Am I Corn or Kale?

Today is the final day of the Carnaval holiday and for us that means that the city will get busy again as all the Paulistas return from their beach vacations. Although Carnaval is one of the things Brazil is recognized for internationally some Brazilians all but ignore the festivities. Marcelo had never attended a Carnaval performance so we decided to take advantage of our timing here and see what all the fuss was about. Saturday night (the second night of 3 parade-like performances) we ventured to the far out stadium (used almost exclusively for Carnaval) to witness the madness. Quite honestly I was expecting to see more nearly naked people, but I guess Sao Paulo Carnaval is somewhat tame compared to other cities (and/or the media focuses on the bare breasted beauties that are among the minority of performers–imagine that). Anyway, the performances started around 10pm and by the time we left at 4:30 am, 2/7 of the schools had yet to perform! In this competition each school had between 3,000-4,000 participants who paraded down the long corridor of the stadium for about 1 hour. Some schools had as many as 28 different sections (each with different costumes and routines) and 5 massive floats. The schools pick a theme to which they compose a Samba that is played/sung over and over during the entire hour. Costumes are elaborately gaudy and look best from a distance. We had the (mis)fourtune of being caught in the chaotic aftermath of one performance as we were making our way to the spot where Marcelo’s mom was picking us up. We bobbed through the sea of neon-colored synthetic fabrics trying to avoid getting our eyes gouged out by some sharp plastic spines.  Luckily, we were not in an altered state (except that of sleep deprivation) as this experience would have been terrifying! Seeing the performers up close I was suprised by the average nature of many of the people.  For some reason I imagined that only young, beautiful, and fit people were allowed to perform–maybe next time we will participate 🙂  That’s not to say there weren’t celebrity performers, the most remarkable of which was the soccer player Ronaldo, World Cup’s all-time leading scorer (15 goals in 3 different tournaments). At the tender age of 33, he’s currently overweight and playing (occasionally) for the loathsome Corinthians, one of the city’s main teams–they have the greatest following in the state and 2nd-largest in the country. Since their organized torcida has its own Samba School… there he was.

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On Sunday, after sleeping until noon, we drove to Centro to visit the big Municipal Market. The concept of large, indoor city markets is somewhat common (Toronto has a neat one), but Sao Paulo’s is distinguished for having restaurants that serve the classic paulista lunch: pao com mortadella, a hot bologna sandwich on the omnipresent french roll. The bologna is sliced impossibly thin and is used in obscene amounts: I used to make cold bologna sandwiches at home in Brazil with 2 to 3 slices, and my sandwich must have had about 20! There is, of course, evidence:

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Yesterday we drove to Campinas, a city about an hour and a half northwest of Sao Paulo, to have the famous feijoada. Some of Marcelo’s family friends invited us to join them for this delicious meal that took them about seven or eight hours to prepare. By the time we arrived most of the cooking had been done so unfortunately we did not get to observe the whole process.  While we waited for the bean/pork concoction to stew, we were pressured into drinking a couple caipirinhas (a very strong alcoholic drink made with fruit pulp (we had one with lime and one with passion fruit), sugar, and a lot of alcohol (in this case vodka).  Needless to say, by the time the food was ready to eat we were a little tipsy and very hungry. In addition to the bean/pork dish feijoada includes rice, farofa (a grainy manioc flour), greens (maybe chard) cooked with bacon chunks/grease, and pieces of orange to cut the fat content! Although I am not a big fan of pork, this was some of the best tasting food I’ve had here. After two plates full we moved on to dessert: passion fruit mousse and key lime pie (both home-made of course). At that point it was nearing 5pm and most of the people there (I think there were between 15-20) crashed on the living room floor. We waddeled out to the car to head for home and I was sleeping within ten minutes… even though I had just had coffee!

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More Carnaval pictures!

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