UPDATE: Roasting the frogs! Erm... That's not the French by the way...

What the frog looked like before
its' heinous murder

Remember back in November 2010 when Ed Carlos, the Frogfinder General, and I went hunting for frogs? Well at that time I was unable to eat the 'delicacies' as I was going to the farm the next day... Drat!

As it turns out, the Frogfinder General had been keeping all of the frogs in his freezer. After receiving quite a few threats from his wife about them, he decided that he was fed up with 'holding onto them for a friend' and dumped them in our freezer. Well, last night we decided to finally crack them out and give them a try!

Carnival - more of a fantasy than a Brazilian reality?

We've all seen the Rio and Sao Paulo carnivals on TV - the splendour, the party, and the dancing - but what's carnival like when you are actually in Brazil?

Well, for the most part, in the smaller cities people appear (to my layman's eyes) to find it a bit tedious and a good excuse to stay at home. Mind you, I don't tend to mix with the young and single crowd. Wikipedia for example states that 80% of all the country's beer sales are over the five days of carnival.

In Quirinopolis for example many people (mainly between the ages of 18 and 25 I suspect) had a big party at the lake. I didn't opt for this option as I value my life, and the chances of getting into a fight and shot are relatively high. Add to that, with all the drinking, and the lack of any worthwhile police force, afterwards the roads are particularly hazardous.

Take that you dirty swine... Are pigs the least useful animal on the farm?

The pig pen... Tailing off to the infamous
'alligator river'

I recently accused pigs of being the least useful animals on the farm to my wife. This statement was based around the idea that all the other animals on a farm had multiple purposes. For example, with cows you can eat them and milk them, chickens you can eat their eggs and eat them, sheep you can use their wool and eat them, but with pigs all you can do is eat them. Don't get me wrong, I love a good slice of pork now and then, but in terms of what you have to put into it (lots and lots of rubbish and fat food which it eats incessantly) you don't seem to get a lot out of it. However, I may now have to reassess my judgement based on new information gained from helping to slaughter one...

This sow was fairly old (five years) and Carlinho had decided she was plump enough (at just over 200kgs) to make a fine dinner (and many more after it). So four of us headed down to its' pen (not the most luxurious of quarters, but I guess that's why it's called a pigsty). Now if you were under the impression (as I was) that killing a pig is less dangerous than killing a cow, I think you are sorely mistaken.