For quarterfinals, I had an interesting situation on my hands. If Germany, the Netherlands, and Argentina all moved on then I could make meals for those countries during the semifinals, finals, and third place game. Since these teams were all favored to win their games, and I was on vacation while they were on, I thought I'd take the opportunity to go a little easy on the food challenge in order to really be able to make some special things for the following week.
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I knew that for Friday, I was going to do Brazil. When I started this challenge, it was mostly just tying in with my love of my Brazilian culture and desire to make Brazilian cuisine whenever they played. The idea for the challenge sprung from there as I realized that food is a big part of all cultures and it would be fun to celebrate that. However, that pushed around my eating schedule a bit... I knew that if Germany won, I could save Germany for the semifinals and I had done all of the other teams playing Friday. This meant that I would finally be able to do one of the Brazilian recipes I was excited for from Day 1 - CHURRASCO!!!
Churrasco may seem like a big scary word and it's definitely got a tough pronunciation but simply it's just barbecue. Brazilian barbecue is done "rodizo" style which means on skewers. It can range from little toothpick churrsquinhos to the fancy Churrascarias that use giant rotisserie skewers. Mine were somewhere in between.
The skewers themselves are really straight forward. My mom suggested steak and bacon. Obviously, I thought this was a great idea. Since I was at a rental property and didn't have a lot of seasoning, I really wanted high quality meat. I was happy that the super market had a special on grass fed top sirloin. I seasoned them with some salt and pepper and then made my bacon and steak skewers. I also had some shrimp so there were a few of those too.
The grill got super hot really quickly so the skewers cooked super fast once we threw them on.
The skewers cooked really quickly once we threw them on and it wasn't long before we were snacking on some surf and turf.
They tasted amazing. For something so simple we honestly could not get enough of them. We weren't even super hungry but definitely ate a ton of them.
Our fire had the added benefit of keeping us warm on the super chilly Santa Cruz beach after the sun went down.
It turns out our view of fireworks was a little more "front row" than we were expecting. We were pretty bummed that Santa Cruz doesn't put on an aerial show. Strangers lighting off illegal fireworks a few feet away from us wasn't too fun. There wasn't a lot of respect for the safety of people around them and we quickly picked up our stuff and got out of there.
For Saturday, I really wasn't feeling like cooking and I knew that with our last day in Santa Cruz, the long drive home, and the little sleep from the fireworks going off all night - I needed something easy. I decided that if the Netherlands won than I would be able to spotlight the last 4 teams during semifinals and finals. That meant I didn't need to do anything crazy. I popped into a wine store and just picked up a nice Malbec. Being away, even for a couple of days, definitely makes little things like a glass of wine at home with kitties even better.
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