This post is only about our most recent visit. It’s more a list of impressions rather than anything chronological. Though I admit that I cannot resist the compulsion to lump things together into loose categories! (Edited to add a link to a Picasa album with more pictures from Puerto Rico). Just click on the picture below:
I have a post started about Puerto Rico and why Tom was there and the state of health care, etc. But instead of finishing that post, it’s much more fun to make a list of my impressions of Puerto Rico. Now, I’ve been before a few times. Tom and I went once or twice by ourselves and stayed with his dad and step-mom in their condo. I can’t remember for sure if this was one trip or two trips that have gotten mixed together in my (really bad) memory. We ate coffee ice cream on their balcony, watched movies, and had a good time. I remember going to El Yunque, to Old San Juan, to Ponce to spread the ashes of Tom’s Granny in the Caribbean, and to lots of dinners. I remember Tom’s step-mom picking up breadfruit at a road-side stand and making tostones with that and platano.
The next trip I remember was also a long time ago. We went to Puerto Rico, along with Tom’s mom and uncle, because his Grandma Jane was dying of cancer. We all stayed together in a hotel in the Condado area. It was nice because we could walk all over the place: to the beach, to restaurants, bars, etc. Despite going for such a sad reason, we had a lot of fun. I remember Tom’s uncle having “heterosexual moments” as he called them. The women in Puerto Rico really get dressed up to go out on the town, let me tell you. I remember going out for Cuban food, going in the ocean in a rocky area and getting thrashed by the waves (and then Tom’s step-mom making some comment about my weight and how that was somehow to blame?).
I remember her not being all that kind to me before we had kids, but perhaps it was, at times, a miscommunication, despite the fact that her English was very good and 1000 times better than my Spanish! I’m not sure how she felt about me, but I cannot complain because she was always 100% terrific with the kids. She was fun and talked to them and played with them, until the last trip they made to Phoenix when she was not as spry. Still, she did as much as she could on that trip. Anyway, I remember being mad at her on that trip to Puerto Rico, but I also remember having a lot of fun.
The visit before last was when Aidan was about 8 or 9 months old. I remember sitting on the back patio of Tom’s dad and step-mom’s house, listening to the coquis and helping Aidan cruise around the table they had on the patio. I remember the loud window air conditioner in the guest bedroom and the rooster that one of their neighbors had. We found it annoying. How funny is it that now, more than 5 years later, we have our own roosters? I remember seeing Tom’s uncle’s long-time girlfriend (there really should be a better way to say that… significant other? partner?). We visited her house, listened to music, and she gave us a picture of Tom’s uncle. I remember having lunch with Viola, who is Tom’s grandfather’s second wife. At this point, both of Tom’s grandparents, as well as his two uncles, had passed away. I remember that it rained every day we were there, except the last day. That was when we went to Old San Juan. I remember carrying Aidan in a sling and walking all over Old San Juan. Old San Juan, by the way, is quite hilly. It was a workout, that’s for sure. And I was not in nearly as good a shape as I am now. We had lunch there and also did some quick pictures of us with Aidan standing by El Morro.
This is a picture of a street in Old San Juan. I think Moira took the picture, or maybe it was Tim.
This most recent trip was really fun, despite Tom’s dad being in the hospital. We stayed at a nice hotel resort, where we got a discount because Tom’s step-cousin (his step-mom’s nephew) works there. We saw some sites, but mostly we went to the beach and played in the ocean and with the sand. For Tim, the kids, and me it was more vacation than anything else. We went there to see Tom’s dad in the hospital, but the kids could not see him (no kids under 12 are allowed to visit). We went there to support Tom, who was very lonely and overwhelmed. We went so the kids could see their dad and see part of their own heritage and ethnicity. It’s the first time they realized that they are Puerto Rican. They knew that Ito (that’s what they call Tom’s dad) and Tita (what they called Tom’s step-mom) lived there. They knew Ito and Tita spoke Spanish. They knew their dad spoke Spanish, but hadn’t really heard him speaking it conversationally. I think the trip was an eye-opener for them, and that’s good. My only regret is that we had not visited in the last 5+ years. I vow that we will definitely go more often, and not just for the good food.
