Brazilian Food: December 7, 2012

Snail mail received 7 December 2012

11 November 2012

The Fam:

In this letter I just want to tell you all about the different types of food that we always eat here on the mission and what some of my favorite Brasilian foods are so far. In other words, it’s going to be a long letter!  I didn’t get to the post office last week, so it helps to send these two letters in one. Yay!

Let’s start off with beverages. We drink a lot of juice and soda (trying to limit the soda). Juice first: you just get juice packets at the store, and voila, juice easy!  Soda is a little more complicated. I will rate my favorite sodas (we can’t drink Coke as missionaries):  #1 is Fanta Orange, #2 is a soda called Guaraná. It is only here in Brasil and it is hard to explain, but it is really good!  You can probably find it on amazon, I hope. If you can, I recommend that you get some to try it out. Guaraná Antarctica is the best! #3 is pretty much any other soda. It is weird, though, because now 2L bottles seem so tiny because you normally see 2.5L or 3L or 3ven 3.3L bottles of soda (Brazilians love their soda). Milk is pretty much the same here as in the US, but I have fallen in love with a drink mix called Toddy. It is like Nesquick but I think better!  I have a small glass every morning with my tiny breakfast.

On now to rice and beans!  People always told me that I would eat a lot of rice and beans, but in the truth, you eat A LOT of rice and beans!!  On a normal day, I will eat rice and beans at least once, my average is about 1.7 times a day. I only have ever had one lunch where I didn’t have rice and beans, but we had rice!  Luckily, rice and beans are soooo good!  The beans here are so good!  I’m going to learn how to make them for sure before I leave. Normally in addition to the rice and the beans, we have meat, usually beef or chicken. Sometimes spaghetti (they like spaghetti and pasta a lot here, but it is really different, but good). And sometimes lasagna!!  It is so good and so different from any other type of lasagna, I will try to get a recipe for this, too.

Fruits are pretty cheap and easy to get. I especially like pears from Argentina and pineapple!  Everyone here loves pineapple, and we get fresh cut pineapple all the time. Dad, you would love this pineapple!  It is so good and at this restaurant that we eat at all the time, it often has fresh pineapple, and it is all you can eat, just if you leave food on your plate you pay a 4.50R tax. Fruits are pretty awesome here!

Snack Time:  one snack/candy that I love here is called “passoquinha” and it is this peanut candy, almost like the inside of a Reese’s, only like at least 10 times better!  You can probably find a recipe online to try it out (I highly recommend it). I will try and get a recipe for this as well.

And now it is salad time!  They have a very different salad here but it is really good. They just get lettuce and add cut up tomatoes and sometimes mango and they put all kinds of oils and things like that on top!  It is really, really good!  And, I’ll get the recipe for this too of course.

I hope you liked the info about what types of food we eat here on the mission. Brasilians don’t really have nearly as much variety as we have in the US but it is all really good. And even though we eat rice and beans here 1.7 times a day, I still love it every time. It is great!  Also, they don’t use spoons very much, it is mostly done with a knife and fork.

Lots of love,

Elder Eldon Ray Cummings

P.S. Can’t wait to share Brazilian food with you guys after the mission!! J