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).

From pig to sausage: Day 1

This weekend a friend came over to teach us how to make sausages. Clovis bought a pig from the farm next door a bit over a month ago, and it was slaughtered Thursday to be ready for Friday's start. Friday was Cuiabá birthday (and a city holiday) so we therefore had a long weekend. Good since the process takes three days.

So Friday we started with the entire pig at about nine in the morning, and Rivania and Decimo showed us how to butcher it. Take off the feet, take out the tenderloin, disjoint the ribs, take out the ribs, then come the loin, then the ham, then skin the head, remove the tail, separate the belly for the bacon, and the rest of the skin and the fat. Just the butchering took all morning.




The head is then put to boil with water and salt, and then the meat was taken off to make frankfurters. We then made four different sausage recipes and salami. Salami has beef mixed in, whereas the others are pure pork. We made the filling for Tuscan sausage, pepperoni, Portuguese sausage, and 'simple' sausage. 2 kilograms of each (1 kg = 2.2 lbs) and everything rested in the fridge over night. We also seasoned all of the other pieces (feet, bacon, loin, tenderloin, tail, face, ribs) to be ready for smoking everything on day 2. The bones were salted and left in the sun, and the skin was boiled with salt and baking soda and then left to dry in the shade to make fried pig skin later. We finished up around 6p.

Pumpkin mania

So tonight Eduardo baked up three little pumpkins and specifically asked for PIIIIIEEEEEEE. He was very subtle about his desire for PIIIIEEEEEE. Thusly, I made PIIIIEEEEE, and with the extra pumpkin puree made a double batch of pumpking chocolate chip cookies.

Pumpkins galore!

Last week my father-in-law took 50+ pumpkins out of the garden in one day. So I put out the call via facebook for any and all pumpkin recipes known. Thus far I've only tried a couple, but they've turned out pretty well. Of course all the recipes from the states call for canned pumpkin, but it's really easy to make a fresh pumpkin puree instead. I just halve the pumpkin and bake it at a medium temperature until it can be pierced easily with a fork. Then I scoop it out and blend it into a puree. Depending on the type of pumpkin, it's good to let it drain, but for the pumpkins we have here I haven't needed to.

I got a pumpkin bread recipe off of epicurious. This recipe makes a lot of pumpkin bread. So be ready to halve the recipe, freeze a bunch, or treat co-workers. It came out tasty, but I had trouble grinding the roasted pumpkin seeds sufficiently. A lot of people apparently just left them out, but I found the bread to be really moist even with all the extra flour.

Otherwise, I used only 1 c. of sugar in the raw, as opposed to 1 c. white sugar and 1 c. brown sugar. But at home we don't even like our deserts to be very sweet, so this is definitely to taste. I also used whole milk as opposed to butter milk, since that's what was in the fridge.

I also got a recipe for Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies from an old college friend that was amazing. Our resident non-desert-eater even requested more. There are no chocolate chips for sale in Brazil, so I just got a bar of semi-bitter chocolate and chopped it up. Once again I halved the sugar and used raw sugar as opposed to white, but otherwise stuck close to the recipe.

Where to go from here...

Since the house is mainly done (minus the pantry and a whole lot of furniture) the question that remains is: where to go with this blog from here?

I think I'll try to maintain this blog with experiences here on the farm, but we'll see how it goes.

It's here!

A mere week late, but not half bad-- the mirror and shower door arrived Saturday and were installed. Other than this, the only major thing left to be done is the pantry. But the pantry is out of sight and out of mind for the time being :) The bathroom was never out of sight or out of mind, so I'm particularly glad that it's now done! After the glass was installed we could also install the toilet paper roll.

Guest impressions

I have long since forgotten what it's like to experience life here on the farm for the first time. But my mom's visiting for a few weeks, and I've grabbed some excerpts from an email to family. Hope you enjoy.

We are surrounded with chickens, roosters, ducks and ducklings, birds of all kinds, fruits I've never tasted and trees of all sorts: bamboo, palm, eucalyptus, cashew, teak, lime, orange.