We’ve been busy lately, where lately means the last month. Tom was in Puerto Rico for 2 weeks before we joined him there for another week. Now we are back and trying to catch up on life and housework while also fighting a cold.
I have a ton of things I would like to write about: new kittens (they are about a month old already!), another dead hen, more hens laying eggs, roosters not turning out as gentle as you had hoped, painting and redoing the floor of our half bathroom, Puerto Rico, our neighbor not wanting us to have livestock, how we are trying to prevent and combat illness naturally, etc.
But it will all have to wait because first I have to catch up on life before I can catch up on my blog. Plus, I need to catch up on reading some blogs.
This last week, I was busy in the kitchen as usual. One thing I did was to clear out the pantry a bit and organize things. We have a lot of glass containers that we bought from IKEA more than a year ago. Some were empty on the floor of the pantry, while others needed to be combined or put into smaller glass containers. For example, I ended up putting rice in glass containers instead of leaving it in the loosely closed plastic it came in. I had an empty container that I filled with chili powder I bought at the bulk dry goods store in town, called Sugar N Spice. I need a lot of chili powder and cumin to make our own taco seasoning. I could actually use a few more glass containers, but I believe the closest IKEA is in the Chicago area.
I guess I was feeling particularly energetic, so I decided that while I was at it, I would measure out the dry ingredients for several batches of pancakes and cornbread and store it in the jars. Not that it is all that difficult to make cornbread or pancakes from scratch, but I admit that sometimes Bisquick sounds so darn convenient. So this is a compromise. Having the dry ingredients premixed and stored in the pantry will save some time. In fact, I’ve used the pancake mix and so far it’s been pretty fast to make pancakes. The biggest problem with this method is figuring out how much of the dry ingredients to measure out. However, I figured I’ll just scoop some of the dry ingredients out, add an egg or two and as much milk as it takes to make them the right consistency. It’s easy and requires no measuring that way. Now the only problem is that I need a bigger container for the pancake mix because now it is so much easier to make pancakes that we have had them twice this week. It’s just about time to make more chili and cornbread, too.
Another thing that happened in the kitchen this last week is that I made brownies twice and accidentally put in 3/4 a cup of sugar instead of 1 3/4 cups of sugar. The first time I did this I thought they didn’t taste all that sweet, but I thought that maybe I had had some store-bought ones lately and that was why they didn’t taste so sweet. But no that wasn’t right because I haven’t had any store bought brownies recently. Plus, the next time I made them they were also not sweet enough, as well as not being quite right because I had run out of baker’s chocolate and had to use cocoa powder and butter to substitute. So anyway, somehow it dawned on me what I had done and I realized that the brownies would probably be just fine with way less sugar. They are not quite sweet enough with 3/4 a cup of sugar, but I think that 1 cup or so might work. I will have to try and report on the results. All three recipes are from the Joy of Cooking. The brownie recipe I use is the Book club brownies.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday. Check it out for more great recipes and thoughts on food.
Here are some pictures of Version 1.0 of our future house. This first picture has the south side of the house at the bottom of the picture. As you can see, the south side is all windows. This is part of passive solar design, taking advantage of the low-lying southern winter sun (in the southern hemisphere it would be opposite, of course!). To the left/west is the great room and you can see the Lego table and chairs in that room. The living area would be to the south, with the dining in the middle and the kitchen at the northern part of the house. I thought it would be a good idea to have the kitchen to the north to warm up that part of the house. The right/east half is the greenhouse area. Mo added the bush thing and the white blocks are the outline of the pool. There are clear Lego pieces to the right to let in the morning sun, as well as tall windows between the greenhouse and the great room.
South side of house; great room to west and greenhouse/pool to east
In this next picture, the view is from the west side of the house. This is another view of the great room and you can see the tall windows dividing the great room from the greenhouse, along with a few windows and the front door on the west wall.
view of house from west side
This is just a close up of the great room. I’m not sure it’s big enough, but I’m pretty sure that table is too big. Imagine couches near the south-facing windows and a kitchen near the north of the room. And lots of sunlight streaming in from the greenhouse in the morning.
close up of great room
This picture is a closer view of the greenhouse. The dead horse is not part of the plan, I assure you.
close up of greenhouse/pool
This is another view from the east side of the house. You can see the big windows that divide the great room and greenhouse, along with the door (black framing).
