Pina's Birth Day

Happy birthday to the family matriarch who adorns The Carioca Kitchen pattern and forever fills our family’s culinary hearts ❤️

The note on the back of this photo says "At the bar in my apartment, 1948" and little did I know my grandmother once had a bar, I never knew her to hold a drink at all. I imagine this was one of the epic game nights she was known for hosting; the name of the game in Brazil is Buraco, which is akin to Canasta. She taught me how to play, and she never let me win. I learned how to roll out gnocchi and to be a ruthless card player from her. I’d love nothing more than to play a round and share a drink with her.

Born Josephina Teresina Amélia Guimaraes, but known to most as just Pina, my grandmother wrote a short novel with excerpts of memories from her life, including this origin story:

“I was born at home with the help of a midwife at 7 pm on a rainy night. The house was at Rua Martinico Prado, 417, in the Higienópolis neighborhood, which at the time was an elegant neighborhood with mansions of coffee barons and rich cotton farmers. I was born in São Paulo capital on the 13th of September 1927. A Virgin, though not always... Unofficially it was on the 13th, but officially my maternal grandfather, a native Italian, spoke poor Portuguese, and when declaring to the notary, this one understood the 3rd, and so this is how I went through life. As for my name, that’s a different story. I carry it with distaste for it being so long and heavy. Why was it so long you ask? Family! At that time, the tradition was to name the first grandson or granddaughter after the grandparents. When my mother got pregnant, she received letters from Italy asking, “will it be a Giuseppina or a Riccardo?” They translated for Josephina. My mother had also made a promise to “Santa Therezinha”, but the ill-fated clerk understood Teresina, and Amélia comes from the name of her maternal grandmother, so there would be no jealousy.”