Brazilian Noms

Past exchange students often come up in my everyday conversations with Brazilians. Interestingly enough, it's also common for them to add in something like, "oh, she gained 15 kilos while she was here." While I'm praying that weight gain won't be part of whatever legacy I leave here in Rolândia, I can absolutely understand how and why it happens. It is not an exaggeration to say that I am immensely enjoying the food here in Brazil - in fact, when people ask me what I'm enjoying most about my stay so far, that's generally my answer. Because of this, I thought I would give a little overview of my experiences with food (complete with Google images) here in Brazil thus far:

Breakfast
My family generally eats papaya, toast, cake or cookies for breakfast. This is, of course, in addition to coffee, which is, indeed, as good here as I was hoping it would be (probably partially because everyone over-sugars their coffee - delicious).
I've always been a big breakfast eater, and my host mom recognized this and has been nice enough to make sure I always have a box of cereal in the pantry. I also eat a lot of yogurt (my favorite flavor is COCONUT) with granola and fruit. I almost always eat a banana at breakfast, too - they're tiny, sweet, and delicious.

Snack

At school, we get a 20 minute break everyday. During this time, you can buy snacks from school. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the big snack is salgado - it's essentially bread wrapped around some sort of meat. They have all different kinds - ham and cheese, hamburger, chicken, beef. On Tuesdays they have a variety of different types of pizza, and on Thursdays there are hotdogs. In addition to this, everyday there are things like iced tea, juice, granola bars, cakes, sandwiches, and other sweets available.
A lot of kids also bring a snack from home, which is what I generally do (being I eat a bigger breakfast than most Brazilians, a hotdog at 10:00 usually sounds like way too much food). I tend to have crackers, a granola bar, or fruit.

Lunch
Lunch is the big meal of the day here in Brazil. At around 1:00, it seems as though all families in Brazil are able to get together and share a meal before heading back to school or work.
Lunches at home are generally like this:
First, a good plate of salad (lettuce, tomato, cucumber, carrots - sometimes onion, green beans, hardboiled egg). Oftentimes we have another vegetable, like broccoli, in addition to salad.

Next, rice and beans. I've been sitting here for a minute trying to find a good way to explain how much I like rice and beans, but I'm having a hard time. In the past, I've said things like, "I could eat Hogan Brothers everyday and not get sick of it." Here, I do eat rice and beans every day, and not only have I not grown sick of it, I actually look forward to it. I know it doesn't look very appetizing (I still think it looks kind of gross and I basically just confessed my love for it), but it is definitely something I will bring back to the US to share with my family.
In addition to this, we always have some sort of meat (pork, beef, chicken, fish) and often one "extra" thing (fried potatoes, potato salad, rice cakes, extra vegetables, whatever). The meal is often completed with some sort of fruit (most often oranges).
Most people, from what I've seen, drink juice during lunch. I tend to stick with water, unless I know the juice is freshly-squeezed -- who could turn that down?

Snack #2
Around 5 o'clock there is "coffee/tea" time here in Brazil. The type of food eaten here varies greatly: cookies, cakes, toast, fruit, salgados, sandwiches, sweet breads, etc. This is, of course, in addition to another cup of coffee!


Dinner
Dinners here occur around 8-9 pm and are as varied as mine are in Minnesota. Here's what I've had the past few nights for dinner, just to give you an example:
On Saturday night, I went to a church supper and had salad, spaghetti, and grilled chicken.
On Sunday, we had vegetables, sandwiches, and salgados.
On Monday, I had leftovers from lunch (salad, rice and beans, fish).
On Tuesday, I was at Rotary, where we had vegetables, rice and beans, and beef with legumes.
Yesterday, we went out for shrimp (seven different kinds!)
Tonight, we ordered Japanese food.
One of my favorite dinners is margherita pizza from a shop downtown - delicious!
Often we have chocolate for dessert. :)
Again, most people drink something other than water (usually juice) with dinner.

Snack #3??
Occasionally, when I've been out after dinner, people provide a THIRD snack of the day. It's usually the same type of snacks (salgados, cakes, egg-bake type things) as earlier in the day, except often with soda or juice rather than/in addition to coffee. (I always turn this snack down at first because the thought of putting any more food in the body seems impossible.. but I am usually persuaded into a delicious plate of food).

DESSERT
I'll just let you take a look.

Brigadero

Pão de Mel

Pudim de Leite

Doce de Leite

 

Bomboms e Truflas

We also seem to have cake here ALL THE TIME. A lot of the time the cake has layers of sweetened condensed milk and coconut. (Hungry yet?)


Other Random Food Things

Guarana soda

•  People always eat with a fork and a knife here.. but with a fork in the right hand, and the knife in the left.
• They drink so much soda! I honestly think I've drank more pop in the past two months here than I have my whole pre-Brazil life. While there is a huge variety of sodas here, it's mostly Coke and Guarana. Guarana is absolutely delicious - I suppose the closest thing I could compare it to in America would be Ginger Ale. It's made with guarana fruit (see photo below) and isn't too fizzy. Huzzah!
• Along with this, no one ever drinks soda straight from the bottle or can. You always have a separate glass to put it in (even if you're not splitting). Also, it's uncommon to fill your glass all the way to the top. Generally, people only half-fill their glass. This seems pretty stupid to mention, but it's one of the first things I picked up on when I got here.

Guarana fruit

• All of Brazil is a lot like going to visit my Grandma Sand - you walk in the door and they're telling you to sit down to eat something, even if you say you've just eaten and couldn't possibly eat any more. People are generally concerned when I refuse food: "you don't even want to try it?"
• People here ask me ALL THE TIME if I miss my mother's cooking. While my mother is one of the best cooks I know (come on over for dinner sometime and you'll see I'm not just saying this), there are really very few foods I miss from the United States. I'm sad to say that most of these things are processed foods, like peanut butter, fruit snacks, chocolate covered almonds, and bunny grahams. Well, and Hogan Brothers, but that kind of goes without saying.
• Most milk here is stored warm until opened. This really concerned me my first week here: my host mom asked me if I preferred my milk chilled and I thought, "how else would you drink it? wouldn't it go bad if you kept it outside of the fridge? am I going to get sick?" I never did get sick, and I actually like the skim milk here in Brazil (although I'm always sure to put it in the fridge a day before I need to open a new container!)
• What American foods have Brazilians asked about most? Cupcakes, muffins, and breakfast. (Do you eat eggs and bacon every day?) One of host cousins keeps mentioning that it's her dream to have muffins after seeing them in movies so often - I need to find the right pan so I can make her a batch! (They also find it hard to believe that I generally only eat a sandwich and fruit for lunch in the US - with milk to drink, nonetheless!)

For those of you who are familiar with Brazilian culture, you're probably wondering why I haven't mentioned churrasco, as that's a major part of Brazilian culture (and diet). I will get to that eventually - it probably deserves its own post!

Also, for those of you who don't know, or just don't have the link: my older brother, James, is currently teaching Biology, Chemistry, and coaching soccer at an English school in Africa. You can check out his blog here.

Beijos,

Kate