Carrying on Tradition

God help us all if us millennials are in charge of carrying on cultural traditions.

Sweetbread is an absolute staple in Portuguese cuisine. Even more so at Easter time. The special Easter variety of sweetbread includes an egg (still in its shell) baked into the top center of the bread, for reasons I could never comprehend. You can't eat the egg, right? I'm going to assume it's decorative until someone tells me otherwise.

I grew up in probably the most Portuguese area in the United States. Portuguese population second only to actual Portugal, maybe. I never had to make a sweetbread. It was sold fresh at every bakery and store within a 60 mile radius, in addition to the homemade versions that would show up for every occasion.

I have since moved out of state, but typically return home regularly enough to get my hands on sweetbread. Enter 2020, when I realized I would be spending Easter in quarantine. My social media pages were flooded with pictures of family making homemade sweetbread. None of it was going to make its way to me this year. I, however, was determined to see to it that I did not go an Easter without my "massa" (sweetbread).

I sucked up my pride and posted a desperate cry for a massa recipe on my Facebook page. One recipe came up in a few recommendations so I went with the popular vote. Only it wasn't a recipe so much as a You Tube video of a Portuguese woman going through the act of baking a massa, in Portuguese. I put my years of Portuguese classes to the test and watched the video on repeat, pausing to take notes on what she was doing. Her measurements were all "mais ou menos" (more or less), which is sort of a death sentence in baking, but I soldiered on nonetheless.

I spent an entire day measuring, mixing, kneading, and waiting. I even created a little mini sauna room to promote rising. But, by the end of the day, my dough had not risen as expected. I blamed the yeast that I used from the back of my cabinet that was 5 years past the expiration date. In a rogue attempt to salvage my efforts, I doubled-down and added a second packet of expired yeast and let it sit overnight.

It worked. By morning, my dough had risen and was ready for baking. Apparently, there is a very specific type of pan that is used to bake massa, which I of course did not have. I did, however, have two stainless steel dog bowls that were about the right size. I filled both bowls with dough and baked them until they had perfectly golden brown tops. I was so impressed; they were even more beautiful than I could have imagined for my first attempt.

After they cooled, I cut into the first one.

You don't have to be Portuguese to know it wasn't supposed to end like this.

Determined to have something to show for my two-day baking process, I ate around the raw parts, fully expecting it to still taste delicious. It didn't.

In conclusion, if carrying on the tradition of baking Portuguese sweetbread relies on me, future generations will know it as "raw beer-bread".

From Street Carpets to Sonic the Hedgehog

A ceremonious cultural tradition in the age of millennials.

The morning began in a white gown, white veil, white shoes and socks - an elementary school bride of sorts. The attire all purchased from a Portuguese shop, called "Pato Donaldo", which I now realize translates to "Donald Duck" for no reason at all. They lined us up at the church in two lines, for boys and girls. The streets were lined with stunning carpet runners of sawdust, flowers, and greenery.

In the moments between when the street closure began and when the procession passed, intricate geometric wooden frames emerged from basements of every house along the route and were placed in the street as molds to create patterns.

The sawdust, accumulated throughout the year from Vavo's workshop and hand-dyed in vibrant colors, was placed by the handful into the molds at a furious but organized pace.

This was a common occurrence. Processions filling the city streets on a weekly basis every spring from each of the Portuguese catholic churches. I never liked walking in them. Maybe because I had anxiety about getting lost in the busy crowd trying to organize itself at the starting line. Maybe I hated watching kids walk in the decorative street carpet instead of around it (the HORROR of white shoes in freshly dyed sawdust). This day was no different. But since we lived in the neighborhood, mom agreed that I could ditch the procession once it arrived at my house. This was approximately the halfway point.

I happened to have the special honor of holding the Holy Spirit banner that day. As the procession approached my house, I felt zero remorse as I let go of my end of the banner and left my first-communion class homies in my dust. I didn't even look back.

I was already changed into street clothes and suited up with helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, wrist pads, and rollerblades before the procession had finished passing my house. I took a few driveway laps ending with a crash into the grapevine post that was captured on a giant camcorder. I still live with the regret of not submitting it to Bob Saget at the time.

The camcorder then shows an eternity of me zipping through levels of Sonic the Hedgehog on my Sega Genesis; the sounds of which I will forever by able to identify. Tails followed along in his most pest-y and unhelpful way, as Sonic gobbled up all of the spaghetti-O's in 100x speed.

The night ended with a recording of me and two friends creating an *iconic* music video to Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do with It" that I'm still upset wasn't played at my wedding reception. I had unpinned the perfect bun that held up a veiled crown earlier in the day, in favor of shaking my wild tresses to 92 Pro FM.