This Thing Called Beef
31 July 2005 (Sunday) – To Manaus, Brazil
Sniff sniff?? Cold’s gone.
Right. Food food food… I felt bad having to devote some time talking about the food here, but I guess it was on my mind for quite a lot of times these past days that I must talk about it.
In the first place, I would like to thank the crew for keeping the hall and toilets amazingly, OK, relatively clean, considering the population living here in this confined spot. (Yep, start with the praise first, before going down for the kill). Also, I had no idea how food is like in OTHER riverboats, so it is probably unfair to comment but, anyway… I had indeed read in the guidebook that in some riverboats, the food was just rice, spaghetti and beans. Now, that would have been outright attempted genocide. So, thank goodness, Amazon Star serves 1 more dish of meat. Good job! Way to go!
So far, since Thursday, there had been ONE spotting of chicken. The rest had been beef beef beef. But chicken or beef, the chef had only ONE recipe and ONE set of spices to cook with. So, everything tasted the same. Yesterday, at the Santarem port, I saw a guy heave several half-cows over to our riverboat and indeed, today, both lunch and dinner, the food had been identical – beef.
The beef, done Brazilian style, is always very overcooked, tough and dry. I know I cannot compare with the Argentinian way of cooking beef because that is probably the way to prepare beef for gods and goddesses. And here, at the Amazon River, we are just mere mortals, pathetic peasants, we are not worth it.
I watched the other Brazilians pile up a mountain of rice, spaghetti, beans and the beef and some sauce, sprinkle the plate with manioc flour, add more strange yellow sauce even before tasting the food and then, mix everything up into an unrecognisable glob and dig into the plate with gusto. And my insides turned.
Meanwhile, with one hand propping my forehead up, and the other multi-tasking by spooning into my mouth the rice and some beef, and then, reaching for the cup of water to wash everything down, and stirring the spoon around the plate to play with the food and repeating, I finished my plate… eventually. One lady had looked at me with some amusement and asked me if I liked the food. Well…
Later, I spotted the tourists who had gotten off at Santarem yesterday got away with sandwiches today. The lucky ‘uns!
Tags: 04) A River Runs Through It, Amazon River
swesn
September 23rd, 2005 at 1:35 pm
Great! I had beem looking out for this chapter! You know – dunno is it because we sporeans are always interested in food – but I just cannot stop imagining what kind of food they serves to a few hundred folks on the boat. Now i know what is the fastest way to lose weight!! Go on a Amazon River boat cruise!! heh! heh!