All right, it’s time to dig in and do some real research.  Food.  I was talking with friends today, and a couple of us realized food is difficult to describe, especially if you’re talking about a food that’s not always available everywhere.  Explaining deviled ham to M was a treat, especially after laughing over a picture of a ham-cat dressed as a devil.  Since he's unfamiliar with American foods, I had explained why the cartoon was kind of amusing.  Yeah, there is some weird stuff in this world.  There he is!  The deviled HamCat.

Shoving all that aside, I’m looking for Brazilian recipes; our one local Brazilian restaurant doesn’t serve food from Brazil so much as they offer foods that American travel shows feature as being from Brazil but are totally Americanized.  What little I have discovered-and this I expected-is food varies from region to region.  Again, Brazil and the US share a commonality.  It is one of the blessings from which we do benefit by living in large, culturally diverse countries.  While you will always be able to find burgers and pizza in the US, you can also find French influenced creole cooking, the meat and potatoes of the Mid-West, barbecue that varies region to region, Maine’s lobster rolls, any of our “Chinatowns”, and so much more.  Like I said, blessed in cultural diversity.  Soooooooo…  I’m thinking of tackling Brazil’s cuisine by looking into the different regions of the country one at a time versus the entire country at once, and I’ll probably be checking out some old episodes of Tony Bourdain.  The man knows food.  

All of this searching has made me think a lot about my mother.  (Hello, Mom, if you’re reading this.)  She cooked on a tight budget, something most of us in life understand.  Things weren’t always easy for her, but I never knew they were hard for my parents until I was much older.  Our meals were simple, always delicious, and I couldn’t understand why my friends thought it was so weird my mom made her own noodles.  She did it because it tasted better and was less expensive.  She made a lot of her own breads, too.  We always had a hot breakfast before going to school, and I thought it was terrible we didn’t get cold cereal!  This is where I admit to being a fiend for cold cereal of any kind.  Except for Trix.  They taste like Lemon Pledge smells.  If you’re not familiar with Trix or Lemon Pledge, one is a brightly colored and possibly toxic food for children here in the US, and the other is furniture cleaner.  Mmmm, delicious!  Yeah, those are not two things that should be juxtaposed, and somehow Trix did it.  (Please don’t sue me, General Mills, I have nothing to offer you but advice, which I’ll give for free. Make better cereal.)    Anyway, back to my mother and her cooking, and  yes, Mom, I know we were really lucky to have you there cooking breakfast for us every morning.  

In the spirit of asking for recipes you might know of or links you know are good, I’m going to share one of my mom’s specialities.  Chicken and rice.  Yes, I eat mostly vegetarian dishes, but this one is a family favorite, and even I will take a bite of it now and then.

Chicken Stock: 

whole chicken

enough water to cover the chicken and veggies plus a little extra

2 onions, quartered

carrots, four or five, also quartered

celery, 1 or 2 whole sticks, quartered

bay leaf, one to two depending on size

peppercorns, a tablespoon

rosemary, a good sized sprig

garlic if you want, but I don’t always add it

salt, I add a spoonful, which I don't measure

onion skins, darker the better

Cook at a simmer until the chicken falls off the bone; remove the chicken for later.  Simmer the stock a couple of hours, strain it, skim away the fat if you’re not into chicken fat, and reduce the stock.  It should be deep gold iin color if you used a few onion skins making the stock.

That stock?  Use it instead of water for cooking your rice.  Save the excess 

Chicken and Rice: 

Remove all the meat from the chicken; it should fall apart easily.  Set it aside while the rice cooks and you chop the veggies.  Chop and sauté one large whole onion, four to five carrots, two celery sticks, maybe half a pound of mushrooms, crushed garlic, salt, pepper, and when the rice is cooked, you’re going to add all those yummy veggies and shredded chicken to it. You may need some of the extra broth.  If you’re like a couple of people I know, you might want to turn the broth into gravy since everyone could use gravy.  Okay, probably not, but in all fairness to my gravy loving friends, that stuff is pretty good when it’s done right.

Mix the chicken, rice, veggies, and pour it into a large serving dish.  Some people bake their chicken and rice after already cooking it, but if everything is well cooked, I like my veggies with a bit of crunch.  If I want to eat food soft enough to be from the blender, I’ll just use the blender.

There you have it.  My my mom’s chicken and rice.  If you are like my son, apply hot sauce liberally!  Now to find a couple recipes for some of the foods friends from Brazil have mentioned!  Kel, I still think that risotto you showed me is possibly the best looking risotto I've seen.