VISITORS. been and gone .......

19th May
A lovely sunny day for our visitors - no need for me to have been stressing about rain.
An air traffic strike meant that their plane had to fly via Ireland, this delayed them by several hours so of course they were tired when they arrived. We just chilled out and I cooked pasta for dinner with my very authentic tasting, squeaky Halloumi!!!!

20th May
We stayed on quinta and just relaxed, ate and drank all day!
I used the whey from the 'chevre' cheese I made the other day as the liquid for a cold pumpkin soup we had for lunch (the whey is sweet and creamy so it worked a treat).
As the chevre was not a great success I thought it would be nice to let Sarah and James help me make some more; Sarah said it was like children helping an adult cook! James got to measure two tablespoons of mesophilic culture while Sarah refused the responsibility of 'one drop of rennet'!
Tomorrow we are going to spend the day in CB town center.

21st May
I was up by 6.00 (I've been waking early all week).
The cheese had set over night, so I drained that ...... it looked much more creamy than last time.

Then I printed some peacocks onto one of the dresses I made last year. I had printed birds on it but they have faded and Brett thinks it looks stained; so I was trying to cover the marks.

We went to CB; we did the castle first, fabulous views. Then to the square for lunch at the Presunto bar - we shared two plates of tapas, two sandwiches, olives etc. It was good. Next we did the gardens with the statues and finally we found the craft shop Karina told me about - it was shut!
Back home we slow cooked the huge leg of lamb we'd taken out of the freezer (that hadn't thawed!), made salad and hummus - for wraps; then sat out on the decking drinking G&Ts! It was an altogether lovely day. Tomorrow we go to Belmonte (James's choice).
Update on Chevre: it's got a weird rubbery consistency and doesn't hold together - I'm doing something wrong!

22nd May
I didn't get up until 7.00 today (slight headache!).
It's great, the car that Sarah & James have hired is big enough for us all to travel in, so we don't have to drive.
First we went to Sortelha, a walled village with lots of boulders (like Monsanto). Next to Belmonte where we had a boozy long lunch, then walked up to the castle. And finally Centrum Celas, a building with no information/knowledge of what it was.

23rd May
We were invited for breakfast at the cottage with Joyce, Sarah & James - then they left (sniff .....). It's been really lovely having them here.
We took the keys back to Vince & Lola (to save J, S & J time) and had a nice natter with them.
I actually did some gardening today (a bit of weeding and planting sweet potato slips).
The vegetable garden looks ok in certain areas:

Potatoes

Strawberries

Globe Artichokes

24th May
Brett went back to his block work and I gardened.
I built a structure, to support my beans, out of rebar (one day it might even be welded); then planted out five types of beans, purple podded peas, cucumbers and onion plugs.

Bloody hell Facebook has just suggested someone as a friend for me (we have no mutual Facebook friends); a relation that Brett contacts occasionally (that I don't know, I've met once); he uses a completely different email address to the one I use for Facebook - how creepy is that? Big Brother is watching you!!!!

25th May
Our car needs it's MOT (or Portuguese equivalent), road tax and insurance by the end of the month, so we went into CB for the MOT as rain was due today. We came home from CB without having had our MOT inspection as we were too early - we have an appointment for Friday.
We did buy tines for the tractor, a hat for me, shorts for Brett and two fabulous blue hydrangeas for the decking.

Look at the wonderful BLUE, I hope they don't turn pink

I tried making Chevre with lemon juice; it's good the consistency is better, and the flavour is fresh & creamy - but not much reward (6.5 ozs) for four pints of milk (80 fluid ozs)!

However ....... we had fried Halloumi (I made it over a week ago; it's been stored in brine & whey, in the fridge) and salad for dinner - it had the right flavour, texture and SQUEAK!!!

26th May
Brett worked hard on the studio/workshop, while I did lots of gardening.
The car insurance ran out today but we couldn't renew it as it was a National Holiday and all the shops were shut!

27th May
Back to CB to get the car inspected (MOT equivalent) - it PASSED!!!
We're into our decking atm, and having animals and birds on it is annoying (they leave poo everywhere!), so Brett is going to make some gates and we bought some 'twig screening' that we're going to fence it with (we also bought two more hydrangeas!).
Then we dashed to Penamacor for the insurance and road tax - the car is legal for another year.

28th May
Rain ........
Had another bash at Chevre: 4 pints fresh milk, 1/2 drop rennet, 1/4 tspn CaCl2 (30% solution), 1 tbspn Mesophillic culture.
This afternoon heavy rain and a thunder storm. Brett watched rugby while I carried on printing my dress (different green colours).