A cup of tea

This post starts whith a little piece of the wonderful book P.S. I Love You, by Cecelia Ahern:

"Holly took a sip of her tea. Oh, the wonders of the magical tea, the answer to all of life's little problems. You have a gossip and you make a cup of tea, you get fired from your job and you have a cup of tea, your husband tells you he has a brain tumor and you have a cup of tea...."

She is an Irish writer, so I suppose that also here people love tea. Maybe an English heritage, I'm not sure. I also love tea. When I was younger, my parents used to make chamomile tea at home. Just after some years I started to try other flavors. But I don't know a lot of people that really love tea. Most of them prefer coffee or juice or Coke... Maybe because it's too hot in Brazil most of the time, so it's not that great thing to drink something hot everyday... If there is somebody that reads this blog and doesn't like tea, please tell me why!!

Well, the fact is that I really think that a cup of tea can give you some minutes of happiness. Yes, I have this theory about other drinks and food too. Why not? It's so good when you can bee happy with all these small things... Of course there's nothing magical in it or you will have no problems after drinking or eating something, but I like the feeling, just that.

So, here I am, at the beginning of my first winter in Europe. It's really cold outside and I started to drink some cups of tea everyday. A simple cup of tea warms me up. It's really, really a good feeling. And there is another good thing: I drink less coffee. Mainly at night, when the coffee make you feel sleepless.

My favorite flavor is berry, in general... Raspberry, Strawberry, Loganberry. All mixed work better. One cup in the morning, another one at the nigh. Simply like that.

Maybe you can join me for a cup of tea someday!

Small packages of happiness

I don't know exactly why (my friends can help me with this question), but a vegan person usually cares more about food and can be happy talking about food, going out to eat some good food or just finding a new vegan option for some kind of food. Maybe this kind of thing just happens in Brazil, because it is always hard to find vegan stuff there. Nowadays it's easier, mainly in big cities like São Paulo, but it's still worse when you compare it to most of the European or American cities.

So, because of that, my mother-in-law started to send to us (my husband and I) some packages when we still lived in Brazil. Those packages usually had pates, nutella, mayonnaise and chocolate dessert. Every time one package arrived, it was a reason to be happy.

And now, since we have moved to Europe, we have decided to do the same thing for our best friends in Brazil. Of course we can't send all the stuff we want, like vegan cheese or ham, because they need to be refrigerated, but we can send the same kind of things we used to receive from my mother-in-law. And the best thing is that in Dublin we have different stuff, things we don't have in Italy and vice-versa. So we can send different packages each time.

Yesterday one of my best friends received one of these small packages and when I talked to her I just confirmed that they really are small packages of happiness and it's so great that such a small act can make your friend's day better!

I wish I could have the money to send them every month to all my best friends, but I will keep on doing my best to give them, time to time, a small reason to smile.

Lunch time

After some days in Italy I realized that my husband's family hasn't the habit of eating food at lunch time. When I say food, I mean real food, not sandwiches or something like that. In Brazil, being vegan/vegetarian or not, people use to eat more at lunch time. I don't know if it is something cultural or if just my family and friends are used to that, but most of the people I know are used to do like this. We don't go to coffee shops or fast food places to have a fast lunch. We have one or two hours to spend away from work and we go home or to a restaurant.

First I thought it could be just in Italy, but here in Dublin it's the same thing. When we go out for lunch, we see lot of people at coffee shops or fast food or take away places. Some of them buy food (salads, for example), but must of them eat sandwiches. And also because of that they don't go home. There is no reason to go home in the middle of the day just to eat a sandwich, isn't there? Sometimes we do eat sandwiches, but not as a regular meal. Just those days when we have no time or no mood to cook something. To me lunch is the better and bigger meal. It's the time we eat more. It's the time to eat pasta, risotto, lasagna, rice and beans, the Brazilian feijoada (yes, there's a vegan version of this dish too). It is also the time to eat a dessert after the meal if you want.

Nutritionists and doctors say that the breakfast or the lunch are the most important meals you should have because you have to spend a lot of energy during the day. I never saw anyone saying the dinner is the right time to eat as much as you can. Because after a few hours, you go to sleep. Full. And this is not good. But I think maybe this is just a Brazilian way to see things. Here (and in Italy too) people eat more at dinner. When I was in Italy I started to eat more every day because we kept my Brazilian style of eat food during the lunch time and adopted the local style of eat food at dinner time. Which means, tones of food most of the days! Now I have my own place in Dublin and we're back to my Brazilian way. My husband has lived with that for the last 4 years and he likes it!

And I really think we're the minority here that goes to a supermarket to buy food to cook at home for lunch time. And I will keep this way as much as I can!