View from the east side of the house
This view is from the east side again, but you can see the greenhouse to the south and the sleeping area to the north. Directly to the north of the greenhouse is a largish hallway, which I thought could be a pantry. That design idea didn’t make it past Tom, but more on that later. I had planned that the area to the north of the kitchen would be the laundry room, then the room north of that would be the bathroom. The reason for that was to make all the drainage and greywater systems easier. All water draining from the kitchen, laundry, and bath would basically be in one place. How convenient! It’s a good idea and I tried to do that in Version 2.0, but it’s a little different.
view of the sleeping area from the east side
This is the sleeping area, to the north of the greenhouse and great room. At the top of the picture (which is west) you can see the laundry room and bathroom. To the right/north of that is the master bedroom. Yes, it has a barrel in it. No, there is no reason other than it’s a Lego rain barrel and I needed somewhere to keep it. At the bottom/east of the picture are the kids bedrooms. The big white piece is part of the roof as Mo insists the house needs a roof, even if it is just made out of Lego. I made a big hallway between the bedrooms so we could put bookshelves on every wall in the hallway and keep books there. That’s better than a room devoted just to books, I think.
view of bedrooms from east side
This is a closer view of the kitchen, laundry, bathroom area (from the east side again). The thicker Lego bricks are about the right size to represent straw bales. I have those thicker bricks as an interior wall because most likely we will be building this house in sections. First would probably be the great room, so it would have straw bale walls that would eventually end up as interior walls. The thinner bricks are interior walls and will probably be made just like the interior walls of many earthships, that is, out of old bottles because bottle walls are beautiful!
kitchen, laundry, bathroom from left to right
So, what was good about this design? The passive solar, south facing windows definitely stay in Version 2.0, just with a lot more. The greenhouse is still on the east side of the house and is still next to the great room, with big, tall windows dividing the two rooms. I also tried to keep the laundry, bath, and kitchen drainage near each other, partly by combining the full bathroom with the laundry room. Our current house has the laundry in the full bathroom and it works quite well. I kept the kitchen near the north side of the house because I think that makes a lot of sense.
Some of the changes in Version 2.0 include a bigger pantry to the north of the kitchen, the sleeping area to the west of the great room, and a half bath. I added a half bath after talking to Tom. He just didn’t think one bathroom would be enough for a family of 4. He values his privacy while, um, doing his business in the bathroom. The kids and I don’t care, but that will probably change for them as they get older. The sleeping area of the house is long and narrow, to take advantage of the south-facing windows. In Version 1.0 the sleeping area is on the north part of the house. Even if that area is bermed with earth at the north side, it will still get cold in the winter. So, I took the sleeping area and put it west of the great room and made it long and narrow. I promise I will post pictures of Version 2.0 as soon as I take them.
I have a recipe of sorts to post. It isn’t really a recipe, more of a meal idea, inspired by another meal idea. I read Cold Weather and Comfort Food at Miss Effie’s Diary. She called her meal Wild Rice Stuffed Squash. I took her idea and changed it a bit, making it more like Tom’s hamburger helper and calling it Monkey Brains. Tim called it “Monkey Brains,” I guess because it looks like eating monkey brains. So that was what we told the kids it was and they were intrigued, just not intrigued enough to try the stuffing in the squash today.
The Monkey Brains had the following ingredients: grass-fed ground beef, onion, garlic, red peppers, celery, zucchini, broccoli, and tomatoes, acorn squash, and wild rice. We also added basil, parsley, salt and pepper. All the vegetables and herbs are from our garden or the farmer’s market. The rice is from a local store called Sugar N’ Spice. Carol, the owner, sells bulk herbs, spices, flour, rice, baking goods, etc. The grass-fed beef is from a family cattle company that is about 30 miles from us, the same people who sold us our cows. Our freezer is full of grass-fed beef.
freezer full of grass-fed beef
So, like Miss Effie, I cooked the rice and the acorn squash while I made the stuffing. The stuffing is really the part that can vary widely, depending on what you have available. It would work with any ground meat, or even stew meat, I would think. She used a white sauce in her recipe and I used a tomato base. She used mushrooms and cranberries, too. Tom doesn’t like mushrooms and we didn’t have cranberries, so that was out. But, then I started thinking about ground beef and veggies and realized that what really sounded good was Tom’s hamburger helper dish. That’s why I called it more of a meal idea than a recipe. In fact, last night it worked out that the squash wasn’t done so we pretty much ate the stuffing, which wasn’t really like stuffing at all, and talked about how we could do something similar with a casserole.
