A few months ago while hanging out at the beach with our friends, the Taylors, we got to talking about both of our Portuguese heritage backgrounds. You may remember from my previous post about the history of Holy Ghost Festas and on how I grew up going to festas {pronounced ‘feshtas’}, and that both of my sisters were queens within the Petaluma Holy Ghost Society years ago. Well, Karen’s sister, Kathleen was also a queen years ago but within the Sausalito Holy Ghost Society.
Anyway, we got to talking about how we want to expose our own kids to the same cultural experiences we grew up with. My family has membership with the Petaluma Society and Karen and her family just recently became members of the Sausalito Society. She was telling me how the Sausalito Society was very active in recruiting new, young members who are interested in learning and preserving the Portuguese culture.
THEN, she tells me I should check out their website.
Um…..website??!!
I had never heard of any such thing {at least around this areaa}.....a Portuguese Holy Ghost Society having a website? This, I had to check out.
So, to make a long story short, after checking out the website, I saw that they had so much to offer, such as Portuguese language classes, group outings and they keep connected with members by their online newsletter. Of course I signed our family up to become members of the Sausalito Society right then and there.
Last night we attended the Member’s Dinner. The traditional Azorean Sopas was served along with the traditional beef and a bonus side of cooked cabbage, carrots and sweet potatoes. Most of the festas I’ve been to have only served the sopas and beef, so it was really nice to have the veggie dish included with the meal. The sopa dinner was prepared by Manual Azevedo, who is the Chef and owner of LaSalette Restaurant in Sonoma, CA and Ruben da Silva and was such a delicious, flavorful treat that brought back many childhood memories.
Here is the display of the Senior and Junior Queen's crowns, which are worn on the day of the Sausalito festa where the new incoming queens are crowned.
Also in the display room hangs photos of all previous queens that have had the honor as sitting as Sausalito Holy Ghost Society queens.
Dinner is always served family style. Here's a pot of sopas garnished with the traditional mint.
The beef.
And here's the delicious cooked cabbage with white sweet potatoes and carrots.
All this was served to a packed house.
My little carnivore was extremely happy.
Time for dessert, served by Chef Manual.
Rice pudding dessert.
Stenciled with cinnamon.
And we finished off the night with a little dancing.
Happy Sunday!
