Eating Honey

WARNING: If you are a member of PETA or otherwise don't like seeing or thinking about the butchering of animals, read at your own risk.

So our team leader Chad left to visit Chile for a few weeks.  He had some business to take care of and hopefully recruiting some more Chilean team members for the work here.  As his return date was approaching, John and I decided to butcher one of our goats as a kind of "welcome home" dinner.

John hired a few guys to help him dig a pit in our yard.  He bought a 50 gallon metal drum and buried it within our yard.  They did cement work around the drum to help insulate the heat.  In the wee hours of the morning on the day we were going to eat the goat, John woke up at (actually just stayed awake until) 1 am.  John did the quick and hopefully painless deed of a quick slit of the throat of our beloved goat Honey.  We chose her because she was the weakest of all the goats and bore kids that were also runts or stillborn at birth. With some help of some of our African friends that John enlisted to help him... they skinned and gutted the goat.  And unfortunately in that order. 

Usually Africans have a different order of operations as far as preparing meat for consumption.  With a goat, they singe the fur on a far to make it easy to remove, and then gut the animal, and don't actually ever skin it (because the skin actually is edible ya know!) But in enlisting their help with the butchering of the goat, John ended up making concessions to the "American Way."  But in retrospect he wishes he would have done it "our way." :)

Because we skinned it first before we hung it up, there were tiny microscopic hairs on a lot of the goat's body.  John and I spent probably a good hour trying to remove them, because... uhhh gross! We then wrapped it in tin foil followed by banana leaves.  John had started a wood fire in the metal drum and we waited till it had burned down to coals.  The only problem was that only the top part of the wood turned to coals because the bottom section didn't receive enough oxygen.  We were a little worried as we lowered the goat into the barrel at about 4:30 am.  The theory behind the pit method is that it cooks low and slow much like a slow cooker... making it nearly impossible to overcook the goat.  But is it possible to undercook it? Stay tuned to find out.... :)

Here's the goat with a little garlic, salt, and parsley seasoning sprinkled on it before we wrapped it up.

Aden Borrows a Baseball Bat

Not yet with the coordination to actually play a game with the kiddos, Aden has fun being outside and using his friends' baseball bat. :)

Aden in Ronurie

Here is Aden and Mari while we camped out in Ronurie with the medical team.  They loved reading this Dora Explorer 'sound' book together.  As you can see... I decided to try the African method of potty training while we were outside most of the time.  The African method is "no diapers".  It was within a week of this trip that he really caught on and is now mostly potty trained! yay!

Plethora of Kids... and I'm talking about Goat Babies

Before we left for our last furlough, we took all of our goats (including a new billy goat) out to the property that we are now living on.  A goat's gestation period is about 5 months.  Lo and behold, 5 months after we moved them out, the goats started birthing kids in fairly rapid succession.  Here's some pictures of Lisa and her two kids moments after their birth.  Lisa gave birth a few weeks early because she had been living with the billy goat prior to all the others.

These pictures were just moments after the birth.  Its so cute watching them trying to walk and find their mama's teat for the first time The white and black one in the picture above was sadly trampled to death by one of our other billy goats.  Four other of our goats (Winne, Sargie, Lucy, and Honey) all gave birth within the next month or so although Honey's was born still-born.  Honey is kind of a weaker goat, although the sweetest so it wasn't a huge surprise.  Because of this, we may or may not be having a goat cookout real soon :)

Yoga Time

Mari is the newly adopted daughter of one of teammates Emily.  She has gone through quite a transformation from when Emily first met her when she was severely malnourished in terms of protein deficiencies.  She is now a just-turned-5, bright, spunky, sassy little girl.

Aden LOVES playing with her. 

Here they are having some fun on my yoga mat:

Kitchen Update

So, here it is... April is almost over.  We've been in our house for over 3 months now and haven't made too many improvements to the house since we've gotten here.  When we arrived, we still needed kitchen cabinets, cupboards, and tile.  Since then, we've only added cupboards about a month ago.  BUT IT HAS MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD!!!!

And they still aren't done yet.  John bought the hinges for them last fall on my special request.  I had requested doors on my cupboards that shut close on the outside (like most cupboards in the states).  Most of the cupboards made locally fit within the cupboard.  I'm not sure if I'm explaining it right to make sense, but I don't like them as much because wood warps so easily here due to the humidity... or maybe its because the hinges aren't good quality so eventually they become ill-fitting and difficult to close.  He also made a nice smooth finish but rubbing many layers of vegetable into it instead of using varnish.  I think it makes for a nice satiny finish which I really like.

These are the tubs that my dishes lived out of for the first two months that we lived here.  It made me very thankful to have cupboards! Now I store my big pots and pans in there until I can get lower cabinets made in that area.

Side note(s): You can see I took this picture right after taking my pineapple spiralizer photos.  Anyhoo- this photo has a better look at the tool if you're interested. Also, you can see the big bag of peanut M&Ms that John's mom brought for John us and we are going through them way too quickly!

Pineapple Spiralizer

Hello my name is Kaysie... and I sometimes write a blog.  Today is one of those times. :)

I just wanted to share a little kitchen tool my mom sent with John's mom when she came to visit.  As the title of the blog gives away, it cores and makes one long pineapple spiral or ringlet.  It works really good as long as you haven't let your pineapple go too long and get to that fizzy, fermented stage.  But who does that? Ok, yes, I do... and all too often! I LOVE pineapple but often forget about it sitting on my kitchen counter until I see a swarm of fruit flies taking over my kitchen.

 

You can barely see the pineapple spiralizer in the last picture far to the right. It works really well and I think I will use it often unless I have a ginormous pineapple.  In the above picture I cut open the pineapple after removing the innards and scraped any excess flesh as to not waste any.  There really wasn't too much wasted, but if I ever by a real big one, I think I'll cut it open by hand.  Also when I usually eat a pineapple, I just cut off the outer skin and cut the pineapple into discs without removing the core.  John and I both eat the core so if you're core eaters like us, maybe this isn't the utensil for you... or you can just cut off that core and eat it like a very fibrous, but pineapple-y popsicle.   :)