Brazilian Potlatch

As soon as I was old enough, my grandparents sent me a $5 check for my birthday. Later that year my mother sent a $5 check to my grandmother for her birthday. A few months later another check appeared in the mail, this time for one of my sisters, in the amount of $5. Then a $5 check was sent to my grandfather, and this went on, year in, year out. This gifting and re-gifting of $5 was my family's amusing interpretation of the custom of potlatch. First practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of Canada and the United States, potlatch is more than gift-giving. It is a deliberate redistribution of resources, either through money, foods or other material things. That my family was redistributing the same resource was merely our little joke.

Here in Brazil my husband, Mark, and I have gotten deeply involved in a Brazilian version of potlatch that is as intense as it is over-the-top. Oh, it started out innocently enough, in the tradition of the don't-go-anywhere-empty-handed mind set. Invited for dinner? Bottle of wine. Lunch? Maybe flowers, or a dessert from the bakery. But slowly we got sucked into a livelier, more inventive potlatch which, at least in our circle, centers around the redistribution of foodstuffs, whether from the garden, the stove or the still.

The kitchen garden, or horta, potlatch is our most active exchange. Whether we've invited people for a meal or a friend just drops by, we have been on the receiving end of large bags of homegrown kale, of bananas and avocados picked right off their trees, and of baskets of fruits I'd once never heard of, but which now I covet: acerola and pitanga. We have returned the favors with red and green peppers, lettuces, cherry tomatoes, beets and carrots, all picked from our own garden. And we have melon ripening as I write. Already some people are eyeing them for future exchanges.

All from backyard stills

We also have developed an interesting alcoholic beverage potlatch, which includes moonshine as well as the store-bought variety. We have happily accepted all kinds of interesting homemade cachaças, each more gut-burning than the other. And we hold up our side with honor, bringing bottles of my own homemade limoncello, a digestif that I love, but which is not readily available here. I make it in large batches, so there are always extra bottles to give away. But our booze potlatch isn't all mountain rye from pappy's little still. The offerings have ranged from bottles of lovely red wines to cartons of sparkling wines, from 12-year-old Scotch to Piper Heidsieck. My all-time favorite is the 1.75-liter bottle of rosé that was brought — along with many, many other bottles that day —  by friends we had invited for a weekend of high-end gluttony. I don't know what to do with the empty bottle, but I can't bring myself to recycle it just yet.

As for prepared foods, well, we seem to have entered another plane beyond the homemade cakes and cookies of my youth. Here the exchange revolves more around homemade jams and jellies, and even chutneys and crystallized ginger. The winner in this potlatch category, though, is our cleaning lady, Rosângela. Over the years she has taken it upon herself to make sure Mark and I taste all the Brazilian dishes she feels we should know, and she makes sure that what she brings is engordante (fattening), since we're too thin for her taste. And every year around Christmas she brings us rabanada, similar to but not quite French toast. Every year around the June holidays known here as the festas juninas she brings us canjica, similar to but not quite rice pudding (it uses hominy instead of rice). Her garden is enormous and her generosity is boundless. She comes on Tuesdays and Fridays . . . wonder what she'll bring tomorrow.

Rabanada

Canjica

Gift-giving

Mums the word . . .

Many, many years ago in France I was invited to a dinner party and wanted to bring a gift for the hostess. Flowers! Always a good idea, I thought to myself. So I arrived at the dinner armed with a huge bouquet of gorgeous chrysanthemums. But my bouquet was accepted with a very reserved "merci," spirited away to some back room, and never mentioned again. I chalked it up to French sangfroid. It was only days later that I was told by a friend who felt sorry for me that one never, ever, brings mums to a French household — unless the household is in mourning. Oops. Live and learn. From that day forward I understood that gifts are not so easily translated from one country to another. Don't bring clocks to a Chinese home, for example, clocks are for funerals. Don't bring white flowers to the Japanese, or anything white for that matter, it's the color of death — and funerals. (I think there's a theme here.) Invited to a home in Mumbai? Don't bring anything leather. And don't bring anything purple to an Italian home, you're just bringing them bad luck.

Well, wherever I'm living there's no way I can go to someone's home empty-handed. (Remember Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin? We had the same mother . . .) Mark and I always bring something when we're on our way to a dinner, whether edible, drinkable, readable or playable. There's one thing very strange about the gift relationship here in Brazil, though. You go to a birthday party, for example. You put the gift you've brought onto a pile with the other gifts. But, if the gift isn't opened and gushed over immediately, only rarely do you get a thank-you note or a thank-you phone call. In the States, you spend half your childhood under instructions from your mother not to leave your room until you've written out neatly, Dear Grandma, Thank you for the pretty handkerchief that you gave me for my birthday. I'm sure I will use it well. Or Dear Uncle Morris, Thank you for the $5.00 you sent for my graduation. I'm sure I will use it well. Here it just seems not to be the custom. And what's even worse than the silences after birthday parties are the silences after weddings. Don't take this wrong, dear Brazilian friends, but on several occasions we have been to stores where a marrying couple has enrolled in the wedding registry. We've ordered a desired gift and paid for it. If it's not acknowledged, how do we know it's even been delivered? Are we supposed to ask? Help us here, we're truly in the dark.

Still blooming, after all these years

Now that I've gotten that quibble off my chest, let me add that Brazilians are not just the warmest, most loving, hugging-est people I've ever met, they're also way over the top in their own gift-giving. Plenty of times people have turned up at our house for a casual dinner as if it were Christmas in Bethlehem. We've received our share of beautiful flowering plants, some still alive and flowering, many years later; we've been pleased to receive cases and cases of wine, always very much appreciated, plus scotch, and champagnes of all labels. We've enjoyed lots of homemade goodies, too. Possibly the most original gift was a hand-blown glass swan, blown just hours before its delivery. The worst? Several sets of Brazilian underwear for me. Way too small. Way too uncomfortable. Way too intimate. I re-gifted it, and quickly. Among the gifts that have most touched my heart, though, are those that have come from our cleaning lady. She is forever bringing us vegetables from her garden and strange, exotic fruits plucked right off her own trees. And several times a month her mother — who's never met me, but has some idea I'm too thin — makes something sugary sweet for Dona Bárbara. What more warmth can a person receive?