Family + Brigadeiro = One good Weekend

From 1994-2001 the Santos family had the wonderful opportunity of having 5 cousins come and live with us. 

I only have a few old pictures on my computer, but here are some.

Adam, Jari, Me and Gigi

Junior and Me

Vovo and Me with Gigi in the background.  

I can still remember the excitement as a young child with every trip to the airport.  These cousins became more like family to us.  So yes, technically I have; 1 sister, and 1 brother.  But I was raised with these crazy siblings.  



Lala, Amanda, Jr., Me, Jari, Geo, and Adam
The photo is just missing one, Gigi.



We learned and tried many new things with each of our "siblings".  They taught us how to play marbles, and I can't number the random game we learned from Gigi.  We spend many summers swimming at the "Club". 


 Durning the school year we watched them at soccer, basketball, swim meets and cheerleading.  I remember the paper-rout we took after school, they would let us ride on the front of their handle bars.  I saw (or heard) them wake up each moring for seminary.  They were amazing examples to us as children.
 
Meal time was always fun as well.  We watched each of them try their frist green vegetable.  They all said how they would never like the "rabit food" (their little name for any vegetables), but now most have changed their minds.  We tryed new food as well, Amanda once cooked chicken hearts for dinner... yum!  And I can remember being payed $1.00 to trying a green olive. 


 One thing we all learned to love was sweeten condensed milk, with everything!!!  We put it on ice cream, fresh slices of pineapple or banana, sometimes just straight from the can... 

And of course you can't have Brigadeiro without sweeten condensed milk.  

The past two-month have been filled with making these yummy little balls of chocolate.  I even taught  Blake how to make them.  

What a pro...

we made 4 batches in 3 day...

They are at any Brazilian birthday party, or really anytime of the day.  It was a must have at our wedding so we found a wonderful Brazilan lady in Orlando to make them.

But while attending my cousins wedding earlier this month, (more on that later) I got a whole new outlook on Brigadeiro.  You see, I only knew how to make the chocolate or non chocolate (I guess vanilla).  

And my family (being the crazy people they are) made all the candies for the party by hand.  YES! The night before the wedding they stayed up till 5am making the most wonderful candy one could ever imagine eating.  Let me tell you, it was not just chocolate and vanilla.  They went above and beound the everyday stuff.

So I had to learn.  Vovo was coming back to Florida to stay a week with my family.  This called for a Saturday of candy making.  It was so much fun just talk and spending time with my Vovo.  

Letter that day (after making candies) we took her out to see a movie.  Because she does not speak a world of English, we thought it would be appropriate to go see a cartoon (as they are easy to understand, even if you don't understand the language) so we went to see Rio.   

The movie was wonderful, I recommend it.  But the best part was hearing her and my Dad laughing about this little bird being introduced to life in Brasil.

 again pictures all around...

So after learning a little more about how to spice up my Brigadeiro making skills, Blake asked if we could make some for the Russ Easter lunch this weekend.  We will see how it goes... 


Oh and here is how you make Brigaderio.


All you need is:

• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
  1 tablespoon butter
  1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk 
• 
  
   Cook the mixture until it thickens over medium heat, should show the bottom of the pan when stirring. 
   Pour the mixture in a lightly greased dish and let it cool. 
    Form the little balls, don't forget to grease your hands with margarine first. 
   Roll in sprinkles 
   Place the balls in candy cups... Or just eat it with a spoon.
  And for anyone watching their weight... don't worry Vovo said you can eat them every day and not gain a lb.  I'm going to live by that..  

We know, those Rolls that are Sweet and Cinnamini

Blake being a "good ol southern boy" as my extended family would call him, and me being raised in the North/West by a Mom from Colorado and a Dad who's first language is Portuguese, lets just day we have different ways for saying things.  Like Blake adds the letter "L" to many words, such as Draw = DrawL and Saw = SawL, I add an "L" to the word both to =boLth.  He says pillow and I say pellow.  But not only do we pronounce things differently, we also have complete different words for the same object.  Like is it a shopping cart or buggy?  Pop or soda?  But when it comes to Sweet roll or Cinnamon roll it does not matter how you say it, they are boLth traditions in the Russ and Santos homes.

