On my second day in Pato Branco, I ate tapioca for the first time. This is not the tapioca pudding that you may have tried in the United States, though Brazilian tapioca and tapioca pudding are related to each other. Tapioca pudding is a creamy, white dessert with small, clear spheres, called tapioca pearls, in it that make the pudding thicker. Those pearls come from a special plant here in Brazil. It has many names, including yuca, mandioca and cassava. Most people here in the south call it mandioca. People grow these plants for food and when the plant is ready, they harvest the roots. They can grind the roots into small pieces and dry them to make tapioca pearls for foods like tapioca pudding or they can grind the roots into a gummy flour called goma de mandioca (mandioca gum). Here in Brazil, that sticky, wet flour is used to make tapioca.
After church on my first Sunday, a family invited me over to visit at their home, even though they had just met me that day. They invited me to eat with them because Brazilians value hospitality in their culture. We ate a big Brazilian lunch, and I stayed to talk and get to know them better. Before we went back to church in the evening, we had dinner, which included a flat, white bread substitute called tapioca.