The weather is warm and humid but not insufferable. The room in which I am staying is air conditioned (if I choose). I am beginning to sleep peacefully after several nights of unsettling dreams, followed by deep drug like sleep. Although there are few city noises, (cars, sirens, neighbors, phones, pagers, doorbells, snow plows etc.), the relative quiet is filled with an occasional plane, and nature's sounds: roosters crowing, and ducks quacking, unlimited songs and calls of well over one hundred fifty species of birds, crickets, gentle breezes and last night a "torrential" rain.

Most of the food we eat comes from the farm: meat, eggs, milk, yogurt, homemade bread, vegetables, different lettuces, fruits and juices. Evelyn and Clovis have two washing machines but the clothes dry on the line within an hour or so. We've been once to the "city" for ice cream, a specific weight of hammer, and some grocery items. (they wheel the groceries to your car and put them in the trunk even if you're not handicapped!) The driveway to the farm is a mile and a half dirt road and the farm itself is about a half hour from Cuiaba central. All in all it is a calm and calming space.

sing with me now...

... "Everybody Ought to have a Maid"...

Especially when their mother is arriving the next day :) The house is in good shape, everything is prepared, and the maid came this morning and did windows, most of the floor and most of the pavement around the house. The pavement was in especially dire need since I don't think anyone had scrubbed it since the early 90's. I'll finish up mopping the floor tomorrow morning, and then pick my mom up from the airport!

But earlier this week we did put up the weather station and the key cow, and got to do some bouldering as well. And the in-laws bought a new stove, so we now have a new (to us) stove which fits the space far better than the old one.

Some Decorations

So yesterday we put up Luigi the Baker and the tree that I got from Eduardo for Christmas. Today I want to put up the instrument panel (thermometer, hygrometer and barometer) and the key cow. We also got a couple of gorgeous wooden bowls for fruits and veggies and a laundry basket and drawer pulls for the bathroom. The laundry basket is a huge improvement over the pile on the floor where the little froggies would like to hide.

But first on the list for today is making an apple pie. And then heading up to Chapada for a little bouldering. So we'll see if the instrument panel and the key cow happen... There's always tomorrow.

New Furniture

Yesterday was full of progress. Not only did Eduardo install the last of the inside lights, but the furniture we had ordered arrived and was mostly installed. They'll come back tomorrow to finish up the install. All in all it's kitchen cabinets, bathroom cabinets, laundry sink cabinet, bedroom armoire, a window for the in-laws bathroom and a quick patch for their bathroom cabinet as well.



Yesterday they installed everything but the laundry sink here. But everything is still missing at least one piece. We decided to have more shelves put into the armoire to take advantage of the space (soooo much space), there was a drawer that was sticky in the bathroom, and two cabinet doors that were too big in the kitchen. So Saturday I'll take more photos, but here are a couple in the midterm.

terrible but true

How is it that only when a visitor is coming that I decide it's time to really get my butt in gear? Well -- my friend (and advisor) arrives tomorrow, which means that it's butt in gear time both work-wise and house-wise.

First off was some necessary storage space... Step 1: Move the tools and wires and sand-paper to one side of the pantry, etc, etc. I grabbed the extra armoire and wiped it down and had Eduardo finagle the missing pins for the shelves and put it in the pantry. This gives us at least a little non-counter storage space and allowed me to unpacked some of the plates, etc and wash all the pots and pans and glasses and put them away.



Eduardo also installed the rest of the lights today. And the towel rack in the bathroom was installed a couple of days ago. And the guy came today to take the measurements for the mirror and shower door. Even the fun ceramic lights on the back porch were installed. My favorite one has polka dots. And we moved the couch from the back porch into the living room and have a borrowed hammock and coffee table. It looks like a house, and all due to a visitor!

bits and pieces

Today a bunch of little things got done. The light in the hallway, the overhead light in the bathroom and the light in the kid's room were all installed. The towel bar for hand/face towels was also installed in the bathroom. And I put together the design for the pantry shelves. Now we just need to get the wood ready so that we can put in the shelves. The pantry is pretty much our only storage space, so it'll make a big difference. The cabinets for the kitchen and bathroom should also be ready at the beginning of the week. And Evelyn found a dvd rental place where they even have some different stuff. Currently, it's 'Bread and Roses'.

and here ends the moratorium...

