YOGURT!

I have been hanging out in Acarau doing research in a tiny village called Corral Velho. It is right next to the mangroves, has an amazing education center and little pousada for researchers, and provides a good source of income for a small community. As I was getting to know some of the staff that work at the little research station here, one of them told me that she makes yogurt every night for the school children. Yogurt, I thought. She makes yogurt? And to me that is amazing. So as you may know, I am not much of a farm girl, and the concept of making yogurt each night is a strange one to me. Especially making enough yogurt for a local school....so not just a little yogurt. A LOT of yogurt. She invited me to tag along and I happily agreed.

The milk is placed into these large plastic buckets and left to sit for a while. Then at night, a group of three or four ladies gather in someone's house, which also poses as a mini bakery (see photo below with all the yummy bread for sale!), and stir the yogurt, adding flavor and putting it in plastic bags for the classrooms.

yum...look at all these breads and cakes, made mostly out of macaxeira, corn and sweet potatoes.

so they make about 50 big bags of yogurt each night that they deliver to the school in the morning. There are even two choices of flavors! Strawberry and Pineapple. Both had um, not so delicious- tasting artificial flavors to me, but I could see as a kid loving it! So here I am stirring my big bucket of yogurt milk before adding the strawberry flavoring. I sat on a little brick on the floor of this building and stirred my little heart out! Yum!