A Veritable Feast     03/16/22

Guadalupe River State Park, Spring Branch, Texas

The plan seemed good to Pharaoh and to all his officials.  So Pharaoh asked them, “Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the spirit of God?”  Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as You.  You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders.  Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.” ~ Genesis 41:37-40     Holy cow!  Joseph has gone from prison to second in command of a great nation virtually instantaneously!  Only God can do that!  We’ll read later that it’s been thirteen years since Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery.  Thirteen years of praying and trusting and waiting on God. And now suddenly, he’s thrown into running an entire country!  Can you imagine?  We might think, “I wish someone would let me run the country!  I’d be better at it than any elected official!”  But would we?  There are many things to learn, and think through the consequences of, every moment of every day.  And don’t forget, Joseph is also in a foreign country.  And even though he’s had thirteen years to learn some things, he still doesn’t know everything.  And I’ll just bet that there were many in Pharaoh’s court who were none to pleased with Pharaoh’s spontaneous appointment.  And what happened to the previous second-in-command?  Surely there was one?  But Joseph is there by God’s design, and God is with him.  And that’s all Joseph needs.

Do you remember those cartoons from back in the day when the villain (usually dressed in black) would stand, shoulders hunched, rubbing his hands together with a look on his face of wicked excitement for his upcoming dastardly deed?

Blaine and I have been doing that for nearly a week now.  Today, we stopped scheming and brought it to fruition!  More on that later.

To prepare, we took a nice long walk today within the State Park.  There were actually a few gentle hills!  But not much to see, meaning fewer pictures.  However it was a lovely day for a 5-6 mile walk.  We began with light jackets, but shed those fairly quickly. 

We were back home a little after 11:00am, to get cleaned up for our outing at a churrascaria.

What’s that, you say?  Well, do you speak Portuguese?  It’s a place where meat is cooked in churrasco style, which translates roughly from the Portuguese word for “barbecue”. Churrascaria cuisine is typically served rodízio style, where roving waiters serve the barbecued meats from large skewers directly onto the seated diners’ plates.  In other words, a Brazilian Steakhouse.  There were a few to choose from in San Antonio, so Blaine chose the one with the best reviews and informative website – Chama Gaucha.  (by the way – – I had no idea they spoke Portuguese in Brazil!  I thought it was Spanish!  Blaine knew though, scholar that he is. 😊)

Anyway, we first heard of a Brazilian steakhouse several years ago when our younger son, Kyle went to one in Cleveland and came home with tales of enormous amounts of all you can eat food, and the meat brought to your table and sliced off right onto your plate. We didn’t have pictures of our own, but I found these pictures on-line.

We had some Christmas money, so it was time to spend it!

What an experience!  We’ve never seen people move so fast!  And appear and disappear with plates, food, whatever you desire . . .

So here’s how it went.  Boring information I know, but this way, we’ll remember it better and you’ll have an idea whether or not you’d like to try it one day.  😊

We were immediately seated.  There are no menus, unless you want to order alcohol.  I had iced tea.  Blaine ordered lemonade.  And the “rules” were laid out.

1. Go to the salad bar, but don’t eat too much.  You want to leave room for the meat.
2. When we see that you’re done with that, we’ll bring out mashed potatoes, polenta (crispy fried corn squares which were much better than I described them. 😊), and caramelized bananas.
3. When you want meat, flip your card to green.  It’s best to only take one or two at a time, then flip your card to red.
4. As the men slice the meat off the skewers, use your tongs to pull it and place it on your plate.

Sounds easy.  And it was!  The salad bar was incredible though, and it was very difficult to be selective.  When we returned to our table, our drinks were sitting waiting for us.  Blaine’s lemonade looked kinda funny, but tasted good – kinda creamy.  I looked it up later and discovered that Brazilian lemonade is actually made from limes.  They blend the entire lime for a few seconds, strain it, add sweetened condensed milk, put crushed ice in the bottom of the glass and pour the drink over top.  It must be served immediately, for some reason I didn’t quite understand.

And then the dance began.  Men in black slacks and white shirts covered with black aprons were zipping all over the seating area carrying upright, tall, three-pronged skewers filled with meat.  The one thing we wondered about was what happened to all the beef that didn’t get sliced off?  We noticed that once the shaving was down close to the skewers, they would zip into the kitchen and return momentarily with new full skewers.  So where did all that ‘leftover’ meat go?  Surely they don’t pitch it!  People came and went so quickly though, there was never a chance to ask.

Anyway, we flipped our card, and immediately someone appeared to whisk away our salad plates, and another swooped in with clean ones.  And the potatoes, polenta and bananas appeared at virtually the same time.  Within seconds, the first man showed up to ask if we’d like . . . whatever he was carrying.  We said yes.  They left, we flipped our cards.  I think we ate for about an hour!  What an amazing place!  The meats we tried were Filet Mignon, top sirloin, bottom sirloin, rib eye, another type of beef that we’re not sure what it was (masks and accents sometimes make it difficult to understand), chicken breast pieces wrapped in bacon, parmesan pork tenderloin (this and the filet were our favorites), lamb (yuk!) and sausage.  As far as we could tell, the only meat we didn’t try was a chicken leg.  By the time they got to our table, we were too full to try it.

And remember, everything was all you can eat.  Every-thing. 

Afterwards, we walked up and down the H.E.B grocery store aisles to help our massive quantities of food digest.  Although, since we hadn’t eaten since an early morning bowl of cereal, we weren’t stuffed overmuch.  And being full, meant nothing sounded good in the store.  😊  But I did have to pick up our ingredients for tomorrow’s St. Paddy’s Day Reubens.