Food and Grocery Shopping

Less than a mile from our apartment there is a big grocery store called BIG.  It has a huge parking lot outside and one underground as well.  Like many city parking lots in the states, you drive up, push a button and get a card (instead of a ticket) and then a bar lifts up so you can drive in.  The funny thing is that when you leave, you just return the card.  You don't have to actually pay anything.  We're still trying to figure out why they even do the cards. For security?  To keep track of traffic?



The BIG has a shopping cart escalator that's pretty cool.  Inside all the colors, symbols, and signs look just like Walmart, and guess what?  It has the Great Value brand in English!  I've heard there are actual Walmarts here and also Sam's Club.  No Costco though.  BIG carries lots of brands from the States.  You can always tell which ones are imported and which ones actually have factories here.  If they are imported they cost 2-5 times more.  I found a bottle of Cattlemen's BBQ sauce for $14 reais where a Brazilian brand might cost $5 or $6 reias.  I found Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup for $6 reais, which is the equivalent of several dollars--for ONE can!  In general, a lot of the brands from the State made in Brazil are still fairly expensive by Brazilian standards even though they are cheaper than things imported from the States.  Here are a just few of the brands you probably recognize:

• shampoo--Pantene, Dove, Aussie
• diapers--Huggies, Pampers
• food-Great Value, Campbell's, Heinz, Hellman's, Fleischmann, Knorr
• drinks-Coca Cola (I've heard it tastes different here though.), Tang (these drink packets are BIG here!)
• cleaning supplies--Scotch Brite, Downy, Ajax

This cleaner has a different name but it looks like Mr. Clean.  The name translates to Mr. Muscle.

That said, the majority of food really is brands you wouldn't recognize.  

One thing I found surprising was the lack of exotic produce.  They have large and small papayas and chu chu (a green squash like vegetable) but most of the produce is familiar--carrots, potatoes, apples, pears, pineapple, bell peppers, watermelon, corn, lettuce, watermelon, beets, cucumbers, tomatoes.  Some of the varieties are slightly different textures or shapes than we are used to-potatoes and bell peppers.  The most common type of banana is a smaller, sweeter variety than typical in the state (I think my friend here called it the apple banana), but they do have the bananas we recognize as well.

A few things they DO have that are not as common in the States is really GOOD mango (two types), maracuja (passion fruit), and palmitas (the inside of palm trees--it's pretty yummy)!

Passion fruit and melons, I think those white carrots are parsnips, right?  But palmitos look similar-round, white, about that length and cylindrical.


MEALS

I think a lot of people know that beans and rice make up a typical meal here.  The meal often include spaghetti noodles or macaroni noodles with a sauce similar to spaghetti sauce.  They seem to use less sauce than us though.  It's very common to have juice or soda with lunch and dinner and a salad is made of lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes with some salt and vinegar on top.  So much of the food is cooked with garlic and oil.  In Portuguese the two words sound so close, it's funny to me that they are the companionship in seasoning almost everything here (aleo e oleo).  The most common rice is parboiled rice so first they fry it in a bit in garlic and oil and then they add hot water to the rice to finish cooking it.  The beans also have oil and garlic added as does the macaroni a lot of times!  They fry chicken in aleo and oleo, too!  We learned very quickly that Safari Girl does not like garlic!

Lunch at Carla's our first Saturday--rice, beans, noodles, and lasagna (a bit different than ours)

**The plate in this picture is typical Brazil.  Almost everyone has the exact same ones or clear glass ones.

Fast food at Giraffas at the food court in the mall--rice, beans, fried chicken, and french fries.  The only reason the kids chose this over Burger King and McDonald's (both options at the mall, as is Subway) is because the kids meal toys were awesome!  They each got a game.


I was surprised to find out how much of the food here is fried and cooked in oil.  I've had stomach issues every day getting used to the greasiness. At home, I usually bake or boil things.  With the help of my former mission companion Dani, I've learned to make a few things Brazilian style.

