First of all, that little squiggle on the a is important – it means you’re supposed to pronounce it thru your nose. The nasal tone is what differentiates bread from dick, from what I’ve been told 😂
Last week, I talked for a bit with the woman who runs the padaria (bakery that mostly sells bread). I’m sure I made a gajillion errors, but I was thrilled with how much I was able to communicate!
It was a slow day, so I was able to ask some questions about the different types of bread.
She commented on how difficult it is to learn Portuguese, and it takes time. And, yeah, I’m still only around an A2 level, which is like advanced beginner, not yet intermediate level. Adjusting to a whole new country and starting a business, learning how to do the marketing and write sales copy and all of those skills that go into running a business… that has been a lot to process! I haven’t had the mental energy to consistently study and practice learning. I reached a level at which I can navigate restaurants and the market, and then kind of plateaued.
But, it wasn’t just the language!
I have SO MUCH to learn about bread here!
I learned that I love rye bread (pão centeio), which I don’t think I ever tasted in the US!
But not all rye bread. There’s a really dense version that this shop carries that I didn’t really care for.
Pão de massa mãe is naturally fermented. The apps translate it to sourdough, but doesn’t have the sour taste I associate with sourdough. I don’t know if that means it’s a different recipe or if I just didn’t get to know sourdough well enough before moving here!
This is the first time I’ve lived in a place where it made sense to go to a local bakery for my bread instead of to the grocery store. You can also get pre-packaged sliced bread at the grocery store here, but the bread from a padaria is so much better!
There are things that Portugal does better than the US
I’m not here to pretend like Portugal is some perfect utopia, because it’s not, because nowhere is perfect. There’s plenty for people to complain about here. (The neighborhood facebook group reminds me of any Nextdoor group in the US 😬)
But today, a couple of things are standing out as making the US look like a real shithole country.
First, today, Sunday, is election day. They scheduled their presidential election for the day of the week when people are most likely to be off work. What a concept!
Sure, there are still some businesses open. The major chain grocery stores, the big shopping malls, and a lot of restaurants and pastelerias are open. But most local shops are closed today.
If your goal were to make it as easy as possible for people to be able to go vote, today makes a lot more sense than a Tuesday would!
The other thing is the banking system. This came to mind because I bought something online, and that process was a little confusing until I figured it out.
And I’m going to describe what I understand, instead of claiming to be any sort of expert on this system.
So there’s the MB, or MultiBanco network here. There are several banks, but as long as I go to an ATM with the MB logo, I can use it without a fee, regardless of whether I’m at Millennium, Santander, Novobanco, or any other bank.
And, there’s a system called MB Way that lets you pay easily through your bank app. I think there’s also a separate MBWay app you can use, but my bank app has that built in.
It makes it easy to transfer money without having to figure out what third-party app to use – zelle, cashapp, venmo, or whatever.
To pay digitally at stores, you can use your card, or you can open your app, and then scan the QR code on the card reader to handle the transfer that way. I assume you probably could touch your phone to any card readers that accept contactless payment, too, if you use a digital wallet. But honestly, the bank app is so simple and feels more secure.
And I also use MB Way to pay online. Today, I:
Entered my phone number into the payment portal
Received a notification immediately to log into my app to accept the payment
Clicked to accept the payment as was asked for my code
And that’s a whole other thing that was completely new to me here, but that feels so much safer than shopping online in the US!
When you set up your bank account here, you get a 7 digit multicanal code. And then, for a lot of digital transactions, they ask you to verify it by entering 3 of those digits.
So if your code was 1234567, one day they may ask for the 4th, 2nd, and 7th number of your code – 427. Another day, it may be the 7th, 1st, 5th – 715.
I don’t think I’ve needed to verify when I scanned a QR code to pay, but I do have to verify it any time I set up a transfer or make a purchase online.
Not every online purchase here is quite so streamlined. For one past purchase, instead of having their website programmed to connect directly to my phone number, they just showed their info – an “entity” identifier and reference number. I had to go into my bank app and type those into the page to pay that way.
I have to admit that I lean toward luddite in a lot of cases – not anti-technology, but not particularly trusting of those offering the technology. There’s a reason I’m typing here instead of on some social media platform!
So I didn’t jump on every new trend with digital wallets and try every new feature immediately in my bank apps in the US. I never particularly trusted Zelle, and only ever used it when I needed to set it up to pay one particular person that was helping me with some things, so I didn’t want to be difficult!
But when I did use Zelle, it was a pain in the ass and felt less secure than MB Way. Learning my multicanal code has also felt kind of like a pain in the ass, but it seems like a useful extra layer of security.
Of course, Portugal also has universal healthcare! But, they’ve been under-funding that for years, which is pushing more and more people to sign up for private insurance. As an immigrant, I have the private insurance to avoid adding more burden on an already strained public health system. Because the public health option is still there, my private insurance premium is only around $100/month.
