Churrasco, Take 2

We took part in our 2nd churrasco this past weekend. I’ll be honest. I really wasn’t looking forward to it. Saturday had been a long day of shopping for some remaining items needed in the apartment. It was wild and crazy out too. I think the whole city was out shopping. I thought this might be because it had rained a lot during the week and maybe people were just starting to get out. I was just prepared to do nothing and stay in pajamas on Sunday.

We were invited to this festa by my Portuguese teacher. She is a college student herself and aside from the presence of her parents the group was a mix of people in their 20s. We ended up having a wonderful time. It was actually much better than our first BBQ. We find that we are at one of those in between ages in life. We don’t really fit in well with families because we don’t have any kids of our own. We don’t always fit in the college group because it has been a few years since those days and we’ve experienced some real life (bills, mortgage, jobs, etc.). I have to say this is a group I felt much more comfortable with. Maybe we like reliving the college days a little more than imagining the days of diapers ahead.

Most of my Portuguese teachers were there, so they forced us to speak Portuguese which was stressful, but helpful. They also translated things for us so we felt a little more involved in the conversations. We got to meet some new people who spoke a little English. So between our limited Portuguese and their limited English we were actually able to communicate quite well.

There were a lot of differences in this churrasco and the first one we attended. It is probably just the difference in hosts, similar to parties in the US. First the meat selection was very small. This definitely pointed to the fact that we were with college students. The meat was good, but we only had 2 kinds as opposed to the 5-6 varieties at our last event. The salads on the other hand were very good with more variety. We had vinagrete – similar to a homemade salsa in the states – cebola (onions), pepino (cucumber), tomate (tomatoes), cebolinha (scallions or chives) and salsinha (similar to our parsley). This is then covered in lime juice and olive oil. By the way, their limão translates to lemon in English, but it is not like our lemon at all. It is our lime. They don’t have anything in Brazil that is like our yellow lemon. The potato salad was great and we had rice here as well. This was followed up by a huge chocolate cake from a local supermarket. (I’ll comment on the chocolate in Brazil in a later entry.)

What we find interesting about the dessert is that at both churrascos we have been to, the person manning the grill has left to go get it. The dessert has never been ready to get out and serve at the end of the meal. I don’t know if this is tradition or consequence, or what the reason might be.

The biggest difference was that we had a host at this event. This might just have to do with personality types, but at our first BBQ we were expected to go get our own drinks. After the first offer for a drink, we didn’t receive anymore. I guess we were expected to get them ourselves at the point. This is a little uncomfortable considering that you are a guest in a place you’ve never been before, not to mention new to the country. At Sunday’s churrasco, every time our drink was empty the host brought us a new one. It was really kind of nice and made us feel much more comfortable.

Well, I guess it is clear that we had a really good time. I was expecting to be there only about 3 hours and we stayed 7! We hope to have a party for all of our new friends once our apartment is completed. We are thinking a SuperBowl party thanks to TiVo and I will try my best to recreate some of the foods we have at parties in the states.