Burra Maluca

Every day!

We cook everything from scratch and if I don't do it every day it builds up into an enormous mountain that threatens to engulf the whole kitchen. The only way to keep it under control is to resist the temptation to have an endless supply of crockery and to attempt to wash up every day without fail. Of course, what I attempt to do and what I actually achieve are two different things, but if I don't manage a batch every day I end up having to have two goes another day.

Well the Friday evening shopping trip happened and my friend handed a whole bag of goodies over to the boys for me.

All this lot showed up!



Iggy wants the novels and Rosa has claimed the jug and the Mrs Beeton's. Which she now wants me to read to her...



I must admit some of those topics look worth investigating.

This page is about haybox or fuelless cookery and gives a basic introduction and instructions on how to build a haybox.



Whilst this page gives instructions for use, though I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of leaving it in long enough that the food needs to be reheated for serving - to me that would indicate insufficient insulation that has allowed the food to cook to a temperature that might allow harmful bacteria to breed.



After all that reading, Rosa decided to take all the silk flowers I had in the other jug and artfully arrange them in this one instead. Which means I now have the original jug to root sweet potato cuttings when the time comes.

I mean, I did have a dedicated glass vase for that job, but somebody borrowed it and arranged peacock feathers in it for her alchemy display. I can't be cross with her though. She is an awesome little dragon.

r ransom wrote:Why is there no E-sharp?
Was he a bad little letter and didn't eat all his vegetables?

Why are there so many sounds missing in European music?

Disclaimer - I'm tone deaf, can't read music, and for the most part can't even listen to it as it overwhelms me and I seem to interpret it differently to most people. But I too have occasionally attempted to understand how it works and how to read it.

This is how I visualise it...

Imagine you are walking along - right, left, right, left, right...

Where each right foot hits there's a note. The sharps and flats are 'extras' where the left foot hits. Except whoever decided how to write the notes down is as bad at math and logic as I am at music, and he wasn't consistent.

In fact, he made the notes go something more like  - right, right, right, left, left, left, left, right

I actually asked my other half for help constructing that. He says it starts at middle C and goes up a whole octave.

So the first right is C, the second is D, the third is E. Then he counts the next note on the step made by the left foot. So there's no E sharp as that step has been declared to be F.

The sounds aren't missing, just mis-named.

And then of course other cultures have different stride lengths so their notes fall in different places. And there are all the other places along the path that don't line up with where the feet landed when the path was first laid out.

Hope that helps!

Also, you guys have no idea how hard that was to write as someone who is not only tone deaf and can't read music, but also can't tell left from right...

Mike Cantrell wrote:Just like that! That's what I was thinking: with the bricks interweaving with the wall itself.

We find the bypass pretty much essential on 'shoulder days' to get it started. It's just too long and convoluted a route to expect the first few puffs of hot gas to find their way along otherwise.



In ours, this means that the gasses come up under cooktop but then instead of snaking their way under the whole thing, then going down into the bell and eventually finding the gap at the bottom of the bell, they can shoot along under the right half of the cooktop and find the chimney. This also means that if we have a power outage and run out of gas during the summer, we can light a quick fire and have half the hotplate to cook on without overheating the house by warming the bell up.

Jackson Bradley wrote:I'd like to be able to tolerate other people, besides my own household, for more than three days.

Three DAYS?

Three hours would be excessive for me...

One hour, maximum, once a month or so. Also maximum.

I really have become a terrible hermit...

As for superpowers, I'd just like some more energy.

The walker cookstove works like that. I'll share some photos of our build...

In this, the heat first comes up to the top, heats the cooktop, then sinks down the gap on the left and heats the bell (and bench when we finally fit it) then there's a gap at the bottom right which the coolest air can pass out of and rise up the brick 'chimney'.  There's a sliding brick there to act as a bypass for ease of starting, too.



This is an earlier stage of the build showing the base and the gap (occupied by a dragon) where the coolest gas escapes up the chimney.



Detail of 'chimney' and bypass.



Then we built in a flange.



And fitted the metal chimney.

My rock collection is busy gathering dust.

I need to give it a good clean up and make a better back-drop for it.



Gaia lives down there, and Maria joined her because it's more peaceful there than anywhere else. Also a Caganer because she seemed to belong. They are almost compulsory in Iberian nativity scenes and she seemed a good sort of friend for both Maria and Gaia.

Which reminds me, Austin has been busy trying to keep Roxa out of mischief by working on the willow feeder with her and it's nearly ready to deploy. I won't tell her you have a sander. She likes tools and will want to come and help once she's finished her magnum opus.

We have a water mine dug horizontally into the mountain above the house. It's 30 metres deep (horizontally) and gravity feeds into two separate systems. One feeds into a tank just behind the house to supply our personal needs. Then there are two tanks further along the terrace. The first supplies water to my son's place next door, also gravity fed, And the overflow from that fills another tank which supplies irrigation water for the garden. Any overflow from the mine feeds into the little gulley and into the stream like it always has done.



It's very much a case of take what you need and let the rest flow by.

One day I'll do a whole thread about it and how it works...

A friend of mine wants to hitch a lift into town next time there's a shopping trip, and offered me this in return.



He said it's getting damp at his place and needs somewhere dry to live. And that it's been a bit chewed.

I asked him what had chewed it. Mice, maybe?

Mice, goats and a donkey apparently.

How could I refuse?

As for which wood to use, you mentioned cherry - Roxa of course lives in the cherry capital of Portugal, and her mother is Serra da Gardunha, though no-one is quite sure if she is named after the mountain range or vice versa, which is where the very best of the cherries are grown.