Of Plaid Sofas...

Brazil is known for soccer, Carnaval, and uncomfortable sofas.

Okay, so maybe the whole implied worldwide knowledge of the discomfort of Brazilian sofas is a bit of an exaggeration. 

Unknown or not, the sad fact is that Brazilian sofas offer very little in the way of comfort, at least at our price point.  During our time in Brazil, we had three sets.

Our first set we bought shortly after moving into our house.  It was black and white plaid with touches of green and red.  I imagine the story of the creation of said sofa went something like this.

“Let’s make a sofa,” says first sofa maker.

“But, senhor, we only have enough foam to add a quarter of an inch over the wooden underpinnings.”

“It doesn’t matter.  Make it anyway.”

Thus came into being the sofas that inhabited our living room for a year and a half.  Lest you doubt my story, I can show you the myriad of chiropractor bills that can be traced directly back to that sofa.  Okay, I admit, that too may be a slight exaggeration.

Our second set of sofas we bought after moving to northern Brazil.  It too lacked in comfort but made up for it in quality.  We hadn’t had the sofa long before the material began to wear out eventually sprouting holes.  The foam smashed down even quicker and the wooden frame stuck out of its upholstered cover like bony ribs through a shirt four sizes too small.

Shortly before my sister’s wedding we decided to splurge and buy new sofas.   They were brown and almost—gasp—comfortable. 

We were delighted.  The wedding guests arrived and we had one very tall guest with a proportioned weight.  He decided to sit on the arm of our brand new sofa. 

The poor sofa was angry at being so used and decided to break its arm.

So, although, the eyes of the world are upon Brazil with the upcoming World Cup and Olympics, I don’t think much broadcast time will be spent belittling the country’s sofa making abilities.

But then, those reporters probably won’t be delivering their stories from the all-too-uncomfortable embrace of a Brazilian sofa.

Convenience food barely exists in Brasil.  If it does it cost an arm and a leg to buy, so it’s just all around easier to make your own food since you at least have all your limbs to do so.

One of my family’s favorite foods is Mexican.  Although one might expect that Mexican food would be very similar to Brasil, it is not even remotely similar.  In fact, you can’t find most of the things we use to make Mexican food, including tortillas.

To make a Mexican meal required a lot of work. 

First you needed to sort the beans.  They came dry and often contained other additives like rocks, stones or if you were really lucky occasionally an egg sack or weevil.  Once sorted the beans had to be washed, brought to a boil, and then allowed to soak for an hour or so.  Then they were pressure cooked.  Pressure cookers are a necessity of life in Brasil.

Once your beans were cooking you started on the tortillas.  First the dough was made and then allowed to rest before rolling each piece into a circle.  Humidity made the kitchen moist and hot and the dough was as likely to melt into the counter as to roll into a nice circle.  If you did succeed in completing a haphazardly-shaped, semi-thin, tortilla-like-ish creation you then got the pleasure of frying it over a hot stove.

Once the beans and tortillas were complete—and providing you had not passed out from exhaustion and the blistering temperatures in the kitchen, made worse by all the tortilla frying— you then needed to shred the cheese.  It sometimes turned out to be rancid or festooned with mold.  After whacking away with a knife you were able to shred it.

If you were feeling particularly adventurous you might then make salsa, but in a pinch ketchup mixed with hot sauce provided a decent sauce.

As long as it wasn’t wine ketchup, my family’s name for the off brand ketchups that were a bizarre purple color and did indeed taste like wine mixed with ketchup.  Only a blistering amount of picante sauce would make it semi-palatable.

Once the beans were mashed and flavored and we added some fresh avocado, our meal was complete and delicious enough to make us forget the hours in the sweltering kitchen.

At least until the next time we had a hankering for some Mexican food.