Picinguaba

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March 27, 2011

Até Logo, Brasil!

Posted by Suzanna under Brazil, Daily Life, Fazenda, Picinguaba
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We left Brazil on Wednesday morning on a quick plane ride to Buenos Aires where we’ll be for two weeks before heading back to the states. The week before, we traveled from Picinguaba to the Fazenda to Sao Paulo, saying our good-bye’s along the way.

In Picinguaba we stayed up late at a beach bar with some friends over many beers.

At the Fazenda Lone, Jamie and Julie came to visit from Fazenda Alfheim for a goodbye dinner. We had a feast, which included their delicioso sausage – made fresh the day before – and Gazpacho from Manu. On Friday we had a party for Pasha, the artist-in-residence who also left this week (see his latest addition to the Fazenda landscape below), which gave us the opportunity to have a very brazilian festa, celebrating with the workers, the farmers and their families and Manu. It was a wonderful, truly Brazilian experience, complete with a huge cake and lots of singing and guitar playing. We left with tears in our eyes the next day saying goodbye to Roseangela and Gisele – our daily dose of laughter from the kitchen – and Manu, our Fazenda Catuçaba leader and friend.

We missed the hotel opening by a few days – but it’s officially open now with the first guests! Here are a few pictures of the almost-ready rooms and Pasha’s latest art installation.

In São Paulo we had a few meetings regarding potential opportunities for the future and said goodbye to some friends over a few good meals and caipirinhas. We went to Le Jazz and really enjoyed our meal, which included reasonably priced tasty house wine. We also went to Marina’s for one last night, hanging out at her house where we were lucky enough to have Alexandre and his delicious tangerine and hot pepper caipirinhas with us.

Given the hectic nature of our last few weeks getting ready for the hotel opening, we had little time to reflect on our time in Brazil or ponder our future. We did, however, have time to enjoy the incredible experience we were given by Emmanuel. We lived in two 500-person villages, experiencing a side of Brazil that not everyone is fortunate enough to see. The people were incredibly warm and open to us and just as they became accustomed to two Americans running around, we became accustomed to their smiles, abraços, and laughter, which we’ll miss tremendously.

February 1, 2011

Fazenda Catuçaba Update

Posted by Suzanna under Brazil, Daily Life, Fazenda, Picinguaba
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After a week of trying to hold down the fort at the fazenda, while Manu is in Spain, we had a wonderful weekend in Picinguaba. Our friend Candice was visiting, and though we didn’t do anything too adventurous, we had a great time living the Picinguaba life. This entailed drinking beers and pinga at one of the 4 beach bars while Suell played his guitar and sang some popular brasilian songs as well as talking to the riddle-man, a banana farmer from Ubatumirin (he literally speaks in riddles, pretty hilarious and impossible to follow in Portuguese). We also met Jaque, who’s a Frenchman biking across the world – no joke. He even hitch-hiked a sail across the Atlantic to Recife with his bike and will continue heading down through Brazil to Argentina, hoping to hop a sail across the Pacific eventually as well. We had a fun and delicious sausage sandwich together by the waterfall at Zé’s linguiça shack.

Stay tuned for more news from the Fazenda as we’re pushing full-force ahead to open by March 1^st (just in time for Carnaval). One construction team decided not to show up Monday, so we may be in for an interesting last bit of life in the construction world of Brazil.

January 19, 2011

Bem-vindo 2011!

Posted by Suzanna under Brazil, Picinguaba, Travel
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A little late, but . . .

Happy New Year!

I hope your 2011 is going wonderfully so far. We’ve been busy bees, as you may suspect from our lack of posts! But it’s important for me to recap our last month, especially to tell you that a New Year’s Eve celebration in Brazil should be on your “to do before I die” list.

New Years in Brazil – Reveillon – is a special event. It’s beautiful and meaningful. We were lucky to have some visitors joining us, which made for an even better night. Lone, Rance and their son and his friend, Johannes and Gabriel, came from Fazenda Alfheim. Emmanuel Cabale’s family was in from Spain. And Michelle and Nigel, our new American friends, came for a few days from São Paulo. It was a full house for dinner with delicious food (including organic piglet from Fazenda Alfheim). After dinner we headed to the beach to celebrate with the village and the many holiday visitors.

Brazilians celebrate by wearing white, to symbolize peace; jump over seven waves, for good luck in the New Year; meaningfully tell you “Feliz ano novo! – Amor, paz, dinheiro, saudade para você”; offer something (usually flowers) to the Sea Goddess, Yemanjá; and then, in true Brazilian style, dance the night away until the morning hours.

Here are a few pictures (the bottom two courtesy of Nigel and Michelle):

November 27, 2010

Thanksgiving in Brazil

Posted by Suzanna under Brazil, Fazenda, Picinguaba, Travel
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As I’m writing this post, I’m eating leftover stuffing with Maggie and Seth’s mango-cranberry sauce and a farm fresh egg. Mmm. Last night, though it was the day after thanksgiving, we celebrated Thanksgiving by cooking up a delicious meal; this was our menu:

Small, but local, fresh and delicious turkey

Stuffing with walnuts, pancetta and whole grain bread from the local bakery in Ubatuba

Mashed potatoes

Our farm’s green beans with hazelnuts, basil and garlic

Mango-cranberry sauce (idea from Seth, executed by Mags)

Gravy (of course)

Roasted veggies from the farm

Salad with lettuce, cheese and roasted red peppers from the farm

Jeff’s spectacular apple pie

I’d say that counts for a full-fledge Thanksgiving meal, wouldn’t you? The only thing missing was pumpkin – though we have a pumpkin from the garden sitting on the counter there was just too much food already (and besides, we’ll will use it this week for something to allow the thanksgiving spirit to linger along with turkey soup). The meal was excellent, and sitting next to the bonfire eating apple pie was exceptional, but the best part was having Maggie (my sister) and Seth (her fiancé) with us. We also shared the event with the artist-in-residence, Pasha. It was incredibly special and has turned out to be one of the best Thanksgiving holidays ever, especially since we were able to skype with our families on Thursday. THANKS MAGS AND SETH!!!

