Welcome !

This blog is to celebrate and share Brazilian flavors and Brazilian/American recipes. You will find that many Brazilian recipes have strong influences from cuisines of African nations, Portugal, the Middle East and Native Indigenous people.

When I moved to the United States in 1988, cooking Brazilian recipes was a bit of a challenge. I had to modify many recipes to accommodate to the unavailability of ingredients in the grocery stores and still preserve the essence of the Brazilian cuisine, so I recreated many Brazilian recipes adapting to American ingredients, and I call them Brazilian/American recipes.

All my recipes are homemade with love . I am not a professional chef, but I thrived cooking for my family and friends, which now, I am sharing with you.

Before you try a recipe, let me tell you a bit more about myself and my cooking.

My name is Luciana, but call me Lucci. I am a Brazilian now living in Arizona with my wonderful family. I was never much of a cook in my youth, but grew up in a culture of family meals and over-the-top dinners.  It was hard to escape learning how to cook. While I’m Brazilian, I’m also a traveler and I  like to experiment with recipes from around the world and adapt them to the Brazilian way and to ingredients I can find in the U.S. I may not travel all the time like I wish, but I can transport myself and my family through my cooking.

When I moved to the US 30 years ago, it was very difficult to find certain ingredients at the grocery stores. I had to go to an Asian market to find a can of coconut milk or a bag of tapioca starch, and even a good extra virgin olive oil was rare. I had to improvise and create new recipes based on Brazilian cooking, but adapted to ingredients I could find in US grocery stores. Today, cooking in the US has changed dramatically. It is safe to say that there was a cooking revolution in the past 20 years and now you find anything at  grocery stores; natural, organic and international gourmet food markets have opened everywhere. There is a variety of cooking shows on television, cooking magazines and cookbooks on the market.

However,  there are very few about Brazilian cooking . After so many years of experimenting and creating Brazilian-American recipes, as well as having my friends continuously asking me for these recipes, I started this blog. I want  you all to get to know Brazilian food. Brazil is eclectic and rich in culture, and food is a great part of it.

I’ll post them here for you under one condition– you have to tell me how you enjoyed it and any problem you ran into along the way.  All feedback is appreciated! Go follow me on Twitter and Facebook! If you like my food, don’t forget to share my blog with your friends and family.

Thank you,

Luciana Schrader