Observations - The yummy food!

The food & drink here is amazing! The huge and fresh fruit, the hearty but healthy food and don't even get me started on the dessert!

I love trying different foods and Brasil has not let me down in this respect! São Paulo is accepted as the gastronomic capital of Brasil, but Bahia has some of the most interesting cuisine. Food in Bahia has a heavy african influence, developed in the sugar plantation kitchens, as well as all the other regions foods.

I've tried it all - acarajé (a fritter fried in dendê oil), moqueca (a seafood stew with coconut milk, malagueta pepper and dendê oil), arroz e feijão com farofa (rice & beans with farofa - flour from the manioc root, sauteed in butter)...

The coffee is pretty good here too! ;) Lonely planet describes how Brasilians usually take their coffee - strong as the devil, hot as hell and sweet as love. Nice description and they're definitely right on the sweet part. I almost fell off my chair in the lunch room at work when a lady put 2 HEAPED teaspoons of sugar in her cafezinho!!! (A Cafezinho is the size of an espresso!)

I think perhaps because sugar has been a part of brasil for sooo long, people here generally have quite a sweet tooth. This means they have quite a great selection of desserts - paves (like a mousse-cake), tortas (cakes), brigadeiros (a dessert made from chocolate & condensed milk) and of course sorvetes (ice creams). Some amazing flavours too - my favourite one so far has been sweetcorn - sounds strange I know, but very yummy! Anyway I could go on and on, but let's just say that the great food is yet another reason to visit Brasil!

Me posing with my acarajé

I can't decide whether the Acarajé acutally looks appealing or disgusting in this photo - so I decided to keep it...

Our guide on Boipeba (Morro de São Paulo) showing us a dendê seed, from which dendê oil is made.

The massive maracujá (passionfruit). That's why the matchbox is there, to give a scale, not cos I was gonna eat the matches! ;)

Caju! Which is Cashew in english. The top (green/grey) bit is where cashnew nuts come from! The red fleshy bit can be eaten as a fruit, but it's most commonly found as sucos (juice).

Açaí - this is made from a nutty tasting berry, only found in the amazonas region of brasil!

Goiaba (Guava)

Beijú - A pancake made from tapioca. This one was a queijo e brigadeiro (cheese and chocolatey goodness!). Gosto!

A very typical sight in Bahia, - a Bahiana selling foods/snacks she's just made. They can be foundeverywhere, I took this in Pelourinho in the Terreiro de Jesus. The pink disc things in front of her are cocada da goiaba - a sweet made of dried coconut, guava and plenty of sugar!