Best pasta in the world

This recipe is probably the most incredible pasta I've ever had in my life. This is a creation by my culinary genius brother Daniel. Not all ingredients are available here in the US, but you can be creative and still get a very similar taste. I have videos of this with more specific info. If you're really interested in making this, let me know and I'll get you the exact measurements. This would feed 4 Fernandos, or 6 normal people. Hope this makes you as hungry as it's making me right now.

Here are the ingredients:

- 1 box of linguini pasta

- 2 small cans tomato paste

- 2 cubes of bacon bullion (if you can't find it, use some bacon grease)

- 2 small onions

- Ground beef (I don't know how much, but as much meat as you want)

- 5-7 roma tomatoes, seeded

- 1 can table cream (find it in the Mexican food isle)

- Requeijao (Brazilian cream cheese) - maybe replace it with some cream cheese

- Garlic

- Olive oil

- Salt

- Butter

- Parmesan cheese

Boil the water with some olive oil and salt

Add the pasta and cook it until al dente

Dice the onions

Melt some butter and add some olive oil to it

Add the onion to the oil and butter and cook it until yellow

Add the garlic to the onion

Start working on the tomatoes.

Cut them in 4s and then dice them small.

Add the ground beef to the onions and garlic.

Brown the ground beef with the lid closed for about 10 minutes or so. Make sure it doesn't burn.

Cut the bacon bullion into small pieces.

Add the bullion to the cooking meat.

Your meat should start looking like this after about 10 minutes.

Add the tomato paste to the cooked meat.

Add a couple of cans (tomato paste can) of water and keep boiling

Add the diced tomatoes to the mixture.

Let it boil for about 10 or 20 minutes (I can't remember exactly...)

After a little bit, add the tomato sauce (about 1 can of regular tomato sauce)

Add about half a cup of requeijao

The sauce should start looking like this.

Turn it off and add the can of table cream.

Add the sauce on top of the pasta and grate some cheese on top of it.

Enjoy it with some Guarana and eat until you pass out.

Brazil

So last week I got to go home and spend some time with the family. I had a wonderful time seeing everyone and meeting family members I had never met before. The food was glorious. I absolutely loved the amazing gluttonous moments I had there. My next post will be my brother's unbelievable pasta recipe. Stay tuned.

The most wonderful part of the trip was my Saturday night conversation with my dad about our family history. It was amazing to learn so much about my heritage. My father's been finding lots of names and people and it's just awesome. He gave me a huge binder with a lot of information about our family history. I have about 100 names ready to go to the temple. I am so happy. I even have pictures my dad found that are amazing. Here's a picture of my grandfather's great grandfather, Manoel Camilo. Old old old picture. I've done a little bit of photoshop work on it to clean it up.

I've added here just a few pictures of my time down there. Enjoy!

My beautiful niece Clara

Cousin Manuela

Clara

Nephew Rafael showing me how strong he is.

Mom and sister-in-law Cris

Sudoeste

Potira, my best friend in high school. Or I should say Dr. Potira (she's finishing her PhD!)

Cousin Sophia

At Capital Steakhouse

Avocado popsicle. Yum!!

Sister Luciana and nephew Bernardo

Niece Fernanda, nephew Nicholas and cousin Joao

My beautiful niece Fernandinha

My nephews Bernardo and Nicholas

My beautiful niece Barbara

Part of the family at pizza place

Old friends from school

The most incredible pasta ever made. Thanks Daniel.

Mom and dad at church.

Lunch made by Tia Inez. Thank you!

Brother Daniel, his wife Cris, and kids Rafael and Clara.

Mom and Dad.

The woes of thirtyhood

Turning 30 has been one of the strangest events of my life. Although having a party and getting presents was fun and all, things just haven't been the same since the fateful three decade anniversary of my arrival on planet earth. Here are some of the things that have happened since January 27th, 2010:

- I've gained 2 lbs;

- I noticed I'm actually balder than I previously thought;

- I've had bronchitis for 4 weeks;

- I couldn't handle cross-country skiing for more than 1 hour;

- I am ready to go to bed at 7:30 pm;

If I'm breaking this badly at age 30, what's going to happen when I'm actually old? Oh boy.

Happiest place on earth

So the pretty lady and I were at Disneyland last week. What an incredibly fun place. We had a lot of fun, especially because there were no lines! This is by far the best time of the year to go. The longest line was probably 15 minutes long. Saturday was a lot busier, but still, not bad, especially when compared to the last time we were there.

I just wanted to post this little video I took one of the times we rode California Screamin', which is by far my favorite ride. Have fun and enjoy!

I'm back

I'm back, folks! Your favorite pseudo political commentator/world analyst/ chef extraordinaire. Am I full of myself or is that how I really see my role in society? I guess a little bit of both.

