Azores

Bom Dia from the Azores

After four days in Madeira, we landed in São Miguel, Azores, the island where my father’s parents lived before they emigrated to the U.S. My parents visited São Miguel in February 2000, which my mother wrote about in a small notebook I took on this trip.

The Azores has nine major islands in the Atlantic — about a thousand miles from Portugal and 2,400 miles from the U.S. As a child, I believed that’s where Atlantis was located.

Our daughter Emily joined Zack, Julia, Brian and us, arriving from Lisbon at the airport in Ponta Delgada within minutes of each other. I already posted about the food we ate. Let me share some of the highlights.

FARMS: While Madeira’s number one industry is tourism, it is agriculture on São Miguel, including fishing, of course. Yes, tourists come here, but they are not the center of attention. I saw large fields and herds of cows. It was corn season, as it was back in Western Mass. where we live. We visited a pineapple plantation, which grows the fruit in greenhouses. The island has a tea plantation — we brought back bags of green tea grown there.

FURNAS: The five of us rented a house in Furnas, located in the eastern most of three active trachytic volcanoes. (That was the view from the back porch.) It is a charming village, where people get bread delivered in the morning in bags tied to their front door. It was an easy walk down to the active part of the village where there were restaurants and shops. Coming back meant trudging up a hill. Still, the streets were wider than those in Madeira and not as steep.

The village’s center, where we were staying, had springs and geysers of varying temperatures and chemical compositions, some much too hot to touch. People who lived there used the hot springs for cooking, including bags of corn. There were pipes where you could collect mineral-rich water, even cold. The air from their steam smelled of sulphur and iron. 

The village has a hot springs spa, which we enjoyed one day.

HYDRANGEAS: The bushes grew all along the roads, a massive and impressive display of blue blossoms.

TILE WORK: I enjoyed the intricate tile work, often done as murals such as the one in the photo above. Also notable was the intricate stonework on walkways like the one in Ponta Delgada shown above. 

PORTUGAL VS. SCOTLAND: Brian was excited that we would be there when Portugal played Scotland in a UEFA Nations League game. We watched the opener in a small bar then saw the rest at the restaurant that broadcasted it on a wide screen TV. Cristiano Ronaldo, the football aka soccer superstar who grew up in Madeira, scored the winning goal.

SUNRISE AT NORDESTE: One morning, Hank and I got up before dawn to accompany Emily to Nordeste to watch the sunrise. To get a full view of the sunrise you need to either hike or drive down an insanely steep road (a sign at the top warns about driving). Emily, who snapped that photo above, walked farther than us.

MEN OUTSIDE COFFEE SHOPS AND BARS: It was common to see men smoking, gabbing, and drinking on tables outside coffee shops and bars. As in Madeira, people smoked openly in public.

AGUA DE PAU: This village was the former home for my grandparents. We attempted to visit the church Nossa Senhora dos Anjos (Our Lady of Angels), but it was locked. My parents attempted a visit three times, according to my mother’s travel diary. A feast honoring Nossa Senhora dos Anjos is held at the bottom of the street in Fairhaven, Mass., where I grew up. Four men from the village, grateful for making it safely to the U.S., had a life-sized statue of Mary carved from one piece of wood. The 700-pound statue is carried by men during a parade. My father was one of those men, and now my brother Tony is. I was sorry I couldn’t see inside the church, but I slipped my late mother’s memorial card in the door.

CATS: Unlike dogs, cats seemed welcome in restaurants and coffee shops. Of course, they are useful animals that help to keep down the rodent population. (We saw lots of bait stations in black plastic boxes.) But Hank, who is more than fond of the animal, seemed to attract them. When we ate lunch one afternoon, the table we chose had a cat sleeping on a chair. It woke up and climbed onto Hank’s lap. The cat stayed there throughout his meal, much to Hank’s delight as you can see above.

BEACHES: São Miguel has more than 20 volcanic, black sand beaches. Zack went swimming among the high waves at Ribera Grande, a popular place for surfers. We discovered the best beach in Agua de Pau on our way to the airport. Zack, who had brought along his bathing suit, took a swim and then let it to Hank.

MEETING PEOPLE WITH MY LAST NAME: My first last name is Medeiros, in which the ‘s’ is pronounced in the Azores as if it has an ‘h’ after it. I met several people with that last name, many of who had relatives in Massachusetts cities like Fall River. I learned later from my brother that my grandparents’ last name might have been Mattos, but was changed by immigration officials.

