ESCUDOS and DELICIOUS FOOD

The money is interesting here. It is all in ESCUDOS.   The silver coin with gold around it above is a little more than one dollar.  It is 100 ESCUDOS.

 Paper money: 1000 MIL ESCUDOS; (just over ten dollars) 2000 DOIS MIL ESCUDOS (just over $20.) ;and 500 QUINHENTOS ESCUDOS (just over $5.) and 200 DUZENTOS ESCUDOS, (just over $2.).
 They put a comma where we put a period and they put a period where we put a comma in our amounts and so it always looks like we are spending alot! Coins are 100, 50, 20, 10, 5, and 1 escudos.  Sometimes the banks (including the ATMs) do not have any money in them.  Good thing to learn early on!

FOOD!  We buy our eggs for 20 escudos each...(about 23 cents each) we tell the cashier (the person sitting on the steps until we enter the store (room) and they follow us in) how many eggs we need, and they place them in a little plastic bag for us to carry home.  The shells are durable here...and it seems one egg ends up being the amount of two. Really. From the luxury of placing sacks in a car, taking groceries in from our Idaho garage (after having pushed a remote to open the garage door). I remember wondering why Heavenly Father packaged things so carefully.  I wondered about the extravagance of a banana peel, or coconut, or almond shell... seemed over the top for such a small piece of tender fruit/nut inside...

but now that I watch the people pick the fruit in the fields and travel with baskets on their heads or banana boxes oozing out the back of vans full of people, animals, and bundles of everything...I understand better the careful planning in the covering of food.  What kind of specific love!  To protect the fruit as long as possible until after having been hauled, shaken, carted, carried, dropped, pushed in, handled again, placed in buckets, boxes, barrels, and some time later, finally into hands that carefully peel the tough covering to share. 

We eat a lot of beans and rice, which we enjoy alot. We really like the black beans that make their own gravy as they cook and we like the ones pictured here.  We make yummy Chili from them.  Usually, on Mondays we make a 'soup of the week!' in a big pan, so we can heat and eat throught the week.  

We can get onions, green peppers, the small, delicious bananas from Mosteiros, cabbage, eggs, and bread most anyday...and we use them almost everyday in something.  Carrots and Tomatoes are often available.

Our juice comes from Brasil, yeast from Russian, Milk (in the blue carton) from Germany, Butter from Holland, Olive oil from Portugal, Tuna from Cape Verde, sometimes we get string beans from France and Jam from Belgium, spaghetti and noodles and other foods from Portugal, cake mixes from America!  If you open our fridge...you would think we are world travelers! ;)  We never know what will be at the store after the boat unloads its surprises once a month.  This month they even had some dill pickles...I bought three bottles...Elder Benedict is a happy man!

Every other week or so, I go early to the market to buy swordfish or tuna and I hurry home to cut and freeze the fish steaks to use for special meals.  Serra (swordfish) is our favorite.  Oh My! (YUM!)

Figs, Papaya, Caju, and Guava, are often given to us as we visit people from the Branches on the other side of the island.