Loooooong time no see!

Hi everybody!

so, i haven't finished writing about chapada diamantina, and i haven't even started buenos aires, but, surprise surprise, end of the semester in brazil is just as hectic as end of the semester in the us, so i've come to terms with the fact that i will not have time to write about those amazing experiences until i am back in the us, where the homework and papers and tests can't find me. until then, i figured it would be nice to drop in here every now and then to let you know what i'm up to.

first of all: happy thanksgiving everybody! none of you lucky ducks have work or school today so you can spend the whole day prepping your amazing thanksgiving feasts - i, on the other hand, started prepping my amazing thanksgiving feast on monday because there's no way one person who has class and homework can do everything in just one day. i cut up bread in tiny pieces and set them out to get stale for stuffing, which i'm going to start cooking when i finish writing this, and they are nice and hard so i'm happy about that. now i will relate the saga of the pumpkin pie.

so, as some of you may know, pumpkin pie is my favorite thanksgiving food of all time. it really makes the holiday for me and i love it with all my heart. naturally, when i was planning my brazilian thanksgiving extravaganza, a pumpkin pie was an integral part of that. i started researching recipes online in october, and found one i liked at http://www.pumpkinpatchesandmore.org/pumpkinpie.php with detailed instructions and lots of pictures. they don't have jack-o-lantern pumpkins in brazil, but they do have cooking pumpkins, and my family had one they said i could use, so the hard part was already done for me. or so i thought. turns out no one uses allspice here (or thyme or celery seeds, which i need for my stuffing). supermarket doesn't have them, my host mom doesn't have them - but without them, thanksgiving doesn't taste right. luckily, claudia (my host mom, for those of you who've forgotten) had the bright idea of checking at the mercado central, they have everything there. luckily, she was right, and i found all my spices without a problem. honestly, anything you think you could want in belo horizonte - beer, a fancy dress, a haircut, an entire dead pig, thyme, a puppy - it's all at the mercado central.

ok - pumpkin? check. spices? check. other ingredients? check. oh wait. what's evaporated milk? didn't see that on the bottom of the list... claudia swore up one side and down the other that it must be condensed milk, but i was still skeptical. in brazil, the condensed milk aisle of the supermarket resembles, in variety and size, the canned soup aisle in the us. and they don't have canned soup here. moral of the story - brazilians eat condensed milk like there's no tomorrow, so claudia's certainty that that's what the recipe called for was founded, but in the end, erroneous. i did some more internet research, and found out that evaporated milk is, just like it sounds, milk without 60% of the water, unsweetened. in the us, you can buy it in a can, but in brazil? oh no. that would be much too easy. so i kept reading online and found out that you can make your own evaporated milk, by heating it on the stovetop on really low heat so it doesn't boil and coagulate. ok, that's not so hard. or so i thought. but i'll get back to that in a minute.

wednesdays i have class until 1 or so, and then i usually have lunch with an assorted bunch of foreigners. however, yesterday i deemed it prudent to skip lunch, which usually extends into the mid-afternoon, in order to go home and make my pie, which, let me tell you, was a really good idea. i got home, ate a quick lunch, and got to work on my pumpkin pie. i prepped the pumpkin and stuck it in the microwave for 15 minutes, and then started to evaporate the milk. should you ever find yourself making a pumpkin pie in brazil and evaporating your own milk, here's a tip for you: hire an unsuspecting neighborhood child to be your milk evaporator, because it involves stirring simmering milk for hours and hours. it took me quite a while to figure out that i could not just let the milk sit there by itself - oh no, if you want it to steam you have to stir it. constantly.

my microwaved pumpkin was great, then i pureed it and that was also great, then i put in the spices and the sugar and it tasted just right, and then i stirred the milk some more. after about half an hour of stirring milk, i remembered i had class, so i did a quick cleanup, threw everything in the fridge, and hiked off to ufmg. i got home at 9:15, ate a quick dinner, and started evaporating milk again. when it was finally ready (about 10pm), i started mixing the milk into my pumpkin and spice goo. i mixed and mixed, but it started getting really soupy, so i didn't add all the milk, which i think was a good idea. i poured the pumpkin liquid into my lovely homemade crust (which i rolling pinned inside a large ziploc baggie, how smart am i?) and stuck it all in the oven.

oh yeah, and did i mention i inadvertently almost exploded the maid? yeah. oops. i didn't realize that the oven, like the stovetop, was a gas thing with a flame, so i thought i was preheating it when in fact i was just releasing gas into the oven. i asked zelia, the maid, to help me turn the oven on because i noticed it wasn't getting hot, and she opened it up and pushed the fire button. luckily, no one was hurt and we both have our eyebrows still, but a nice large fireball came shooting out of the oven at us, and now i know how it works and won't make that mistake again.

so, i left my pie slosh to cook for the hour that was suggested in the recipe, but when i went to check on it, it was pudding consistency, not pie consistency. at this point it was 11:15 and i had to go to bed, so i called my mother, who suggested turning the oven off but leaving the pie in there to hopefully evaporate some more of the liquid in the warmth overnight, and that's what i did. i went down to my room, and as i was getting changed for bed, realized i didn't have any more clean underwear. zelia washes all of our clothes except the underwear, which is each family member's responsibility, and i tend to leave mine to the last minute to wash, which is what happened this time. i didn't want to wear dirty underwear or go without, so, at 11:45 last night, i had a little laundry party. by the time everything was clean and hung up on the line to dry it was 12:40, and i decided that my class at 7:30 was not something that i really had to be at. plus, i still wouldn't have any underwear. so, i texted marlieke and asked her to get my paper for me, if the teacher gave it back, and i went to bed.

i woke up this morning about 9:30, refreshed from my night of sleep, and tentatively and with fear in my heart crept upstairs to see my pie soup. i opened up the oven, and, much to my surprise, i was greeted by a real live, firm, normal-looking, pumpkin pie! the only explanation i can think of is that my pie was visited by the thanksgiving fairy while i was sleeping, but i'm not going to overanalyze - the point is, my pie is perfect and now i have to go make the stuffing.

happy thanksgiving everyone!