I don't have much to say right now, so I'll just share a gastronomical experience I had in Vegas last week. I was there for CES 2010 with my company. Our PR agency, Alpaytac, invited me, our company president and one of our VPs to dinner at Daniel Boulud's Brasserie at the Wynn. It was by far one of the most incredible eating experiences of my life. Living in Salt Lake, we don't get many options for high end restaurants, which is a complete shame. So this made the experience in Vegas even more incredible.

The atmosphere was just incredible. From inside the restaurant you can watch a show that plays about every 20 minutes right outside. It's quite an awesome experience.

The servers were very friendly and polite. Now, be prepared to spend a very pretty penny there. This is not Outback, so not only do you pay for every single thing that comes to your table, but also your food doesn't come within 5 minutes. Be ready to wait a little bit. The average price for an entree is $45. Side dish average is $20.

I had a delicious salad to begin, then an amazing French Onion soup. The top of the soup was covered in really thick cheese. Wow. Then my main dish was a filet mignon on a bed of super green spinach with baby potatoes on the side (marvelously seasoned). The filet was covered with a buttery sauce, similar to a hollandaise sauce, but a little sweeter. I could actually taste a little bit of coconut in it. I asked for it medium well, and that's perfectly what I got. The filet was so tender that I could have cut it with a spoon. This was by far the most delicious piece of steak I have ever had. Unreal! Worth every penny (although I didn't pay for it). We also had a cheese platter on our table that was just wonderful. I even asked the server to write down the names of all the cheeses for me so I could find them later. Mmmm...

Check out their website: http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/#dining/dbBrasserie/

Brazil's having the best week ever

Brazil is having the best week ever; and so am I.

There's a very prominent disease that attacks Brazilians in general, knocking us off our feet, threatening to diminish our value, ensuing feverous fear and incompetence that is nothing but psychic tricks brought on by a lack of self-assurance and a history of consecutive failures. Brazilians suffer from LNSF, or Low National Self-Esteem. Sure, we’re proud of our 5 World Cup titles, our paradisiacal beaches and our warm and loving people. But deep inside, we all want and need more. There’s an innate need in all Brazilians that screams hoarsely: “Look at me! I’m really really cool!”

This week Brazil received another dosage of a much-needed antidote that may forever defeat this sad case of LNSF. Hosting the 2016 Olympics for us means more than just a summer event full of foreign crowds and rowdy sports maniacs. In fact, the 2016 Olympics will be hosted in the middle of Rio’s brutal blistering winter. The 66 votes that elected Rio to host the summer games were nothing but loud affirmations by the rest of the world that exclaimed somewhat skeptically: “YES! We believe in you?” But we don’t care about the side effects of skepticism. We beat Japan, Spain and mighty Obama’s America. We’re hosting the World Cup and the Olympics 2 years apart, the most important sports events in the planet. We survived this nasty economic swine crisis and even improved, while the rest of the world continues to show high fever and constant hemorrhage.

Brazil is pulling itself out of its self-proclaimed comma. It has planned, created and applied a powerful vaccine that has been slowly destroying the harmful and destructive effects of LNSF. All we needed was the IOC to sign our hospital release papers.

It’s our turn to show the world that we are indeed that cool; that our beaches are actually that beautiful; and that our people are proud, happy, loving and loud. Bring on the world. We’re ready.

Sweet Victory

There's one thing that Brazilians really look forward to when it comes to soccer: beating Argentina. The more important the competition, the higher the stakes. Saturday, Brazil played Argentina for the South Africa 2010 World Cup qualifiers. Only 32 countries qualify for the World Cup every 4 years, 4 of those countries being from South America. Brazil is currently the leader in the South American qualifiers, and they needed to beat Argentina on Saturday to qualify early for the World Cup. Now, if you know Argentina's soccer team, you'll know beating them in them in their home turf is a very very difficult task. They have Leonel Messi, one of the best players in the world, and their coach is Maradona, one of the best soccer players in history. Argentina is struggling to qualify for the World Cup and beating Brazil is essential if they want to qualify. Then Saturday came. Watching Brazil play that well almost brought tears to my eyes, especially after seeing the faces of Maradona, Messi and Tevez, in complete unbelief and disappointment. If I were from Argentina, I'd just pack my bags and move to Brazil and beg for Sports Refuge. Kaka and Luis Fabiano are just ridiculous. What they did in that field is what makes Brazil once again the best soccer team in the world (Fifa Ranking as of Sept 2). http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/ranking/lastranking/gender=m/fullranking.html

Here's a video (in Portuguese) with the highlights of Saturday's game. Just watch how incredible Kaka's passes for the 2nd and 3rd goals were. I think he sees the field from a TV camera view, like I see the field when I'm playing FIFA 09 on my Xbox. It's crazy!!!