Helen and Peter in Portugal

So, do you have a hobby?  Not me, I don't, but I'm trying to get one....trouble is, I'm actually not that good at anything.  Despite still wanting to be a pop star (what do you mean 37 is too old even for Louis Walsh's X Factor group?), I cannot sing (didn't stop Two Shoes I know).   I cannot draw, cannot paint, cannot dance (well on my own it's fine, put me with a partner and there is a danger they won't come out with both feet), I cannot sew, I dig up things when I garden and kill trees....do you get the idea? I know that at the start of a hobby you cannot be good at it from the beginning, but surely you need to have a flair?  Something which sparks and you think 'wow I'm enjoying this, I could really get into this'.  Alas, alas as yet that spark has not hit.  More Edwina Curry than Alex Jones (Strictly fans, that one is for you). I recall, when I was about 11 painting a picture of our apple tree, at the time I thought it was great, looking...

In October the chestnuts start to fall (mind your head they are spiky buggers), but the whole village and beyond start collecting chestnuts, young and old alike, everyone is carrying buckets of them around.     As with all gluts, you do start to tire of them after having baked chestnuts the 4 th night running!   But we’ve been collecting with the best of them, as the proud owners of one of the best chestnut trees in the village, we’ve been out there every day clearing up, throwing some on the bonfire (which has smoked away for several days now) and hearing them pop, preparing 100s of them for freezing.   I even made a chestnut flour cake (recipe below if you want to try it). So, what better time to have a chestnut festival!    The village of Coentral hosts an annual chestnut festival, with music, dancing, food, drink and you guessed it...chestnuts.   Normally held inside due to poor weather, this year the sun shone and almost all the surroun...

Wednesday the 5 th October was not a great day for Castanheira de Pera,   a small fire started in the woods sometime in the early afternoon.   By 2pm it was a pretty big fire with 30 firemen (Bombeiros) and numerous fire trucks.     Coming home from a lunch with some friends, we got a phone call asking if we were OK.   Well, we’d seen the smoke from the road, but not realised it was happening so close to home.     The village was out watching the fire, it seemed under control.   No one was worried, everyone just calming saying how awful the fire was.     2 hours later the wind got up and blew the fire across the valley, on an on it went, along the top of the ridge through thousands of trees, covering miles and miles.     At 4pm the helicopter came over head, dropping tonnes of water on a hotspot just at the top of the hill. Through the binoculars we saw the Bombeiros run for their l...

I've never been grape picking before, not had the wanderlust need to fly to Oz and pick grapes with a lot of gap-year students and a couple of old hippies.  But when the grape harvesting season started recently in Portugal I started to feel the need to snip some grapes and become part of the wine making process. So instead of the lush vineyards of Bordeaux or the stunning landscape of the Douro wine region in Portugal nor the far off general loveliness of Stellenbosch we plumped for Avelar.  Not somewhere (although it pains me to say it) where you would really go for a romantic image of grape picking, complete with wine lodge and Keanu Reeves (if you've never seen A Walk in the Clouds you won't get that).   No, Avelar has a good bakery, a hospital, a car show room and is the home of Jo ão, whose father in laws grapes we were about to pick. Now, I do have to say that my knowledge of grape picking does come from the afore mentioned film - A Walk in the Clouds -...

It was about 9am when our neighbour Alfonso handed Peter a dead, but still warm rabbit.   It might not be how every day starts, but it works for me.       This is the dish Peter created for our dinner by frying off the rabbit and some chorizo then adding everything (except the rice) to a casserole dish and putting in the over for a few hours, adding the rice in the last hour. 1 Rabbit (from the neighbours) 2 peppers (from the garden) Tomatoes (from the garden) Piri Piri (from the garden) Garlic Onions Rice Chorizo He’s also been using up some of our slight excess (is 20 kilos excess?) of tomatoes, by making gazpacho; It’s so simple and really refreshing and surprisingly hearty.    Just wiz the ingredients together in a processor, then chill, chill the bowls you serve it in too.   Just use Tomatoes (from the garden) Onion Garlic Cucumber (from the garden) Olive oil  And as if that was not eno...