Family Camp 2012 - Food

Ahhhhhhh! Food.  Be prepared to be jealous.  Brazilian food is GOOD!  There were so many yummy meals to choose from, but finally narrowed it down to these tasty dishes.  

I (Tracy) had the oportunity to work in the kitchen quite a bit during Family Camp.  It was interesting to see how you go about cooking from scratch for 200 people.  It's a lot of hard work, that's what!  The cooks were in the kitchen ALL DAY LONG!  You can't buy many canned or pre-packaged foods here, so everything has to be done by hand.  And you can trust me, tearing every leaf of arugula off of its plant to make salad for 200 people takes FOREVER!!! (thank you for letting me get that out of my system :)

Rice.  Brazilians could not survive without rice and beans.  Seriously!  Just ask every woman, and she will tell you that she has to make rice and beans EVERY day for her family.  It was funny to hear the cooks grumble about how much rice they go through in one month.  Even if they were to make a complete meal, they would still have to make rice and beans too.  It's just expected.

At camp, they made 33 pounds (that's dry/before cooked) of rice for lunch and supper every day.  That's a lot of rice, folks! Here is one of the cooks scooping the rice from the main pot into a serving tray.

This is the head cook at camp.  Every one asked her opinion on everything before they made a dish, and she knows what she's doing!

I thought you might find this interesting:  None of the Brazilians I've seen use a spoon to taste for seasoning.  Instead, they poor a little bit of the *burning hot* broth into their palm....

....and straight to the mouth for tasting! *OUCH*

They also cooked 65-75 pounds of meat for every meal!

Have you ever seen the black/green overgrown bananas in Wal-mart's fruit section?  Well, it's this - plantain. They're much sweeter and less "woody" here though because they are left on the plant for longer.  

Mmmm....fried plantain.  It's yummy.  Trust me.

And on a hot day, what would be better than some refreshing lemonade?  The cooks would pull two men out of the morning service to come back and squeeze enough lemons for lemonade. 

 Many, many lemons were juiced in the making of this lemonade.  And we enjoyed it.

And here is a parting shot of everyone getting their plates full so that they can sit down and enjoy it all.  Well, was I right?  You're jealous, aren't you?  :)