mooshed together
Sep. 9th, 2022 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asakiyumeWhen we were in Letícia, I bought a bar of soap (and a beautiful green plastic bucket) to wash out socks and underwear and things. The soap was just a bar of Dove soap, but it's not soap I buy at home, so the scent was new to me, and so it became the scent of vacation, a scent of Letícia. We brought it home with us (along with the bucket), and every time I use it, the scent takes me back there.
Now, though, it's mooshed together with some fragments of old soap. Familiar everyday soap fragrance and faraway holiday soap fragrance, mixed together. It feels like the perfect symbol for how all the intense, striking, unique experiences of the trip smoosh together with the rest of my past experiences, and with what I'm thinking and feeling and doing right now.
So for example I brought home roasted, coarsely ground cassava (Manihot esculenta, aka manioc, aka, in Spanish, yuca, sometimes spelled yucca, but not to be confused with this plant, which is not cassava)...
because we had had some in a Tikuna/Magüta meal, and it was very tasty...
And now I cook it like couscous or with rice and serve it with stir fry or omelets. I haven't found a way to cook it that preserves its crunch and yet doesn't threaten to break our teeth (the meal we were served managed that trick).
(A little extra about the ground, roasted cassava: it's sold in plastic bags thicker than my arm. In this picture you can see piles of the plastic bags stacked on a wooden crate, and you can see raw cassava stacked like kindling by the blue striped bag. There are two sorts of cassava: sweet, which you can just cook and eat, and bitter, which needs lots of processing to get out the cyanide. All cassava has cyanide in it--sorry, I should say "cyanogenic glycosides"--but the sweet cassava has less and it disappears with cooking. The bitter needs more processing, and that's what they grow in the Amazon. You soak it and dry it and roast it and grind it. It can take days. I love that it's grown locally, processed locally, and sold and bought locally--except when someone like me buys a bag and carries it home.)
(Here's a photo from my guides' website, showing it being roasted.)
I promisedwayfaringwordhack some pictures of the giant water lilies. My husband-and-wife guide team told me they are bigger during the rainy season, but they were fine and big! They were originally called Victoria regia but apparently now are called Victoria amazonica:
Unfortunately there's nothing for scale, but this one, from my guides' website, shows their son supported by one (he seems like he's ready to be done with the experience at this point).
ETA: How much weight can a leaf hold? About 30 kg, if it's well distributed! And in comments I thought of other things I wanted to share (read here)
Now, though, it's mooshed together with some fragments of old soap. Familiar everyday soap fragrance and faraway holiday soap fragrance, mixed together. It feels like the perfect symbol for how all the intense, striking, unique experiences of the trip smoosh together with the rest of my past experiences, and with what I'm thinking and feeling and doing right now.
So for example I brought home roasted, coarsely ground cassava (Manihot esculenta, aka manioc, aka, in Spanish, yuca, sometimes spelled yucca, but not to be confused with this plant, which is not cassava)...
because we had had some in a Tikuna/Magüta meal, and it was very tasty...
And now I cook it like couscous or with rice and serve it with stir fry or omelets. I haven't found a way to cook it that preserves its crunch and yet doesn't threaten to break our teeth (the meal we were served managed that trick).
(A little extra about the ground, roasted cassava: it's sold in plastic bags thicker than my arm. In this picture you can see piles of the plastic bags stacked on a wooden crate, and you can see raw cassava stacked like kindling by the blue striped bag. There are two sorts of cassava: sweet, which you can just cook and eat, and bitter, which needs lots of processing to get out the cyanide. All cassava has cyanide in it--sorry, I should say "cyanogenic glycosides"--but the sweet cassava has less and it disappears with cooking. The bitter needs more processing, and that's what they grow in the Amazon. You soak it and dry it and roast it and grind it. It can take days. I love that it's grown locally, processed locally, and sold and bought locally--except when someone like me buys a bag and carries it home.)
(Here's a photo from my guides' website, showing it being roasted.)
I promised
wayfaringwordhack some pictures of the giant water lilies. My husband-and-wife guide team told me they are bigger during the rainy season, but they were fine and big! They were originally called Victoria regia but apparently now are called Victoria amazonica:Unfortunately there's nothing for scale, but this one, from my guides' website, shows their son supported by one (he seems like he's ready to be done with the experience at this point).
ETA: How much weight can a leaf hold? About 30 kg, if it's well distributed! And in comments I thought of other things I wanted to share (read here)
no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 07:56 am (UTC)That looks spectacular. What else is in it?
They were originally called Victoria regia but apparently now are called Victoria amazonica
There used to be a photograph at the New England Aquarium of an infant asleep on a giant water lily. I loved that picture.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 08:00 am (UTC)And it's so great that if you want to be reminded of your trip, you can just buy a bar of Dove and there you'll be.
I love that kind of waterlily, thanks so much for the photos.
P.
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Date: 2022-09-10 09:02 am (UTC)Sellar and Yeatman in one of their books refer to the maniac plant! :o)
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Date: 2022-09-10 10:41 am (UTC)I'm surprised they let you bring home cassava. Customs is usually so strict about agricultural products.
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Date: 2022-09-10 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 12:16 pm (UTC)The meal contained a small (and delicious) piece of tapir meat and some fish whose name sadly I didn't catch, plus the rice, plus the fariña de yuca--the coarsely ground, roasted cassava--and then a spicy sauce for the fish with tomatoes, onion and things, and a piece of roasted plantain.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 12:23 pm (UTC)The meal was delicious: I'll copy in what I wrote for Sovay--The meal contained a small (and delicious) piece of tapir meat and some fish whose name sadly I didn't catch, plus the rice, plus the fariña de yuca--the coarsely ground, roasted cassava--and then a spicy sauce for the fish with tomatoes, onion and things, and a piece of roasted plantain.
And I should have said in the main entry about the water lilies that when they're young, they're little and scrunchy and red, like the one you can see in the middle ground, and they they sort of unfold and greenify. And then when they fall apart, their walls go first, and then the middle part slowly decays away.
And the way they are fertilized! The flowers open at dusk, and a beetle flies in. Then the flower closes around them, and it spends the whole night in there. When it opens the next evening, the beetle flies out covered in pollen and goes on to cross pollinate another flower. And this page says that the scent the flowers give off is "butterscotch and pineapple"!
no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 12:29 pm (UTC)cocainecassava in the middle of it.no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 05:08 pm (UTC)I wanted very much to sleep on giant water lilies as a child. When I finally saw them in person in the Conservatory of the Longwood Gardens, it was 2006 and I had exceeded the regulation weight.
The meal contained a small (and delicious) piece of tapir meat and some fish whose name sadly I didn't catch, plus the rice, plus the fariña de yuca--the coarsely ground, roasted cassava--and then a spicy sauce for the fish with tomatoes, onion and things, and a piece of roasted plantain.
That sounds spectacular.
I remembered since your post that I have had a form of fariña de yuca as farofa, on the side of fejoada.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 10:45 pm (UTC)Thank you for the description of the meal. I didn't know people ate tapirs. I was wondering if that was a roasted plantain. I am not good at frying things, but I can roast them just fine. So hmmm.
I love the method of fertilization! I feared for the beetle at first, but it was all good. Thank you!
P.
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Date: 2022-09-11 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-10-24 08:43 pm (UTC)