Easter in Brazil Smells Like Chocolate

It was fun spending Easter here in Brazil again! This time of year is heaven for chocolate lovers like myself! As you can see from the photo above, one of our traditions on Easter is to gift people with chocolate eggs - not tiny ones, big ones!

The grocery stores and department stores are all decorated with beautifully wrapped chocolate eggs of all sizes and themes. Every year during the months of March and April millions of eggs are sold while the country smells like a chocolate dream - if you have been to Brazil for Easter you know what I am talking about :-)

My daughter was "our bunny" this year and she loved her job! Look at all the chocolate eggs she distributed:

Here are my kids (two on the right) and my nephews.

My son was mesmerized by his bunny sister!

Time to give away the eggs:

Even the bunny got some eggs too!! This is my mom with her:

There is nothing better than being a little kid (or being me!) and opening a beautiful chocolate egg and finding a little surprise inside:

For some the surprise does not matter much, they would rather eat the chocolate right away:

And that is how we ended our Easter celebration. Sitting around opening eggs, discovering surprises inside, and enjoying every bite of the chocolate!

Aside from chocolate, we eat lots of seafood during this holiday. Here in Espirito Santo, the tradional seafood dish we make for Easter is called Torta Capixaba, which is an outstanding mix of several kinds of seafood with fresh hearts of palm, all very well seasoned with olive oil, onion, garlic and cilantro. It is also topped with a flufly layer made with beaten egg whites. The dish is cooked and baked in a locally made clay pot that we call Panela de Barro. This year we did not cook the Torta Capixaba but I got a photo off the Internet so you can see it:

Photo by Edson Chagas for GazetaOnLine.com.br

**Updated! Just found a picture of myself eating Torta Capixaba. Here is it is: