Morning walk and Christmas shopping

We woke up to a beautiful but very cold morning. It was no more than 5 degrees ouside but the sky was blue and the sun was shining. We decided to take the dogs for a nice walk to Salir de Matos.

It is about 3 km along Rio Tornada to Salir from where we live. We walked slowly enjoying the beautiful landscape and well there we had a coffee at café Rustico. Then we headed home 3 km. All in all it took 90 minutes or so. While walking I had to first take off my knitted hat, then my scarf and finally open my jacket. It just got hotter and hotter.

beautiful road

rows of apple trees

When we came home we locked the dogs into the house and went to Caldas da Rainha to do some shopping. Well we didn´t actually shop anything but pointed at things we wished for Christmas so the "others" would memorize.
There were quite many people shopping and first we went to the fruit and veggie market to buy some nuts.

a lot of nuts

There were many different animations in Caldas today. Among other things we saw a crib with a human Josef and Mary.

The baby is a doll

 There was also people dressed up to, well I am not sure what, but some kind of christmasy people.

Then we went to restaurant Lisboa for a lunch. All in all a nice and relaxed day.

If you want to book for the season of 2015 click here

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/Åse

Houston, we have a problem

We have a problem. Our problem is not of the dignity the crew of Apollo 13 had of course. It is not the worst one we´ve got either because we have many other, much worse, ones. But this particular problem is what to do with all our fruit.
There are about 120 fruit trees on our vineyard. We´re not sure because we haven´t counted them but more or less 120 fruit trees. There are apples, pears, quinces, plums, olives, oranges (many different types), lemons, grapefruit, clementinas, nectarins, peaches, cherries, figs (at least two kinds) nespera, medronho and maybe more varieties.
We tried to take care of some of the fruit but the time was never enough. It was very sad to see the fruit fall down and rot away. The figs, for instance, ripened all at the same time and we made as much fig marmelade as we had time to, but it was so much fruit that went to waste.
We made a very tasty marmelade with fig and brandy and in some of the jars we had walnuts as well. The original recipe had vanilla in it but we took walnuts instead.

the recipe for the fig marmelade is here. Unfortunately the recipe is in Swedish but you can probably use translate of some form to read it.

We also made Persian quince marmelade which is one of my favourites, It turns bright red if you let it cook long enough and since I love cardamom it is both beautiful to look at and to eat.
the recipe for the Persian quince marmelade is here

quince with cardamom and figs and brandy

We have made apple sauce, carrot and cinnamon marmelade, plum chutney,limoncello, orange liqueur with star anis and rum topf
recept på god limoncello

Limoncello, rum topf and orange liqueur

The the best lemon curd I´ve ever tasted was made the other day. The colour was so yellow so it almost looked artificial but the colour came from our eggs. Our chickens are so happy and eat so healthy so their yolks are insanely yellow, almost orange. Our lemons are organic so the taste of this lemon curd is pure heaven.
The recipe for the best lemon curd ever is here

lemon curd-look at the colour!

If you book with us we will make sure you will be able to taste some of our products. In the future you might even buy them. They could make great gifts for the cat sitter or family and friends.

if you want to book for the season of 2015 click here

/Åse

We know that the headline is a misquote

hooligans

Our veranda isn´t what it used to be, a place to sit and relax and watch our gorgeous view. Nowadays it is filthy and dirty with dirt all over from our pots and plants.

Two days ago Lars came shouting about that someone, a wild dog?, had been on our veranda, in our pots, digging and throwing up on the veranda floor. Who could it be? We had to look out for this animal and try to chase it away when it came along next time.

Later that day one of our dogs behaved strangely. He was charging at the front door, barking like mad and growled a lot. Was it the wild dog outside? Now we could take it by surprise and tell it to leave, scare it off so to speak.

We looked out and saw this....

Our rooster and his ladies acting as hooligans

attacking the plants

Chicken droppings everywhere

The chickens are so tame and friendly so they tend to "hang" outside and wait for us to come out and feed them. Whenever we are inside nowadays they are outside because they can hear us.

The thing is we don´t want them to shit everywhere and to dig up our plants but it is sweet at the same time.

We think we have to put up a gate or something to keep them out.

/Åse
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Market day in Caldas da Rainha

Hi

Segunda- Feira, Monday in Portugese, is the big market day in Caldas da Rainha. Yesterday when we were cleaing up in the front yard and hade a big fire we saw that we didn´t had any more straw for the chickens. So first thing this morning I went down to the marketplace. The Caldas market is quite big and you can buy a lot of things that you don´t see in the markets in Sweden like  chickens, ducks and a lot of different tools. I found the straw, but I couldn´t resist to take another picture from the market. If you would like to make your own aguadente (moonshine) you can easily buy your new machine in the market.

Machine to make your own destilled

Straw

Gracie laying an egg

After the market I and Åse started to clean the chicken coop and as you can see one of the chickens, Gracie, jumped straight up into the new bed. She was happy and we got another egg. Now I and Baldo are off to our agility class

Have a nice evening
/Lars

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A perfect day - for a fire and more ....