   


Sweet Rolls

Blake's Mom has been making sweet rolls around the Dec. holidays for as long as Blake can remember, now she makes them every New Years Bon Fire.  I did not blog about the bond fire we had this year, mainly because the only thing I wrote about that weekend was:

• Clean for New Year party
• pack some stuff to move to Gainesville
• Watch the boys build a 33ft bon fire
• prepare food for NY party
• Have NY party and see the 33ft structure become coals
• Eat 2 maybe 10 of Liz's sweet rolls
• Clean up from NY party till 4am
• Sleep
• Pack up the rest of the room and clean
• Move everything Blake and I own to Gville
• have the santos family over (except Adam what a butt head)
• Sleep
• get up for what we think is 9 o-clock church
• find out it is the new year and church is now at 1pm
• drive back home to get stuff we forgot and give the truck back to Adam
• make it back to Gville for church
• find we left the apt key in the truck
• drive back home to get the key
• go to Donald Mckinney's farewell
• make it to Gville by 8pm
• unpack a little
• read 
• go to bed
• first day to sleep in... and I'm up at 9am

SO here are some picture of the 33 ft Bon Fire the boys made.

My favorite part is the star on top and the little Christmas trees around the bottom.

The Brother's Russ have been making these Bon Fires for many years now and they keep trying to out do themselves.
Look how far they have come...

Yes, that is Blake

  The first time I was invited to Blake's house was to attend the 2007 burning.  
They are alway memorable and almost every year the police and firetrucks come to see.  This year we had 6-9 calls to the police before we even lit the thing.  Off duty fireman heard the explosion and knew where to come for all the excitement.  

HERE is the video Brandon made for 2011

Even with all the crazy flames and explosion, you ask anyone, and Liz's sweet rolls is one, if not the best reason to attend the Russ House New Years Bonfire.  

Cinnamon Rolls

Now the Santos family has been addicted to Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls ever since I can remember.  We have them religiously twice a year, for General Conference.  I remember living in Vancouver Washington and driving to the Lloyd Center in Portland to pick them up the Saturday of Conference weekend.  No better way to get a kid up at 9AM then the promise of Cinnabon.  

The tradition almost stopped when we moved to Florida because we did not have a Cinnabon "near by".  But the Santos Siblings did not let that happen.  Now my mom follows a Cinnabon recipe that we all love more then the real thing.  And even though Conference starts at 12 now and not 9 we still enjoy our afternoon snack of Cinnamon Rolls.  

I tried really hard to make the cinnamon rolls for the April Conference... lets just say I had to start over 3 time.  But by the beginning of the 2nd session they were done.  

Call them Sweet Rolls, call it a Cinnamon Rolls, either way every child should have a tradition.

St. Patrick's Day

I know, I know, we are behind!  Blake and I are trying hard to keep this thing current, BUT school is just getting in the way of that.  Yet we both agree that this is our little family Journal so we are going to post it anyway... even if it is a month late.  So here is what we did for St. Patrick's day.  It is not much but I'm mean what really do you do as a childless, Mormon on this holiday?  It seems like Valentines day and St. Patrick's day would be MUCH more fun with kids (that is why I can't wait till Easter to go play with the nieces and nephews).  For me anyway in elementary school these holidays were the best!! Blake still being a child at heart had an idea of making a really cool and yummy leprechaun trap.  

Yes it was all his idea... he looked up how to make it (it looks like he got it from not martha) then told me what I needed to do to make it happen.

 Another good thing about having kids would be help eating the cake.

Talking about Blake childish side, this is what HE wanted to do with the leftover frosting...

 And we all got into it...

In my moment of strength I asked to through the left over cake away, then came one more idea from Blake...

 "can we go and feed it to the birds?  I know you are not going to find this surprising but I really like feeding bird."  

So the cake is still in the freezer, waiting for us to find time and feed the birds.