BUTTER: I forgot to mention the butter of Azores in my last post on food. Made from the milk of local cows, it is the best butter ever. I froze two large blocks, and when we flew back, I wrapped them in plastic inside my suitcase. I am saving them for special occasions.

THE END BUT NOT REALLY: Did I see and experience enough when I was in the Azores and Madeira? Hardly. But it made me excited to revisit, to explore more where my family came from, perhaps even to find family although I know many of them moved to other continents such as Africa and South America. I have been practicing Portuguese although many people speak English. Eu retornarei.

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Travel

Cozinha de Madeira e Azores

Quero um pastel de nata. Translation: I want a pastel de nata. That’s an egg custard tart I consumed, uh, several times, on our recent trip to Madeira and São Miguel, Azores. Pastel de nata has the right amount of sweetness and creamy texture, plus the crisp pastry flakes in your mouth. The photo above has two pastel de natas along with another delicious pastry stuffed with apples. After my last post, subscribers wrote they wanted to read about the food of those two islands. So, why not start with dessert?

What else did our family eat on our recent trip? Seafood and lots of seafood, which makes sense since we were on two Portuguese islands. Plus, whatever was grown there, such as passion fruit and pineapple. 

We ate in a restaurant for all but one of our meals, thanks to the culinary talents of Brian and Julia one night in our rental. We took our time eating and chatting. Afterall, we were on vacation. 

Here are some highlights:

EXOTIC FRUITS: I developed a new interest in pineapple, even on pizza. I admit shaking my head when people ordered pineapple on pizza in the U.S. But it worked in the Azores, where I ate it for the first time. Of course, the pineapple was grown locally. In the photo above, that’s me standing in a pineapple plantation’s greenhouse in Ponta Delgado, São Miguel. I learned later from a childhood friend the plantation was owned by her late husband’s family. 

We had pineapple on hamburgers and as a side dish. The best was pineapple cake — twice. There were other exotic fruits such as bananas, oranges, and passion fruit. The passion fruit mousse served in a restaurant in Funchal, Madeira was outstanding, as was the mixture of orange and passion fruit juice. 

FISH: We encountered a new one: black scabbard fish, deep sea creatures found in the Atlantic between latitudes 69 N and 27 N. It appeared to be a go-to fish for most restaurants although there were options such as tuna and sea bass. Then there were prawns. I admit having to take a break from fish and shellfish after eating it twice a day for seven days straight.

NIGHT OUT: Brian, who accompanied our family, treated us to an elegant meal out at Avista in Funchal, Madeira run by prestigious chef Benoît Sinthon (Il Gallo d’Oro, two Michelin Stars). Service was excellent, as was the food. Ingredients were from the island. Yes, I opted for a fish dish. We shared the appetizers, which included steak tartare, and desserts.

INSTRUCTIONAL MEAL: We had a seven-course meal and an instructional experience at Azores Essentials, where our daughter Emily ate on a previous visit. The building is an historic thermal bathhouse — Furnas is filled with natural hot springs. The evening was described as a gastronomic cultural experiences Azorean style accompanied by the appropriate wine. Ninety-five percent of the ingredients were local. The best part was Rich’s entertaining demonstrations about green tea, the local waters, and how each course was expertly prepared by Paula Aguiar. The posole and artichokes were cooked geothermally. (Alas, the restaurant doesn’t have a restroom, so we had to walk to a public restroom in a nearby parking lot or a bar, part of the experience.)

HOT LAVA ROCK: The last dinner on São Miguel was an interesting one at A Quinta in Furnas, which was essentially open-air seating beneath a large roofed structure. My son Zack and I shared a steak cooked over a hot lava stone. The meat came sizzling to the table. We flipped it on the stone to the raw side, slicing it into pieces and then cooking each one to what we wanted.

WINE: Lots and lots of it with meals. 

Next post I will tell you about São Miguel.

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Travel

Bom Dia Novamente de Madeira

I have in my possession two small notebooks my late mother Algerina took with her when she visited Madeira and the Azores. In the neatest handwriting, she recorded what she and my father did, saw, and ate. I brought both with me on our recent trip to those Portuguese Islands.

My mother’s first trip was in 1983 to Madeira, where her parents lived before they emigrated separately to the U.S. Times were tough then. So, like so many immigrants, they were seeking that so-called better life. My grandmother, Angela, was 16 when she came by a ship with her sister. I don’t know how old my grandfather, Manuel, the name traditionally chosen for the oldest boy in a family, was when he left the village of Gaula. 

