One Way Ticket

We eat lunch and snacks at local pubs, coffee shops, and small mom and pop places. We cook our main meals when needed in our apartment. Tasting the local food is very much a part of the whole cultural experience. Sometimes we are surprised when the food arrives as it is not what we thought we had ordered or even purchased at the local grocery market. 

This is a flaming chorizo sausage eaten at a local pub. The fully cooked sausage is reheated with burning alcohol in a special created clay dish. The local beer in the Azores and Portugal mainland is Super Bock.

We thought we had ordered pork noodles and sautéed onions. We received smoked pork shavings, olives, and bread. 

Louise thought she had bought a frozen package of shrimp to cook with rice. The package was mostly encased in frost. She did not read the label “tentacles, etc.”The surprise almost over shadowed the smell when she pulled off the thawed plastic packing lid. 

The first stop on our tour of the Douro River Vallley yesterday, which began with a 7:30 AM bus boarding, was in a town famous for itsspecialty pastries. In Amarante, they are famous for Doces Falicos. During the Estado Novo regime the pastries were outlawed as being too risqué. They became a symbol of defiance to the fascist dictator. Previously the tasty pastries were offered by men to women as an indirect way to request intimacy, so the story goes.