Yesterday I went to a job interview at BP. It went more or less, it could have been better, but I always end up getting too nervous and I think I talk too much, too fast and always at the job interviews that I'm most interested in ;) Now I'll have to have a stop in job interviews as this month I've already been to the doctor twice and I can't afford to loose my actual job ;)
So as you can see not much as happened in my life...
A pedido de uma pessoa tive que eliminar alguns posts, se mais alguém não quiser as suas fotos neste blog podiam-me avisar para as eliminar. Não quero violar o direito à privacidade de cada um, por isso senão quiserem ver fotos vossas divulgadas neste site avisem-me. De qualquer forma o site não é público (ou seja, se procurarem num motor de busca ou no motor de busca do blogger ele não aparece), é preciso que eu dê o link do site a alguém ou alguém escrever no endereço sem querer lerato.blogspot.com Como é óbvio não quero que toda a gente tenha acesso facilitado à minha vida e nem me dava jeito dado que teci comentários sobre o meu emprego que convém que o meu patão não as leia ;)
Peço novamente desculpa por ter posto as fotos sem consultar-vos, mas como só eu e a Rita é que as recebemos, pensei que assim seria mais fácil toda a gente ter acesso às fotos.
...have been updated with the photos Kazik so kindly sent me! Thanks once again! The photos were taken by Martim another polish who will visit our University this winter.
Thanks Kazik for the photos! And this is one only Martim could have taken: taking a photo with a sign saying "No Photos" and just after our guide had told us not to do so ;) This is the famous Pusher Street in Christiania (The Free City), Copenhagen, where you could buy and smoke joints without a problem. Or at least that was how it was supposed to be, as the Danish police was trying to close down their business. That is why we were not supposed to take photos, so there was no proofs of the traffic. 
and next week as soon as I arrive home I'll have the new deluxe edition of Guero by Beck waiting for me ;) After all the reviews I've read it seems it will be another fantastic album, it may not be a huge suprise as all the other albuns, but I certain it must be still an evolution as this is only one of the biggest genious in the music world and one of the 4 most divine, still living guys, in the world ;)
Here is www.allmusic.com review:
"Ever since his thrilling 1994 debut with Mellow Gold, each new Beck album was a genuine pop cultural event, since it was never clear which direction he would follow. Kicking of his career as equal parts noise-prankster, indie folkster, alt-rocker and ironic rapper, he's gone to extremes, veering between garishly ironic party music to brooding heartbroken baroque-pop, and this unpredictability is a large part of his charm, since each album was distinct from the one before. That remains true with Guero, his eight album (sixth, if you don't count 1994's Stereopathetic Soul Manure and One Foot in the Grave, which some don't) but the surprising thing here is that it sounds for all the world like a good, straight-ahead, garden variety Beck album, which is something he's never delivered prior to this 2005 release. In many ways, Guero is deliberately designed as a classicist Beck album, a return to the sound and aesthetic of his 1996 masterwork Odelay. After all, he's reteamed with the producing team of the Dust Brothers, who are widely credited for the dense, sample collage sound of Odelay, and the light, bright Guero stands in stark contrast to the lush melancholy of 2002's Sea Change while simultaneously bearing a knowing kinship to the sound that brought him his greatest critical and commercial success in the mid-'90s. This has all the trappings of being a cold, calculating maneuver, but the album never plays as crass. Instead, it sounds as if Beck, now a husband and father in his mid-'30s, is revisiting his older aesthetic and sensibility from a new perspective. The sound has remained essentially the same — it's still a kaleidoscopic jumble of pop, hip-hop and indie-rock, with some Brazilian and electro touches thrown in — but Beck is a hell of a lot calmer, never indulging in the lyrical or musical flights of fancy or the absurdism that made Mellow Gold and Odelay such giddy listens. He now operates with the skill and precision of a craftsman, never dumping too many ideas into one songs, paring his words down to their essentials, mixing the record for a wider audience than his friends. Consequently, Guero never is as surprising or enthralling as Odelay, but Beck is also not trying to be as wild and funny as he was a decade ago. He's shifted away from exaggerated wackiness — which is good, since it wouldn't wear as well on a 34 year-old as it would on a man a decade younger — and concentrated on the record-making, winding up with a thoroughly enjoyable LP that sounds warm and familiar upon the first play and gets stronger with each spin. No, it's not a knock-out, the way his first few records were, but it's a successful mature variation on Odelay, one that proves that Beck's sensibility will continue to reap rewards for him as he enters his second decade of recording. " By by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
So just enjoy!!!
As many people have asked me for the recipes of the desserts here they go (sorry but as my melktert was not right and I was only able to get the recipe in Afrikaans I cannot post it, as I don’t understand a word of it)…
30-days Muffings (which means you can have the dough in the fridge for 30 days before baking it)
Ingredients:
- 2 cups and a half of all-purpose flour / 2 chavénas e meia de farinha
- 1 and a half cups of brown sugar (the original recipe asks for yellow sugar but I think brown sugar tastes better) / 1 chavéna e meia de acuçar mascavado (a receita original pede açucar amarelo mas eu acho que o mascavado sabe melhor)
- 2 and a half teaspoons of bicarbonate / 2 colheres e meia de chá de bicarbonato de sódio
- 2 cups of bran flour / 2 chavénas de farelo
- 2 well-beaten eggs / 2 ovos bem batidos
- 2 cups of milk / 2 chavénas de leite
- 1 cup of oil / 1 chavéna de óleo
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence / 1 colher de chá de essência de baunilha
- Nothing or raisins or, as Paulo suggested, peanuts ;) / Passas, Tamâras ou nada ou outro fruto seco
Mix all the dry ingredients and then join the liquid ingredients. Mix it all very well and leave it in the fridge from one day to the other (or just do it like I do, bake them straight away ;) Bake it for about 15 minutes (or until dry when you stick a piece of spaggetti in the muffing, when they have already grown and become dark brown) in the oven at a medium temperature.
