Category Archives: Life Untangling

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The Gang’s All Here

So Serena (the angora–wool– rabbit) did not have any babies this week.

And as I’ve been praying all month that she’ll have “just the right number” of kits, I’m sort-of backwards relieved.  I’ve been feeling pulled this week back to writing, so not having more fiber animals to maintain is doubtless a good thing.

In other rabbity news, we picked up the crew of Californians (2 bucks, 3 does, purportedly all bred and due mid-July) and have spent this very. wet. week trying to keep them sheltered in their temporary set up and trying to keep their food dry enough that it all gets eaten, rather than soggy and thrown out.

Side note: I cannot remember a more soggy summer ever.  I mean, I remember a persistent drizzle last summer, and the summer I was married 10 years before that, but this year it’s just been coming down *buckets.”

Twice now the press-board ramp up to the porch has become so saturated that I slipped coming down and landed with a slick of mud up my pant leg. Two hours later it was dry again and had no issues.

The ducks are nearly feathered out, and I’m pretty sure they’re full-size.  They go through a five-gallon bucket of food in two days, and still freak out whenever anyone approaches.

Jay is offended by this, but I continue to argue that there are too many to make an effective effort to tame them. I keep figuring that once we cull them down to only two drakes (according to my sloppy tally that gives at least 5 to the freezer) we’ll have a better shot at winning them over with patience and food-treats.

I have named all the new rabbits.  And I use their names when bringing them their nightly food and water.

Their previous owner made her position very clear (They’re meat-producers.  Period), but I realized I’m no good at interacting with numbers (i.e., tattooed designations). I need names.  It ties into one of my favorite quotes and says something real about me:

Names are an important key to what a society values. Anthropologists  recognize naming as ‘one of the chief methods for imposing order on   perception.’  ~David S. Slawson

With all the change in my world over the last year and a half, I am quick to grab at anything that will “impose order on perception.”

And with that in mind, I realized something else interesting about all these animals I have purchased for a concrete purpose: They’re all black & white.

In a world where nothing else seems that simple, here is what I choose to surround myself with.  It’s comforting to see clarity somewhere.

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First-Try Gluten Free Pancakes

(We buy our starches and grind our flours.  I like to imagine it balances out the nutrition: starches=worthless, whole grains=very good).

We choose to grind our grains not b/c of “increased nutritional value” (We’re not that dedicated.  More is required than we do– like soaking and/or using immediately– for those perceived benefits).

We grind our own simply because it is exponentially cheaper to do so.

In the dry bowl I combine:

  • 1 cup brown rice flour
  • 1 cup millet flour
  • 1½ cups tapioca starch
  • 1/4 cup buttermilk powder
  • 2 t baking powder
  • 1½ tsp gaur gum
  • 1½ tsp baking soda
  • ¾ tsp salt

In the “wet” bowl (I use my 4-cup Pyrex) combine:

  • 2½ cups water
  • 3/4 cup apple sauce
  • 1/4 cup corn oil
  • 1 Tb vanilla

Combine wet and dry bowls and proceed as usual to cook pancakes.

ETA: Grease your pan.  Especially if you substitute another oil for the corn oil, the GF batters always stick more than you expect.

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When my millet/rice flours get low I sub in another med-weight flour like buckwheat or sorghum.

The main thing to be aware of in substituting is that different flours taste different, and some very strongly. Gluten-free flours can certainly be an acquired taste, which is why these hit pancakes use milder grains.

Gluten-free baking traditionally uses more components than regular baking.  Over the last several months I’ve gotten used to it.  I use some pre-mixed dry goods (like for muffins) but I still prefer this recipe from scratch-scratch.

10/19/11 ETA: I removed the “best” from the title, because we’ve been making new (and better) versions in our kitchen for a while now.  Generally with more eggs, since we have an abundance of those now.

Between school-teaching and life-management I am not in a state to make any ultimatums or outline any principles for success.

What I will continue to offer is specifically what worked for us, and what I’m discovering.  Maybe I’ll even get to adding pretty pictures.

I’m learning so much so quickly I’m beginning to be afraid to assert anything, but as food continues to turn out well, is something I can offer: our successes.

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Kitchen’s together.

It only took a month, but my kitchen floor is now clear of boxes and cupboard doors so I can (tomorrow) scrub my kitchen floor for the first time.

I’m not a keep-it-clean-enough-to-eat-off-the-floor type, but in my old house I was much more relaxed about my kids eating that raisin or M&M that fell on the floor, or putting on the table that clean cup that fell out of the cupboard.

Not here.

Anything touches this God-knows-what’s-been-on-it floor and it’s tossed or washed at once.

