I’m starting this post in the a.m. and I will finish when we return from our friends’ house tonight. So, it may be a bit disjointed. But, I’m starting with one thing I love and I typically do not eat much of in the states: bread.

Daniel introduced us to what we think is the best bread we’ve had in the area, so far. It is from Museu Do Pão (“bread museum”, or if you pronounce pão like I do, it’s a dick museum. Our Portuguese language instructor laughs at me every time I try to say bread). I digress.

Museum Do Pão offers various kinds of delicious Mafra bread. “Mafra bread” is a thing here. Today, we chose one traditional loaf and one chouriço (chorizo) loaf. Every time we’ve been, the bread is warm which means it was just made. Mama only makes it on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The kilns are outside near the street and her “museum” (read: weird, funny stuff – some related to kitchen and bread making, lots of it not) is half inside a house and half outside around the property. The kitschy piece I like the most is at the entrance. It’s a pig manger scene and it cracks me up. Yes, I do have a thing for baby pigs.

We went lunch at João and Paula’s today and we brought dessert from a café in Ribamar called Raiz Mercearia that Tina introduced us to. So far, we have not found very many Portuguese desserts to our liking. The ones we have tried are more full of sugar than anything else interesting and most of the pastries we’ve had leave a lot to be desired if you are spoiled enough to have had croissants or any other pastry from a good Parisian patisserie. But, this particular dessert is muito gostoso (very delicious). It’s a pumpkin tart with lots of nuts in it. It relies more on flavor and texture and less on a lot of sugar.

Joâo is also kind enough to bring us local eats when he is out and about traveling for work. This past week he brought us this gooey cake in which the dominant flavors were Christmas spices and dark molasses (although it says honey (“mel”) in the name and the description is a sugar cane syrup cake). It had some walnuts in it for texture. Great with a cup of tea or espresso! It was so rich and sweet, though, that we ended up sharing it with our neighbors – Fernanda and Elsa.

Joâo also knows Carnet loves to bbq, so he bought C some bbq salts. So sweet of him!

We’ve had so much great local food but we’ve also had a hankering for some Asian food. C pointed out that it had been two weeks since we had anything spicy. So, a few days ago when it was pouring rain we decided to head into the depths of Lisbon to find some Asian food. We shopped at two different Asian grocery stores. The first one was Supermercado Chen (an ode to our dear friend Grace, with whom, coincidentally, we shared our last meal in San Rafael the night before we left for Portugal). The second market was called Amanhecer. Amanhecer has a broader variety of foods, including Indian staples and different brands of Thai jasmine rice. It also had better looking and cheaper baby bok choy which a local had to help me weigh on the self serve scale from which you print the sticker for your goods.

In almost every store I’ve been, I get looks like “You’re doing it wrong”, which I am. I always think of that school drop off scene in Mr. Mom when Michael Keaton thinks he knows what he’s doing and Miriam Flynn (one of my favorite, underrated actresses who plays Cousin Eddy’s wife in Christmas Vacation) tells him he’s doing it wrong. Most people we’ve encountered are extremely friendly and try to help which is nice. But, I did get yelled at our local Intermarche the first time I went. I was standing in line waiting for the fruits and vegetable person to weigh and sticker my goods when this lady grabbed my arm, took me out of line, yelled something at me, and pointed to the kiosk where you pull a number you need in order to be in the queue for weighing your goods. How do you say “my bad” in Portuguese?

Back to Asian food… C found a Chinese restaurant that was quite good and it had 2 Euro TsingTao beers which is amazing. The place was called Mi Dai. We thought the beers would be more like 5 Euros each due to heavy import duties on foreign goods and luxury items. But we were willing to pay the price in order to get a different taste. Not that Sagres and Superbocks aren’t okay. They go down really easily when you need a light, cold beer. But they’re more like the Bud of Portugal, in my opinion. I’m positive I just offended our Portuguese friends with that comparison – my bad!

We don’t have any pics of the food because we started scarfing the moment they set the food down. From looking at the neighboring tables, we did it wrong – again. We decided the menu was for foreigners and that the next time we go there we’re heading straight to the fish and vegetable case up front and pointing to what we want. Even though the variety of food on the neighboring tables was far more interesting than the menu items we ordered, the beef soup and the greens were very satisfying. And, the hot sauce was wicked good and hot. I mean ROF hot. But, it was worth it.

I do have this cute pic of C who is super happy to have found this area of town.

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The second half of the post starts now at 5:56 p.m. Lunch at Paula and Joâo’s was duck rice and chocolate lava cake, both homemade by Paula.

One word: Exquisite. And, they are such a lovely family. Lunch was from 1:30-5:30. Love it!

Now we’re back at home where our power keeps going out every few minutes. So_much_rain from this Pineapple Express. Wine and one of a number of movies that Gerald downloaded for us on a thumb drive are calling my name.