A Thanksgiving story

A piece from a book I am writing, I hope you enjoy it! Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

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O Dia de Ação de Graças

Today’s mini-fact: Did you know that there are two countries in the world named after an extremely annoying but tasty bird indigenous to the Americas? Yes! Turkey and Peru!

Just so you know… Thanksgiving is not a holiday in Brasil. The last Thursday of November is just like the third one, a warm and very pleasant spring day, with possible showers, and flowers blooming everywhere. There is no Macy’s day parade in Brasil on that Friday. But really, they are ok about it.

After a few weeks of living in the Aparthotel Flomon, I was moved to a great little apartment on the top floor and in the back. It had a big back window that afforded a varsity view of the whole city, and when the weather was nice I kept it open. One could hear the sinos and buses and a dog.

The dog was owned by a senhora viúva, in the house three floors below and across the alley. It was a chocolate Weimaraner. When looking up how to spell Weimaraner on the internet I found that they are,

tireless, versatile hunting dogs with the skills needed to find, point, track, and retrieve birds and other small game. Weimaraners are also wonderful pets. They’re loving, fiercely devoted companions - quick to learn and eager to please[1].”

They forgot to mention that they never stop barking, or why a senhora viúva would want one.

After so many years of traveling in Brasil, I had felt I was accustomed to noise… but soon this dog got on my nerves. The dog would sit out on the patio of the house below by idyllic abode and just bark. He barked at people walking by, trucks going by, birds flying by, the sun, the moon, the rain, the trees, time going by… he just barked, 24/7. His tiny little senhora viúva would go out occasionally and tell him to be quiet, which never worked.

Overtime, I noticed that the dog noticed me when I opened the window. One day, as I was eating a line or two of bolachas Maria while looking out the window, and watching a sunset, I had thought that the dog was asleep, but I soon realized that, in fact, I was being watched. I looked down, saw the dog, and absent mindedly threw it a cookie. It gave me a tiny woof of thanks and remained quiet. I thought to myself,

“Ok we can work with this”

So I threw it another cookie, which was met by yet another quiet woof. Thus began our relationship, I hear barking, I open the window, the dog stops barking, and sits and waits for a cookie.

I understand, sometimes we all just need to be noticed.

A few weeks later, Milton came to visit for his Thanksgiving week, as he was in Sacramento, and I was in Ouro Preto on a visiting professorship. We told my colleagues that we would cook a turkey, and that Milton would bring stuffing (they were fascinated by this particular USAan ritual that they had heard of and seen on film, but never witnessed). I was just too glad to share this special day and initiate them into the rituals of pie and turkey and graças. So it was decided that we would host one, at Roselli’s house, as she had a large table and best of all, a maid to wash things up afterwards.

One tiny problem arose. Where to cook it? Brazilian stoves, and the one I had in my apartment was no exception, are tiny little things barely enabling the cook to bake a pie, let alone a peru. So Milton and I asked the guy in the padaria in the downstairs supermercado where we could get someone to cook us a peru.

You need to know that in Brasil padarias are often engaged to cook big things that aren’t part of a churrasco. All you do is take it, they cook it and you retrieve it after paying a set price. Pretty handy actually, and probably why you never see oven cleaner commercials on Brazilian TV.

But in Ouro Preto, if you ask to do things out of season, you are often met with a “no can do”. Perus are cooked only at Christmas, if ever, and it wasn’t Christmas, so no one was going to cook one for us because it wasn’t done in November. But of course, no one would tell us that. Our question was met in a singularly Mineiro fashion,

“Não é aqui, mas eu sei de uma padaria que pode fazê-lo” (Nope, not here, but I know a bakery that does...)

So off we trudged down the hill to the next padaria we could find… and to the next one, and to the next one , each one saying no, they can’t but the next one does… the route gave Milton a good taste (pun intended) of every bakery in Ouro Preto. I know this for a fact, as Marger was driving me somewhere this last summer, and I said, Milton & I missed that padaria when we were looking for a place to cook a peru, when she said,

“Mas este padaria é nova, Daniel” (but this bakery is new, Daniel)

At the last padaria of the tour, we were given a phone number of a senhora who is known to cook big things... like a peru. Mind you, we haven’t gotten a peru yet, we are just looking for a place that cooks one. So we called her. And she gave us an address, which was weirdly close to my house on Rua Alvarenga. When we got to the address, one that seemed more like one in Harry Potter - between the one and the other, yet not there at all, there was nothing, but an alleyway, the very same alleyway that ran behind my apartment and where the annoying Weimaraner lived. So we walked up the alley, and lo and behold, it was the very same house!

We knocked, she laughed, we laughed and the dog woofed! We arranged for her to cook our peru.

“Oh and by the way where do you get a peru in Ouro Preto?”

She told us that they sold them in supermercado … if we just got it and she would be able to cook it for us tomorrow.

So off we went in search of a peru, and soon we were beginning to trace the steps we trudged earlier, this time from açougueiro to açougueiro instead of padaria to padaria. After realizing we where retracing our paths and neither of us wanted to do that again we decided to rethink this whole thing. Perhaps we were committing yet another unintentional act of cultural chauvinism by well meaning North Americans? Then a light bulb went on, and we looked at each other and at the same time said,

“Um CHESTER!”

Come to find out, there was not a peru to be had in Ouro Preto, they are something just not eaten a lot in Ouro Preto. But we did though find a chester was a substitute that would just have to do. So we found the largest freaking chester possible. To be honest, I was shocked that a chicken that size could even walk. The senhora didn’t want to do the stuffing, as she had never done that before and really had no idea what we were talking about.

“E fácil, vc pega essa mistura, mexe na panela, e colca o recheio o dentro do chester e... (“Its easy, you take this mix, and cook it on the stove, then stuff it inside the chester and…”)

I saw that look of “what are you talking about?” in her eyes. So we settled for making the stuffing at the friend’s house on the stove, it was “stove top stuffing” and well, what would they know anyway right?

Thanksgiving Day came; I heard the dog, so I rolled up the window. Threw him a cookie, and clapped three times. In Brasil, you often clap in front of a house instead of knocking on the door; the senhora viúva opened her door, and looked up and down the street until I said, from the 3rdfloor above her,

“Oi!”

She looked up and told me to give her another 1/2 hour. And Milton said,

“Daniel, você está parecendo um mineiro!”

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[1] http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art4814.asp