Tags: [Brazilian life and customs, Food]
The best views are for the poorest people. The favelas or slums extend up the hills of the coastal cities in the sorts of locations that would be the millionaires’ row in most countries.
Lifts or Elevators. Apartments often have two (or more) lifts of which one is for servants, tradesmen, wet and sandy people from the beach and those carrying rubbish.
Coffee in self service restaurants is free provided free of charge from insulated containers at the exit. It is taken standing up. I guess it is a good way to move the customers from the table after they have finished eating. There are often free cups coffee in supermarkets and stores.
Self-Service restaurants charge by the weight of your plate. Meat, fish, salad, beans, rice, chips are all weighed together. It is a much better system than the Spanish “eat until you vomit” for a fixed price or the English “all you can pile onto a single plate” It makes calorie control much easier.
Plastic self-adhesive hooks are very hard to find and double the European price when available..
Gasoline For many years gasoline has been mixed with alcohol. Cars marked Flex can also run on 100% alcohol and some can run on liquid gas.
Sugar Consumption is astonishingly high at 50 kilos per capita per year. See US Department of Agriculture This leads to high figures for obesity related deaths.
Monarchy It is the only South American country to have had a monarchy. In the early 19th century the Portuguese royal family fled from Napoleon and set up the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarves. In 1822 independence was declared under the Emperor D. Pedro I. In 1889 the last Emperor was deposed and a republic proclaimed.
Beer here is the same Pilsener style beer that you see all over the world. It is the only country that I recall where draught beer is more exensive than canned or bottled beer. In most bars you can buy beer by the meter which does save a lot of work for the waiters. The strangest thing about the beer here is that I have seen several people add salt.
Cars I was wrong when I said there are no expensive status symbol cars. Apparently there are plenty but they mostly live in their garages while their owners drive more modest vehicles. It is inviting theft, hijacking and kidnapping to drive around in a $250,000 car. Expensive cars are used for safe trips to secure places. This type of crime is decreasing. I am preparing a piece on security and crime in Brazil
9 Comments to this entry.
The Best Views…… I suppose the poor must have something going for themselves.
Coffee…… Not my cup of tea ( coffee?). It´s nice to relax after a good meal with a cupper and a smoke? Is smoking controlled there?
Self_Service resturants…………. Interesting that protien foods carry the same cost as your veggies and carbohydrates!
Plastic self adhesive hooks………….. Looks like a business opportunity to me. Are the Chinese it that part of the world?
Isn´t it ironic that the they give us cheap goods on one hand and are in the majority responsible for increasing oil prices?
Beer……….. I assume you are comparing measure for measure?
The meter system must be similar to the Jarra of beer over here. The salt sounds very Mexican to me.
Coffee… so there really is “An awful lot of coffee in Brazil” [breaks into song]
Self service plate weighing… what a great idea. I’m beginning to think Brazilians must be very smart people indeed.
Plastic self-adhesive hooks… you KNOW the price of these in European shops? Steve, you’re far far more sad than I supposed!
Beer… by the meter? One-dimensional beer? I need to get drunk to begin to understand that. First I’ll have to water the yard.
PS: Well done for keeping this blog going for more than 2 weeks!
Food. Weighing the plate is a brilliant idea but might not work here. With the high price of proteins human nature would insist on filling the plate with only ‘treats’ and leave the rest.
Beer. What sort of meter? Presumably not the type that measures a yard of ale! Is it an electronic one?
Flavia must have found we Europeans quite primitive!
Don:
In Europe a lot of vegetables cost as much as chicken or pork per kilo. Beef is quite cheap here. But yes, it does sound strange but it works very well. There are a lot of self service restaurants.
I was comparing the price of a glass of draft beer (chopp pronounced shoppy) compared with a similar quantity in a bottle.
There is very little sign of Chinese people here. Very few restaurants and and the type of shops run by Chinese in Spain are run by Brazilians selling local products.
Harriet:
There is a lot of coffee in Brazil and Vitória is the port where a lot of it starts its journey to almost everywhere the world.
It is that we have spent a long time looking for some small self-adhesive hooks for the kitchen. I recently bought four in Spain for two Euros. Here they were Euro 1.50 each.
Gabrielle.
No, the Brazilians like to eat rice with a meal and probably some beans as well so I have not noticed many plates piled with the good stuff and no cheap food. Would the English pile up the protein and forego their chips and baked beans? Or the healthy ones their salad and veg?
Everyone
Beer by the meter (metre) is 100cm. The picture is of the metre of beer that they bring to your table. It is about ten glasses or 2.5 litres at a guess.
They serve free coffee in self-service restaurants and also TEA, although not English, of course, but made of Brazilian herbs or fruits. Some places serve milk with toasted sugar as well.
Flavia. Milk with toasted sugar in it sounds ununsual. Do you first make the sugar into a sort of caramel?
Hi, Gabrielle, ive missed you
To make that recipe you must melt some sugar until it turns to caramel and then add milk, which will solidify the sugar and you must stir until the sugar dissolve. It was very good for warming me in the dry nights of my childhood.
Kisses.
You mention beer and salt. I have never heard of it as a national or
even regional habit, but I have heard of it as a personal peccadillo and
have even tried it. As you know, the thick, creamy head on beer, which
was once a natural condition of all beer in the North of England, began
to lose out to the bubbly head of London beer and the arrival of foreign
lagers and assorted pilseners eventually put paid to it altogether. And
as the beer is drunk the remains in the glass look steadily flatter.
Those who still like to see a head on their drinks discovered that the
addition of a (very tiny) pinch of salt to the glass revives the head.
Appearance here is all things and taste should not be affected. That
pinch has to be VERY tiny otherwise the taste is affected and the result
can be undrinkable.
Bruce, While in Mexico we frequently came across beer with salt which is very popular there. I have to admit I was not tempted to try it!
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