Obrigado Brazil

Guava paste gives traditional shortbread cookies a South American twist

It’s summer in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, and today’s high is 28 C. Snow is a rare sight in Brazil, even in June and July, South America’s cold months.

Other than that, Christmas is pretty much the same as in Canada. Especially the family gatherings and the abundance of food, says Patricia Amaral, who, along with her husband Daniel, moved to Winnipeg in August 2017.

“It’s pretty hot, and it’s sort of weird but the kind of food we have at Christmas is a lot like Thanksgiving here,” Amaral says. “We always have turkey. We have a dish called farofa, it’s very Brazilian, that I could compare to stuffing here in Canada on Thanksgiving. It’s made with some vegetables, bacon, sausage and cassava flour.”

Rice, salad with tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers, as well as other vegetable dishes — one advantage of having Christmas in summer is the abundance of fresh produce — complete the typical Brazilian Christmas spread, she says.

Curling great, broadcaster Don Duguid dead at age 90

Legendary Manitoba curler and broadcaster Don Duguid, a three-time Canadian men’s champion and two-time world champion, has died at the age of 90.

Main Street crash involving motorcycle linked to speeding

Speed appears to be a factor in a serious four-vehicle collision, including a motorcycle, on Main Street Friday.

Police did not immediately release information about the crash, but at around 7 p.m., a large section of Main Street was taped off between Jarvis and Dufferin Avenue. Traffic was redirected and pedestrians were told to stay clear.

Behind the tape, a crumpled white sedan was smashed into the side of a building, and a damaged motorcycle was on its side in the middle of the street. Two SUVs were also damaged.

The Free Press watched video captured from cameras at the nearby Northern Hotel that shows the two vehicles involved in the crash — the motorcycle that had a rider and a passenger, and the white sedan — speeding side-by-side southbound on Main Street. The speed limit in the area is 50 kilometres per hour.

Blue Bombers’ Reese picks up the pieces

David Reese admits his new routine took some getting used to.

No, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers rookie defensive end wasn’t talking about the transition to the CFL game.

That’s been relatively smooth, especially over the past two games as his playing time has increased and he worked his way into a starting role.

But after spending eight years in the NCAA due to a host of injuries and circumstances such as a global pandemic, Reese said there were times he wondered if he shouldn’t be walking into a classroom, burying his head in a textbook or preparing for the next exam.

The next Duff’s Ditch must be medical

A runaway rail trolley hurtles towards five people tied to the tracks. You stand at the switch lever. If you pull the lever, the trolley veers onto a sidetrack, where one person is tied down. Do nothing and five die. Pull the lever and one dies by your hand.

A health minister needs no introduction to the weight of that choice. Every budget season, governments confront this dilemma with one cruel modification — the lever switches between today and tomorrow. Down the near track sits this year’s emergency, a crowded emergency department, a surgical backlog, a crisis demanding a decision by Friday. Down the far track, in the distance, over the horizon, waits a geriatric demographic that has not arrived yet. Each year’s budget cannot simultaneously rescue both.

Philosophers treat the trolley scenario as a thought experiment. A health minister calls it Tuesday.

The actual choice is crueller, because both tracks hold real people. The stroke patient in today’s hallway deserves rescue, as do the patients down the line. Two scholars, Guido Calabresi and Philip Bobbitt, analyzed such allocations as tragic choices — scarcity forces a society to preserve one value by sacrificing another. Their darker observation concerned method. Societies rarely make these choices in the open. The lever keeps directing traffic away from the immediate noise, toward the far track.