Since Eduardo was in training Monday through Saturday this last week, and we ended up working somewhat late on the house monday night, I declared a moratorium on house work until the end of the class. Even with the moratorium, Thursday was a late night since the carpenters came to install the doors and I still did a fair amount of shopping. But today ended the moratorium, so Eduardo is back at it, with me as the faithful tool-passer.

So this morning the lights over the cool table that hang from the trunk were installed. This required drilling two holes through the trunk and making a channel along the top so that the wires wouldn't be visible from the ground. Since the long drill bit wasn't perfectly straight, the majority of the drilling hand to be done using a hand-drill after starting it with the electric. But it went smoothly, and was all done before lunch time.

Last of the Doors.

So in the end the marceneiros didn't show Wednesday, but they called Thursday morning and came in the afternoon. Amazingly enough they were able to get everything done, and stayed until about 8:30p to do so. All in all they installed the front storm door and the bathroom door, and then the handles and latches for the three other interior doors that Eduardo had installed.



The front door is especially important since we can now just close the doors when we go to bed and not spend an hour trying to convince Mimosa that she needs to sleep outside. It will also save the screen on that door from further damage. At this point it's pretty far gone, but we want to wait until Mimosa is better trained to change it. The problem is that she gets stuck inside. So yesterday morning she further ripped the screen in order to get out. So Evelyn and I stitched it up last night as a temporary fix.

Move in day!

So, I got back from Sao Paulo just over a week ago, and it´s been a pretty crazy week! Mimosa made it back from Sao Paulo fine, and has since made friends with Pirata (the australian cattle dog), is fine with Gigo (a boxer-looking mutt) and has only failed to win over Sisa (a 16 yr old aspiring lap dog). She´s also learned how to open the screen doors, and enjoys stealing flip flops -- but is otherwise well behaved, which is good since she´s probably about 45 pounds (and not even four months old!)



This week we: bought a bed (Tues -- delivered Friday), had the cabinet guys out to take measurements, talk details (Wed), ordered cabinets for the kitchen and bathroom and armoir for the bedroom (Fri), Eduardo finished installing the doors to the three bedrooms, acid washed the house to remove remnant cement and grout (Sat), cleaned all the donated furniture and moved it inside and assembled it (Sun), cleaned the veranda (Sun), installed the home theatre (Sun), purchased new sheets, lamps for the bathroom and bedroom, and installed most of the lighting. We also resolved the process at ProCon to get our money back for the tiles which took over two months to arrive from sao paulo. And Eduardo started job training! Today the last of the doors will be installed and all of the door handles.



And most importantly, we slept in the house Monday night for the first time! Most of our things are still at the other house but we're gradually moving over a few things to hold us over until the cabinets arrive. The kitchen and bathroom cabinets should be here in two weeks and our bedroom wardrobe and the laundry cabinet is set for delivery at the end of February (the 28th). Eventually we also want to have a bed frame built with drawers underneath, and another cabinet for the hallway, but that can wait.

And there's finally a ton more photos up on flickr. I still haven't figured out to get the cute collage without just making it manually in ppt or some other annoying thing. So I'll just suggest you head over to flickr and check out all the new lights, etc.

Granite

Prelude...
oh my oh my oh my... the granite is being installed as I type, though this will likely not get posted until after it's up and I have pictures. It's painful to see them cut through the beautiful, freshly installed tile, but none of the expensive tile is being harmed in the process. But I absolutely can't wait to see what the kitchen and bathroom look like!

