New activity: Sampling Venezuelan Food

Eager to try some food from Venezuela to see how it compares to other Latin American cuisine we’ve tried in the past, we headed over to Todo Pasapalos on Preston Road in Dallas. We decided to try the arepas. Laura ordered the arepas with cheese, Barbara with ham and cheese. We had expected the cheese to be melted but it was like someone had just poured out a big pile of grated cheese into a bland tasting corn pocket. The ham broke up some of the taste but the all-cheese arepas was pretty much inedible. And the prices were high for what you got. We were planning to compare it to another Venezuelan restaurant in the area to see if theirs was different. However, after Barbara watched a film that took place in Venezuela and saw that the main character ate arepas for breakfast that looked exactly like the cheese one Laura had, we figured it was just something you get used to living there and not for our palettes at all.

New activity: Venezuelan film

Barbara: Pelo Malo (Bad Hair) was an interesting but somewhat sad film from Venezuela about a single mother living with her baby and her 9 year old son who inherited Afro textured hair from his father and is constantly trying to straighten it. His dream is to have straight hair like the rest of the students and become a singer; his mother is frustrated by his behavior that she sees as being unlike a “normal” boy his age. While not my favorite film, I liked it enough to stay with it and was sad for the boy throughout.

Activity: Continuing food tastings

This month we continued our ice cream search and for U we found one at Sweet Firefly in Richardson at which we’ve had nothing but delicious flavors. This was no exception. Uptown Cinnamon was quite good and the cinnamon was not overpowering as it sometimes can be.

For V we made Very Strawberry Pie from a cookbook of pies that we’ve used before. It is a no bake pie with a strawberry and pudding filling over a chocolate cookie crust. Our attempt at making this pie was, well…let’s just say Barbara is taking the cookbook to the library as a donation.