Misturar todos os ingredientes secos e depois junta-se todos os ingredientes liquidos. Mexe-se bem e deixa-se repousar no frigorífico de um dia para o outro. Esta massa pode ficar no frigorífico até 30 dias. Podem fazer como eu que depois de misturar tudo não coloco no frigorífico mas logo no forno médio durante 15 minutos ou até o pau de spaggetti ficar seco quando o espeto num dos muffings, que devem já estar crescidos e castanho escuros.
Cheesecake
For the base:
- 1 packet of Marie Biscuts
- 125 grams of margarine (and only that otherwise the base will become too hard)
Melt the margarine and mix it with the Marie biscuits already crushed into small pieces (I find the 1,2,3 very useful to crush the biscuits into small pieces ;). Use a pie plate (or a pirex) or some kind of recipient that has a flat bottom and is high all around the plate and cover the sides and the bottom with the margarine/biscuits mixture. Afterwards melt a packet of jelly (any flavor you like, but tutti-frutti cuts a little bit of the sweet of the condensed milk) with 250ml of boiling water and stick it into the deepfreeze (if you don’t want to wait for too long), mixing it once a while until it cools down. Beat 200ml of cream into chantilly (don’t worry if you can’t I never can as I double the recipe, but it helps if the cream is very cold), then add a tin of condensed milk, 250ml of cream cheese and the jelly already cooled down. Mix it all and pour it into the pirex and let it get stiff in the fridge.
Para a base:
- 1 pacote de Bolachas Maria
- 125 gramas de margarina (e só mesmo isso senão a base fica demasiado dura)
Derrete-se a margarina e mistura-se a com as bolachas Maria todas esmigalhadas (a picadora/1,2,3 ajuda imenso a esmigalha-las). Cobre-se um pirex no fundo e dos lados com esta mistura. Depois derrete-se um pacote de gelatina (pode-se usar o sabor que se quiser mas a de tutti-frutti é a melhor que corta o doce do leite condensado e não torna o cheesecake enjoativo) com 250ml de água a ferver, deixa-se arrefecer no congelador (se quiserem que arrefeça rapidamente), mexendo de vez em quando até arrefecer. Bater 200ml de natas até ficarem duras (não se preocupem senão ficar, eu faço sempre o dobro da receita e nunca fica, mas ajuda se as natas tiverem bem frias) e depois acrescentar uma lata de leite condensado, 250ml de queijo creme (ou queijo natural paturagés que vem num boião de 500ml, daí que faça sempre o dobro) e a gelatina já arrefecida. Mexe-se tudo bem, deita-se no pirex e deixa-se ficar firme no frigorífico.
It was my Aunty Irene who gave me these recipes so: Thank You and thanks from everybody who always enjoys your wonderful desserts and dishes ;) ENJOY!!!
One day somebody remembered from our university group of girls that, as most of us didn’t have enough money to go to last-year trip abroad with all those who had entered university at the same time as us, we should do our own last-year trip. Our trip would consist of sleeping over each others house and getting to know different parts of Portugal. So after a wonderful lunch at Ana’s house near Torres Novas (you can see the maps below if you are interested), it was my turn to invite the girls and, of course, their boyfriends to my parent’s house for a lunch with some South-African dishes: Boerewors (Farmers sausage), Mealie Pup (Cornmeal mush), Melktert (dessert), Chessecake and Muffings!
Unfortunately not everybody was able to join us, but if they ever want to drop by they are very welcomed! The same goes for Tasquinhas (type of a gastronomic fair in which all the small villages around Rio Maior compete with each other, during a week, with their traditional dishes and in the end the one with better decoration and food wins the 1st place), as only Ana, Henrique, Fatima, Rui, Nuno and Marina joined me!
I hope everybody enjoyed the night and day as much as I did and lets see if we meet once again very soon!
(I'm not religious and I've only seen this celebration once when I was 7 or 8 years old when my Granny from Oporto was here passing some days with us, so I think it's every year) Every year, 2 weeks before Easter Rio Maior has a religious celebration called Prossição do Senhor dos Passos. Senhor dos Passos means Lord of the Steps and this celebration is the most important at our little town, lots of people come and watch the volunteers carry Our Lord and our Lady from this church (which we call the old church, as we have two) which is quite beautiful from the inside, unfortunately is always closed and we didn't reach the church in time as it opens to let the men carry Our Lord and Our Lady from this church to the new church!
The day was not fantastic, but as you can see Mother Nature always amazes us, even in a cloudy day with a cold wind! As it's winter Marinhas do Sal doesn't have any salt, but in summer you will be able to see little pyramides of salt, as the water is sea water although Rio Maior is 30km from the sea! This pehnomenon only occours in another place in the world, only 2 places in the world!