Flying to Madeira in 1983 took effort. Their brother-in-law drove them to Providence, R.I. to catch a bus to Logan Airport in Boston, where they flew to JFK in New York, and then via TAP Air Portugal to Lisbon, where they stayed fa ew days before flying to Funchal. On the other hand, my fellow travelers and I took a direct flight from Logan to Funchal. (The seating aboard the plane was tight, but we got free red wine and a nice meal.)

My ever observant mother wrote “Men wear jackets on shoulders and carry pocket books to carry all those escudos, lots of paper money.” My parents went on tours, but they also visited her Uncle John, who was 83 then, and other family members in Guala. “He kept saying my name and saying that the other Algerina (nun in Africa) was stronger than me.” Her Uncle Paul, the youngest who had emigrated to the U.S., had notified them. My mother saw the home where her father was born. “Took pictures of the bedroom where my grandparents slept and all the children would sleep on the floor.” It appears my parents got their fill of what Madeira had to offer, including taking one of those basket sleigh rides down steep, cobblestone roads. My mother notes that was how food was once transported, but someone smartly decided to put a seat in them as a tourist attraction.

Inspired by my mother, I kept my own little notebook during our trip. Here are some of my observations:

Views from the patio include the tiled roofs of the homes below and the ocean beyond — at night, an impressive display of lights.

Roosters are aplenty and up early. Their crowing sets off the dogs. 

Cristiano Ronaldo, the football aka soccer superstar, who grew up here is big with his own museum and a life-sized bronze statue. Strange but true: the area around his prominent jockstrap is rather polished. 

The roads are narrow, steep, and winding, many cobblestoned, not surprising given the island is volcanic. Navigating them was a challenge for Brian, the designated driver in our group, especially since we had a car that fit five rather snuggly. Well done, Brian.

Before our trip, I learned rudimentary Portuguese via audiobooks, enough to be polite and say what I want. But everywhere we went, except for one exception I will mention later, everyone spoke English well. Of course, it was a friendly gesture to greet and thank them in Portuguese. In one restaurant, I guess my accent was good enough for the maître-d’ to think I was fluent. Desculpe.

Coffee is served stronger in small cups than I could handle. Hank said, “This coffee will make you stand straight up.” One time when I order decaf, it was thick, a bit bitter, and served black in a tiny cup. 

Food was exceptional, lots of seafood, exotic fruits, and wine, so was the service. Brian treated us to dinner at Avista, which had exceptional cuisine.

Unlike my mother who had to deal with escudos, the currency was euros. It was easy to draw money from an ATM  (I had notified my bank ahead of time) or pay with credit card.

The taxi cab drivers are super chatty. One was local, the other from South Africa.

I had limited access to the internet, but when I did, the Google entries were written in Portuguese.

Bars are everywhere including at the bus stops in our neighborhood.

Smoking is popular. Lots of smoking in public.

The air smells of ocean. The waters, as we found when we swam in the ocean at Porto Moniz Bathing Pools, surrounded by black volcanic rock, are blue and clean.

We stopped at a small restaurant in Guala on our way to the airport for breakfast beverages and a variety of pastries, including pastel de nata. The rest of my fellow travelers were making their way to the car when I went to talk with an older woman who sat at a table with a man I assumed was her son. What struck me was how much the woman looked like a younger version of my grandmother, Angela or Vovó as I called her. I shared who I was, my connection to their island, and how she resembled my grandmother. The man interpreted. At the end, the woman smiled and thanked me: Obrigada.

My parents only went once to Madeira. I want to return and see more of the island. The members of my family in the U.S. who still had connections to those living in Madeira are no longer with us. But I would like to see who I could find and what else I could experience on this island.

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Uncategorized

Bom Dia from Madeira

The roosters began crowing around 3 a.m. They kept it up as that first morning’s light grew, stirring the barking dogs in the neighborhood. Then the church bells started ringing on the hour and half hour. Bom dia from Funchal, Madeira.

I was on my first trip back to Europe after a very long time, thanks to our son Zack who generously bought Hank and I tickets on Azores Airlines. He came along with his sister, Julia and her friend, Brian. Julia handled finding us a short-term rental and car. This was the first leg. Next, we would fly to San Miguel in the Azores, where our daughter, Emily would join us.

Visiting these Portuguese islands has special significance because of my family’s origins there.

Today, tourism is the number one industry in Madeira. The tile-roofed and stuccoed-wall homes tucked into this island of volcanic origin, its tropical vegetation, and the ocean beyond are stunning. Madeira, only 360 miles from North Africa’s coast, is 34 miles long and 14 miles wide. Ruivo Peak tops at 6,106 feet — one of the destinations Zack, who likes challenges, ran on the island.

