December 12, 2010

The weather was sort of gray when we got up. With danger of rain we decided to do a walk we did 15 years ago together with Dauro and Laura. First we met up at their place.

Our kids love the iPods they got as a present for the voyage and they are great all-purpose entertainment devices. However, it has become increasingly necessary to police their usage of them. I don´t want to hear in 10 years time: “Dad, we never got to see anything on that around the world voayge, becase we had our eyes on the iPods all the time.” As the adults got everything ready for the hike I took a look into the living room and saw this scene with our very social kids playing with Miguel and Bruno:

We finally got everyone into the cars and drove to the start of the “Costa da Lagoa” trail. A nice trail that goes through a very lush jungle. They call the type of jungle they have here “Atlantic Forest.” Iseline is really in a stubborn period and had decided that she was not going to walk with us and staged another strike:

It was difficult to get her to take part in the photo at the beginning of the trail.

She came around. We had very good memories from the walk 15 years ago and everything seemed to be the same, with the exception that were more houses close to the trail. Dauro told us that the area had been heavily developed during the last 15 years.

The path follows the coastline of an enormous freshwater lagoon called “Lagoa do Conceicao.”

These guys seemed to waiting for something:

About half way we reached a natural swimming pool formed by a small stream. We swam in this one 15 years ago also. It was hot and we were soon in the water:

My padawan practices his skills and tries to get in touch with the essence of mousse. He is a good man and will be strong when he is ready, if he is able to resist the temptations of the dark mousse:

It´s late spring here and there were beautiful flowers all around us. I went bananas with my camera:

This looks like a small regular jungle plant:

until you put a kid in front of it:

Our goal was the village of “Costa da Lagoa.” It took us about 2 hours to get there, bathing break included:

Last time we were here there were only a few houses and a single restaurant. There were very few people around in this village, which can only be reached by the trail or by boat. I remember feeling that we were really remote. Now there was a beach side with several restaurants and lots of visitors. Tourism had really come to Costa da Lagoa.

Laura, Bruno and Miguel had taken the public transport ferry and were waiting for us at a restaurant. We had a great seafood meal with shrimps in many different shapes and forms.

While we were waiting for our food the kids played in the strip of water you can see to the left on the photo above. A restaurant playing area that beats the playing area of our local McDonald´s hands down:

The rain had stayed away, except for a small drizzle and we were all happy as we headed towards the ferry:

and took it back to where we had the cars:

Adrian took a series of photos of Helene and me inside the ferry. The trick is to follow the little red light which measures the scene for the camera. From it it is possible to infer exactly when the photo will be taken and then change your facial expression in the very last moment:

Bummer, I was too slow in this one:

Back at Dauro and Laura´s place we had Laura´s mother and sister and her sister´s husband over for dinner:

Finally, the mousse was eaten. I had been a bit nervous since it had been very liquid at the end of production, probably because of the high temperature in the kitchen. My worries were unnecessary, the mousse turned out very well.

So, I guess you want to know the secret now? Not so fast, you need to learn some basics first. You need to learn the standard recipe for mousse, the way Odin meant it to be. The ingredient list for hard-core pure mousse is as follows:

2 eggs per person

30 grams of chocolate per egg.

That´s it!

The chocolate should be standard dark sweet baking chocolate. Cocoa content should be between 40% and 60%. I have found that 55% works best. My favorite chocolate is 55% Belgian Cote d´Or chocolate.

In addition I add the following taste enhancers:

1 tablespoon of cognac for every 4 eggs.

1 teaspoon of finely grated orange peel per 2 tablespoons of cognac.

1 pinch of salt for every 8th egg.

If you got all the math correct you should end up with the following list for mousse for 4 people:

8 eggs

240 grams of chocolate

2 tablespoons of cognac

1 teaspoon finely grated orange peel

1 pinch of salt

Now, please memorize this and I will tell you more later. Oh, and by the way, this list adds up to pretty exactly 2000 calories. You can survive for a whole day on this one small batch of mousse.

I had brought the projector and the kids had a cinema evening:

See you around, folks!

Eirik

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