Wednesday February 3 2010

I am a great believer that whenever you go somewhere new, you have to try the local food. That is not difficult here in Sao Paulo because I recently discovered that there are over 12000, yes 12000 restaurants to choose from, and if I want pizza, 750 of them are made every minute.

So on my first night here I tried something called “heart of palm” salad. When it arrived there was the usual lettuce, a bit of shrimp and other salad type stuff. But the “heart of palm” turned out to be a perfectly round, white disc of what looked like some sort of root vegetable. It had the texture of artichoke hearts and when I bit into it, it was fleshy and utterly delicious.

It took me several days to discover what “heart of palm” was. There was me thinking that it was some type of root vegetable, not thinking for a minute that it is actually the heart of the trunk of the palm tree! Needless to say I was horrified at the thought that this amazing taste was brought about by cutting down trees. So for a few days I resisted the temptation to eat this magical dish (or the very aptly named “millionaires’ salad” if you check it out on Wikipedia.)

But salvation was at hand. I also discovered that if you buy a particular type of palm heart, then it is farmed in a sustainable way. Phew……

Now visiting our house, I discovered that all of the trees in the garden have little brass tags with numbers on them. My numbers are 53 to 61. When I made enquiries about this, I discovered that my trees have been logged by some central organization, and if, in the future, one dies or is cut down, I have to replace it.

This got me thinking. I have tried to find out how much of the Brazilian rain forest is cut down every day, but it is very difficult. There is a World Bank project to encourage other nations to support the rain forest and not cut it down, but then I discover that palm trees are being cut down for their root system and “hearts of palm”.

And from what I can gather, I can’t even cut down a branch of a palm tree in my garden without getting the Governor of Sao Paulo’s permission.

Something here just isn’t right.