As we walked around Funchal that first day, servers, obviously recognizing us as tourists, waved menus to lure us into one of the city’s many restaurants. Friendly staff served us seafood and coffee. I had learned enough Portuguese to greet people politely and show my appreciation, but everyone we met spoke English.

Street scene in Funchal, Madeira.

But Madeira wasn’t a draw for tourists during the early 20th century when so many people, including my mother’s parents left for the U.S. (My father’s parents came from the Azores.) The island’s people were impoverished and there were economic opportunities elsewhere, such as New Bedford, Mass. with its textile and fishing industries. Grandmother Angela, or vovó as we called her, was 16 when she came by ship with her older sister. She met my grandfather Manuel, avô, who came from the village of Gaulo. Both worked in the textile mills and had a house with enough land to raise vegetables, grapes for wine, and hay for their goats.

That first day we explored Funchal’s center. A point of interest was a museum for Cristiano Ronaldo, the superstar football aka soccer player from Madeira who is a forward on the Portugal national team and Al-Nassr FC. Julia and Brian wanted to get shirts, especially since the Portugal team would be playing Scotland in a few days.

(I give kudos to Brian who managed driving a rental car that accommodated five people through the incredibly steep, narrow, and curvy streets of Funchal without a mishap.)

This trip, staying in a comfortable rental and eating seafood in restaurants, was a far cry from my first trip in Europe, when I hitchhiked, traveled on the money I had made washing dishes, and was taken in by perfect strangers. Someday I may write about that experience. But this trip was special, spending time with family exploring these Portuguese islands. For the next few posts, I will share my observations. Obrigada.

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Hilltown Books, The Sweet Spot

Writing The Sweet Spot with One Hand

A true story: I wrote my novel The Sweet Spot with only one hand. That was twenty years ago, when I was recuperating after getting hit by a car as I walked across the street.

I was in a crosswalk on my way to get coffee before I headed to the newsroom at 7 a.m. The driver claimed he didn’t see me. The impact threw me into the air and broke my collarbone when I fell onto the hood of his car. Something on the hood cut the back of my head. A person sitting outside Starbucks called for an ambulance to take me to the ER.

My injuries could have been much worse. I am grateful for that.

I missed work for a week. I was a copy editor then for a daily newspaper. When I returned, I got good at typing with one hand. The heavy-duty meds and ice helped. Plus Hank, who worked at a job site in the valley, drove me back and forth to work until I mended enough to drive.

And that’s when I started The Sweet Spot, which has been the novel’s name all along. I set it in the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts, where I lived then. It is also the favored setting for most of my books. The small town of Conwell is pure fiction, but I feel I made it believable enough that I could plunk it in the middle of Worthington, where we lived, Chesterfield and Cummington.

The year is 1978. No cell phones or email. No home computers. The Vietnam War ended officially three years earlier.

The characters are locals, except for one important newcomer.

I set the stage with softball and baseball games, a Fourth of July parade, a general store, a swimming hole, and raucous nights at a local bar.

Emotions get high. As I learned as a resident and reporter, things can get mighty personal in a small town. In this case, Edie St. Claire, one of the main characters, messes up big time. Most in Conwell won’t let her forget it.

Her father is a crusty so-and-so who runs the town dump. Her wisecracking aunt is as fiery as her dyed red hair. Both live next to Edie and her young daughter on a dead-end dirt road.

Edie is an “I gotta go” kind of woman, pretty and direct, but she holds onto an old sadness: the death of her husband in Vietnam. She tries to ease her grief with his married brother, Walker.

But when the affair comes to a tragic end, Edie does her best to survive the blame with the help of her rough-sawn family and a badly scarred man who has arrived for his fresh start.

I remember coming home and letting the words flow one after the other. I don’t know where they and this story came from, but there it was 80,000 words a few months later. To this day, I have not written a novel that fast.

I also got quite good at typing with only my right hand.

I sent the manuscript to my then-agent. His suggestion: start from the middle. After I reworked the novel that way, he pitched it to two publishing houses. Both editors took a pass. One of them died the next day in surgery. Another true story.

Slow forward ten years later. I reread The Sweet Spot. I loved it enough to rewrite it. I went back to my original beginning and added more dialogue thanks to the encouragement of my then-agent. But alas he couldn’t sell it either. My pitches to other agents and indie houses after I let him go were unsuccessful.

So I published it myself. I felt it was too good a novel to keep in my computer. Here’s the link for The Sweet Spot if you want to find out yourself. And thank you if you do.

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