And, Portugal has its own far right candidate on the ballot for president today. I really hope for anyone else to win today. But I’ll be looking at those results to see what other parts of Portugal I still want to explore, and where to stay away from.
Today I feel like taking a break from the linear story telling to write about beans 😂
When I decided to move to Portugal, I knew my diet would change. I expected to be eating more fresh seafood.
I did not expect to find myself eating so many beans!
It’s not like I never ate beans in the US. I enjoy a good red beans & rice or black beans & rice, but it wasn’t a regular thing.
Feijão means bean. My translation app says beans (plural) translates to feijões, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen that used on a menu or label. From what I can tell, feijão seems to be like rice, in that it refers to the thing in general.
Feijoada is a bean stew, and there are several varieties that show up on “plates of the day” lists at restaurants regularly.
My favorite is feijoada de choco, which is white beans with little cubes of cuttlefish. Recipes vary, but it usually includes slices of carrot, some sausage for flavoring, tomato pulp, and seasonings. Sometimes you get a whole, unpeeled shrimp or two on top.
Feijoada á transmontana is another popular one, but I haven’t had the nerve to try it yet. That’s a bean stew with a variety of meats – sausages and various bits that my white suburban Midwest US childhood did not prepare me to find appetizing, like pig ears and feet! And I have to admit that I don’t really enjoy most of the Portuguese sausages I’ve had slices of in different dishes, so I’ve passed on this feijoada so far.
Then we have the feijoada Brasileiro. No qualifier means that it’s black beans and meat, including bits like pig ears. But feijoada Brasileiro vegana is also pretty popular and yummy!
And then there are the soups.
Soup is apparently an important part of getting your veggies here in Portugal, and it’s not uncommon for them to include beans.
As I’ve settled in here, I’ve been getting more comfortable with cooking. I used to completely hate cooking.
But fresh ingredients are just so readily accessible here! When I decide I want to cook something, I either walk like 4 minutes to the municipal market, 5 minutes to the produce shop down the block, or 6 minutes to my choice of two grocery stores (Pingo Doce or Continente).
In Atlanta, getting groceries meant driving somewhere. I lived in a gentrifying (not gentrified) part of town. The two closest grocery stores treated everyone who walks in like a suspected criminal and never had more than 1-2 registers open, no matter how long the lines got.
(To be fair to Kroger, one of those locations had to shut down for a while a few years ago because someone stole their electrical wiring for the copper. And while I was looking for that news story, I found out that someone shot and robbed an armored truck driver in front of that same store just a couple of months ago! So crime is a legit concern in the area. But I still think that adding more staffing is a better response to regular shoplifting than all the nonsense that Kroger has chosen instead.)
And it was about a 10 minute drive to either of those options.
So I’d usually make the 15-20 min drive to the nearest Publix instead.
Now I can get to the market, get what I need, and get back home in less time than it used to take to just get TO the grocery store!
And, on top of that, either EU or Portuguese food policy is just different. I’m assuming it’s that they don’t subsidize hyper-processed foods the way the US does, but I can buy a kilo of fresh tomatoes at the market for less than I can buy a can of diced tomatoes at the grocery store.
As I’ve leaned into cooking at home more, and cooking more from scratch, I’ve finally learned to cook beans from dried.
I know, that’s something a lot of people grow up doing, and I’m in my mid 40s just figuring that out! In my defense, I was raised by a single dad who didn’t know much more than how to grill meat and cook an omelet when he got custody of us, and who worked manual labor jobs, so didn’t have the energy to learn much.
I’ve had to figure out everything I know about cooking on my own, and didn’t have much incentive to learn to cook beans from dried until now.
There are at least three stalls at the market that specialize in dried goods, including several types of beans I had never heard of before!
Here we have butter beans, several varieties of white beans, catarino beans, red beans, black eyed peas, chickpeas, and canary beans! I’ve never even heard of canary beans before! I was really disappointed to learn that they lose that vibrant yellow color by the time they’re cooked.
There’s some overlap on the shot here. This view adds black beans, red and green lentils, fava beans, Congo beans, stone beans, feijão papo rola (no idea what that translates to), and beautiful beans (feijão lindo)!
And a closer view of the feijão papo rola and feijão lindo:
I’m not surprised by the fact that there are so many varieties of beans beyond what I’ve ever seen in grocery stores, but I had to learn how to cook them so I could try the new varieties!
So for the past few weeks, I’ve gotten into a habit of making a big pot of some sort of bean soup about once a week, and having that for dinner all week. This week it’s feijão lindo with cubes of sweet potato and couve (not sure if it’s kale, collards, or some other leaf that looks similar!).
This is just one of many small things that have surprised me since moving here!
