Mercado Municipal Paulistano

Our Mission President wants us to get out of the MTC at least once a week. This gives us a great opportunity to give out pass along cards. Vernon/grandpa does it best because he can talk with the people and answer their questions.

This was a visual feast. I have never seen whole pigs hanging in a meat market. Every imaginable part of the animal could be purchased pickled, salted or freshly cut.

I learned that tripe (the stomach lining of cattle is what is used as the casement for sausage. I may never eat it again.

a lot of the meat was salted so it did not need to be refrigerated.

Vernon/grandpa is always trying to increase his vocabulary so he was asking all the vendors the names of the fruit that we rarely ever see in the states and writing it down so he would not forget it.

I had never seen red bananas. They also had some bananas that were as small as a man's thumb.

I love cashews but had never seen a real cashew fruit. The nut we eat is the dark part on top of the fruit. One nut per fruit.

I absolutely loved this outing. Brazil is so colorful and this indoor market was a profusion of shapes, color and texture.

some of the stalls had their fruit displayed in fancy baskets and individually wrapped and others just stacked in crates straing from the farms.

on the second floor was a row of restaurants and hundreds of people were eating. The food look wonderful.

We ate at the Mission before we left so we wouldn't be tempted. It is so easy to over eat here in Brazil.

I couldn't resist taking a shot of one of the menus. the floor is mahogany.

The building was built in 1922 and has 22,000 square meters of floor space. A meter is a little bit larger than three feet. The building was built to house this market and has persisted to this day. The purchasing agent for the mission told us that this is where many of the best restaurants in Sao Paulo buy their meat, fruit, and spices.

The stain glass windows are wonderful and the architecture detailing of the building was fabulous.

needless to say this has been one of my favorite outings. I hope to paint some of these images when I get home.