Cook-up at the office - A special community lunch

Hello everyone,

This week we had a fun and delicious event at the office. We had a community lunch where a group of us cooked meals for the whole team to share.

This event was something that one of our managers had wanted to organize for years and this year he finally had everyone on board. The way it was organised worked pretty well and I believe people will get more and more excited for the next ones.

We are 25 people at the office and we got divided into teams that are responsible to cook a meal for the rest of the group. We are a very diverse group there so we have the opportunity to taste a wide range of different food.

I was in the first team, so we were the guinea pigs of the event and would set the bar for the next ones. Fortunately, our meal was a success and everyone enjoyed not only the event of sharing the meal but also the taste of all the dishes. There was almost no leftovers.

Our team was composed of one Brazilian (me), one Spanish, one Indian and one Vietnamese. Each one of us cooked (or bought) one or more dish to be shared by the group. I cooked only one dish, Feijão Tropeiro. A very hearty meal that has its roots with the first explorers invaders of my country. It consists of pork sausage, bacon, beans, eggs, collard greens and cassava flour. It’s usually eaten as a side dish nowadays, but the origin was that it would be the main meal.

I was quite anxious on the day and afraid that people wouldn’t like it but it turned out really good and people enjoyed it. I cooked a very big portion mainly because I have no idea how to make small portions of food, especially if I’m cooking for others. 😂 At the end, the container was almost empty. We did have a bit of leftover to eat the next day though, so it was a good thing.

As you can see from the photos below, people were having a great time sharing a meal and tasting different flavours from around the world.

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Here are photos of all the dishes that we had. My colleague Sonia made the labels in the morning to show what were the contents of the dishes and the level of spiciness. That was a great idea because her and I have the least tolerance for spicy foods. Which will be a challenge for us in this event since half of our office is composed of Indian people. 😄
But the way the teams are divided seems to be well balanced so I believe we will be fine in the next events. I will post about them and let you know how the next teams will do.

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And a photo of how the table was set

And here is a photo of the team - Michael, Me, Shivani and Sonia
The best cookup team (so far 😉)

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I really loved participating in this community meal and I can’t wait for the next one.

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