The Hillbilly Viking

If you know a little Spanish, you already know enough Portuguese to guess what this post is about (but as we learned yesterday, you can’t pronounce it). Without going all Anthony Bourdain on you, I absolutely agree that other cultures are best experienced through the stomach (and oftentimes the liver). Here are some examples from our trip so far:

Why don’t we do it in the road?

Sao Miquel is largely a winding two-lane on a high bluff overlooking the ocean (think Pacific Coast Highway). There are multiple, scenic turnouts with picnic areas to further over stimulate your appetite for breathtaking vistas. After a quick stop off at the supermercado for tuna, chorizo and ripe cheese, we enjoyed a do-it-yourself, visual and gastronomical orgy. By the way, if you visit another country and don’t wander around at least one large grocery store, you are truly missing out on insight into the soul of the people around you. (Shit, I promised not to do the Bourdain thing. My bad!)

Fish School

After a stressful drive through the tragically narrow and directionally dysfunctional streets of Ponta Delgada, we beelined for the suburbs where we took shelter from a rainstorm in an oceanfront, seafood shack.

When I asked my server what the fish of the day was, he said, “Mackerel. It is friend of tuna.” I’ve had mackerel before, so I didn’t need it’s relative taxonomic rank, but I wasn’t offended by the lesson, and any “friend of tuna” is a friend of mine and always welcome at my house for dinner.

Patty, on the other hand, wasn’t a fan of the cold-smoked, gelatinous salmon on her salad. Pity. It was warmly welcomed on to my plate by my other friend, the mackerel where I hosted a long anticipated, Friends reunion. There were no survivors.

Stew on it

When we were in Iceland (or Mama Azores, as I call her now), we were impressed with the way they used the volcanic, geothermal energy to provide electricity for that island nation. Clever.

In the Azores, they use their geothermal energy to slow cook meat. Brilliant!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about clean, renewable energy sources, but I fricken’ LOVE pot roast. The Azoreans throw root veggies and a who’s who of Old McDonald’s Farm (and their sausage derivatives) into a big clay pot in the morning, bury it next to a volcanic vent shaft, and then dig it back up around suppertime. Assuming no volcanic eruptions occur in the interim (can you say delivery?), you end up with a tender, savory cornucopia of pot roasted stew called Cozido das Furnas. Although with the lingering sulfur smell, it’s more like Devil’s Dinty Moore. Anyway, the delicious version I had from Restaurante Banhos Ferreos (less crowded and nicer people than the over-hyped Tony’s around the corner) included a statin-straining array of beef, pork ribs, chorizo, blood sausage, chicken, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, yams, and something I couldn’t identify but ate anyway, perhaps Jimmy Hoffa. Simply outstanding, and the ensuing cold sweats and chest pains were so worth it.

Reverse Cowboy

This is purported to be the land of Happy Cows (seriously, look it up). When I was a kid, my Uncle Ron (not nasal hawking Uncle Ron from a few posts back, but another Uncle Ron) had a farm in Michigan’s preferred peninsula with some cows, and since I helped out on a few occasions, I feel like I can weigh in here.

Granted, I’m no cow expert, but as a child I personally did not witness them having demonstrable emotions one way or the other. In my experience, their completely emotionless states of being were: sitting, walking, and shitting (and the last two were not mutually exclusive). However, I have to admit, even when whizzing by the Azorean cows at 90km/hour in a sputtering Renault, I’ll be damned if they don’t seem, well, happy. We even saw calfs playfully pouncing around like kittens. Maybe it’s the breathtaking scenery. Maybe it’s the sea air. Maybe it’s all that free-ranging on verdant mountain sides. Maybe it’s because they never have to drive a Renault. I dunno, but I do know that when we found ourselves in a cozy bistro later looking over the menu, the beautiful, Azorean steaks suddenly didn’t seem so appetizing, and I ended up with another order of Atlantic cod.

Shah-na-na

About the same time we Americans were fighting our first civil war, an invasive, brown bug about the size of a TicTac, wiped out the lucrative orange crops on Sao Miquel. To find a replacement crop, the Azoreans shrewdly decided to look east for wisdom and ultimately invited two, Chinese tea masters to the islands to teach them the agri-science of tea leaf production. The Chinese know-how combined with the nearly perfect Azorean climate created the one and only site of internationally exported tea production in all of Europe, and it still exists to this day. It also created a tangible blueprint for friendly, free trade that will probably not last through the weekend. Thanks, Donny.

The Portuguese word for tea is chá and pronounced shah, like in a 1980’s teen comedy:

Tina: Hey Becks, isn’t the new foreign exchange student kinda’ bogus?

Becky: Oh my gawd, like, shah!

After a self-guided tour through the Gorreana Tea Plantation, culminating in a low-budget video and a free cup of weak chá, we hit the gift shop. I’m not a big chá drinker, but since Patty is, Euros were dutifully spent. I did stumble (literally, damn near knocked over the display) across a bottle of chá liquor, which I thought might be a good gift to bring back to the states. However, temptation is a persistent little bitch, and it didn’t survive the day. Do we have self-control issues? Like, shah!

Olde World Meets New World

Thanks to our friend, Carolina, we were introduced to the amazing cocktail called Caipirinha while in Brazil years ago, and she is named in our will as a direct result. Thanks to Portugal having such a long and close association with Brazil, Caipirinhas are everywhere here, and our will is being updated when we get home to include Portugal.

Saúde!