By the way, I have to say that the celery from my garden has flavor. I mean serious flavor. Nothing I’ve ever had at the grocery store compares. I don’t know if it’s the variety I planted (not sure what variety it was as Scott the Farmer gave it to us) or the soil or just the taste of organic celery. I really don’t know, but I know that it has lots of flavor and it doesn’t take much to add flavor to a dish.
OK, I’ve worked on another post about our future house. It’s almost done, but I need to find the time to finish it. In the meantime, check out this link for more videos on all kinds of natural building materials. This specific link is for straw bale videos, but if you explore the site you will see all kinds of other videos for other building materials. Check out the Natural Building category. Enjoy!
Finally, a post about building a green home. I admit I haven’t thought about our future home much over the summer and spring. Now that it is autumn and the oats will soon be taken care of, it will be time to explore our property some more and look for that south-facing hill that will serve as a building site. I am sure that our future home will be many years in the making, as we plan to do much of the work ourselves. Since the kids are still little (shhh don’t tell them they are little) it would be very difficult to start building. So right now we are in the planning stage, where we are thinking about materials, foundations, layout, and building sites.
One thing I have been able to build is a Lego house. I built Version 1.0 (and Version 2.0 after discussing things with Tom) and I wanted to post a bunch of pictures, but I think that I need to give some background before I rush into the pictures. Some of my readers are probably very familiar with alternative or “green” building ideas, but some might not be. If anyone is interested in an introduction, I recommend The Good House Book. This book has chapters on foundations, walls, roofs and shows traditional, modern, and alternative materials to use, as well as explaining what a good foundation or roof should do. As far as websites, I recommend Green Home Building as a place to start (this link is in the sidebar to the right, by the way).
I first learned about green house building after a friend, Heather, posted a link to pictures of her mother’s earthship. I had no idea what an earthship was. I remember looking at the pictures and not understanding what I was looking at as it mostly looked like a regular house, but a very cool one. So my next step, of course, was to ask Heather what the hell an earthship was. That, and Google, of course. Those two things sparked my interest and I read and learned a ton about earthships and other alternative building methods, including cordwood, straw bale, earthbags, cob, etc. Before hearing of earthships, I had an inkling in the back of my head that houses throughout the world were not all built the way modern houses in the US are built. I had heard of houses built out of straw bales, but didn’t know much other than the fact that you can build out of straw.
I’m not sure I am up for building an earthship as it seems like a ton of work, but I like the idea a lot. They are not just houses built of out old tires filled with rammed earth, but are supposed to be self-sufficient, zero waste systems. So it’s not a house, but a system. People who build earthships often live off-grid, which means they are not tied to power lines (or water or public sewage treatment or anything like that). The houses have solar and/or wind power, rain catchment and treatment, and greywater systems (the greywater is used to water the indoor plants and to flush toilets, assuming the toilets are not compostable). Blackwater, or water with fecal matter, is piped outdoors into landscaped areas. This way the landscaping gets watered while the water gets filtered through the plants.
If you want to learn more, here are a couple of videos you can watch:
Anyway, you can see how these ideas are really interesting and how building an earthship is really a lifestyle choice, not just a building choice. Anyone can build a log home or a straw bale home that is just like a regular home, with a furnace and air conditioning, public water and sewage or septic tank, and is tied to the power grid. You can build an earthship that way, too (and in some areas building code require a septic tank). You can build a straw bale house that is more like an earthship, too. So since I am not really into using a sledgehammer to ram earth into old tires, I figured straw bale is our best bet (though I’m not sure that is the best option since we are surrounded by woods!), but I want a lot of the same features as an earthship.
