[Diniz Borges asked me to provide a few words about my 2026 calendar, “O último calendário eletrónico ~ Uma síntese” (“The final online calendar ~ Summing up”), because each month this year the Filamentos blog is posting that month’s page, along with my brief explanation of its contents.]

To view a larger version of this calendar page, click on:

http://www.inolongerlikechocolates.com/26-10_calendar_oct.htm

In 2005, while polishing our translation of Álamo Oliveira’s novel I No Longer Like Chocolates, Diniz Borges and I puzzled over a simile alluding to a heritage bread-sponge method using sweet potato starter that was unfamiliar to either of us:

“Cities were growing by leaps and bounds, like the Azorean massa sovada dough that Mary now mixed using packaged yeast, disdaining the many hours it took back on the island when she used a traditional bread-sponge of sweet potato and eggs, then waited with the patience of a Benedictine nun while the dough doubled.” (p. 37)

Eighteen years later, as recounted in detail in my husband John’s and my article “The Search for Maria de Fátima’s Sweet Potato Bread-Sponge in I No Longer Like Chocolates” in the Fall 2023 issue of the Gávea-Brown journal (pp. 102-44), John developed recipes for both sweet potato-based starter and sweet potato massa sovada bread using the starter:

https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:w3a36zyb

As a bonus, our article included the recipe John developed using the same sweet potato starter in pão caseiro (home-style bread) — our approximation of the memorable Friday bread that, in her memoir The Tenth Island  (p. 184), Diana Marcum rhapsodized over being served at Ti’ Chôa restaurant in Serreta, Terceira.

We invite you also to sample our other recipes for Portuguese and Luso-inspired meatless soups, breads, entrées, side dishes and desserts on our 2021 & 2025 calendar pages:

http://www.inolongerlikechocolates.com/calendars_contents.htm (click on separate page icons on the right to select enlarged individual pages).