Anticipation, Anticipa-a-tion

Sometimes we get hungry for restaurant food we used to get occasionally at home.  (We only talk about it 4 or 5 times a week.  Or maybe a day.)  We think the restaurants are a little expensive here so we don't go out too often.  But, recently we saw this advertisement and thought Hallelujah! There is a place we can buy deep-fried, battered shrimp.  Let's go!  (We had asked before at a couple of other restaurants if it was available, and they acted like they had never heard of such a thing.)

We made plans, talked about it all day,  and decided to take along our bottle of cocktail sauce we had imported from home. We headed out at about 6:30 or 7:00, which is early by Brazilian standards.  We got seated quickly, and ordered quickly because we knew what we wanted. It didn't take long for our waiter to come back with our order.  It was about this time we realized we had forgotten to bring our cocktail sauce, but no worries.  We could see that it was a lot of food and we just figured we would eat some of the shrimp there and then ask for a box and take the rest home to eat with the sauce.

It looked great.  The shrimp were all lined up around the outside of the serving dish atop some pretty rice and vegetables with some potatoes in the middle. (I just realized that I 'm not sure whether I should say shrimp or shrimps and use was or were.  I guess I will look up the plural form later.)  Anyway, Alan beat me to the first shrimp.  He took a bite.  I waited for a reaction.  I honestly thought he was going to cry, and he said he almost did.

But alas, not for joy.

Each shrimp had been split and filled with what we later found out was catipury cheese before it was battered and fried.  I think Alan described it pretty well when he said it was like biting into a nice, juicy shrimp that had been covered in a generic brand of Easy Cheese.  I thought the texture was more along the lines of Elmer's Glue. ( Not that I've eaten any since elementary school, but that's what came to mind.)

So we ate the potatoes, of course, stirred the rice around a bit, and asked for a box.  Before we left the restaurant Alan asked if we could order the shrimp another time without the cheese.  The waiter said, "No because we just buy them frozen.  They come that way."

Pre-frozen shrimp and we are 50 yards from the ocean?  Talk about a double whammy!  Actually, triple whammy if you consider the price we paid. 

When we got home we made some incisions,  squeezed the cheese out and enjoyed some nearly cheese-free shrimp WITH imported cocktail sauce. Not too bad, but there was a certain air of sadness, bordering depression as we ate.

It's still hard to talk about.