Jacob told me yesterday that he was going to bake bread everyday this week. Pictured below is day 2.
Tired of so many a bread machine failure loaf this year, I decided to take failure into my own hands. Bread, like mayonnaise and kombucha, is something La Casa knows is way way waaaay better when you make it yourself, unquestionably worth the extra effort. This half-whole-wheat loaf was hand-formed with my trademark ineptitude™ and includes sunflower seeds and rosemary. Maria (my protégé) has assisted greatly with kneading and baking.
My friend and band-mate Sam generously gifted me this piece of M-7 rootstock with three golden delicious apple buds grafted onto it. Sam’s horticulture class at Parkland College was doing a unit on grafting and he wanted to share what he was learning with me and La Casa. We grafted on two dormant buds in Sam’s kitchen Friday afternoon and I biked home with it all smiles. I’m keeping it in the sunny room with the seed starts until its ready to move outside.
The golden delicious graft with the seedlings in the background. Three buds were grafted onto the rootstock. I did the top bud and Sam the middle. After the buds grow the green on top will be cut off.
Last Friday I made it to the U of I quad during an event by local artist Bonnie Fortune called Make Mountains. Participants were instructed to assume a stance similar to downward facing dog. I participated as long as my wrists would let me, and then went on my way after snapping this photo.
We don’t have any mountains here, and the flat land seems boring and barren sometimes. This performance gesture was a nod to those communities suffering from mountaintop removal practices.
When a house our size has bulk amounts of at least six kinds of bean, I’ve got two hours to make dinner, it is sometimes difficult to justify making food that requires buying fresh ingredients: “Cauliflower? Plantains? But the lentils and black-eyed peas are right here!”
(Of course, the tables will turn come harvest season!)
If a house goes on like this, without taking care to coordinate what is cooked, weeks’ worth of dinners may lack the expected textural and stylistic range as we spoon gruel from a bowl for the umpteenth time.
Now, I’m mostly a recipe person. I delight in following directions down to the letter for the promise of surprisingly perfect food (provided no one gets hurt). I think I got this from my mother (Hi Mom!). Nevertheless, occasionally I indulge in improvisation. This one began with an oath to make “gruel salad”, a joke that became reality. It was “one of those evenings.”
gruel with a twist
Cut celery, scallions, and asparagus into 3-inch chunks. Braise in medium saucepan with a little oil and a little more water. Add sliced mushrooms and broccoli. Pepper half-heartedly. Add half a cup of wheat flour and enough water to keep everything from sticking to the bottom. Overcook until gooey. Serve atop whole leaves of lettuce, carrots, and pear, with a vinaigrette dressing.
– Jacob, while we were discussing this best-of-craigslist post, which states that you can conserve water by peeing into a 5 gallon bucket and dumping it into the toilet without having to flush.
The Library of Radiant Optimism is a project by Let’s Remake, a group of local artists/activist that live in our hood. They write: “The Library was begun to catalog a groundswell of optimistic and visionary activities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We gathered a handful of books that embrace grass roots exchange of information and themes of self and community empowerment.” They put up a PDF of a book titled Domebook 2 and I’ve been fascinated with it the last couple days.
Domebook 2 was published in 1971 by Lloyd Kahn, at the height of geodesic dome excitement within the counterculture. Geodesic domes were evangelized by Buckminster Fuller as being cheap, easy to construct, and structurally superior. Sounds super-cool, right? After spending some time reading through the book I did a bit of background research on domes, this book, and the author.
It turns out that Domebook 2 was taken out of print by Kahn a few years after publication after continued frustrations with dome building. After building some 19 domes, Kahn abandoned domes altogether and shifted his inquiry towards elegantly built homes made from local material. This new work was published in the books Shelter (1973) and Shelter II (1978). However, he had created so much hype about domes that he continued to be asked about their construction for years and years. He finally wrote up this piece, Refried Domes, along with a comparison of dome/rectangle construction. His arguments against domebuilding are many and seem to have been earned through the pain of experience.
Reading Kahn’s later words killed some of the excitement I had upon discovering the book. Over a hundred pages of beautiful people trying new and exciting ways of living resonated with my current view of the world. Domes might make bad homes, but they certainly seem appealing when the rest of the world is so square. I also love the idea of starting with a stack of triangles and a group of friends and building an object of wonder together.
LaCasa member Don awoke this AM to find chicken tracks on his eastern window!
Despite his fear and loathing, he was able to electronically post this vital information (unless the chickens find a wy t* scr#m^b!* th@& l@st r%s0u#$ …
Here’s a 3D model in that I’m in the process of building to document our permaculture garden. It includes a mock-up design for the pond that attempts to maximize the amount of perimeter. I’m still learning how to use Google Sketchup so I haven’t added too many bells and whistles.
I sense an interesting utility in 3D modeling software when building permaculture designs. I’m already comfortable using photoshop but it was a conceptual leap to start working in the third dimension. Google made Sketchup very user friendly and they have online tutorials to explain each tool. Here’s a good place to start if your interested. The killer feature that google implemented is the ability to download and add models to the 3D Model Warehouse. That is where all the trees in my model came from. Other users have already started adding their own permaculture designs.
These cheap, unscented candles make great lighting for dinner time. The Jesus one was received from Mexico from a friend. St. Joseph and La Virgen de Guadalupe were found at Schnucks, a grocery store nearby.
I found this great webpage that has collected a bunch of free plans for building bat houses. I built a birdhouse over the weekend, when that’s finished a bat house is next. I like this one.
