Last week, we went out for a late dinner to a diner around the corner. It's an upscale American-style diner; serving assorted appetizers, burgers, fries, milkshakes and a variety of entrees. American-style food with a Brazilian twist of course. Looking for some comfort food, I scanned the menu and was delighted to see Mac and Cheese. The menu is all in Portuguese with a few English names here and there. We've been to this place once or twice before and have always gone for burgers, but that night I wanted something else.
When I imagined the plate of Mac and Cheese that would be placed before me, I could smell a creamy, cheddary dish of steaming oozy cheese, maybe baked so the top would be crunchy. (never mind that we don't really have cheddar cheese here!) So I quickly scanned the item description and saw a bunch of words which I supposed to be a combination of cheeses - ok, so it would be more like a four-cheese kind of dish. That was fine with me. I ended up ordering the "Louisiana Mac and Cheese" which came with spicy sausage added into the mix. That was fine with me.
When the dish actually arrived - well, it looked pretty good (not as I had imagined) and smelled pretty good, and was baked with a crunchy top, but after a few bites, I tasted something I didn't like - mushrooms. Wait a minute, I never saw mushrooms in the description! To my mind they have no place in a macaroni dish. So I asked dad, "what's the word for mushrooms?" Of course, once he told me; cogumelo, I vaguely remembered skimming over the word, assuming it to be a kind of cheese.
Two lessons learned. One; always read the menu and ask about new words before you order. Two; the Portuguese word for mushrooms is cogumelo. That's one word I won't easily forget now.
Oh, and the Mac and Cheese was pretty good (once I picked out all the mushrooms)!
I should have been there to eat those mushrooms you picked you!
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