Amiga de Mr. Gobble

Our friends here were so generous to us in raising a turkey for Thanksgiving, and their generosity continued with fulfilling the promise of a portion of Mrs. Oink. Who's Mrs. Oink, you ask? Well, while we were up at the farm of Mr. Gobble (our special Thanksgiving guest), there was cute little adolescent pig romping around at the farm. The farm owner told as that Mrs. Oink was due to become her dinner in a couple of months and offered a piece of her to share. So, lo and behold, 3 months later, sitting in our friends' freezer was one of Mrs. Oink's rear legs.

So, a little bit of internet searching, quite a bit of laughter, 20,000 handwashings, and 5 hours in the oven later... out came this!















The skin and top layer of meat being cut off are used for a Costa Rican delicacy called chicharrones. The rest made fantastic BBQ and I think it's safe to say we have finally optimized our Costa Rican BBQ sauce recipe.


















Another fun adventure last week (after repeating bacon night as told in an earlier post) was the homemade hot tub. We managed to find a hose long enough to siphon water from the kitchen sink down to the back yard and fill a kids' pool with hot water, actually too hot to sit in for awhile. If only we had pictures of the boys trying to get the siphon started...


As for the project, we have been working to find an alternative route to get families into the homes sooner. Our main goal this month is to start finalizing some names. We just met one potential family who have two children and live in a house that floods every year. The university the husband works for is letting them stay in the house, but it could be taken away at any time. When the engineer started talking to the son about the houses we were building, he immediately ran home and took his parents to the worksite. His words to describe the houses were that they were "palaces". He started yelling that they were moving, they were moving into the palaces, so hopefully we can make that dream into a reality.

Hope all is well in the US and that you are still enjoying the snow!
Love,
Team Wander