We put together those temporary
Ikea cabinets we got as an interim solution for cabinets in the front room, and darned if they don't look okay. We think we're going to live with them for a while and maybe keep them that way. Life's too short to keep chasing perfection (we keep telling our perfectionist selves).
On Sunday Aug 23 we had two couples over for dinner. Our old friends Bernardo and Carolina brought some American expats here to meet us, and we clicked immediately. Rick and (the other) Pat moved to Portugal from North Carolina just a few months ago and are now living in an apartment in Porto which Bernardo found for them. We all had a great time together, talking and laughing, and realizing our shared values and experiences. Gerrit slow-smoked some ribs and Pat served her famous potato salad, coleslaw, and a Mediterranean tomato and chickpea salad. There was a fair amount of Americana in that meal, but instead of barbecue sauce for the ribs we offered Pat's homemade pesto. It's a very nice touch, not as sweet or heavy as many BBQ sauces and it lent a nice Mediterranean touch to the ribs. Sure wish we took pictures.
Alex, our horticulturist and irrigation installer, has been seeing mysterious pressure fluctuations in the lines. He and Gerrit have been puzzling over it, and to investigate they took apart a manifold for the irrigation system. They found that the water filter looked pretty clogged. When Alex rinsed it out the pressure bounced back up. So, Gerrit has a new project: to improve the whole-house water filter. We already have one filter which catches sand, grit, and some sediment, but he'll follow it with another which has smaller pores. Parts are on order. And meanwhile, we'll clean the irrigation filters weekly.
Pat has been busy cooking up our figs, which are ripening on the tree outside. She is drying some, making jam from some, and using others for fig cake and tarts. The whole house smells wonderful while she's working. Not only is she preserving the figs, but she's busy with our other crops here too: basil, leeks, tomatillos, cucumber, jalapenos, and squash now, and the tree fruit when it is in season.
She is also continuing to unpack and store. We have a little more storage space now with the new cabinets, so she is using that and also optimizing other areas to make more room. She is consolidating, organizing, and winnowing out things to give away. Slowly the piles of stuff on the floor are dwindling.
It was rainy and cloudy with occasional dramatic thunderstorms all during the last week of August. Very uncharacteristic! It's a good test of the new skylights though, which are staying dry and watertight.
One of the new vegetable vines we planted this year was watermelon. All the vines suffered from too little watering since the irrigation system has been erratic, but we did salvage a few pumpkins, squash, and one wee watermelon. Despite its difficult upbringing, the watermelon was delicious. The little thing gave us just two dessert bowls of fruit. Now that the irrigation system is up and running we should have a better harvest next year.
In Portugal the "mini" beer bottle size is popular. It is only 200 ml (6.8 oz). Gerrit thinks they're the perfect thirst-quenching size, but Pat misses her 12-ouncers. On the plate here you can see the remnants of a Waldorf salad Pat made with our home-grown apples. We only got a couple of them from this tree this year, since the tree had been traumatized by uprooting and moving this spring, but they're really good: tart and crisp. Next year the harvest should be bigger, and we do still have apples from the other tree coming.
The annual Ponte de Lima Feiras Novas celebration is coming up next week, and this year is the 200th anniversary. We'll send our ace reporters (us) to cover some of the event.
(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done. Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)