I expect we’ll keep it up (this floor gives no illusions of cleanliness) but it’ll feel good to have things done for once.

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In other news, Jay’s gone under the house and learned a lot about how things are plumbed. The important thing to keep in mind after his discoveries is that we shouldn’t wash clothes when it’s colder than -20 (F).  The pipes under the house stay open because the furnace is blowing hot air under there, but when it gets really cold that’s not reliably effective.

Jay says his big house project this summer will be pulling the siding off this house and adding a vapor barrier. There’s lots of insulation on this place, but it’s essentially a filter for the heat coming out, not preventative enough.

He’s also decided to insulate the shed and pour a concrete floor in to make it a combined barn/garage with heat fueled by the same tank that fuels the house.

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A few of the ideas so far in the long-term projects:

  • Start chickens and raspberry bushes this summer (my main goal)
  • Maybe a kid goat (if our friend’s Saanen kids a doe)
  • Maybe meat rabbits
  • If we do meat rabbits, we’ll also get a few angora rabbits (for their fur) becasue the girls want to have pet rabbits too, and I’ve been getting back into handspinning.
  • If we are feeling especially adventurous we might get a few ducks/geese as well.  I think some of this will depend on how close the pond feels in the summer.

And of course all of this depends on the house selling.  We’ve had some nibbles and a few showings.  People are positive, but without an offer we’re still in limbo.

Definitely welcome your prayers in that area.

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Septic Adventure

And much less adventurous than it could have been:

The line from the washing machine (newly pressed into service) to the tank froze yesterday.

Thankfully (Thankfully-thankfully!) this is a separate line than the one that flows from our single toilet.

Translated that means that the washing machine couldn’t drain, but the toilet could flush (a highly preferred state of affairs when a soaked carpet is your notice).

The pumping and thawing guys came out, blasted the block with steam, checked the septic and said it wasn’t too full (praise God), and said the living-level of water flow should prevent future freeze-ups.

I pray he is correct. I think things are *just* exciting enough now, and don’t crave more action.

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We now have:

  • Hot water (but no bath towels)
  • A dishwasher (need automatic dishwasher detergent– have you seen the result of standard dish soap? Jay took responsibility. I was able to continue sitting.)
  • A washing machine (dryer will be ready soon– then we’ll have a remedy for the tearful loss of beloved jammies.)
  • A functioning kitchen
  • Clearance to drink the water! The tests came back nearly identical to the city water we’ve been drinking for 10 years.

To do still are a bunch of little odds and ends, and a few bigger things that will wait till later in the year:

  • Redo bathroom
    • Get rid of carpet in bathroom
    • need a sink/vanity
  • new kitchen floor
  • Range hood
  • wood stove reinstalled
    • the stovepipe and everything else about the set-up was declared unsafe, so we took the pipe down and it’s an elaborate end-table until summer.
  • I’m also looking forward to getting the little monitor in the cabin so running out for a refill on my small (in-kitchen) containers isn’t painfully cold while I fumble about with bare hands.

So so thankful the water situation has worked out. It was the biggest question in this fingers-crossed experiment, and it looks like the Lord has blessed us.

Now we continue to wait on the questions about the septic system (when the indoors work slows down a bit Jay plans to do more investigating work).

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We’re In!

Spend the whole day in our new house, scrubbing walls, clearing cobwebs and generally imagining what the next several years of our life will look like.

We are excited to report the well-pump is working. We don’t know yet about the quality of the water (will need to have it tested), and since we haven’t yet purchased a hot water heater we also don’t have hot water yet.

But since we bought the place not even knowing if the well worked, well, we were pretty excited when that water came wooshing out.

That last paragraph as got to have the most Ws I’ve used in a long time. Especially noticeable since my keyboard’s not cooperating.

My kitchen cupboards are disapointing, but I’m praying for inspiration to make them a little less ugly, and I have a couple ideas not completely asked for.

The trick will be whether I can find what I’m looking for at a store– without too much wasted time looking.

The rest of the kitchen will be more fun; I picked a pinkish burgundy for the walls (a first for me) and we expect to buy a full fridge and just use our chest freezer for any frozen stuff.

The kids were thrilled at the chance to pick out the colors for their room (each contributed a shade and each will get to help paint his or her wall) and we plan to recycle the colors elsewhere in the house: sunshine yellow, sky blue, and lavender.

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Hey Nonny Nonny, Much Work to Do

We just finished reading The Hobbit.

Melody’s first words on realizing this– she hasn’t been paying consistent attention, though she always begs for another chapter, even when it’s not bedtime– were, “Now! Let’s read it again!“

Jay and I took four kids out to the new house yesterday to take notes on measurements and the amount of work to do before we can move in.

