Que gostoso!

Those who know me understand that I truly enjoy food.  So, I would like to take some space to describe some of our best and worst food experiences in Brazil thus far.

The Delicious

Rice and Beans

I've come a long way from when I ate rice and beans for breakfast with my host family in Costa Rica at age fifteen.  At the time, they must have been able to tell I was not used to it, since they set our Kellog's Cornflakes for me every breakfast after that.  However, I do not get tired of rice and beans here in Brazil.  Even in our school cafeteria, it is available every day for lunch without fail, and most days I take it and enjoy it.  There is something special about the way they flavor it.  I think they must use a lot of garlic.

Tropical Fruits

My favorite is passion fruit.  There is a creamy dessert mold they make here that is the flavor of passion fruit that I will not pass up.  We also eat a lot of papaya, watermelon, pineapple, and mango.  We also buy the pulp frozen, then mix it with yogurt and banana for a breakfast vitamina, or smoothie.  Another favorite is (pronounced ah-sah-EE), which is a dark reddish purple.  Açaí is the only fruit I have heard of that is actually high in fat, and it is worth the extra calories!  You can get it whipped up in a thick smoothie that reminds me of dark chocolate ice cream in its appearance, but tastes like only açaí can.  We enjoy it most at a restaurant at Barra Beach called Golden Sucos.  Sucos is what locals call fruit juice, often mixed with sugar and some water. 

Juices at Bibi Sucos
(L to R) Mixed red fruits, strawberry and cacao, pineapple mint, pitanga

Rabanada

A special Christmas treat in Brazil:  sliced bread soaked in eggs and sweetened condensed milk, fried in oil, then smothered with cinnamon and sugar.  I drool just thinking about the warm, custardy bread in my mouth.  Our school chef made them for our school breakfast!

Churrasco

Churrasco (shu-HA-skoo) is Brazilian for barbecued meat.  Picture an entire wall of grills filled with skewers of every cut of beef imaginable, tiny chicken hearts, linguiça (pork sausage), and even grilled pineapple.  There are restaurants that specialize in this, one of which we visited while in Iguaçu Falls.  The meat is delicious and all-you-can eat.  If only my palate would not tire of eating so much salty meat! 

Beets

Much to Z's dismay, beets are a popular side vegetable here.  My body needs iron, so I pile up my plate when beets are served for school lunch.  (Did I mention our school lunch is delicious?)

Doce de leite

I cannot go without mentioning this delectable golden-brown paste made from milk and sugar.  It is used for filling in cakes and cookies, or you can just spread it on a piece of bread like I just did for my snack.  Of course, you can also just eat it by the spoonful, which I also just did.  (Hey, this is South America's version of Nutella--of course you can eat it by the spoonful!) 

Guaraná

Guaraná is what Z almost always orders for his restaurant beverage.  He especially loves the version that includes açaí.  This is what he drinks for a bubbling refreshment, to keep awake at the wheel, or just for fun.  Guaraná is a nut or berry from the Amazon that is known as a stimulant.  This soft drink is Brazil's Mountain Dew.  I heard, however, that the soft drink does not actually contain any of the Amazonian fruit.  I recently decided to try the real stuff in powdered form, which I use to spruce up my morning shakes.  A suggestion from a friend:  do not drink before you go to bed.  Guaraná powder will give you such a boost of energy that you will not be able to sleep. 

Fish

On Ilha Grande, we enjoyed a meal of a whole fried fish, with rice, beans, and salad.  The "restaurant" was a few plastic tables and chairs set out in front of a woman's house.  Her eight-year-old son was our waiter.  This was the best food we ate on the island, and the best fish I have had in Brazil.

The Less Delicious 

Pizza

While I am grateful to have pizza in Brazil as a comfort food of sorts, the amount of mozzarella on Brazilian pizza is literally hard to swallow.  The mozzarella also tastes slightly different here, which turns me off from pizza.  There is a type of restaurant here called a rodizio, which is an all-you-can-eat restaurant where the waiters come around to each table with different pizzas (or meat, or whatever the theme of the restaurant might be).  You can accept or decline to your heart's content.  Perhaps this is how I experienced cheese overload!  The dessert pizzas, however, deserve mention, as they are unforgettable, often involving chocolate.  Too bad the waiters bring them out last when I am already filled with cheese.

Mushrooms

Imagine the canned, slimy kind.  Yes, Mom, the kind that probably turned you off from mushrooms forever.  (So sad.)

Lasagna

When I asked my second-grade students what their favorite food was, all three of them claimed lasagna.  This surprised me because they are all from different countries, and not one of them from Italy.  I do not enjoy lasagna in Brazil because it is always made with at least two kinds of meat.  There is usually ground beef and a layer of ham.  Again, lots of mozzarella topped off with a creamy white sauce makes for a dish that is too rich for me.

Moving on to Brazilian food, it tends to be too salty for my taste.  One day, B's maid cooked carrots for dinner, and I thought they were inedible, they were so salty.  If food is not salty, it is usually bland, so we do miss the spiciness of Asian and Mexican food we used to enjoy.  We did find hot sauce at the grocery store, which I used to make burritos at home.  We also brought some chili pepper flakes from the States, which we used to make fresh tomato salsa for B and L when we were staying with them.  Well, I guess we did not realize that red pepper flakes become even spicier when you cook them because, while the salsa had enough bite to satisfy our craving for spice, B and L's mouths were on fire!

Our next door neighboors from India help fulfill our need for spiciness with their homemade food that, lucky for us, they love to share!  They claim that it is not as spicy as what you will find in India (and even they were unable to handle the spiciness when they visited India last month), but it is just right for us.  S, our Indian chef, is so good at cooking that she could open her own restaurant, I am sure.  Much of my culinary pleasure while in Brazil has originated from her kitchen.  They are lacto-vegetarian, which means they eat a lot of vegetables, my favorite!  S has a container filled with the staple spices, which she dumps by the tablespoons-ful into the simmering pot.  She also uses a lot of rapadura sugar in her cooking.  The result is mouth-watering and nutritious at the same time.  Aah.  As I believe I have said before, who would have thought I would be learning so much about India in Brazil?  It has made our lives all the richer to have known such friends.

As I publish this, we are now back in the United States, as we stayed in Brazil the maximum number of days possible.  We are waiting at Z's parents' home in Santa Rosa, California for approval of our work visas (for which we have reapplied), at which point we will return to Brazil to resume work.  Please pray that we can know God's will for us as we make decisions about the future.