ingrid

Pardon the extended metaphor.  Remodeling is a deep, dark tunnel.  Something good is at the end, but you must pass through far worse possibilities before you arrive.  Finally, I see paint at the end of the tunnel… and it is bright red.

We’re doing the bathroom red… really, really red.  I am hoping that people will open the door and say, “ohhhh, my!”.  Sheetrock and wonderboard went up last week (or down, as the case may be).  This week I ordered tin ceiling tiles (for the wall behind the sink basin) and painting started.  It gives me hope that it will all end eventually.  As flexible as I consider myself, I am sick to death of not having a dining room, and even sicker of not having an art space.  One day of paper mache with Francis in the kitchen had me convinced that food prep space does not care to share with artsy activities, not when the food prep space is already somewhat compromised.  In this department, we are no longer eating at a tiny kid table, but we do have a table tucked in right next to the couch in the living room.  It is right next to the window so you feel like you are constantly at a sidewalk cafe.  Is that cool?  Only sometimes.

Anyway… the other great thing that has nearly wrapped up is the ceiling in the art room.  As you may remember, the leaking floor in the bathroom had rotted out the beams underneath it.  We pulled sheetrock away from the ceiling in that space back when we initially tackled the basement in 2008, but then were not able to address the larger problem because we couldn’t afford to deal with the bathroom up above.  (I just went looking for a photo example of the room and me being who I am, all of the pictures I have taken of the space attempt to cut off the offending hole as well as the stupid duct that hangs down in the room.  If you look really closely though, you can see both the hole and the huge HVAC pipe that cut across the room on the way to the bathroom upstairs.)

August 2008 basement remodel

2010 New and Improved soffit!

Another view of the soffit of my dreams.

I hated that damn pipe, but now that we addressed the bathroom on the main floor, we have also moved the pipe to run along the SIDE of the room rather than smack dab down the middle.  It looks awesome!  Of all the silly things that I am excited about, this soffit takes the cake.  I love my new soffit.

Whoops.  Need to feed the children.  More remodel photos coming!

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We were chosen!  We were chosen!  We were BAWCK BAK! chosen for the Tour de Coops July 26th, 2010!  Y’all come see us.  We intend to be the nicest stop on the 29 coop Portland tour.

Hugs & Pecks,

Rita

8 Comments | In: Awesome!, Chickens Are Super Fabulous | | #

How often does this happen?  You go to your refrigerator trying to figure out what to do with your random left overs and each ingredient is somehow EXACTLY what you need to make one of your favorite things in the world?

We’re leaving for New Orleans on Thursday night, so I am trying to clean out the fridge before then.  I started out thinking I would make chicken broth by boiling down a denuded chicken, then I found some brown rice.  My refrigerator yielded up some more surprises.  Hey, some cabbage all ready chopped up!  Woa, look at these beets that need to be used!  Hey, these baked potatoes are nice.  And what about those diced onions?  Frozen carrot chunks?  Lo and behold– borscht!

I first had borscht in a quite unforgettable location.  I was locked up actually.  And it was midnight.  Intrigued yet?  My first taste of borscht was over a control panel in ______ County Juvenile Detention.  I was working there as a guard, (although they had some fancy name for us to make us sound nice and knowledgeable), and was filling in on an overnight shift with a very sweet man of Russian decent.  Knowing we were to pull a difficult (i.e., boring) shift together, making hourly checks on snoring juveniles and looking at cameras where nothing ever happened and no one ever went, he asked if he could share a special family recipe with me.  Little did I know, he intended to bring a crockpot into the facility and stew up some borscht overnight!  I am not sure how the kids slept considering that the smell pervaded the whole building, but it was delicious.  I loved it instantly.  It made a miserable job a bit better, at least for one night.

There are many recipes on The Internets about borscht, but I have had good luck just throwing stuff together.  Here is what I toss in there:

• beets (shredded)
• beet greens and stalks (chopped)
• cabbage
• onions
• carrots
• potatoes
• vegetable broth or chicken broth
• optional rice or barley
• touch of mustard powder

I like to finish the bowl of soup with a nice fatty dollop of sour cream.  Yum.

And now for your amusement, a picture of me from that time in the uniform that magically added about 20 pounds.  I was trying to look really tough:

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Watch this awesome video/cartoon on consumption!

The Story of Stuff Project

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Picture taken by Jason Franklin

This is me, soaring through the air at sunset.  The kids and I discovered that we could run at a sand dune and fling ourselves over the lip, hurling through the air and letting our stomachs drop out of our bodies with the sensation of falling, all before landing comfortably on soft, lovely sand.  Fun!  We also spent a great weekend staying at yurts at Umqua Lighthouse with super good friends, but really the best part was this— launching.  There is surely a metaphor for life in here somewhere.

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Francis wrote this great essay for school.  I was so proud of her, I thought I would put it here:

En mi familia plantamos un jardin.  Todos en mi familia tiene un cuadrado para plantar.  En mi cuadrado yo quiero plantar calabazas, espinacas y muchos flores.  Mi hermano quiere plantar zanahorias y melocotones.  Mi mama quiere plantar lechuga y guisantes.  Mi papa quiere plantar los mismos cosas que mi mama.