Our timeline is pretty tight: Jay goes back to work with the new year, and we have just under a month to meet our goal of having the Princess house back on the market by January 25th.

Wondering now if we’ll modify that goal.

For starters I plan to make the walls in th new place a priority: washing, patching and painting, so I can hang stuff up as it comes out of the boxes.

The flooring needs to be redone in the kitchen, bathroom and library/pantry cabin, but at this point I expect to wait on that until the house is ready for market.

We’ll clean what we can and do a sort of fast-swap, where we bring over what we currently are using and set up house with that before we even start to mess with the stored boxes.

Once we’re out of this house we’ll change our cleaning energies back here, patch and pain the walls then have Lowes come through and replace the carpet.  We expect to leave this house partially staged, using the furniture that won’t come to the new house, and to put it up at a price lower than it is assessed at, with the goal of course to be done with the whole business as quick as possible.

The kitchen is as small as I thought, 2½ feet of counter space on either side of the sink, but we have a 4-ft set of shelves that we hope to set up there if possible.

Right now the house has a front porch that is rather charming to me.  Jay pointed out it would be perfect to enclose as an unheated arctic entry, and I can’t disagree with the logic of his observation, but I feel a little sad about it, since as old and weather-beaten as the exterior looks, the porch made it look nicer.

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Last minute (because of course, the clock stops for Christmas) e-mails flying back and forth to prepare for the closing Monday.

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Downsizing a Kitchen

In the next month–Lord willing– I will be moving into a new house (and by “new” I mean a 40-year-old cabin, albeit one blessed with running water; not a given in my community).

The layout is fine, but the storage options in my new kitchen are limited to two sets of cabinets: one below the sink’s counter, and one above.

We’ll probably add some more once we get the appliances in and see where they’d fit. But, even with the extras I estimate I’ll have about 1/3 the storage space I enjoy in my current kitchen.

I will have a dry cabin right outside the front door, so any non-daily stuff (pressure-canner!) and pantry storage won’t have to fit in the actual kitchen.

This post is to throw an open door to this sort of advice: What bare minimums would you keep in a stripped down kitchen?

Some of my first answers surprised me, for example, between my salad-spinner and my Kitchen Aid mixer, I’d pick the first.

You see, since going gluten-free most of my baked-goods have been one-batch experiments, hardly worth the effort of unpacking then washing. On the other hand, I’ve really enjoyed the simplicity of the spinner’s results, and food that needs rinsing is cheaper anyway, which makes it the kind I’m most likely to buy.

Fortunately (she says with a grit-tooth grin) my minimalistic living while our house was on the market this summer can inform these choices.

My off-the-top list (these are all things I have and use already. The goal is to keep handy only the constantly used):

  • Dishes to eat off of, and silverware.
  • All my mixing bowls
  • Two of every measuring cup (my ill-fated attempt to use just one of each really cramped me in the kitchen this summer) and all my spoons.
  • Two bread pans, three cookie sheets and four Silpats (non-stick silicone mats. *Perfect* for GF cookies) and silicone baking cups (did you know these will work on a cookie sheet? Means I can pass on the cupcake tins.)
  • Full pot rack (freebie, since it can just hang )
  • Vitamix blender
  • Knife block
  • Microwave and/or toaster oven (These last four will likely fill most of the available counter space– though we usually stack these last two.)

Aaand that’s about as far as I’ve broken it down.  I’m not entirely sure how to divide the food or remaining “filler” that currently finds its home in my kitchen.

Anybody with experience or insight will be heard with great eagerness.

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Short Story

We have an appointment to close (write the check) Monday the 27th.

The question, that doesn’t make sense to me, is when we will be given the keys.

(Seems to me that coincides with the payment, but somehow that’s in question?)

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New House (again)

Latest news:

The title search revealed two IRS liens on the property (against the previous owner, who was foreclosed on).  As things stand the IRS’s “option to redeem” expires about Christmas. At that point the land will be free and clear with no possibility of the rug being pulled from under us.

So naturally we’re back in waiting mode.

Three possiblities are now before us.

  1. The seller could pay the liens, facilitating a quick closing
  2. We could all wait until the liens expire, less than a month away.
  3. The seller may withdraw from the contract

Considering the communication record with these sellers we have literally no idea when we’ll know which option is chosen for us.

They’re listed in the order we’d prefer.

On the upside, the kids and I drove by the place yesterday and the big berm left by the snow plow (that I was afraid would now be an ice-wall b/c of the freezing rain we had) has been plowed down.  The driveway/parking area still needs cleared of snow, but I like having a means of seeing how much attention the structures have been receiving.

None since the last big dump more than a week ago, and I prefer this.