• popcorn--old fashioned style with some oil and kernels in a pot on the stove.  Here they like to put something very similar to sweetened condensed milk on it for a special treat.
• fried chicken-thaw it in a pot of warm water, cut into pieces, rub with garlic and oil, fry it up
• stroganaff-use fried chicken add it to a pot of something similar (I think) to evaporated milk, put corn in a blender for a bit and the blended sauce to the milk, add a bit of ketchup and heat it up over the stove.  Put this mixture on rice and add some shoestring potatoes on top. YUM!  This is a favorite for me and Papai.
• pastel/pasteis-You can buy ready made dough for this here.  It's thin and cut into 4 inch diameter circles.  Fry up some meat (they don't drain it the grease), add in a bit of corn, and some beef broth seasoning and you've got your filling (though there are many more options than beef and corn for these).  Put a couple spoonfuls of that in the center of the circle of dough and fold in have and pinch the edges.  Flip it over and pinch the edges again on the other side and then fry it up until it's golden in some oil.

Pasteis (plural of pastel)

 

Back at home I've given myself a pat on the back feeling like I cook dinner most of the time and we rarely go out to eat.  But here, I've had a wake up call.  I don't know how to cook anything from scratch, and certainly not from memory!  I use recipes for everything and just about everything has at least a can or two of something that is not available here (or that is really expensive here).  It seems like the general population here cooks everything from scratch!  I keep thinking my mom would be able to handle this a lot better than me!  But I'm learning.  I did hear Papai's co-worker say that she buys canned beans because she doesn't have a pressure cooker, which is how they cook their beans here.  But I have not been able to find canned beans anywhere!  I don't have a pressure cooker either. I have actually successfully cooked dried beans at home before (you know, after soaking them overnight) but so far I haven't had luck here.  I've heard of a baking soda solution that softens them up faster.  I'll have to try that next.   

So far I've made mashed potatoes from scratch (fancy, yummy ones for Thanksgiving), a pumpkin pie from a real pumpkin (my first time ever--It's Costco all the way for us!), and this Crockpot Hawaiian Meatball recipe that is one of two recipes that I'm sure Safari Girl will eat every time.  That one failed because I used "kibe" as the meatballs, which I think is more like meatLOAF balls.  They fell apart and turned to mush when I cooked them in the recipe.  Safari Girl was not a fan but Papai still ate them.  I liked that I got to use FRESH pineapple in the recipe!!  My mission companion keeps requesting a meal that I'd make at home but I have found it much easier to just cook what Brazilians cook.  That's my homework this week--find one of my usual recipes that we can make here.

It's been tough to find healthy food that Safari Girl will eat.  Or anything that she will eat.  We do have a bakery on our street that is well known in the city for being really good.  It's called Panificadora Da Villa II and the kids love to go there and get these little pigs-in-a-blanket things called doghinos.  We've been trying other things there little by little.  Sure enough, this town really does have some German influence--I found our German Christmas fruitcake there called Stollen (here they spell it Shtolen).  We've also tried their French Rolls (a common thing for dinner here-French Rolls with mayo, ham and cheese), coxhinas (tear drop shaped, breaded things with meat filling), quiche, pizza, and a mini doce de leite pie.  Everything is so yummy!

 

Yummy bakery on our street

Stollen--a German fruitcake we eat on Christmas morning, Mini Dolce de Leite pie

 Doghina, Quiche (it was too greasy for my taste!), and pizza (SO GOOD!)

A Sandwich I tried. It's pretty good.

Anyway, that's a little bit about the food here.  I could definitely post a lot more and maybe I will another day.  If you have any questions, please comment.  I would love to hear your thoughts and questions!

***Update:  We've visited a couple other grocery stores now and they work very similar to BIG with a parking lot beneath the building, a gated entry, and a shopping cart escalator!  These are the big city kind of grocery stores.  Other places we've been in Brazil have stores with regular parking lots and no escalators.