still on bananas

The women in my family love bananas. I am not sure exactly why. I realized this when editing the photos from my last visit home this past January. There are so many photos that show bananas! This realization got me thinking... yes it is true - bananas are an integral part of my family's table. We eat them at breakfast, at lunch, in the afternoon snack and even at dinner (in the form of a dessert called doce de banana). 

Each woman has a very specific way to approach this fruit. My grandmother, for example, is very particular about how one should and should not touch her bananas. She is known for her doce de banana (adored my many) but she will will only make this dessert when she can find "proper" bananas for it (perhaps it's a good thing she has never seen the bananas we get abroad). She will go unimaginable lenghts to get the bananas she is comfortable cooking with, even pretending to befriend people she absolutely despises just so she can have access to their precious banana plants. 

In June and July we celebrate Festas Juninas in Brasil. These are the parties for Saint John, Saint Anthony and a few others that I honestly don't remember (does this make it obvious how un-religious I am?). During these festivities, young women perform very traditional divination games, the kind to do when you want to know what the future holds for you. It's things like blurbing some sayings at the same as you're dripping some candle wax in a bowl of water with some spices, then reading the first letter of the name of the future husband on the wax. It's also things like poking a peixeira (very very large knife everyone carries around in the Northeastern countryside) through the banana tree, which supposedly also has divination qualities. The tree is very moist inside. This moisture grabs onto the blade and on this blade one can see the face (or the first letter of the name, or whatever one may believe to see) of the future husband. 

I am curious to discover more about the origins of such relationship between the women of this tiny corner of the world and bananas (ooh! that didn't sound right). But in all seriousness, there is a very intimate connection between people from rural Brasil (and rural parts of the world in general) and food. In my grandmother's home, each thing that goes in your mouth is in there for a reason. There is a preocupation with where this food came from, whether it is a quality item, whether it's at the right moment to be eaten, and what it does to your body. The older women in my family don't have all the answers, but, in paying attention to each banana that is consumed, for example, one can understand and participate so much more in the culture and society in which she inhabits. 

Food is not only about sustaining the body. In fact, I believe that's far from being its most important quality. Food is about relationships. Relationships between people, between people and their environment, between people and the perfume of life. People who have no relationship with their food also lack involvement with the very elements that make us human. Human culture is not consumer culture. Traditionally, we are eaters, not buyers. We produce (or find) and share our food. A very dangerous disconnect exists in households where more and more industrialized foods are consumed in place of "real foods." A decline in everything that is good and wholesome stems from the increased development of a relationship between people and industry, not between people and food, or people and people. The examples are everywhere and are especially visible in the so-called "industrialized, developed" nations. One just needs to open her eyes to be able to see.  

my first kitchen

My grandmother has two kitchens. There is the “normal” kitchen, which is beside the dining room and is adorned with a gas stove, a refrigerator and a freezer. Then there is the “downstairs kitchen,” which is behind the house, passing the old chicken coup, a hundred plants, and the laundry area. This kitchen has a wood-burning stove. It is a beautiful thing.

About three times a week there is an old man who comes with his donkey loaded with small pieces of wood he collects several kilometers away in the Sertão - the arid landscape down the mountain. This man is the husband of the lady who used to do the laundry at my grandmother’s house for 30 years. She is now retired. Her husband and his donkey have been fueling the yellow stove since my mother was a teenager.

The yellow stove and the wood are together partially responsible for the amazing taste of all my grandmother’s food. Her cooking has been spoken about by many people. It has been written about in several newspapers. People come from far away for the peculiar, and incredibly simple, cooking created in the yellow “downstairs” kitchen.

I was raised by grandmother. I spent my first years playing in this lively kitchen, watching the processes that happened daily - people that came in and out, different dishes being prepared, laughter, coffee being roasted, clothes being ironed... It is a multi-faceted space with lots of history and lots of light. For me, being there is like walking into another time. The images are blurred and out of focus. The smells and the sounds are the same as decades ago. In an era when we are ever more disconnected from any place to which we can attach our history, I feel so very lucky to be a part of this magical space.

Dona Alzira's kitchen

Dona Alzira is the lady who washed the laundry at my granmother's pousada (a brasilian version of the bed and breakfast, I suppose) by hand for over 30 years. She is married to Seu Nonô, the man who, with the help of his donkey, brings the wood that fuels the wood-burning stove at my grandmother’s kitchen. He has been doing this three times a week for over 35 years. They live in Viçosa do Ceará, my family’s birthgrounds, located on the top of the Ibiapaba mountain range, a 5-hour drive from Fortaleza (the capital of our state of Ceará). Their home is beautiful, colorful, and full of light.

The kitchen is hands down the most lovely part of the house. It’s welcoming and bright; there is always something on the stove and freshly brewed coffee for the visits (in the northeast of Brasil we must always feed our guests). Paying a visit to them is a must every time I am in Viçosa. They have known me from the time I was born, and their unconditional love carries through in the food and drink they offer me with bliss.

the open market in Viçosa do Ceará

One of the greatest (and simplest) pleasures from when I was a child, was to burry my hands down the dried beans at the market. They are so smooth...

Siriguela: the fruit with a large seed and a tiny bit of sweet (and often times sour) flesh.

Visa and Mastercard at the open market in Viçosa? Is the whole world corrupted by corporations?

jaca • the jackfruit

There are some fruits in the tropics that you either love to death or would die if your life depended upon eating it (or even taking a good whiff). Jaca is one of such delicacies. It was brought from Asia to Brasil by the Portuguese colonists a few centuries ago and is there to stay. It is a massive plant, starting from the tree, which grows beyond where the eyes can see. The fruits can weigh several kilos and inside them are some enormous seeds. Their unmistakable smell is very very pungent and sweet, and can be sniffed from a distance.

There are two types of jaca: soft and hard. Which is better? It’s all a question of personal taste. The soft jaca (pictured) is gooey and impossible to chew. The flesh is very slippery and slides right down your throat. Whole. I prefer the hard jaca, which is more manageable to the teeth. When they are in season, there are so many of them that it becomes impossible for the town to consume the entire production, so many of these fruits end up rotting away on the ground. This is the case with many other fruits in Brasil. The earth is just so fertile in the humid areas that the abundance of food is often an incredible sight. Welcome to the tropics, my friends, the land of massive pungent fruits!

Click here for more on the jackfruit.