Beautiful Bahia

Salvador

In my last few days volunteering at Bahia Street I got to lead a workshop on making banana bread, pumpkin bread, and fudge. It was a bit of a challenge trying to find all the ingredients (since the recipes from my mom were from the states, and some things just aren't the same here). But on the other hand the delicious bananas, hand-ground nutmeg and cloves, and local-churned butter were certainly an improvement over their American counterparts. I thought it was cool that Bahia Street uses its budget to support local shops and vendors whenever possible. When I went out to buys things we took along a notebook full of forms for the vendors to sign, as a replacement for the receipts which they don't give out. That way the money spent can still be filed in the accounts and the local vendors benefit from school's purchases.

Some of the ingredients. This brick of chocolate was massive, but between the fudge and banana bread we used almost all of it.



Two of the cooks at Bahia Street. Here Sonha is helping me stir the mixture of condensed sweetened milk, caramel, and butter that form the base of my fudge recipe... hard to go wrong with those ingredients





 Pumpkin and Banana bread!

Fudge!

Food was a success. I left copies of the recipes and my friends at Bahia Street promised to send photos when they bake up huge batches of banana and pumpkin bread for the girls. Around 70 girls makes for lots of baking.

I also did some exploring around town, taking photos of some of the vendors and their delicious foods. Here in Salvador there is a common local dish called acarajé--bread made from black-eyed peas fried in palm oil cut in half and filled with mixtures of shrimp, cashew, salsa, and spicey peppers--it is mighty tasty but I underestimated the potency of the spice the first time. Given the lack of spice-tolerance in Rio I foolishly thought Bahia was similar and requested a generous share of spicyness. The result was painful bliss. And it came back to bight me at about 3am in the morning... acarajé with ample spice makes a quick circuit of the digestive system.

Here are some pics from my wanderings:

 These lobsters were pretty impressive looking

This lady was super nice, and was happy to let me take pictures of her selection of beans, corn, avocados, and other vegetables.

This guy was the sea-food master, had an impressive array of fish, and the lobsters above were his too.

Arembepe

The second half of my week in Bahia I spent in Arembepe, a small beach town north of Salvador. It has become famous for its beautiful beaches and hippy village, atractions that brought celebrities from around the world. I talked with some of the residents of the hippy village. Apparently there are 28 families with permanent residences, no more development is allowed. They make their living as artists mostly, selling their goods to tourists. I bought some cool bracelets from one guy. He told me that he is one of the original residents, and spends his time travelling around the country exploring remote areas to find pieces for his jewelry and art. He had all sorts of cool nuts and teeth and beads and stones and stuff. I found out a few days later that shiny finish that he put on some of the beads he sold me was in fact paint (due to it rubbing off on my hand), contrary to his sworn claims of being polished to a shine with sandpaper. I should have known from looking at them. Wonder how many other tourists he fools...

Since the beach was the main attraction of Arembepe I spent most of my time there. I ranged north and south of the town, saw the beach in many moods, from stormy and crashing at the dunes, to calm and full of cristal clear tide pools perfect for taking a break from the hot sun.

 This is actually a picture of the river just on the other side of the sand embankment from the beach. The river carries on for miles behind this natural levee before finally veering into the ocean.

 An awesome natural pool. The waves break on the rocks and leaves this hollow full of clear, warm water.

 A small shack near the end of the hippy village. Don't let this be representative of the neighborhood though, the houses were much nicer.

 Stormy day. The waves were breaking hard against the rock reef and still coming in with enough strength to break again on the beach. And the water was way higher up the beach too, in some places there was hardly room to walk. Not so good for swimming on days like this.

Lobster tails. The storm washed up a lot of interesting things (trash, coral, coconuts, shells...). These were pretty stunning

One of the incredible tide pools. This one was cut off from the ocean, meaning it was warmer and great for just chilling in. Others were closer to the waves and surrounded by more rocks, they were better for cheching out the critters. If you sit in the water without moving all the colorful tropical fish and crabs come out to play.

Wish I had more time here, it is an excellent place to relax and take it easy. And a big thanks to Iana for the superb room and board while there!

After Arembepe I headed south to São Paulo and from there branched off into the countryside to work on a biodynamic farm called Estancia Demétria. But these exploits are for the next blog. Just to get you excited for the news though, I witnessed my first Cesarean section on a cow in the middle of the freezing cold night in a lonely field. I pinned her legs to keep her from bashing the vet. Learned more about surgery and anatomy of a cow in that night than in all my life in school. Well I guess I never took classes on surgery or cow anatomy  but I learned a lot. Unfortunately (fortunately?) I didn't get any pictures of the process.