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.