Mexelote or caralinho

All over Madeira, in small town tourist shops, we saw these wooden, um, rockets. That’s what I preferred to think of them as: rockets. Usually we found simple versions, with just the head and a clean shaft and the little wooden propellers on the end. We wondered what they were, but what they seemed to be was so obvious that I could never bring myself to ask. Then I came home and used the power of the internet to find the truth. They are and they are not exactly what they appear to be. In Portuguese, this is a mexelote, which is basically a bar muddler. It’s used to mix together the ingredients for a cocktail. The Madeiran speciality is called poncha, which is a potent mixture of rum, lemon, honey and sugar. Here’s me on our last night in Madeira, enjoying one of these mind numbing cocktails.

I’m too far gone to even know what day it is in that photo. Anyway, back to the mexelote. In Madeira, they call this wooden muddler a caralinho, which literally translates to “little cock.” Yes, you read that right. In Madeira, they use little cocks to mix poncha. Which makes me wish I’d have plunked down 20 euros or so to buy one: I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a caralinho.

(Too raunchy? I still can’t seem to sleep past four AM so I’m feeling a little punchy.)