Archive for November, 2009

And so another National Blog Posting Month comes to a close. I think my second time participating in NaBloPoMo was a little easier than my first go-round a few years ago, but I will admit that the simplicity of “just post every day in November” is a slightly deceiving. I’m not going to claim that there were 30 posts of genius or even 30 really good posts (or even 15 mediocre ones), but so it goes when you’re writing on demand. I always have mixed feelings about doing things like NaBloPoMo, mainly because while I did accomplish the goal of posting each day this month, I don’t exactly feel as if I’ve grown or discovered something as a result. Or maybe I discovered that sometimes, posting every day can make blogging seem a lot harder than it needs to be. In any case, it was fun to jump on the bandwagon again, to read Jamelah’s Q&A sessions and to post on my otherwise neglected blog for 30 days in a row, just to say I could. So, there.

Although we were traveling for Thanksgiving and didn’t have the luxury of a home base kitchen this year, I wanted to make a homemade contribution for the meal. I decided on pao doce, Portuguese sweet bread, as this year’s effort. After a few false starts (think Yosemite Sam yelling “My biscuits are burning!”), I thought it turned out to be quite tasty. This is a rich, slightly sweet (but not cloyingly so) recipe, but makes a light dough that’s very easy to work with. Yeast breads have this rap for being difficult and time consuming, though I’m not sure it’s well-deserved. Making bread is pretty straightforward and the end result is worth the small amount of effort — plus people seem genuinely impressed with this edible parlor trick.

There are many variations on “massa sovada”, I’ve been using this recipe and I think it’s one that results in a nice flavor from the mix of butter, eggs, potato and flavoring. Sure, you can probably get a similar taste by grabbing a bag of King’s Hawaiian bread … but it’s nowhere near as good.

Tonight we went out with my stepdaughter and her fiance. It was a great endcap to a fun extended weekend with family for the annual Thanksgiving romp. It was great to get a glimpse into their social scene and meet some of their friends with whom I hope we’ll become more acquainted with before the wedding in June. The music scene reminded us a lot of the acts we caught in Memphis and Nashville during our honeymoon and we hope that they will find as much fun and adventure in their lives together as we have. I can also say that if you’ve not heard a rockabilly version of “Paper Moon” or “This Thing Called Love” then perhaps you need to expand your horizons just a teeny bit.