Horse, Tripe, and Heart

Thursday Laís and I were invited to our friend Divas' house for dinner. His mom had been eager to meet me for quite some time. We arrived around 6:30pm and walked into an entryway filled with maybe 10 birds in an equal amount of cages. Their place was upstairs, and the room opened up to a nice sized flat with three bedrooms and an open setup. His house was busy with his mom, grandma, two sisters, brother in law, father, niece, and us--a total of nine people. Once again, I made an effort with my Portuguese throughout the night but usually found myself lost. 

His mom had made two dishes; one with bread and cream cheese with olives and cilantro, and the other with meat and cream inside of a pumpkin. The pumpkin did not look like what we would consider a pumpkin in the US, and I told them we would most likely call it a squash.

When I talked with Laís yesterday about the meat we ate inside of the pumpkin/squash and in the mashed macaxeira, she threw me an unexpected curveball. I'd noticed both were the same type of meat, a salty and stringy bright red meat. The best way I could describe it would be if bacon bits were reverted back into meat but in a salty stringy form. Hmm... I guess that would be called bacon, huh? Okay, bad analogy. It wasn't bacon.

In fact, the meat is called charqui. Don't follow the link before you read on. Nonchalantly, Laís told me it was horse meat.

"Hey, what's that meat that we ate at Divas' house and in the macaxeira at Rosi's place?" I asked.

"Oh, charqui? It's horse meat." she said.

"Seriously, horse meat?" I was a little disgusted.

"Yeah, well usually horse meat. Sometimes it's beef too, but it's never all beef. There's at least some horse meat." 

If you chose not to follow the link, Wikipedia informed me it's a salty jerky usually made from horse, llama, or beef and common in South America. I'm glad I didn't know what it was when I ate it, or I would have flashed back to our horse, Babe, and Medora trail rides. I would have had dreams of prancing through a rodeo ring and laying in meadows with Seabiscuit while the Budweiser Clydesdale's catered our picnic. Alright, not true. I'm not too worked up about it. But I truly am glad I didn't know at the time.

Last night we went out for some beers with Tuca and Maneco at a bar we'd been to once before. They serve something called torres, or towers, of beer. Follow that link for a photo. Maybe it's more common in the US than I know, but I had never seen them before. They're two- or three-liter cylinders of beer that cost a fortune on a Friday night (R$ 30 each, or $18). Other nights, not so bad (R$ 15, or $8). But don't go on Friday. But again, compared to the US I suppose the price isn't outrageous.

We were getting hungry, so Maneco and Tuca ordered some french fries. Later on, Maneco ordered some delicious sushi, putting him more in the credit card debt he'd showed me earlier in the day. But don't worry folks, he's making the minimum R$ 12 ($7) payments each month. He should be out by the year 2090.

Another dish found its way onto the table. I couldn't quite tell what it was. The pieces were brown and crispy and looked a little like fried dog treats. I asked Maneco what he ordered and he told me, "É tripa ('It's tripe'). From inside." Laís confirmed it. The dish was a pile of fried bite-size chunks of small intestine. Maneco insisted I try some, and I took a piece. It was gritty, crispy and failed to hit me in whatever part of the brain that says, "Hell yeah!" In other words, unimpressed. I took another piece, a little smaller, and it tasted like the pieces of chicken breading left in the fryer at the end of frying. A little better, but not worth buying, in my opinion.

Afterward, we took Maneco and Tuca to a Reggae music festival in the rain, while I stayed high and dry in the car at 2am. When we got a hold of them by phone, we took off and went to a sandwich place for a bite to eat nearing 3am. On a Friday night, nothing seems to close or stop. I definitely feel United Statesian when I seem to fizzle out by 11pm. I think their bodies have adapted to long nights of parties or dancing. 

Even more difficult is the fact that the sun rises at 5am, an hour different from Minnesota, due to our location very near the equator. Such a location also means the sun goes down before 5:30pm. When I left Minnesota in August, the sun would set around 8pm, giving us plenty of daylight into the night.

Anyway, we stopped at a sandwich place and Maneco and Tuca went inside for sandwiches. Feeling a little like we'd spent our lives away at the bar, Laís and I decided to try a churrasco vendor across the street. I'd seen them before but never bought. She asked what he had, and I heard "só coração," or "only heart". Chicken heart.

I remember my dad cooking up the innards of chickens or turkeys separately when I was younger. One time he gave me a piece of the heart and I actually thought it was good. There's something about that pericardial tissue that seals in a salty, rich taste for a burst of flavor. We bought two heart kabobs, each with about 5 hearts, and walked back to the car. Verdict? Delicious.

I have some more photos, but I still need to get them from Maneco's computer. I'll share more as soon as I can.

And to provide evidence I'm beginning to feel the difference in place, last night I dreamt that I gave a woman US money and she gave my change in US currency. And it was a big deal.

Even better, two nights ago I dreamt of flying between my old elementary school and high school gym. No one believed me, until I showed them I could just rise up and take off. Seemed a little ironic considering the title I chose only days before.