Dinner in a thunderstorm with the Franciscan Monks

Thursday night, Imran made plans for us to make dinner for the Franciscan Monks who live near by. They actually live in Robin and Binka's first house when they moved here from Washington DC to start their farm. Imran wanted to cook them Indian food, since it's pretty rare to find it in these parts. That also means it's difficult to find ingredients for a proper curry. But between Limeira and Muriae, we gathered what we could and set to cooking.

The Monks are an interesting group - it seems they are focused much more on community and living in harmony with the land than with religion. They are a bit of a rowdy, fun bunch. Aside from them, we also had a local organic farmer at dinner, a farmer/Tae Kwon Do instructor, several children running around and Toffee, Binka and Robin's dog who followed us to the Monk's house from Iracambi.

We made 2 vegetable curries, one which we needed to use black beans instead of chickpeas since Gui wasn't able to get back from Muriae with them in time for dinner due to the thunderstorms. Surprisingly, everything turned out really tasty, though several of the locals thought the dishes were a bit spicy - spice is not very common in these parts.

There was also a very interesting game that was played during the evening - try to make sure the glasses of beer don't go empty - initiated, of course, by the monks. And they were very good at the game. The second game was every time the lights went out due to the thunderstorm, we all shouted "Oopa!"

Though my Portuguese isn't very good, I managed to follow most of the conversations and even was able to get some thoughts out myself. Everyone really enjoyed themselves and we were invited to do it again this week when the Monks are going to make us pizza. Very excited for that!