Dinner and Dancing: Brazil
Happy Mardi Gras! Tired of winter and ready to expose some skin? Get your feathers on and shake your money maker. “But didn’t they cancel Mardi Gras?” No one cancels the party in your kitchen. Get the music grooving and the dinner cooking to celebrate the delicious sensory overload of Carneval. (We stole some Mardi Gras bling for this photo from the friendly folks at Presqu’ile Winery who have ties to both New Orleans and the Santa Maria Valley and who poured their lovely Pinots at WOPN. Thanks Matt!)
How to celebrate Mardi Gras
let’s do some cooking!
Make a pitcher of caipirinhas, Brazil’s national drink
Explore Brazilian cuisine with Tastespotting and Gourmet
Explore New Orleans cuisine with Saveur and the LA Times
Make a king cake with inspiration from Martha Stewart and Saveur
Read up on foodie destinations in Sao Paolo; read a Brazilian foodie’s blog
Perfect your Brazilian rice and beans (Blue Kitchen)
Satisfy a sweet tooth with coconut milk fudge (Smitten Kitchen)
Explore
Amazing photos of Rio Carneval 2011
Mark Bittman on Brazil’s successful school lunch program
Twelfth Night: Or, King and Queen
by Robert Herrick (1648)
Unhappy mask needs to lighten up
NOW, now the mirth comes
With the cake full of plums,
Where bean’s the king of the sport here;
Beside we must know,
The pea also
Must revel, as queen, in the court here.
Begin then to choose,
This night as ye use,
Who shall for the present delight here,
Be a king by the lot,
And who shall not
Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here.
Which known, let us make
Joy-sops with the cake;
And let not a man then be seen here,
Who unurg’d will not drink
To the base from the brink
A health to the king and queen here.
Next crown a bowl full
With gentle lamb’s wool:
Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger,
With store of ale too;
And thus ye must do
To make the wassail a swinger.
Give then to the king
And queen wassailing:
And though with ale ye be whet here,
Yet part from hence
As free from offence
As when ye innocent met here.
