La Casa Grande Colectiva

Category: house

  • On the road: Minneapolis

    On Friday I left lovely Urbana for a two-week tour of the Midwest, in conjunction with elizaBeth Simpson and the Change of State Performance Project.  I hope to post occasional updates on this fortnight of adventure.  I also hope Urbana folks can come on April 21 or 23, when we hit Urbana, and that you can invite whoever friends near Iowa and Chicago and Milwaukee are arty enough to handle our art art art. 

    The theme of the tour is WATER; Qilo and Andrea perform a play about water & its politics, Beth has created a seaside multimedia romp, and I play an udderbot solo piece called hoprock.  The udderbot is a musical instrument we’ve invented which must be filled with water to be played; check out the blog ‘n’ wiki when curious.

    Stop One was Minneapolis.  Staying in a house with hairless cats, who are more like giraffe-bats, eating ginger snaps, studying maps.  A hurried visit with Philip Blackburn, a soft-spoken and highly-accomplished sonical practitioner who’s planning to plant a circle of 52 different varieties of apple tree in his backyard.

    Then we had a show this afternoon, and a good audience came, despite the inclement Easter.

    That’s all for now.  Maybe one of these other folks will lend me their camera for further illustration…

    Hold down the fort!

  • A Feast for the Ages

    Last Monday, Jacob and I toiled away in the kitchen for many many hours. He made bread while I prepared things for open-faced sandwiches.
    Homemade Bread
    Here is the dough being made.
    Kneading
    Being Jacob’s protégé, I helped with kneading. It’s fun. And gets tiring. But you can build some guns in the process.
    At one point, the chickens escaped from the coop, making a mad dash for the compost pile. With the help of Ronna, we wrangled them in and went back to our toiling.
    Homemade Bread
    Here it is! The bread was toasted in the oven. You can also see some curried eggs in the back that Jacob made.
    My Sandwiches
    Top: sauteed leeks, chard, shallots and swiss cheese. Bottom: fresh arugula, tomato, avocado, goat cheese. Right: sauteed mushrooms, shallots, swiss cheese. And then a curried egg. It was quite the feast.

  • Mama Marrrrria’s Salsa

    salsa2
    Ronna got the house on a salsa kick after she made it a couple times. Here is how I make my salsa:

    1. Throw the following into a food processor: 1 can diced tomatoes, an onion, green pepper, some bunches of cilantro, garlic, chives, hot pepper (or substitute with chili powder), cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, fresh black pepper.
    2. Press the button on the food processor several times.
    3. Dump into serving bowl and watch it disappear before your eyes.

    salsa1

  • Things La Casa Likes, 2

    Mismatched Socks

    socks
    Because sometimes (or most of the time) your sock drawer isn’t organized.

  • Beer Dig

    Yo! La Casa hosted a BEER DIG yesterday, which means we bribed our friends with alcohol to help get our pit ponded!  Something like 40 people showed up, some of them with shovels, for a muddy-fine time digging, grunting, drinking, heaving, hoeing, and drinking.

    Some La Casans went out round about 10AM to imagine a desirable curvy shape for our pit-pond to take, wiggling our garden hose and some electrical cords around until everyone ok-ed it.  Maria threw down some white spray paint to make it official.  “Dig here.”  We made a design with two shallow, wiggly fingers and a mound in between.

    Pond shaping up

    In the picture above, Liya (purple shirt and fabulous overalls) stands in front of the mound and between the two fingers. You can see how high the water table had gotten from the night before!  We bailed out the pit more than once, and it quickly filled back in with fresh water from the ground.

    Towards the end of the day

    Above: Towards the end of the dig, you can see even the new fingers filled with a bit of water.  The north finger is the close one, and on the other side of that soggy mound, you can see a bit of the south finger.  We made a lot of progress, and we have more digging to do yet!

    Bonnie in the low contrast of the sunshine

    Anna, Brett, & Bonnie in a dramatic pic!

    Many beds were prepared as well

    Above: Meanwhile, some of us worked on digging new garden beds and raising them up with soil from the pit-pond.  We carried sod to the front yard to replant it in a strange patchwork under a tree, hence Vinnie with a wheelbarrow of sod.

    The hungry laborers

    Post-dig din: whole wheat macaroni with tomato sauce, quinoa, (leftover) delicious chili, and home-made bread-machineless bread.  The sun going down, and the crowd dwindling a bit.  The alcohol finally catching up with me….

    Post dig bonfire

    And finally, as we digested our elbows and beer, we enjoyed a big-ol’ bonfire, the first of the season.

    Post dig bonfire 4

    Thanks for digging with us, those of you who did!  I, for one, thought it went swimmingly, pit-ponds, garden beds, soddy jigsaw puzzles, bowls of quinoa, and raging fires considered.

  • Jacob, white bread

    Jacob told me yesterday that he was going to bake bread everyday this week.  Pictured below is day 2.
    Jacob baked bread

    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.

  • Dinner recipe: Gruel Salad

    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
    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.

  • Unintentional Pun of the Week

    And then you’re in trouble.

    – 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.

  • Intentional Pun of the Week

    You ungrateful piece of metal!

    – Ronna, about the grater that wasn’t cooperating with carrots.

  • Analysis Needed: House Mtg Called For Today

    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#$ …

    Photo coming, soon?

  • modeling the La Casa permaculture garden in 3D

    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.

    Garden Model

    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.

  • Things La Casa Likes, 1

    Jesus Candles

    Jesus Candles
    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.