Brazilian cuisine is not extremely exciting.  I mean, yes, they do eat chicken hearts and feijoada, a bean dish that contains such delicacies as pork feet and snout. 

For the most part, though, they eat rice and beans (sans pig snout most of the time).  The rice is plain white rice and oil is added while it is cooking.  Beans are brown beans that have been pressure cooked in water.  The beans in the unflavored bean water are then poured over the rice and that’s your meal.

Without salt, it is little more than an exercise for the jaws. 

We were forced to embrace it.  According to missionary friends serving a guest anything other than rice and beans is an insult.   

Salad in Brazil is not tossed.  Instead, the vegetable are cut or shredded and arranged on a platter.  There is no dressing.  Eventually, the wife of another missionary taught us to make homemade French dressing which was the only kind of dressing we had.

We tried to do things properly when having company and so adopted the Brazilian way of having a salad.  We arranged our carrots, beets, avocado, etc…

It was until we’d had several groups of people over that a lady finally took us aside and informed us that avocado was, in fact, a dessert.  It should be served with sugar and not in a salad.

We rallied—although we never did look upon avocado as a dessert.  We removed it from our menu.

Next on the foods to be chopped was the Jell-O.  In the States, Jell-O is considered a side dish.  However, in Brazil, it too was a dessert and only a dessert. 

I can only imagine what our guests thought as they came to the Americans’ house.  Probably something akin to what we would feel if we were guests in someone’s house and found chopped cake in the salad and lemon meringue pie as a side dish.

Of course, there probably is a recipe for cake salad somewhere out there, but it is not something I necessarily want to try.  Nor is feijoada or chicken hearts, although according to my braver sisters chicken hearts aren’t that bad.

I’m quite willing to take their word for it because I never did bring myself to try one.

Have you?