Monte Siao (the pottery town) and the Cheese Shop

Monte Siao is a town known for it's beautiful blue and white pottery and I was eager to take a trip to visit the town and the workshop.  I had done some research and knew that it was a mere 1 hour and 30 minutes drive.  About half the trip was on a highway but the other half consisted of small winding roads cutting through the verdant hills of Brazil.  Monte Siao is in the State of Minas Gerais.  There are 26 states in the country of Brazil.  I live in the state of Sao Paulo in the city of Campinas which is near the city of Sao Paulo.  This should not confuse you as it is similar to the American configuration of  New York State and New York City. 

I invited a few new friends (Donna and Chris) on my porcelain adventure which made the whole day that much more fun! We left at 8:30am from my home and arrived 10am at the store and workshop.

Porcelana Monte Siao Ltda was founded in 1959 and only made miniature porcelain decorations at the time.  Now the company makes beautiful plates, bowls, mugs and other great tableware and produces 2,000 pieces a day!

 

The blue and white pottery is quite sturdy and seems like it would not chip easily.

 

We were permitted to walk around the factory which was connected to the front shop.

Here is the BIG kiln, firing of the porcelain lasts about 50 hours and the temperature of the kiln reaches 1,300 C/ 2,370 F. 

The pieces of pottery are placed inside these round vessels called saggar boxes which are made of refractory baked clay in which the finer ceramic wares are enclosed and protected while baking. 

The pottery in this shop is made by the slip casting method.  A liquid slurry of porcelain (watery clay) is poured into molds and left to set for 24 hours.  The set slip is then removed from the molds

and these lovely ladies wipe down the pottery and trim the excess off the edges to make it smooth.

 

 After the trimming the pottery it's left to dry and then it is dipped again in another slip to coat and cover any imperfections.  a white pigment is added to the slip so that when fired the end product will be white. 

 

The next step is the painting! Only two colors are used in this shop blue or brown. I prefer the blue color.

 

Everyone was friendly and kind and allowed me to take as many pictures as I liked.  We had a great time exploring the shop! 

Now that we had seen the main attraction of Monte Siao we were ready to explore the rest of the town.  The first thing that greeted us as we exited the pottery factory were these wild green SCREECHING parakeets.

 

 

These wild green parakeets are everywhere and deliver an amazingly loud screech; pretty but noisy devils. 

 

 Monte Siao has a population of about 17,000 and has two pretty churches in the center of town. The yellow one, known as the Rosario Church was not open for us to get a look inside but I found out that this church was build in 1953 and is the second church on this site. 

 The white church is named Our Lady of Medalha Milagrosa and was built in 1849.

 

This one was open!

It was nice and cool inside and everything was light and colorful.
 

 

 

 

Next stop LUNCH!  There are always too many choices and not enough time to try them all.  I had a restaurant picked out but apparently that one was only open for dinner.  So we walked into this little Brazilian buffet joint and prepared to be satisfied!  The Brazilians really like their buffets but I have not figured out why it's so popular.....yet.  
 

And yes we were the first because I was HUNGRY.  I eat breakfast between 5:30a and 6:30a every morning so by the time 11am comes around I am STARVING, AND MUST EAT NOW! I am usually the first in most restaurants at lunch time because I need to eat the minute they open.

 Every buffet has a wonderful salad bar, you could fill up on that alone!!
 

But you need not fill up on just lettuce because there is a hot bar too! Rice and beans are always served, a pasta, beef, chicken, fish and hot veggies of some sort. 

But what I am finding to be my favorite item at these local restaurants is the homemade hot sauce! And so far they all taste great!

The cost for lunch (all you can eat) is about $7.00 USD.
 

 

Another important site in Monte Siao is the cheese shop.  Campinas (dare I say Brazil???) has a poor selection of local cheeses.  So far they all taste like American pasteurized cheese very good for melting but not a lot of flavor.  We had been told there is a cheese shop in Monte Siao that sells cheddar cheese that tastes really good!  We were given some very loose directions as to the location of the shop. They went something like this: "  It's near a gas station(??) you can't miss it, don't worry you'll find it. "

What we found was a sign on a concrete wall indicating that there was a cheese shop down the hill.

 

And around the corner

 

 

Inside was nice, clean, cool and there were bottles upon bottles of hot sauce!

But no cheddar cheese just the soft white non-flavorful kind that I seem to find everywhere.

 

 

 

So back up the hill we walked.....sad that we didn't have the address or name of the shop that sold "yellow gold".

 

 

There is one more 'famous' feature of Monte Siao,  knitwear.

 

It seems the growth of the pottery industry in Monte Sião is directly involved in the rise of what is actually the city's major industry: knits. Monte Sião used to depend almost exclusively on agriculture before the pottery business began and generated more traffic in the town. Women in this little mountain town began selling hand-knitted products they made at home right out of their front door to passing travelers.

Today, Monte Sião boasts hundreds of knit and textile companies, many of which are small to medium family businesses.

The high season for this kind of shopping is the Brazilian winter, especially June and July.
 (Go Brazil)

I plan to explore these shops more carefully the next time I come to Monte Siao.  I did notice that along the main street they painted "knitwear" on the trees but I didn't exactly understand why until I began reading more about Monte Siao.

 

We hit the road disappointed that we didn't find the "cheddar cheese" shop but satisfied nevertheless as we had had a banner day seeing a new town! Goodbye pretty Monte Siao!

As I was driving along the winding road, Donna shouted out from the back of the car - LOOK there it is, I remember the name of the shop now - QueijoBom! And low and behold,  it's near a gas station just like they told us!  Uh, looks like it's IN a gas station but I wasn't going to quibble because maybe, just maybe good cheese will be had here! You know, in a gas station, like we do it at home.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was a really nice cheese shop that had all kinds of wonderful products.  There were smoked meats, plenty of cheeses, wine and many other tasty foodstuffs.

I did not buy any cheese but the girls did and I was happy to sample the products.  I didn't really think the cheddar tasted all that good but I never said I was a cheese connoisseur, I just like what tastes good to me.

And since I enjoy eating Black Wood Fungus Ears with garlic are you really going to listen to me?!

 

Our salesman was very chatty and helpful and even gave us a sample of concord grape juice squeezed and bottled without chemicals or preservatives.  It was very very good.  I did buy a bottle of that and have been enjoying it with sparkling water. 

And so after shopping complete we headed back home.  Satisfied and content that we had found the elusive cheese shop.....in the gas station.