What We Eat: Produce Edition

One of the great aspects of living here in Brazil is the availability of delicious fruits and vegetables year round. And because we live very close to Hubby's parents' farm, we regularly get heaps of locally grown bananas, papayas, sweet potatoes, yucca (mandioca), cucumbers, avocados, etc. etc. I've been introduced to some fruits and vegetables that I had never even heard of before moving here. I've also grown to love some things I'd heard of or tried but never really ate much in the US. Here is some of the produce previously unknown or unfamiliar to me that we now consume on a regular basis.

VEGGIES

Chuchu/Coyote: This veggie grows right off the back patio of my in-laws' house. To my palate, it's a lot like zucchini squash, and is typically boiled. The skin has deep grooves that make it difficult to peel completely. The younger a coyote is, the thinner and more edible the skin is. The bigger/older the veggie is, the tougher and less edible the skin is. We typically peel, cube, and boil with cubed potatoes as a side dish.

Batata doce/Sweet Potato: Obviously we have sweet potatoes in the US, but these ones aren't like the orange, yam-my sweet potatoes I am used to. The skin is a really pretty fuschia color (that doesn't show well in the photo, and the inside is white to pale yellow. This is another item we usually boil. The "meat" of this potato remains a lot firmer and drier than the sweet potatoes we have in the States, even after boiling.

Yucca/Mandioca/Cassava: This is absolutely one of my favorite carbs in the world! It's a big potato-like root covered in more of a thin bark than a skin. It's a bit of an effort to prepare this one involving knives and lots of rinsing, but it is so worth it. Yucca is a very starchy starch. You can cut it into cubes or strips, boil it, and then fry it up in oil. Sprinkle some salt and it beats a damn French fry any day of the week. We also cut it into huge chunks and cook it up in the pressure cooker with beef, chicken, or pork. When prepared this way, the yucca breaks down a bit creating a really delicious thick stew consistency. I love yucca (have I made that clear?)

Ihame: I've never seen this in the US, and I have no idea what it would be called in English. It's another potato-like root vegetable (go figure). The skin is peeled off and the vegetable is boiled to serve as a side or incorporate into a soup/stew. The flesh is much like a potato, but it has a blueish tint to it after cooking. I'm not a giant fan because it also has a slightly slimy texture.

FRUIT

Maracujá/Passion Fruit: Brazilians adore this fruit. I had heard of passion fruit before coming here and had eaten deserts made with it at Brazilian restaurants. Since moving here, though, it has been a big part of our regular diet in the form of juice. These grow like crazy at the in-laws' farm so we harvested a ton, cut them open to get out the pulp, and froze it all to make passion fruit juice for months to come. The pulp is very tart so a lot of sugar is needed to make it tasty enough to eat, but it is such an interesting flavor. I especially love passion fruit mousse, which is a common desert around here. We like to let Little Man have some if he's having a rough day because it has properties like melatonin and can encourage sleep.

Goiaba/Guava: This is another one that you can probably get in the States at Brazilian stores, but I never ate it until we moved here. As you can see in the photo it has some light colored seeds inside that are very hard. You can eat this like an apple taken right off the tree, but we mostly make it into a refreshing juice using out hand blender. Guava pulp is often sweetened and boiled down to make fillings for candies and cookies here as well.

That's a just a little taste of the kind of produce we eat here. It's impossible to cover everything because there is just so much available at any given time. Just a short walk around the farm and you'll see mangos, bananas, passion fruit, guava, cacau, papaya, carambola, pitanga, graviola, jambu, ingá, avocado, watermelon, oranges, tangerines, cajá, acerola, beets, sweet potatoes, yucca, corn, tomatoes, cucumber, beans, chuchu, cará, carrots, collard greens, lettuce, cabbage, pumpkin, etc., etc., etc.