Some of our goals for our future home are:
to use solar and wind energy, and possibly micro-hydroelectric and be off-grid, if possible
to have a home that does not require a furnace or air conditioning
to reduce our energy use overall so that living off-grid doesn’t cost a fortune in solar panels and batteries or become a hardship
to use well water, but to also capture and store rainwater for gardening and landscaping and maybe to eventually use well water as backup from filtered rainwater
Now, we do live in a cold climate, so the idea of no heating might sound crazy. However, that is the reason we want to
build into a south-facing hill, to take advantage of the thermal mass of the earth on the north side of the house
have flooring that absorbs heat and lets it out later (another thermal mass), such as wood or tile,
have a masonry oven heater
have super insulation in the form of earthbags or straw bales, and
design with passive solar methods, such as south facing windows to catch winter sun, which will in turn warm the earth to the north side of the house and warm the flooring and northern walls of the house, as well.
In cold northern climates, rooms should not be too deep, otherwise the northern side can get cold. Of course, it seems that if the northern side is also bermed by the earth this will be less of a problem. The straw bale walls also serve to keep heat in the house during the winter, and heat outside during summer.
A masonry oven heater is usually totally indoors and is made of materials that absorb heat and release it slowly (thermal mass again!). It has a chimney of course, but it looks like this on the inside. I really like the look of this one as well as the fact that it is in the middle of a great room. That is exactly what I want, a great room with a masonry oven heater in it.
So, here is one picture of the house I built out of Lego. I’ll post more pictures next time, as well as explaining why this was Version 1.0 and why I had to scrap it to make Version 2.0, which looks more like the Long House on the Prairie that was part of what inspired me to started the blog in the first place.
Do not mess with a woman with PMS and a gun, even if it is a bb gun. Just some advice from a cranky mama who had a bad day. Please pass this on to any other predators of chickens and/or cats.
We heard coyotes Sunday morning. When I say we, I mean I heard them, Tim heard them, and so did my mom. They sounded quite close to the house. It was around 4:30 in the morning and that might be why Mo woke up, too. She thought she heard dogs and said she wondered where the owners were. I told her I didn’t think they were dogs. Anyway, the two of us finally went back to sleep, but I kept hearing some kind of scratching going on by the coops. When I looked for tracks today, I didn’t see any by the coop so maybe I was hearing things. I did, however, see something walking around on the sidewalk between the house and garage. I think that was a possum. I also heard something step on a snapper (not the fish, but the tiny bags of gunpowder that you throw on the sidewalk so they pop). I hope the noise scared it away!
The other morning I went out to let the chickens out and there was a raccoon on the ground, dying. It was not dead, it was dying. I say this because I told Tom it was dying, but he didn’t seem to understand. He was in the office telling me what to do and I told him he had to come see it before he started telling me what to do with it. So then he comes down, looks at it, and says, “Oh, it’s not dead.” Yes, I said dying, not dead. So anyway Tim ended up taking care of it. I didn’t hear the whole story, but he used a shovel and moved it somewhere else to let it die, so it wouldn’t die near the house. Apparently he somehow put it out of its misery, which is not something I could easily have done.
About two weeks ago we lost a hen to a coyote. Or most likely to a coyote. Our electrician was working on some outlets in the office (did I ever describe Tom’s super cool office with a view?) and said he saw a wolf by the chickens. However, we don’t have wolves in this part of Illinois, but we have coyotes galore. So most likely it was a coyote, in the middle of the day, coming for a snack. So far they haven’t been back, but the chickens do make a lot of noise if they see something. It almost sounds like the noise they make when laying an egg except much louder and they are all making the noise at once. That was what they were doing when the electrician mentioned the “wolf.” They did it again one morning, but were safely in their coop so i did not go check anything out. And we’ve heard that noise a few other times and gone out and not seen anything. I’m sure they saw something, though. Perhaps their squawking scared off whatever it was.
We also seem to have wild turkeys nearby. We hear them around dusk and I can only assume they are making noises and roosting at that time of night. I wonder if that is what the chickens saw one morning? I can imagine they’d be scared of a wild turkey. Shoot, they are scared of my mother-in-law’s Yorkshire terrier. Speaking of critters I had best go see what the kids are up to. Plus, it is almost time to get the chickens in to keep them safe from critters.
Imagine couches near the south-facing windows and a kitchen near the north of the room. And lots of sunlight streaming in from the greenhouse in the morning.