Hi everybody

Today there was a lovely weather. There was no wind and the temperature was around 15 degrees celcius a perfect day for a fire. We have as we wrote yesterday started up the renovation and cleaning for the next season.

the fire

There were many animals who were really interested in our fire

first - the worms (the victims)
second - the chickens (the lucky ones)
third - the dog (the hungy one)

The lucky ones

There were a lot of branches from all our fruit trees and the wine and of course a lot of leaves from all the trees. We had collected them in different piles and after a while when we had burned a couple of them the chickens came. There were a lot of worms and our chickens loved it.

One of our dogs were laying in the sun and was sleeping. When the chickens came he all of a sudden remembered that he was hungry (he is always hungry) and there was his favorite food just one meter from him. He started to lick his lips. It was lucky for us that he was tied in a tree otherwise we probably had lost one of our chicken,

the hungry one

To summerize this story, we had a lovely day and burned a lot of branches and leaves, the chicken had a lot of food and hopefully we will have a lot of eggs tomorrow, Of course Lennon our hungry dog had a lovely evening meal so we hope that he is not so disappointed. When we went in we also had a new booking for the next season.

/Lars

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Sunny Silvercoast - Summer 2015 preperation and a lot of other things...

Hi

Home made lemoncurd

As the season of 2014 just has ended the preperation of next season has just begun. We have a lot of work but there are also a lot of fun. We are living our dream. Today we had a lazy morning with a perfect breakfast. Åse has made an incredible lemoncurd with our own eggs and lemon. This together with a lovely toast is a perfect start of the weekend. Look at the color!!

Casa Jardim - start

This week has been perfect for outside work and renovation. So started with Casa Jardim, outside painting and and a new tile is more or less ready. If the weather keep being good we will continue with the other apartments next week.

Casa Jardim - work in progress

This morning we also went to the beach with dogs, Baldo (or as the Portugues freind says Ronaldo) was runing like a maniac. The dogs just love it and so do we. Who wouldn´t like this view.

And we also would like to say happy Lucia to all the readers, The spring is already here and the summer of 2015 coming up soon.

view from our morning walk 

 /Lars

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The Portuguese way

Idag blir det ett helsvenskt inlägg, "den gamle" sitter vid tangenterna. Idag kommer inlägget handla om the portuguese stile of solving problem och gas.

Hur hänger detta ihop portugisiskt sätt att vara och gas, det är självklart att det finns ett naturligt samband mellan dessa två saker.

För att göra en liten kort återberättelse för att uppdatera er läsare är status följande. På vår gård använder vi gas för uppvärmning av vatten samt matlagning. Gasen finns på flera olika ställen på farmen. I början av juli tog gasen slut i vårt hus, vad gör vi nu? Jag åkte ner till macken som säljer gas med våra stora behållare, blev hänvisad till ett annat ställe som skulle leverera gasen direkt till vårt hus. För att hitta detta ställe hjälpte en kille före mig i kön att hitta, troligen för att jag lät hans farfar gå före mig i samma kö och köpa kaffe på macken. Lite av karma skulle jag tro, det var ingen karta han ritade utan han körde helt enkelt före och visade vägen. Väl framme i affären beställde jag två stora gastuber, leverans direkt under dagen, kanon allt på rull igen tänkte vi, men hur skall vi betala detta, killen som levererade ville ha kontanter, ca 150 euro vilket vi inte hade, så han sa att vi skulle betala i affären. Tyckte detta var lite underligt att behöva betala direkt i affären så jag ringde och bad om faktura vilket vi skulle få. Inget hände.

En månad senare när vi har hyresgäster händer samma sak igen, gasen tar slut, inget konstigt i sig men nu har vi en skuld och måste få ytterligare leverans, detta fixar sig smärtfritt men man poängterar vid leveransen att vi redan har en skuld till bolaget och bör betala omgående till affären. Allt frid och fröjd, idag var vi påväg ner till stan för att betala, jag hade som ni säkert förstår ingen aning om var affären låg och hade naturligtvis inte kollat på nätet eller via GPS:en. Hustrun var inte helt nöjd och sa "varför kollar på inget i förväg så att det går enkelt". Kände mig lite dum men jag kollar inte särskilt ofta i förväg eller gör planer. Så jag sa "jag frågar någon så kommer vi fram" Första personen jag frågade vara fransman, och blev livrädd när jag frågande honom på felaktig portugisiska med Göteborgs dialekt.

Åse fick nu syn på en polisbil, och sa fråga dem om vägen. Sagt och gjort jag gick ut och frågade polisen och de tyckte inte detta var speciellt konstigt så de sa att de skulle eskortera oss till affären vilket de även gjorde. Helt underbart jag har kommit helt rätt, i Portugal finns det en majoritet som inte googla eller kollar vägbeskrivningar i förväg utan helt enkelt frågar om hjälp. Detta innebär att jag har hamnat helt rätt, jag är inte underlig som inte kollar i förväg, till och med ordningsmakten tycker detta är helt normalt.

I övrigt blev jag erbjuden jobb i veckan som hantlangare för byggnation av tak, detta är en annan historia med det går bra nu.....

Sköt om Er

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