bagels!

A while back a friend posted an article about what things are learned when living in a foreign place. And amazingly enough, I found it again! It was a list, of about ten things or so, all of them were pertinent, but some more so that others. My favorites were: you learn how to ask for help, and you learn to cook. In my case, well, I'm still working on both of those. But as I ramp up to go to the states next week I find myself mainly thinking about all the foods I want to eat while I'm there. I know it sounds silly, but there's a reason we call it "comfort food". On my list is tex-mex and starbucks chai and oysters and margaritas and well... a whole lot of things. But also bagels! I was remembering the article's point about cooking as I finally gave in to a bagel craving the other day and looked up recipes. For some reason, despite the fact that I make bread, I always thought bagels would be really difficult or complicated. It turns out they're not all that complicated, and the work is not that substantial and is well worth it for the moment when I get to sit down with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a bagel :) A rough day is always made better by PB&J on a bagel.

us v. us

Unfortunately, this New York Times opinion section piece seems to miss the point. Or possibly it was just aiming for a very different point than one that is representative of my life as an ex-pat. The piece by José Itzigsohn addressed the fact that migration is not an immediate process, whereas the majority of the other pieces seemed to employ a combination of quotes from the oath of citizenship and the turn of the century to present a very "us against them" viewpoint. The points made in the comments were much more diverse, submitted by people who do or do not have dual citizenship for a wide variety of reasons; Those who are "American&" and those who are "&American". I'd be interested to see the numbers, is any particular situation "normal"?

For me, the questions of acquiring Brazilian citizenship and denouncing American citizenship are not one and the same. Nor does it seem that for most people they address these two disparate ideas together, except when forced. Very little of the reasoning is ideological, and an unfortunately large amount of it is financial and legal. Despite being a fairly conscientious citizen and resident, I am no expert in international tax law or international treaties in general. One of my goals for this year: find an expert.

Peevish pronunciation

So one of my pet-peeves is the point 30 seconds into any conversation with a new person where they ask where I'm from. This is obviously not something that is meant to be offensive in any way, and is usually asked with genuine kindness and curiosity. Cuiabá is not filled with foreigners (nor actually people born here), and most people I meet are curious as to how I like Cuiabá, how I can stand the heat, and how I ended up here.

Never-the-less, I would very much like to be able to make it past 30 seconds without it being obvious that I'm not from here. Partly, I think, due to the distinct 'outsider' feeling I get when this is the first question asked. It would likely be easier to accept that I am an outsider than to perfect my portuguese grammar and pronunciation. Who knows which is healthier in the long term, but the latter is easier to be proactive about. So I picked up the third level Rosetta Stone, and have spent a couple of weekends being haunted by diphthongs and nasalized sounds. Thankfully, Rosetta Stone is actually pretty entertaining. As is my husband when he looks up from his reports to shout out corrections.

Cashew, the fruit

So one of the things that I found shocking when I first came to Brazil is cashew trees. I remember my first trip to the Amazon in 2004, going to Alter do Chão with a couple of the women from the office with whom I'd made friends and stopping along the road to fill a bag with cashew fruit. They are sweet and tart, and drip with juice like any overly ripe fruit should.

In reality, the fruit are false fruit from the biological perspective, since they don't contain seeds. The seed is actually the cashew nut, and must be roasted properly to remove the oils. Wikipedia says its the same oils that are in poison ivy, so you can imagine that you would not want to bite into the unroasted nut.

But the cashew trees here in the yard are fruiting, which is both gorgeous and delicious. So today in the heat, I picked some cashews and made some juice. tasty tasty juice.

Jacote

So in the weeks leading up to my birthday Eduardo mentioned again the idea of separating out a couple of the horses that are more or less wild here on the farm. There were three yearlings, and it was a good time to separate them from the herd if we wanted to train them. So we spent a fair amount of time looking at the three yearlings, and once I picked mine out, Eduardo rounded up the herd and brought them to the corral to get treated for ticks and to separate off my yearling and his mom.

The three yearlings consisted of two females and one male. The two females are sorrel and the male is a dapple brown/gray. I chose the male, for no better reason than he's adorable. As far as we could tell, no one had a smoother trot, so it seemed as good of a way to make a decision as any. So the day before my birthday, Eduardo separated the male and his mom and put them in the pasture behind our house. It took until yesterday to name them. Eduardo suggested Jacote for the little guy, which is the name of a local fruit that apparently has his coloring. I named the mother Nevoa (Fog). She's white with a slight grey dapple, and is pretty old, so has a little bit of the wispy fuzz, so it seemed appropriate.

I've been feeding them corn every morning, and they're gradually getting more accustomed to me. This morning we spent some time out there and Eduardo gave me some lessons on getting up close to the mother. She let us pet her for the first time today. Jacote is still really jumpy, but I'm hopeful that as the mother becomes more comfortable with us, he will to.

Needless to say, it'll be quite an adventure for me to try to train Jacote from scratch. Especially given that I barely ride. But the idea is that we'll learn together. So here goes...

Mimosa in the Rain

This year, like last year, had a suddent onset of the dry season. One week it rained seemingly everyday, and then it simply stopped raining all together. At this point we've gone a couple of months without rain. And then to tonight, we got a real rain.

I scampered home from the in-laws to take the electronics out of their sockets ditching my umbrella next to the front door. I ran back outside to close all the windows without grabbing the umbrella and when I get back to the front door found Mimosa sitting underneath the umbrella, looking quite pitiful. She's not a big fan of getting wet in the rain. So I continue my scurrying to grab my camera, and when I come back outside I find that she's curled up in the corner with her rug, and brought the umbrella with her. I was overcome by the absolute adorable-ness of the situation and took far far too many photos. In my defense, I needed to try to improve the lighting from pitch dark.

From pig to sausage: Days 2 and 3

So the second day, we started a bit later. Everyone came over for feijoada and then we got to work. Eduardo started building a smoker a bit before lunch, and he and Clovis worked on that all afternoon so that we were ready to start smoking the various pieces around 5p. The rest of us working on filling the sausages, tying them off, and tying up the various cuts.



For the salami we used silicon tubing, but for all the others actual intestine was used. Carmen's grandparents made and sold sausage in Colombia and Clovis remembers his mom making sausages, so they both had stories about how the intestines were cleaned and prepared for sausage making.



This morning (the third day) we took all of the pieces out of the smoker this morning, and put in all the sausages. And currently, everything that's out of the smoker is hanging in our kitchen. A few more days and we'll take it down and I imagine it will go in the fridge. This morning I'm already snacking on the tenderloin. An interesting piece of information I learned today while furiously using google translator to figure out the names of the various pieces is that Canadian bacon is an American invention, and that it's not made using the bacon, but is rather the loin. Which makes a lot more sense when you look at it (round as opposed to flat and meaty as opposed to striped with fat).