At the village table

In 2011, Maria da Conceição Gonçalves Mouta already cooked in gas stove and stainless steel pans. However, the whole meal returned to the fireplace and to the three-legged pots.

The collection in Recovos, Pedraça, also notes that it sometimes resumed this way of cooking outside Christmas. The old utensil continued to take place in a kitchen that had changed. It is a family memory, not a custom attributed to all the houses of the municipality.

In the crops remembered by Maria da Conceição, the first meal was called lunch and arrived at nine or nine and a half. Fried cod was served with bread, followed by chestnuts broth.

The testimony associates this rhythm to April and May, when tilling and sowing corn. The words of the meals also guard ways of organizing the work. It is the memory collected in this family, not a general time of the municipality.

In this case, the learning of broth came from the mother-in-law, born in Pedraça. The testimony thus distinguishes different people in the transmission of the recipes. The preparation used dried chestnuts, approaching an autumn harvest of spring labor from the fields. The meal recalled gathered preserved food, bread and a concrete agricultural task: to till and sow corn.

The metal box L 104, of Joaquina Basto, of Arosa, Cavez, carried sweets for parties. Media 88 cm long, 45,5 height and 43,5 width.

The measurements help imagine the backstage of the party; the inventory does not identify the content of each trip or the weight charged.

The number L 104 allows you to recognize this box in the inventory and distinguish it from other containers. The chart associates a name, a location, a material and a function. Instead of showing only the ready candy, this object draws attention to the transport that the party required.

Compares its length to its height: the box was much longer than high. You can draw a scale rectangle to imagine the space occupied, without deducing how many sweets it took. The inventory records external dimensions, not a useful capacity or a weight.

In Gondiães, the party begins to be prepared days before reaching the table. In the visit of 2012, the Land Museum of Basto found the bread already ready when, at dawn, the popes were made. First the stump was cooked; then, in the water of this cooking, the white corn flour would enter. The great iron pots gave way to glazed clay malgae, ready to wait for blessing and sharing. It is the report of a collective preparation that year, not a recipe with quantities or sahrabulho popes.

The report also distinguishes two moments of eating: on the morning of the feast there were hot popes for those who arrived with malga and spoon; in the collective distribution they were served cold, firm enough to cut to the cut. The next day, the meeting was intended for the residents and the popes were again served hot. They are moments of the documented visit, not times of a future edition.

In the visit to Gondiães January 2012, a stick marked the intervals between the sets of bread, ribs and popes at the tables. Each group then distributed these foods among the participants. Preparation brought together return residents and emigrants.

The piece of bread was called carolo. The account presents the protection of São Sebastião as a legend of origin, without documentation that fixes the beginning of the party.