|
|
Dining in Brazil - Brazil Trip
|
|
Brazil has some wonderful dinning experiences to offer. Their cuisine is influenced by the native Indians, the Portuguese colonists and the
African slaves they brought with them to work sugar cane fields (and later mines.) Where we were in Minas Gerais, the food beef was very popular,
and there was a wide variety of tropical fruit. We tried to be adventurous and try anything offered to us, and there were very few things we didn't
enjoy. In fact there are several things such as Mate Cola and passion fruit that we crave now that we are home! We have to admit though,
we were still craving Chinese food on the plane home. If you are looking for some Brazilian recipes, try here: http://www.maria-brazil.org/brazilian_recipes.htm
| Kilo Restaurant in Brazil |
It is a kilo restaurant. You fill you plate from the buffet, and they pay by the kilo at the cashier.This is the restaurant near David's office where we usually ate lunch. |  |
 | 
The favorite vegetable dish in this region is couve a mineira, shredded kale sauteed in oil with onion and lots of garlic. |
 | 
Our favorite dish was the stew/meat with gravy (bottom row, middle) |
| Traditional Meal in Brazil |
David and his wife, Julia, took us to a wonderful churrascaria out in the country side. It had beautiful views.
| 
They serve different grilled meats on skewers. The servers come to your table and slice off the meat on to your plate.
|
We stopped at this restaurant on the way to the aquamarine mines.
| 
It was popular with the truckers, so we knew it had to be good!
|
The bottle on the table is Guaranį. It is made from the fruit called guaranį which is naturally high in caffiene. It tastes a bit like cream soda, and is very popular in Brazil. If you have a latin market near you, get some and try it! | 
The meal consisted of picanha, a type of grilled beef, fried eggs, rice, a dish similar to pork and beans, tomatos & onions, and moniac meal (type of flour made from the cassava root , use to dip beef in or to soak up juices...sounds strange, but it's good.)
|
| At the Garimpeiro's Cottage |
We had the hotel open one of these coconuts for us. We drank the juice and tried some of the soft meat inside.
| 
This is a cashew tree. Who woulda thunk? All the boys (Dev, David, and Corrego spent a good half hour throwing sticks at the tree to get one down.
|
This is the cashew fruit. The nut is in the little pod thing at the top. The pod and oil around the cashew nut are poisonous, we didn't mess with that part. | 
David and Corrego prepare the fruit for us. It tasted a bit like sour apple with a weird "suck all the fluid out of your mouth" after taste.
|
| Grocery Stores |
One of the grocery stores in Teofilo Otoni.
| 
The produce aisle. Those are eggs on the second table in. You just put them in a bag and carefully take them to checkout and hope they make it home. Funny the things appreciate when you don't have them...egg cartons!
|
A large striped catfish popular in Brazil. | 
Just thought the names of the toilet paper were funny!
|
| Other Food Related Stores |
BBQ is taken very seriously here.
| 
Don't mess with the bbq...
|
This is the pizza place we went to several times. Pizza margarita is the way to go, but ask for extra sauce on the side. For some reason, Brazilians haven't adopted the tomato they way Americans have. | 
A caldo de cana (sugar cane juice) vender.
|
Mate Cola is made in Teofilo Otoni. It was our favorite drink in Brazil, and we were surprised that we couldn't find it in other cities. It's made from the mate leaf, which is used for tea or chewed.
| 
This is had the best drinks called vitaminas..sort of a creamy fruit smoothy. Passion fruit is the best!
|
Use the links below to check out other topics of interest from our trip to Brazil.
| Getting Ready for Brazil Trip - Topics of Interest |
| |
Click any text above for more information
|
