This first food habit of Brazilians is so ordinary, even standard for us that it’s a bit of a shock for many of us (certainly it was to me) to learn that, apparently, most of the world eats not just differently, but in a completely opposite way. A real case of cultural shock, particularly because, like Spanish vs. Portuguese, it seems to be one of those unreconcilable differences between Brazil and Hispanic America (just kidding, my dear hermanos).

I’m referring to how people eat avocado. For Brazilians, avocado has always been a fruit to make sweet desserts.

We eat avocado with sugar, (often powdered) milk and other sweet things like granola (some even add manioc flour); avocado cream with condensed milk; avocado mousse; avocado pudding; avocado icecream, popsicle and the quintessential Brazilian homemade popsicle, which is basically frozen juice inside a plastic bag and has one of the largest variety of regional alternative names in Brazil (e.g. sacolé, dindim, chupchup, gelinho, geladinho, flau, juju, dudu, etc.). We regularly drink avocado milkshake, shaking avocado, milk and a bit of sugar until it becomes a refreshing cold drink.

Traditionally, it was almost unthinkable that avocado is used to make savoury sauces and other dishes that use salty ingredients. Only recently did we slowly start to know the flavor of avocado used in savoury food, importing foods that aren’t traditional to our country, like guacamole.

There is another typical food habit that Brazilians have and is so universal here that many of us used to assume that it couldn’t possibly be unusual or even virtually unheard of in the rest of the world. That’s one of the most indispensable parts of most Brazilian region’s cuisine: the many recipes of farofa. Some people even joke that, if you don’t like farofa, you are probably not fit to be Brazilian.

I only came to know how extraordinary eating lunch and dinner dishes with farofa is when, during the 2014 World Cup held in Brazil, I saw foreign tourists saying the thing they had liked the most or been most surprised about in Brazilian cuisine was “that weird sand you put on the food”.

“Sand” sprinkled on a food plate doesn’t sound very enticing, but it’s in fact an apt description: farofa consists of very small and slim grains of manioc flour that are lightly fried and mixed with a myriad of other foods (e.g. beef, chicken or pork broth, dried meat, bacon, eggs, sausage, onion, carrot, Brazil nuts, banana, etc.) and create then a rich variety of flavored flour that adds an extra crispy texture and taste to another food (usually lunch or dinner).

Another Brazilian habit that I’m sure must exist in some other places, but would be seen as very exotic in a lot of countries (heck, it’s a bit eccentric even for me), is that millions of Brazilians enjoy having lunch (which, of course, is savoury) with one or two bananas in the plate, blended with all the beans, rice, meat, pasta, eggs, etc.

(Oh, and we also eat Brazil’s most famous savoury dish, almost “the” national dish of Brazilians, feijoada (a stew made of black beans, several pork parts and other ingredients), together with slices of orange.)

There’s also the somewhat notorious case of Brazilian-style hot dogs. I know many Americans who come to Brazil for tourism and especially for a longer stay or even residence complain a lot about the boundless degree of, huh, “inventiveness” that Brazilians show in their cachorros quentes (the Brazilian translation for hot dog). Many of them see how Brazilians prepare their hot dogs and have a clear verdict on it: a travesty, no, an unforgivable blasphemy! ;-)

Brazilian hot dog varieties have no limits and no end, just like they say about Brazilian zoeira (the implicit mutually agreed social contract to laugh at each other and joke about almost everything — even the bad stuff — in a tongue-in-cheek manner, which some foreigners from less openly humorous societies, unaware of that custom, sometimes take seriously as a rude or hostile provocation).

It’s thus perfectly normal to find a Brazilian hot dog that is choke full with sausage and different kinds of sauce, BUT also with mayonnaise, mustard, minced meat, bacon, vinaigrette (made traditionally with tomato, bell pepper and onion), shoestring potatoes, mashed potatoes, maize, peas, quail eggs, requeijão (the virtually unique kind of Brazilian cream cheese, pretty distinct from those well known abroad, as Brazilian expats regularly complain), olives, grated Parmesan cheese, so on and so forth.

If you can imagine it, you can make (and eat) it. LOL