Our First Churrasco

We decided to expand our social life by having a Churrasco - a barbecue. Mostly so we could celebrate Emily's birth...and partially to introduce Otto Bouwman to a few people on the coast. He is here to present at the Reformed Teacher's Conference in Recife next week, and is the principal of Cornerstone Christian School in Lynden, Washington. Sandro took Shaun shopping for meat and I think we bought enough for sure for the rest of the time we are here! When they have a party they throw slabs of meat on this little barbecue. The barbecue is lit with a paper towel soaked in gas with charcoal on top, and to prevent smoke you can fill a empty pop bottle with water and put that right into the coals. Most of the meat was beef, but we also cooked up my new favorite meat - chicken sausage. We had a barbecue at Sandro's the day before and the meat he served was sheep. We also served rice made by Sandro. It sounds really silly but I had to look up on the internet how to make the rice, and was just about to start when Sandro and Djane walked in. They cook their rice differently here, first frying it with onions and garlic and carrot, and then adding boiling water. Bel makes so much when she is here that I've never had to make it when she isn't here. We also had feijoa, which is beans, not our green beans but the little legume type beans, (made by a new Brazilian - Dutch friend Elke (? the spelling), who is the daughter of Pastor Meyer, an old missionary to here). She offered to bring it just as I was thinking, uh oh, am I supposed to have feijoa. This of course is accompanied by vinagrette, which is a salad type dish with onions, peppers, tomatoes, and lots of cilantro, with some oil and balsamic vinegar on top. I literally got a callous on my hand from cutting up a gajillion vegetables....what a hard life! These are the common things to serve at a Churrasco. We had a wonderful time up on our upstairs patio, the wind was wonderful, the night was perfect. Shaun learned to make Caiporoscas, which of course is vitally important to become culturally savvy. Sandro barbecued for us pretty much the whole night (thanks Sandro!) and we ate our weight in meat and had a fabulous time.