Festa Julina

Since I spent most of my June in the US, I missed the Festa Junina celebrations around Maringá and surrounding cities. I find the event a little hard to explain so here is a handy link to learn more. It has to do with a celebration of Saint John and also of rural life. People often dress up. Think old fashioned hick, redneck and square dance attire – plaid shirts, pigtails and country dresses.

Well, I was fortunate in the fact that I didn’t miss all the celebrations. A friend of ours belongs to the local country club and they had a slightly delayed Festa Junina celebration called Festa Julina since it was in July. Only the kids dressed up, so this was a huge bonus for me. I like to reserve my costumes and dress up days for Halloween.

The area was beautifully decorated with the party taking place out on the pool deck. By about 9:00 the place was pretty packed. There was singing, traditional dance, traditional food and even a few fireworks.

Of course the food was my favorite part mainly because they had two things there I had never tried before, but was looking forward to. The first was pinhão. This is the pine nut of the Araucaria tree.

From the info I’ve gathered these nuts are roasted or cooked in a pressure cooker with lots of salt. This softens the outer shell allowing you to peel it off, which proved to be a harder task than I was expecting, and eat the nut inside. It really doesn’t taste like a nut, more like a cross between a solid bean and softened nut. It was great really. I ate my whole cup, but was worn out from the peeling! It must be a complication of being a gringo because Brazilians seem to be able to extract the inside nut quiet well.

The second thing we got to try was Quentão which is hot wine. As soon as I tasted it I knew it was pretty much the same as our mulled wine in the States. Some people have this around Christmas time. I looked it up today and I was correct according to this recipe, however, it looks like there is cachaça in it too.

I loved it because it reminded me of winter and fall at home. However, I stopped after a couple glasses for fear of a headache the next day. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much luck with Brazilian wine and I’m sure if they were giving it away by the bucket-full it probably wasn’t the expensive stuff.
I can’t forget the candy. They were giving away bags of an assortment of homemade candies. There was cocada, marshmallow concoctions and even a pastel cone filled with a substance similar to doce de leite. We later found out that the center piece at the table was filled with candy too.
I will say, while good, it was just too much sugar. Brazilian candies are so sweet they make your teeth hurt. I prefer rich desserts. A couple bites of the candies and that was enough, although I do appreciate all the hard work that went into making all of it.

As I sat down to look through my pictures today I had the realization that the party this past weekend was oddly similar to a 4th of July celebration. The tables, chairs and table clothes just happened to make up the color scheme of red, white and blue. There were all kinds of things we would consider summer snacks – popcorn, peanuts, corn on the cob and even hot dogs. The hot dogs had a Brazilian flair being served with tomato sauce and potato sticks on what could be considered an entire loaf of bread, but still hot dogs.

Add in the short fireworks display and you’ve got yourself the 4th of July. So I guess I got the best of both worlds. I didn’t miss out on the experience of Festa Junina and I got my Independence Day too! Even when we think we are so different, we are still very much the same.