saltwatersteve.com/travel

Let’s begin with breakfast, the first, most important and my favorite meal of the day. Brazilian breakfast, for me, is wonderful. It always consists of fresh fruit, including watermelon, mango, guava, pineapple, banana, papaya, oranges, cantaloupe, and/or honeydew melon. It also includes fresh juices of various types. Sometimes, they are not as sweet as you expect, but you can add sugar or just eat sweet cake that is often served with breakfast. You also get bread and butter which Steve likes to turn into a “butter sandwich.”
Breakfast may also include bananas that have been prepared in one of many ways: banana bread french toast with cinnamon and sugar, sliced bananas sautéed with butter, sugar and cinnamon, whole bananas probably baked with honey and butter. All delicious!
I don’t usually drink coffee, but often there is cocoa that you can add. What an excellent idea! I definitely drink coffee when you can add chocolate!
We have tried some unusual breakfast foods as well. For one breakfast we had an interesting potato type thing (maybe yucca?) sliced with cinnamon and sugar. It was surprisingly good. There is also something called tapioca which is a bright white, dry, and rather flavorless thing that resembles the shape of a pancake. I actually really enjoyed this when there is a little bit of butter and fresh coconut inside.
The best thing is that breakfast is usually included at the hotel!
As for lunch, we don’t eat a whole lot because Brazil is expensive. We did try some excellent fish prepared in the market of Belem. We also eat coxinhas often which are little pear shaped dense balls of fried meat or cheese. Very tasty and filling!
For those of you that have been to Rodizio’s in Denver, you will appreciate that we had a fabulous rodizio (here that just means all you can eat, but people bring it to you) dinner of meat for only $10 accompanied by salad, wonderful black-eyed peas with meat, and falofal! We also had rodizio of pizza which included dessert pizzas! I think we ate more desserts than actual pizza. We are thinking of going to rodizio pasta soon.
We have had some excellent steak dinners with tons of food for fairly reasonable as well. Last night we tried the house picanha (sliced meat). It was cooked in a wine sauce with mushrooms, celery, onion, and peas. It was served with rice and banana falofal. I never would have thought to eat bananas with meat, but it was surprisingly good!
Finally, my favorite food in Brazil so far is of course a dessert: açai. Açai is a tropical fruit/nut from the Amazon. The best way I can describe it is a creamy, grape sorbet that they serve with bananas (of course) and granola. Yum! Steve gets all of the credit for suggesting we try this!