The Clark Family's Amazing Adventures

Being four and three quarters and the one child in the family who inherited her Mum’s fussy streak instead of her Dad’s more adventurous, gluttonous one, it was interesting to get her thinking about her favourite foods in our first three months and four countries in South America!

Mo’s cousin Val is a head teacher and the children at her school have been hearing about our adventures in their assemblies. They sent us some questions and Lara’s was about her favourite foods, so we decided to do a Lara interview to try to answer this one!

Mum : So Lara, what’s been your favourite food on our journey so far?

Lara : Fizzy Orange! You can’t get fizzy drinks in England can you?

Mum : of course you can but we don’t have them very often and you’ve had a lot more whilst we’ve been travelling !!

Lara : Yep – I’ve had coke and fizzy orange (that’s my favourite) and Inca Cola in Peru which was bright yellow and Guarana in Brazil.

And I learned how to ask for a straw in Portuguese  – it’s a ‘Canudo’ – and now I have to ask for it in Spanish and its a ‘Popote’

Happiness is drinking through a canudo!

……but I’m not allowed fizzy drinks all the time am I?

Mum : No that’s right … because it rots your teeth and stops you being hungry for real food

Ben : but Mum, she always makes friends with people and then gets them to give her coke and stuff  when you’re not looking doesn’t she mum?

Mum : that’s true!  But Lara, the question isn’t about your favourite drinks, it’s about your favourite food! You’re brother and sister try chillies don’t they?

Lara : yep – they eat them if Daddy promises to give them some money or an ice cream but I prefer chippies! I don’t like trying new stuff but Dad tries to get me to try something new every day! This was everyone elses favourite meal in Brazil……

Everyone else got excited about the Thai restaurant we found in Paraty in Brazil – Ben and Zoe tried the chillies. I ate rice and chicken!

My favourite food is chippies! In Spanish they are ‘Papas Fritas’ (‘Papas’ is potatoes and ‘Fritas’ is fried) and I know how to order them!

Oh dear – we found a McDonald’s in Rio and had to stop and get Lara a chippie fix!

When we were in Rio I had my favourite meal when we went to a kilo restaurant where you can pick whatever you want from a big buffet and then they weigh your plate and you pay for how much you got! I got salmon sushi and chippies and then had chocolate brownie and chocolate ice cream for pudding!

Sushi and Chippies! Bet meal ever!

Mum : So apart from chippies, what kinds of food have been your favourite?

Mmmm! My favourite rice!

Babybel in Rio!

In Ilha Grande,Brazil, I’m looking at the Brigadeiros and Mum’s eaten too many cakes already!

A Brigadeiro, courtesy of wikipedia

You can’t beat egg, bacon and crusty bread!

Yucca chippies – in Brazil!  Yucca is a bit like a  potato – but not very nice and usually dry and chewy – but when they made it into chippies I liked eating them with ketchup!

Plantain chippies in Ecuador !   Plantains look just like big bananas but taste quite different. They serve them boiled like vegetables with your meat and rice!  I don’t like bananas or plantains but when they made them into chippies in Ecuador, I ate the lot! Even when Ben and Zoe didn’t like them!

Sugar cane juice – where we saw how they make lots of alcoholic drinks from sugar cane and we chewed on sugar cane and had this drink. Ben liked it but I didn’t!

Cheers! We only got to try the non alcoholic but very sweet sugar cane juice!!

Freshly squeezed orange juice which is called ‘jugos laranja’ in Portuguese and ‘jugo de naranga’ in spanish, but i still prefer fizzy!!

Mmmm! Freshly squeezed!

Oh and Ketchup and mayonnaise mixed together – my brother Ben taught me this one! I love it! Mum said you can get this in England but I didn’t know that!

And I tried that eel too that Ben caught in the sea and Mark cooked for us, but I didn’t like it much! And I tried the piranhas that we caught in the Amazon and they were ok! And the fish we caught ourselves at the oyster bar in Boipeba in Brazil was delicious!

Freshly caught (by us) fish

Now we are staying in an apartment in Quito which is the capital of Ecuador. We miss lots of food from England, our school dinners, especially the puddings, and roast dinners on Sundays.  I miss beans and broccoli and peas and we bought some this week to have at the apartment and I’ve eaten lots!

We like to look in the supermarket which is called the supermarcado, We see things we recognise and then we see new things.  Now we are learning Spanish we have been there with our Spanish teacher too to practice words for different foods!

We found these chocolate covered marshmallows called Spumi’s – they looked lovely but they were disgusting!

Disappointing Spumis!

Then we found Ferrero Roche chocolates and got them for my Mum for her birthday and the other day we got Ferrero Noggy’s!  We’ve never seen them before but they are yummy!

Ferrero Noggy’s! Delicious! Can you get these in England?!

Mum and Dad said that as we were inviting some friends to dinner last night, we’d make a roast with Yorkshire puddings and we got really excited but then they couldn’t light the oven so we had spaghetti bolognese instead! I hope we get to make a roast soon!