Little portuguese islands in the atlantic: Eating barnacles in the Azores

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.   —Lau Tzu

A search on the Azores will find 100 articles on why to visit these mysterious Islands.  Give 10 Reasons Why you must visit Europe’s secret paradise a try. I went because one of my great loves, Anthony Bourdain id a segment on the Azores.  Anthony was correct, these are amazing islands to visit.  You won’t find a single thing truly memorable thing to see-no Mona Lisa or Great Wall of China-but you will be glad you have arrived.  There are travel specials on places like travelzoo.com that literally give a trip away.  Once you have learned that this is a land full of waterfalls, hot springs and just plain beautiful landscapes, you should then consider the food. After all, this is a FOOD blog.   These are a group of Islands where the official language is portuguese and where almost every meal will have some type of seafood in it.  Most of these wonderful items are simply delicious but the Azores does have one or two strange items by my standards. Take limpet for example. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and we played with limpets. Eating them was out of the question. I think, it still might be. Think about eating those pink erasers you used in second grade and you have this about correct.  Of course, pink erasers in butter and garlic.  I can eat almost anything in butter and limpets are no exception.  Next we come to barnacles.  Once again, a childhood plaything.  We used to watch the little black “hands” sweep the water for food but in the azores, those hands are boiled and eaten.  They don’t really task like chicken (surprise) but more like a very salty scrambled egg.  Fear not, plenty of wonderful flaming cheese, hearty sausages and just plain amazing foods make the table.  My favorite?  Anything from the Tasca-an amazing place to eat with the fried cheese “puff” you see here.  Another little known item is that they grow a very special type of pineapple that is small and sweet. It makes an appearance in cakes, puddings and jams and under no circumstances should this be missed, regardless of how many tapas you have consumed!