Fighting "Saudade"

A new knife and a good book...

According to Google SAUDADE (noun) is a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament. If you look SAUDADE at Wikipedia they go over a very long page trying to explain the inexplicable, but Nascimento and Meandro cite Duarte Nunes Leão's for what may be a proper definition of SAUDADE: "Memory of something with a desire for it."

Anyhow, my wife has been in Brazil for the last five or six weeks and yesterday I had a particularly strong case of saudade. So, I left work earlier than usual, stopped downtown Traverse City for a couple errands, started filling hungry and decided to treat myself to a proper dinner.

I stopped at Maxbauer Meat Market and bought a beautiful T-Bone steak for main course and a kielbasa and a weisswurst for appetizer. Before I reached the cash register I added four small young potatoes to my plans.

As I arrived home the small USPS box on my mail box greeted me with news that a new toy I was anxiously waiting for had arrived, but I controlled my urge to open the package in order to first start the fire on my Big Green Egg.

Once the fire was burning, and the potatoes and sausages were on the grill, and some oldies were playing on the radio, I turned my attention back to the small USPS box. From its guts came the most beautiful and well made friction folder one can conceive. The Michael Morris knife was made from an old file and the comfortable handle is made of micarta. A nice design feature is that the tang doubles as a bottle opener. I didn't even feel like having a beer, but felt compelled to try the built-in bottle opener! My expert opinion is that it works better than most bottle openers I've used to date.

While the Green Egg imparted its magic to the sausages I went on reading a couple chapter of Jim Harrison's Just Before Dark. The celebrated Grayling, MI, native discusses why "Small portions are for small and inactive people" along with observations along the natural order of really important things: first eat, then love! Considering I always told people that my stomach is the most important part of my anatomy, I can relate to Mr. Harrison's passion for food, that lesser souls could consider gluttony.

By this time the sausages were perfectly grilled and while they rested to allow the juices to incorporate with the meat I salted the T-Bone steak and placed it on the grill, taking time to assure the potatoes would not burn. I finished the beer while savoring the appetizer, and really building a bigger appetite.

A couple more pages and the steak was ready.

...and a great meal helps one to feel better!

In order to complement the magic that lump wood charcoal imparts to food I split the potatoes and seasoned with table salt, butter and olive oil. The texture and flavor was just out of this world. The simple dinner was washed down by a small (or maybe not so small) amount of a special edition Jameson Irish Whiskey.

Desert was just one Sonho de Valsa, the popular Brazilian bonbon made of chocolate and cashew nuts filling, and unchanged since 1938.

All this happened just before dark what is the time that saudade strikes most powerfully, but the new knife, good reading and great food helped keep it at bay.