Later on...
So, they got here at 1p, and left at 5:30p and installed all the granite, and it looks amazing! We did some serious sweeping, but the rest of the dust will need to settle before we can wash down the house more thoroughly.


First of all-- the truly finished (not merely mocked up) table that Eduardo built. Though decisions still need to be made about varnish... I'm still calling in truly finished...


The rest of the kitchen counters, still propped up a little until everything dries. We even have a kitchen sink now! The space in between the counters will have the stove.


The bathroom sink


And Eduardo getting a little break :)

finished tiles

So the bathroom and the laundry area are finished, with all of the paper off the tiles, and even the excess grout rinsed from around the edges, though we'll probably still need to sand a little bit to get it nice and even.

The next step for the bathroom is to test the water pressure so we know what type of shower to get. And all of the granite in the house will be installed tomorrow (we hope), and the bathroom sink will be installed at the same time. At this point the toilet can also be installed and grouted around the edges, but there's only so many things that can happen simultaneously.

As for the laundry area, the space underneath the sink will be painted, and there will be a cabinet underneath as well, though this cabinet is lower down the priority list (kitchen and bathroom first). The washing machine will go to the right of the sink.

And a few more photos from yesterday: Pirata napping, freshly varnished windows and doors drying inside to avoid the rain, the stoop after the rain, and Eduardo cleaning up the bathroom.

Paint and Tiles Finished!

So the doors and one last window arrived, the tiles are now all installed, and the painting is finished! And we bought a door mat. I realize this is a bit pre-emptive, but we went to do some supermarket tourism (there's a new one in town-- not as nice as the one we currently frequent though) and found a door mat that we liked. The fact that we left a supermarket with *only* a doormat is proof that it's not all that great. Granted, we had just come from our preferred supermarket where we parked to pay bills at the mall, and managed to spend R100 despite the fact that we'd gone in only needing mustard and to spend R20 to not have to pay for parking...

Anyhow, paint and tiles and doors! And the tiles that we had originally purchased for the bathroom arrived as well, though they had been replaced earlier this week due to their extremely slow progress from Sao Paulo. Two months!

I need to take photos of the laundry area since that is now also completed, but for now photos of the bathroom and the last window will need to suffice.

It was varnished today with the doors that arrived and they are currently drying inside due to some afternoon rain showers.

And the last of the bathroom tiles. I'll post a full pictures of the back bathroom wall tomorrow with the picture of the laundry area. At this point the ever important grout had yet to be applied. But at least this is a big improvement from the photo with the paper still covering the tiles.

Happy New Year!!!

Ok, so I realize this is a bit lame-- but my primary new year's resolution is to quit Farmville. Which is part of the significantly less lame theme of more conscious living, and a needed general increase in productivity. This resolution is brought to you by the letters 'P','h', and 'D', and the number "2012".

Apparently I'm not completely on the bandwagon yet, but I've cleaned our desk so I'm not working from bed and checked the deadline for my fellowship renewal and taken some photos of progress in our house!



In some order--
The extreme amount of sawdust on some of the walls allows for an interesting drawing palette, but the door frames are just about sanded down and ready for the rest of the doors that should arrive tomorrow.

The newly chosen outside house color, "Sausalito". It's not as dark as we originally thought we'd go with, but it's nice and cozy.

Grout, maybe not all that exciting... but I spent all of sunday afternoon sanding and scraping around the edges to get no overflow of grout, so I thought it deserved a photo.

The first inside door, currently being bent (by a giant 4 x 4 resting on one of the top corners on the inside of the room) to fit the not-quite-perfect door frame.

My incredibly darling neice, ready for a nap hanging out with her mom in the hammock.

And last, but not least, the incredibly long awaited bathroom tiles. Not the ones we originally ordered (which never arrived ... ) but substitute tiles from the same manufacturer (but not the same store!) which are quite pretty. They're held as sheets by a paper covering on the front, so they're hard to see here, but they're "Oceanic Pearl" and have a bluish tint to the edge.

Here's to a happy and productive 2011! Boas Festas!