Week 15: Thanksgiving Food

Every year, we try a few different dishes in our Thanksgiving feast. In this photos is another fruit from trees in our yard called the "pitanga" (pee-TAWN-ga). These are quite tasty and juicy, having a tangy sweet cherry-like flavor. There a three or four seeds in the middle. I served these with abacaxí (ah-bah-kah-SHEE), the Brazilian pineapple. Brazilian pineapple is sweeter and less acidic than the Hawaiian variety. The core is also softer and very edible.

 These are deviled-quail eggs. Brazilians usually eat quail eggs boiled and plain as a side. I thought it would be fun to have a twist to serve them as deviled eggs. They are small and bite-size making them fun to eat.

As Thanksgiving was approaching, we were getting worried that we wouldn't be able to find a a large turkey to roast, so I purchased some sausage and marinate pork "lombo" to cook in the churrasca. My gardener did the outdoor cooking, and he did a nice job cooking the meat just right. The Saturday before Thanksgiving, we were able to find a 24lb turkey at Sam's Club. It cost three times as much as a turkey would in the U.S., but it was worth. Rebecca roasted it with oranges and butter as part of the seasoning. It turned out nice and juicy.

Week 15: Thanksgiving Dinner

We hosted several families for Thanksgiving dinner, including an American family that manages the LDS Church farm near Formosa. They had not been with other American kids in Brazil for about a year. Not all of the families we invited were able to make it for dinner, so we also had a desert social in the evening. In total, 51 people came to our home to share stories and eat food. I enjoyed hosting the event and seeing people relax and enjoy the company and activities. The kids played for hours in the pool and box fort and swinging on the hammock. The boys even convinced to me to light our brush pile on fire. The second fire we've set since moving in, and a lot less scary than the one we had during the dry season.

Week 14: Ripe Fruit and Monkeys

 A couple of the trees in our backyard had ripe fruit on them for a couple of weeks. This particular tree has is the acerola (ah-ser-ROW-la). The fruit are about the size of crab apples and have a couple of large seeds inside, and are sour like crab apples. According to our gardener, the acerola is supposed to be very high in Vitamin C and very healthy. Since we didn't have fresh cranberries to make cranberry salad for Thanksgiving dinner, I substituted acerola, and it tasted pretty good. The texture wasn't quite right because the acerola are not as dry as cranberries.

While the fruit was ripe, we received daily morning visits from the family of tamarins that lives in our neighborhood. They are also particularly fond of bananas and readily eat banana from my hand. There are five members in this group, two are juveniles. The bravest male no longer has a tail.

Brazilian Fruit: Maná-Cubiu

This is a peel and eat fruit called a "maná-cubiu" (mah-NAH coo-BEE-oo). It is kind of sweet, has lots of little seeds in the middle, and leaves a very sticky film on your lips due to the latex in the peel.

Week 13: Box Fort, Phase 1

 For Family Home Evening, we made a box fort from the empty boxes. We had several large, three-ply bicycle boxes that were very study and made a nice foundation for creating a bridge. Each of the younger children claimed a "house" using one of the larger boxes. We then added a library and a restaurant. The kids played in this structure for weeks with their friends. By Thanksgiving, we had added a couple more towers and tunnels. My gardener thought were we a little crazy to keep all the boxes, but he agreed that the box fort was pretty cool.

We built the fort in the area called the garage. Here is a view of the rest of the back porch. It's a pretty large area and is a nice place for entertaining, playing and just sitting outside. 

A fallen bird's nest

One morning, after a rain storm, the kids found this bird's nest on the ground below a palm tree near our back porch. I do not what kinds of birds made this nest, but I think the eggs are beautiful.

Week 13: Furniture in the Family Room

For the first time since moving into our home, the upstairs family room has furniture. This is the room for the toys and the TV, and there's still plenty of room for dancing. In honor of the room, and since the audience now had a place to sit, Abby and Emma put on a play about a Korean princess who thought she was an orphaned encountering her mother at the market.