Traditional dessert

The day dawned with gray, a slight fog, which I'm told is pretty common here. But as my dad and I walked to his favorite restaurant, the sun broke through, and now I'm complaining because it is too hot. I'm wearing shorts. Don't see too many women my age wearing shorts around here. Oh well, at least they pick me out easily as not being from here, and are willing to forgive my missteps!

The food is well made, plentiful, and cheap, in comparison to ours. Restaurants that serve buffet style or buffet, by weight, are the norm, and I ate a wonderful lunch of fresh salad greens, with little hard-boiled cornish hen eggs decorating it, and I sampled a lot of the dishes, brown rice and beans, gnocchi, farofa, golden fried potato pieces, and friend polenta. A nice variety of delicious food for $3.50. I didn't realize they also had little tiny shot size plastic cups of caipirinha, the national drink. Lunch included dessert, and I had "pineapple stroganoff," which was fresh pineapple in a light creamy sauce. My dad could have actually had some, as it wasn't super sweet which is the norm here.

This plate of "sweets" was at a friend's house. The little wrapped yellow ones are my favorite, "quin din de ya ya," made with egg yolks and coconut. The white ones are coconut taffy. My grandmother used to make them, and they are sort of like divinity, but just melt in your mouth, and also coconut. The brown ones are little squares of "doce de leite" or condensed milk squares. I think I ate a dozen of yellow ones over two days. I think there is a lone "doce de abobora," or squash sweet, which I never liked. Anything that can be cooked with sugar and made into a solid is done here. They also make the same thing with sweet potatoes...I prefer my sweet potatoes fried!