feijoada!

Here's the feijoada, cooking away. It smells and tastes like nothing I've had before, but its European roots show through quite clearly. Feijoada is basically a beef-and-bean stew that faintly reminds me of the meat combination found in choucroute alsacienne. Apparently, you're supposed to serve this with a toasted-flour sprinkle and orange wedges on top. My brother David tells me that, the longer you boil the stew, the better it gets. At the same time, David warned that, when feijoada rots, it rots big-time.

What you see in the pic below looks more or less like what I saw in the various feijoada videos on YouTube. A preliminary sampling tastes quite good. I expect this to age into awesomeness by Friday, and will probably use my slow-cooker on Thursday to help it along.