JOURNAL #11 Holiday Season is here.

One of our lovely cottages at Morgado do Quintão, This one is called ‘Gatekeeper’. 

Holiday season is here and with it special and festive moments.

Interestingly, in our region, around a hundred years ago, giving presents was not a tradition in the algarvian Christmas. Everything was very different.

Christmas Eve was a fasting day, and there was a frugal supper with fish. At midnight it was family dinner. When fasting stopped, supper was “a pot of cabbage” or “pot of corn”. Many, used to fried pork with garlic or clams, while families that had a higher connection with the sea ate octopus rice.

On Christmas Day, rooster or chicken stew was set on the table. Unlike the cod which is common in the rest of the country, in the Algarve we ate a plump rooster, chosen months before, the “Christmas Rooster”, or a “Cherry Chicken”.

Quite common was the presence of delicious honey cakes, Christmas deep-fried cakes, sweet potato pastries, fig ‘stars’ and fig ‘cheeses’, almond cakes, the typical ‘Dom Rodrigo’ egg sweets, roasted figs, almonds, pine nuts, hazelnuts and walnuts, all paired with different wines – many of them certainly from Negra Mole (our indigenous grape variety) – and the tasty Algarve Medronho (a strong distilled spirit made from strawberry tree fruit).

Today things are slightly different, but the communion of the moment and the celebration persists.

This Christmas we decided, for the first time, to create exclusive gifts to strengthen the bonds between us, and thus overcome the distance.

Wherever you spend Christmas, with more or less presents, with more or less sweets on the table, it's always good to be able to celebrate this time of year and we want to be part of the party.  

Find out more about these unmissable offers and be part of this special Christmas with us.  Just click here for all the details. 

Happy Holidays.

Filipe, Teresa & MdQ team