Of Street Vendors...

There is something adventurous about eating food from a street vendor.  It is one step wilder than a picnic and not quite at the level of drinking from a cattle pond (we had a friend who did this).

In Brazil, you could find everything from drinks to snacks to sweets sold by a hopeful person with a cart.  One of the most popular drinks was sugar cane juice.  I never tried any since drinking unfiltered water is an invitation to get sick, but I heard the taste described as grass-flavored, mildly sweet water.

For snack foods, one of the most popular was corn.  Now, Brazil does not have sweet corn like we were accustomed to eating.  The corn is tough and not very good tasting.  Eating an ear—even drenched in butter and salt—was exercise for the jaws and disappointment for the taste buds.

Because of our dislike of the corn there, we never tried it from a street vendor.  After boiling it, they would roast the corn over an open fire, leaving it toasted and streaked with charcoal.  Since it had already been tougher than shoe leather, I couldn't imagine what kind of exercise it would be for the jaws after the roasting. 

Our absolute favorite street vendor was the churro man. 

Every week at the feira (a vegetable street market) we would meander through the stalls checking out the fruits and vegetables.  My mother had a feira cart, basically a metal basket on wheels with a handle to pull it.

After making our purchases, we would head to the entrance of the feira, and on occasion we would stop at the churro cart.

The man would shoot the batter into the hot oil, wait for it to fry, and then flip them out into a bath of cinnamon and sugar.

The final stage was to stick a long metal tube through the middle of the churro and gradually pull it out leaving behind a filling of oozing doce-de-leite.  Doce-de-leite is a thick, very  rich caramel.

Fried batter, cinnamon and sugar, and a luscious filling made a delectable if extremely unhealthy treat.  We justified it since we had, after all, walked to the feira.  And we were there for a good purpose.  To buy healthy fruits and vegetables.

And, yes, we went for the churros too.