the oyster, being careful not to spill the water (gourmets' call this 'oyster liquor").  Serve with lemon juice and Tabasco sauce.
   Having conquered steps 1 and 2, Richard and I stood side by side with the oysters on the kitchen counter.  By taking turns with the paring knife, we discovered that I am fairly good at #3.  With an Ove Glove on my left hand to hold the oyster and protect myself, I could locate the "groove" and stick the knife between the shell parts.
   Then I placed the oyster with the knife still attached into the Ove Glove on Richard's hand so that he could "slide the knife between the shell parts."  In the YouTube demonstration obtained through Google, the guy had oysters that were smooth and even.  The knife slid easily.  Not so with Portuguese oysters.  Edges where the plates join are rippled.  Still, we managed to open all dozen oysters in less than half an hour.
    During our work time, it dawned on me that a crucial ingredient to enjoying oysters was missing:  vodka.  In my opinion, ice-cold vodka is the perfect pairing with oysters.  Sip vodka.  Slurp oysters.  (Not the reverse!)  What to do?  Richard already knew.  We have a bottle of medronho, the Portuguese form of moonshine distilled from berries picked on the mountains here.  Maybe a bit more alcohol than vodka, but there's an art to making do with what you have.
   Will we make this a habit?  Become regular oyster shuckers?  Are you crazy? 

Behind Closed Doors

  We were walking down the sidewalk in Odiaxere this morning.  A man was unloading a dump truck load of dirt one wheelbarrow at a time.  He was taking it into a little cafe.  Some kind of revenge against the owner?  Some sort of sick mind who didn't like the food?  Nope.  Just an example of what I call "Closed Door Syndrome."  Sure enough.  Straight back from the door of the closed-for-renovation cafe was another door that was open to reveal a sort of alley and behind that was another door opened to reveal a garden and, believe it or else, at the end of the garden was another door open to receive the new dirt.  In all, about 80 feet of door-to-door-to-door entries into a world beyond the cafe.
   We've seen this before.  Once, we had just arrived from the States and had no hotel.  Our friend, Jose Reis, said, "You are welcome to stay with my parents.  They have a separate bedroom and bath for my sister and other relatives who come from Lisbon to visit."  Having assured us that we would not trouble his parents, we followed him up the same sidewalk we were on this morning.  We got to a metal garage door with a regular-sized door inset.  He opened the door and led us--not into a garage--into a lovely garden with citrus trees, marble-paved patio, and his father sitting under the shade of a grape arbor.  Our bedroom there was detached from his parents' home and had an even smaller garden area behind it, complete with chairs and a table.
  It seems to me that Americans are much more public people than the Portuguese.  We decorate our lawns with flowers and flags and lawn ornaments.  The Portuguese put a wall around most of their houses, especially the older ones, and create a space for themselves.
   I'm not sure why someone wanted the dump truck load of dirt this morning.  I couldn't see what the man was ultimately doing with it.  I hope he was adding dirt to a garden back there.  One people going down the sidewalk will never suspect exists.