on ESPN 2 with that sweet action...don't you think?
Jen shoveling hay
nice bridge...see the ice?!?!
Aaron shoveling saw dust--YAY no poop smell!
Our worlds have been opened up to a whole new dimension today--we encountered a pressure cooker! What a magical kitchen gadget that speeds cooking of all things. Of course, we've seen it on the food channel and such, but neither of us ever worked with one first hand. We cooked coconut rice for dinner (using dry coconut powder and adding hot water) in the pressure cooker -- and finished it off with craisins and slivered almonds. Yum. It was a bit of an annoyance when we ran out of propane in the midst of cooking but hey, at least we have the use of a stove and a full kitchen. It's a good thing Paul took two old empty propane tanks the other day and replaced them in our front yard with new filled ones; all we had to do was go outside and grab it and hook it up. Along with our rice for dinner, we made a vegetable stir fry with tofu and concocted a yummy but unexpectedly spicy sauce of curry powder, homemade pb, and a touch of ground ginger.
This morning's work involved time at the saw mill with Paul, after a fairly strange breakfast of "rice cereal", which lacked a certain snap, crackle and pop, that we were hoping for. For starters neither one of us were hungry, but we knew we needed some energy before working, so we gave it a go. Rice cereal looks like cream of wheat and is cooked on the stove with water or milk. We also added wildflower soupy jam and raisins, which helped out in the flavor department tremendously but did nothing for the consistency. We were left with a weird, mushy, soupy, muck that tasted surprisingly sweet. Unfortunately with such small appetites at the time, we didn't make much of a dent, but after returning from a few hours' work at the saw mill we were eager to try it again. Whether it was our hunger or whether the rice cereal had improved by sitting and thickening up for a few hours, we polished it off with our lunch. For lunch we crafted veggie burgers from a dry mix. Topped with some melted cheese and some spinach leaves, they weren't too bad but were a bit dry. In addition, we made some mashed potatoes with a few potatoes we cooked the other day.
Back to the saw mill. Paul showed us how it works and we cut three big beams into long shingles. The job consisted of a lot of oiling the machine, charging it with his batteries and then having the spray "motor starter" on it because it was so cold, and a lot of sweeping. We locked the beam into place before each cut, and stacked the finished shingles on the side. Then we collected some saw dust to bring back to the cabin for our "toilet". Today's other outdoor activities included hauling straw from the barn up to our cabin to put around our humanure dumping site perimeter, kicking frozen cut logs off the ground in order to pile together closer to the cabin, splitting wood, and feeding the animals at the barn. Indoor activities included more interior decorating, and the beginnings of new projects: Jen will catalog all the books in the cabin and create a database for them while Aaron will learn the inner workings of the water pump system, which delivers stream water directly into our indoor plumbing, that is already in place so he can create a manual.
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