Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais: Mercado Central

Food markets are one of my favourite activities when I travel. Food is something that brings people together in many ways - it brings traditions from the past to the present, it brings people together to cook and share, and it exposes different nutritional habits.

We spent two days this week walking in the mercado central of Belo Horizonte. I was grinning the entire time. The best part of going to Belo Horizonte's mercado is that this town is really not a tourist town, so I think I was the only non-brazilian there. This is beneficial for my experience because I am able to really see how people go about their food shopping and selling without worrying about a 'show' being put on for tourists.

Here are some of the highlights:

Candied fruits. My favourite were the candied whole figs.

Here we bought mandioca flour which we often eat at lunch in a fried rice and vegetable jambalaya. Mandioca is also known as yuca or cassava in other parts of the world and has typically been a food of poor people.

Here you can see the mandioca root which this seller efficiently removed the skin with his machete so it was prepared for us to cook. We enjoyed the mandioca fried in oil which makes it take on a french fry like consistency.

What is this you ask? Pig tails. Pig tails, feet and ears are popular ingredients as they are used to make feijoada which is one of Brazil's most popular dishes, though I have not yet been able to try it.
Tabacco rolls for all my smoking friends.

The actual biggest hat I have ever found. I have a similar one at home but maybe 3/4 the size of this one. It was fabulous!

Then we got to the live animal section which was a clamorous site of activity. Cages upon cages were filled with thousands of birds of every type you could imagine, dogs, cates, rabbits and other rodents. Birds were the most popular and they are one of my favourite. Though the conditions were questionable, all the birds did look quite healthy. The parrots were cheap but some of the more rare birds quite expensive. For example in Canada last I checked you could buy a cockatiel or lovebird for $180. Here you could buy a cockatiel for $45 or a lovebird for $30. For the more exotic birds - namely the Canada goose - the price was 5000 R or $2900 for the pair.

Being in the market I obviously assumed that some of the birds were for pets, but that some of them were for consumption like the ducks, the chickens and some of the geese. When I told this to Gigi she was horrified that I would think such a thing and so maybe they are all just for pets. I wish I would have asked. Apparently I continue to only see cooked meet when I look at certain animals.

A variety of bulk spices. Attractive displays are definitely most eye catching and effective and bringing in customers.

Bottle of Cachaca (said ka-sha-ssa). This is a typical sugar cane alcohol of 40% proof. I was given some to try pure at home, which went down very easy but then slammed you with its alcohol a moment later. Really took my breath away. In a lemon-sugar cocktail, it was much more apetizing.

Here are pequi fruit. It is native to Brazil and very popular in Minas Gerais. Its seeds can also be used to produce an oil.

The last two stalls were for hot peppers, pimientos, for cooking and preserving, as well as a collection of dulce de leites.

Game Changers: Altering Your Itinerary at the Last Minute

I drank some coffee this afternoon and now am unable to sleep. I am glad to use this time to share some news about my trip.

Yesterday I was advised that the person with whom I was supposed to spend the Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro legs of my trip is no longer in Brazil. For whatever reason, I was only given this information less than a week before we were supposed to meet, and less than two weeks before Carnaval is to occur. This has several implications including the fact that essentially all accomodations are now booked in Rio so close to the celebration dates, and transportation costs are very high when booking this last minute. I am dissapointed that this person did not share the possibility of his absence with me in advance so that I could properly make alternate plans, but I did have my suspicions that something was not right since I had not received confirmations from him over the last two months.

So what does one do when your plans change? Make new plans. I am lucky that I do have contacts here in Brazil who as I have said are extraordinarily hospitable. They are helping me as best they can to ensure my stay in Brazil is all I hoped it would be.

The major decisions that I have had to make in the last two days is one of value judgement - 1) is it more valuable to see more places in a country but spend most of your budget on accomodation and transportation, or 2) is it more valuable to visit fewer places but have the cash to do more and better activities?

I have chosen the option two. I know that I have never been the type of person that likes to visit a city every day or two for the sake of 'having been' to each place, but I'd rather see one city inside and out. I leave tomorrow for Brasilia. Originally I was supposed to fly from there to Sao Paolo to meet the person in question. However, without knowing someone in the city, it really doesn't have much draw for me anymore. So my options were to 1) fly directly to Rio if I could find accomodation and visit Ihla Grande for a few days before trying to go to Carnaval, 2) fly to Florianapolis for five days before trying to go to Carnaval, or 3) return to Belo Horizonte to stay with my current hosts for an additional five days and participate in the activities which they have planned for me.

After doing the cost analysis of these three options, as well as doing a safety, fun and convenience analysis, I have chosen to return to Belo Horizonte after Brasilia. There are so many activities and sites I would still like to see in Belo Horizonte, and I have a place to stay and people to expose me to the best activities in this town.

I still think good karma is on my side, and I look forward to sharing more details from Minas Gerais upon my return from the country's capital - Brasilia.

Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais: Weekend Activities

I am being spoiled. This weekend was a weekend of luxury for sure. Honestly I am so fortunate to have such welcoming and sympatica hosts. On Saturday I was invited to spend my day with Carol and Lucas at the weekend home of Lucas' family. His family, as do Carol and Lucas, live in a gated community, which are called condominios in Brazil. His home is in a valley surrounded by minimally developed mountains so that residents can enjoy the beauty of brazilian nature and get away from the crowded city life.

His home also has an outdoor kitchen and hosting area with three large permanent outdoor dinning tables, a pool, a billiard table, a tennis court and ample room to lounge. We played music ranging from unplugged shows of Eric Clapton to MPB (musique popular brazil).

I think the lunch was to celebrate Carol being pregnant because Lucas' three sisters and their family were present and we drank a very fancy bottle of Spanish wine with lunch. Alexia, one of Lucas' sister, is a chef who teaches cooking at a school in another province. She made a delicious seafood lunch for us to enjoy for the celebrations, after which we played billiards, swam, sun tanned and generally relaxed.

Meeting kids is always an enjoyable experience in a foreign country for a number of reasons. First, you're able to communicate more easily because the topics of conversation with a child tend to be more simple. However, in many cases, children are often timido with foreigners. For two of Lucas' nephews I was the first person they have ever met that doesn't speak Portuguese. For some of the older ones, they explained that they could understand me when I spoke English because they had started to learn in school or for one Fransisco (there were two) he said he would only be learning this coming year.

The pre-teen nieces decided later to make luxury dog cookies from a cookbook that was in English. They kept running to me to explain different ingredients and words in the instructions. For example, I had to explain what 'grated' meant and what 'dough' was in a couple different ways before the girls understood. Actually it is a little like playing Tabu - you can use all sorts of hand signals and words less ones (generally the most useful) that aren't understood by the people to whom you are trying to describe the subject. 'Grated' was difficult to explain because they had to grate carrots so I explained that cheese on pizza and nachos was generally grated and that's what they had to do to the carrots.

Luckily I wasn't the only foreigner at the gathering. Mat, a Turkish exchange student living with Alexia, was able to translate much because he has already been in Brazil for six months. When I asked him why he chose to learn Portuguese of all languages, he said it was because apparently Portuguese is the most difficult of the latin languages (which I believe), and he says he has been advised that if he learns Portuguese before Spanish and Italian it will be easier to learn all three than if he learned Spanish or Italian and then tried to add Portuguese.