8 Comments | In: Awesome!, My super freakin' cute kids | | #

A woman,

black severe hair, closely cropped,

Pale skin, red, red lips, arching dramatic eyebrows,

Dressed all in black,

Carrying a huge shopping bag with a cartoonish vampire face on it,

Getting out of a Red Cross Mini Van,

“Give Blood!” it said.

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I hate to admit it, but I have become sort of house-wifey in some ways.  Cooking is one example.  In general, I love to cook, and get all sorts of ideas from wandering the aisles of the grocery store.  I also LOVE to grocery shop (and I mean that!), because I like food and feel creative looking at the endless possibilities of things to make.  It is fun to go out to eat, but only because I like to taste things and think about what is in them in the hopes of replicating that recipe at home.

As much as I love to cook, I don’t care for following recipes.  I am distressed by food waste,(hence the compost, hence the chickens, hence the less packaging), and I try to manage our household to make the most use out of what we have.  I am not the type to go out and shop for specific things for just one recipe.  I struggle with recipes that tell you to use a quarter cup of onions when you are going to end up cutting the whole onion.  And no way am I using just half the can of tomatoes!  What will happen to the other half of that can?  In general, I make vast quantities of food, often freezing the left overs for another day or tweaking the ingredients.  In our house you find squash and chard for dinner day one, beef burritos day two, and squash, beef & chard enchiladas day three.

Here is a good website on trying to avoid food waste.

The truth is that I sort of hate following directions anyway, so recipes and cookbooks are used mostly as loose recommendations around here.  Even so, I still occasionally need a loose recommendation just to keep cooking foods that are interesting and to break out of my cuisine rut.  Here is a “loose recommendation” that turned out SOOOOO GOOD, even with me making it sort of following the recipe!  The kids loved it, it is pretty healthy, and I had most of the ingredients (and the ones that I didn’t have were easily substituted out).  I recommend it highly, especially served with rice.  Super good.

West African Peanut Soup

Ingredients:

1 cup cooked, skinless, chicken breast, diced

2/3 cup onion, diced

1 1/2 teaspoons garlic, minced

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

3 cups reduced sodium, fat free chicken broth

1 6-ounce can tomato paste

1 (14 1/2-ounce) can stewed tomatoes

1/2 cup reduced-fat peanut butter

Directions:

1. In a large pot, sauté onion in sesame oil until translucent; add garlic

and chicken and stir to heat through.

2. Add seasonings and sauté 1 minute longer.

3. Add broth, paste, tomatoes, and peanut butter.  Stir until well

combined.

4. Heat over medium heat until hot but not boiling.

5. Serve immediately.

6. Refrigerate leftovers within 2-3 hours.

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This is up above Brad’s parents’ place in Grand Ronde.  I think it is beautiful.  Eerie, but beautiful.

There is a dirt road through the woods and when you run down the hill, the ground is soft and cushiony with fir needles.  I took this picture in the dark, looking back up the hill at where the light shines through.  The kids love to race down the hill into the darkness.  I do too, that is why it is the best.

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I know, I know… how can a tree be a man?  Trees are not feminine or masculine (so there French, Italian and Spanish!), they just ARE.  And yet, this year just before Christmas, Francis, Inez and I discovered this kind of cool place and saw our very first man-tree.

The special place was Portland’s Queen Anne Victorian Mansion.  It was all lit up for Christmas, and for a measly $3 we could stroll through it and check out all sorts of lights and trees and such.  I wasn’t interested much in lights and trees, but I was interested in the first house in Portland to have running water and electric lights.  In 1884, David Cole thought it might make a nice wedding present for his new bride, Amanda Boone, Daniel Boone’s granddaughter (hey Brad, how come I never got a house with running water and electric lights for my wedding?—Oh wait, I did.  Thanks honey!).  The house is full of Povey stained glass and has most all woodwork still intact.  David Cole was a millwright, so all the treadles and do-dads and wooden stuff that I forgot the names of, was all made in his mills.  Most interesting of all, the house was on the Columbia river before the river was dammed above Portland and MOVED for God’s sake.  That is ridiculous how a house could be on a hill above a river in 1884 and just 126 years later sits on a neglected hillside overlooking a railroad track, ugly Columbia Boulevard, and an abandoned sugar mill.  Where is the river?  Oh, a mile or so away….

Anyway, Man-tree.  Man-tree.

So, there were 10 trees in the house which means that there was a Christmas tree in almost every room (some had two!).  In the mass of trees we saw one upside down tree and many, many themed trees.  In David Cole’s study, we saw the head of a boar, the head of an elk, a stuffed pheasant, and this:

Isn’t that a man-tree?  It screams out, “I’m gonna’ grab this bird and kill it with my bare hands, ripping its feathers from its body to adorn a Christmas tree in my manly study!”

And so, the Man-Tree is also THE BEST, but in a different way, I do admit.

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