Showing posts with label Tracy Farrell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tracy Farrell. Show all posts

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Sao Paulo Day Trip - Embu de Artes

About 30 minutes outside of Sao Paulo, just off the Bittencourt Motorway you'll find Embu - often referred to as Embu de Artes.  It's a tropical enclave of artists and craftsman representing some of the best of Brazilian culture.  And what is a day of travel and exploring without a couple of surprises.

 Embu is an old city with cobblestone streets and mature trees that provide shade to the thousands of tourists that visit each weekend.  The draw is the 900+ shops and vendors with their arts and crafts.  We viewed paintings, sculptures, hand woven rugs and blankets, artisanal cachaca (distilled sugar cane spirits), a variety of leather goods and beautiful items to brighten any home.

One of my favorite pieces was the life-sized sculpture of St. Francis of Assisi in the photo below.  My pasty, white legs quickly identifies me as a "Nord Americano".  

 A couple of logistical notes on visiting Embu.  The weekends are crowded
especially on Sunday and parking is sparse.  Be patient.  Also, we thought we had seen most of the shops and booths but on leaving Embu we saw another side of town with more shops that we missed.  Explore a bit more and push the boundaries.

As it came up on 1:30 it was time for lunch.  We found a small table outside with shade and ordered "dois chopp" - two draft beers arrived frothy and cold.  The food was traditional Brazilian; not bad but not necessarily memorable either.  The entertainment is another story and was our surprise from Embu.



"We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year, running over the same old ground.  What have you found?  The same old fears.  Wish you were hear."  Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here

Meet Nell Filho, struggling but very talented musician.

Just as we were sitting down I heard the music and did a double take - that can't be Pink Floyd?  In English no less?  Nell sings American classics mostly from the 70's but there was some Garth Brooks thrown in.  He performed songs from John Lennon, Elvis, Bob Seeger, Bob Dylan and Southern Cross by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in impeccable English.  We spoke with him between sets to learn that he is native to Sao Paulo and has not travelled beyond Brazil.  We also learned that he does some nice accent work from south London and Dublin.  We would like to see him perform in the US one day.  We ended up buying his CD for R$10.

All in all, it was a successful side trip.  We bought some leather purses for our daughters and a handcrafted, leather map of the Americas circa 1640 that was beautifully reproduced.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Graceland, The Exorcist and Hummus

Do we really need much more than a few friends, some good food and light entertainment?  It's easier for me to answer that now that I know I didn't win the $640 million Mega Millions jackpot - friends, hummus and trivia are back in style. 

Chris and Eryka
 We had a great time answering 100 trivia questions with Chris, Eryka, Doug, Lou, Steve and Angie all for the benefit of a local elementary school.  We scored respectably -95 out of 100 for 6th place.  The winning team scored 105.  Our team had a great time, everyone had a specialty and clicked with at least one of the topics.  Diversity is important for trivia nights.  Eryka rocked the fairy tale category.  Tracy and Chris knew their science.  Doug was spot on with sports films and local sports  history.  Angie kept up with the television them songs and everyone chipped in for commercials and movie and themes. It was a bit light on history and geography and we fumbled our lone history question,
"Who came first as president - Wilson or Harding?"  Answers at the bottom.

We also blew,
"Who retired first - Larry Bird or Magic Johnson?" 

We did get this one right,
"What is the name of Paul Simon's grammy winning album of the late 80's with South African backup singers?

In the end, like most group activities our team result was better than anyone could have done individually and we talked ourselves out of a few correct answers  (Halloween instead of the Exorcist) along the way; but we had fun, good food and some laughs.

Doug and Lou
We had too much good food.  I was able to limit the damage to only 1.2 pounds on the scale this morning.  Tracy and I have grown to appreciate hummus as a snack/appetizer in our lower calorie lifestyle.  Over the last couple of months we've refined our recipe to a more trendy, tasty version of this ancient classic.  If I had stuck to hummus last night instead of pizza and cheesecake, I'd be in better shape this morning.



Tracy's Hummus

1 16 oz can of Garbanzo beans (drained and rinsed)
1/3 cup Tahini
2 Tbsp of roasted red peppers or sun-dried tomatoes
3-4 cloves of garlic
1/2 tsp cumin
3 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp Sriracha hot sauce
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp of olive oil

Combine the first 8 ingredients in a food processor and mix until smooth.  Blend in olive oil until desired consistency.


ANSWERS:  Wilson, Magic and Graceland