And now for a quick recap of our wonderful week with Mags and Seth. They arrived Monday into Paraty on a bus from Rio. We had a fun walk around town, a snack of tapioca and headed to Picinguaba. That night we grilled some sausages and Jeff made us our first of many caipirinhas together.

Tuesday we walked to and along Praia Fazenda and made it back just in time for the rain to start. More caipirinhas and a great meal at the hotel of shark moqueca. Wednesday we braved the seas for a two-hour kayak to Ilha dos Coves where we lounged on a small, secluded beach for a few hours. Well, Seth and Jeff found some rocks to jump off and bamboo stalks to throw and Mags and I did the lounging. Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, we hiked to a waterfall in the rainforest, talked to family and then headed out to the Fazenda. Along the way we stopped for some açai na tigela in Ubatuba.

Thursday night we managed to pull off a great churrasco (brazilian bbq) even though it was raining. Friday we woke up to start our Thanksgiving celebration day – we had some breakfast and hopped on the horses for a 2.5 hour ride up and around the property. Since we were unexpectedly not able to get into the kitchen until 4pm as the girls were cooking lunch for 40 bombeiros (firefighters) doing a course for our farmers on wildfire prevention, we took our time picking vegetables from the garden and mentally prepping for the meal.

Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Maggie and Seth this morning as they were off with a ride to the airport (mashed potato sandwiches in hand). Jeff and I will hunker down for the week with lots of work to do both at the Fazenda and the Pousada!

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November 13, 2010

A day for us (last Sunday)

Posted by Suzanna under Brazil, Daily Life, Fazenda, Picinguaba, Travel
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After a very busy and fully focused work effort for over two weeks now, we declared a break for 24 hours. Last Saturday afternoon we finally returned to our “home” in Picinguaba after 11 days away. We promptly had some coffee and then Jeff made us delicious caipirinhas (it was 5:00 by then if you’re wondering). Sunday we took a trip about 20 km up the coast to Trindade – a small, fun little village with a spectacular beach. We enjoyed our peaceful time in the sun as the pictures below show . . .

I also managed to get a little cooking in on our day off – homemade crackers! (I call these Lone’s crackers as we first had them at Fazenda Alfheim.) We tested them with guava jam, homemade pineapple jam (my first attempt was good, but I need a little practice to get the consistency down), and salami; all were delicious accoutrements and I’m thrilled to have a simple recipe for what is surely a healthier option than the store-bought choices.

The past few weeks have been busy and hectic, but fun and interesting nonetheless. Since Manu, the on-the-ground lead at the Fazenda, has been in Europe for a few weeks, we’ve been stepping in to manage the construction of the hotel rooms and renovations on the 1850s main house. Walls are being torn down, steps built, bathrooms added, new kitchen space created, and more! It’s quite comical as we’re doing our best to speak and understand Portuguese while incorporating a lot of hand gestures to instruct the construction guys. We’re getting by and the team does their best to work with us. The work on the hotel rooms is another story – it’s going slow, slow, slow – this is Brazil after all, but we’re getting nervous for the anticipated January opening. My biggest concern over the delays in finishing the construction is the inability to fully dive into landscaping until they’re finished with their machines and heavy materials surrounding the houses. We need trees and grass – SOON!

In the midst of all that is happening at the Fazenda we also spent a few heavy work days in São Paulo to forge ahead on some financial and marketing work. We’re hoping to have a high profile architect step in to design the future villas at the Fazenda, so my big effort for the week was to put together an inspiring, seductive presentation for Emmanuel to use as the basis of his talk with this architect. We’re hoping to engage the architect primarily on a profit sharing basis. So, for those in the professional services industry, you know how tricky this can be – but with a big upside it works. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds. Jeff continues his work to keep the businesses afloat with good looks, good sense and incredible excel skills.

This week we were back at the Fazenda, holding down the fort. It was another busy week and we look forward to getting back to Picinguaba for a more stable existence with Manu’s return from Spain on Friday. General life goals such as painting and exercise have been somewhat on hold lately, so I’m hoping to fix that soon. I have, however, been enjoying life on the farm – the vegetable gardens are in full swing with fresh cucumbers, eggplant, lettuce, peppers, herbs, zucchini, squash and beautiful beets all coming in by the baskets. These vegetables are gorgeous and taste spectacular. I’m especially appreciative since I just finished Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and have now started Nina Planck’s Real Food (fresh milk, cheese, meet and lots of veggies does a body good). With the lack of kitchen in the main house due to construction, we’ve started taking advantage of the “churrasco” (bbq), which you can imagine has made Jeff quite happy as well.