Thursday, January 27, 2011

"Pao de Queijo" (Brazilian Cheese Bread)

First of all I will give the list of ingredients: 1 cup of water, 1 cup of milk, 1 / 2 cup of oil, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 pack of tapioca starch (450 g), 2 to 3 eggs, 200 g of grated Parmesan cheese. 

Now the first thing to do is bring to boil in a big pan, water, milk, oil and salt then remove the pan from the heat and add the tapioca starch. Mix well with a wooden spoon and let it cool down, now put the mixture in a bowl, add eggs and knead well, add grated cheese and keep kneading dough until smooth, roll 1 tablespoon of mixture into small balls. 
 
Tip: Grease your hands with oil before making the balls. Wash your hands once in a while if necessary, place the balls on a baking tray greased with oil or lined with baking paper, bake the cheese rolls in hot oven (350 degrees) for about 20 minutes or until golden brown, put the cheese rolls in a basket and serve them warm.

This recipe makes about 70 small cheese rolls.
Tapioca starch can be found in Asian grocery stores. It comes in a clear plastic bag and the standard pack has 450 grams.
Knead the dough (usually Brazilians by hand. It's really hard work. I prefer to use the mixer to knead the dough).
"cheese bread"can be an appetizer or served the snack.


Have fun...Pao de queijo is delicious.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Letter 3

Every time your 3 year-old son does that you should talk with him eye-to-eye in a very firm and stern manner and tell him that that was not good behavior and that you want him to stop throwing stuff on people because this is not nice and the people don't like.  But this is something you must be sure to do each time he behaves this way. When he develops the association between hitting and throwing things and being placed on time outs the behavior will diminish in frequency. Expect that the improvement will occur gradually, not dramatically or overnight.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Sandra's Graduation

The Sandra Suguino's Graduation, my sister, was in november 27, 2010 at Citibank Hall Theater in Rio de Janeiro. A wonderful prom and the whole family present, the teachers, principals and dean were there, all of them were wearing their vestments. After the surrender of certificates and congratulations, we went out to celebrate in a wonderful restaurant, the family and only a few but dear friends were there.

Although all the happiness of the moment, the whole family knew about all of the hard times that Sandra  had faced during the college. The problems began in early college when our dear father passed away then when her fiance, aged 32, passed away one month before their marriage. Despite all the difficulties, Sandra has been a good student with excellent grades and always participating in all activities of the university. For our surprise Sandra was the valedictorian of the class and the dean Gave her medal for best student of the year.

In november 27, 2010 was a wonderful date and now Sandra is a dentist as the whole family. We gave her a dentist ring and also a office.


 

Thursday, January 20, 2011

The Family's Structure

The American family structure has changed greatly in the last 20 years, which was often average family consist of a father (working outside of home), mother (at  home taking care of  children) and children, all of them living in the suburbs. Nowadays this kind of family has became rare, but theses changes have been happened not only in the United States, you can see it also in other countries.
Other forms of the families unit have became fairly common like, two-career families, single parent families, stepfamilies...Although the employment of married woman increased the income that not bring happiness because the most of men want their wives to work out and also do all the houseworks including the children. 
Other kind of family is growing up, the single-parent families most of them (82%) headed by women. 
After high rates of divorce and remarriage, stepfamilies become common, the most of these families are consist of mother, her kids and stepfathers. All of these different kinds of families have been  increasing in numbers and each one with their own problems, not only in the United States also in Brazil.

In the last 30 years family's structures have been changing in Brazil but big changes happened in the big cities, like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. In the past, the avarage structures were the father, mother and 3 children, in the small cities and suburbs you can see it frequently, but in the big cities we can see families like in the USA, also homossexual families.

To complete this research, there is little difference in family structures between Brazil and the United States. The only significant difference is that in some cities in the U.S. have allowed official marriage with matrimonial rights between people of the same sex, but that is totally banned in Brazil.