Whether at home or in a restaurant, meals in Brazil are sacred (神圣的) : a time to eat, but also to share precious moments with family and friends. Now, here's a Brazilian custom I miss enormously: a decent, sit-down, leisurely-paced lunch and/ or dinner. To this day, I have to keep reminding myself, 'what's the big hurry?' and I confess that one of the things I look forward to, when I go to Brazil, is the 'family' meal. We have a joke that, if you see people sitting around a table in the US, having lunch for longer than 1/2 hour, it must be a business lunch. And also, sitting at your desk and eating lunch while you work is incomprehensible to most Brazilians, who leave their offices to eat with their colleagues and friends in restaurants and cafes. You guess, lunch is usually a more substantial meal than in the U. S. . For lunch and, depending on the location, also dinner, Brazilians have wonderful, inexpensive restaurants where home-style. meals are sold by kilo. You just pile the food on your plate and someone will weigh it for you. The same goes for desserts. You order drinks from your waiter and pay him at the end of your meal. Dinner is served much later than in the U. S. . In the big cities, children are a common sight in restaurants at night, since Brazilians will take their kids out to dinner at all hours. As a result of this and the traditional Sunday lunches, Brazilian kids learn table manners at an early age. For many of my Brazilian friends, dinner is a lighter meal of bread, cheese and cold cuts. So expect either type of meal. In Brazil, people usually have meals______.