Celebrating their arrival!

UPDATE!: I put some photos of the new chicks up on flickr. Click the photo below to jump to the slideshow.

Wet and windy weather saw our expert friend, Rafter, lead a mushroom workshop on April 16th! Indoors for a PowerPoint, Q & A and snarf session; then outdoors for Shitake log inoculation and garden bed prep. Thanks to housemate JP for his effort and achievement in helping organize a delightfully illuminating event. And kudos to our many guests whose enthusiastic participation and food contributions will undoubtedly manifest in a good-Karmic harvest. Happy, happy!

Prized duck egg (left)!

Our ducks, Mr. and Mrs. Cloud (as named by Joshy)

Meet our ducks:  Mr. & Mrs. Cloud. Based on what we were told when we adopted them last Fall, we didn’t expect to see a duck egg anytime soon (if ever). Well, as you can see, the layin’ has begun! This egg is amazing, with a shell that’s almost translucent, like vellum. It has been suggested that Mr. & Mrs. Cloud are especially content, now that they’re allowed to walk themselves to and from the garden puddles. Let’s hope there’ll be many more eggs to come…

Julio cooked a spectacular dinner of stuffed eggplant, stuffed squash, tomato stewed okra, and flaming cheese!

Not too long ago, JP approached me about crafting a House logo. His photograph (gracing our blog banner) has served as an illuminating source. Along with that photo, Housemate feedback and our fidgety chickens rallied my signature line art to paper. Voilá—communal inspiration hatches free again!

I just brainstormed 10 things that I have personally known people ’round here to make, excluding alcoholic fermentations:

1. Mayonnaise
2. Komboucha
3. Yogurt
4. Bread
5. Granola
6. Ginger ale
7. Pesto
8. Ice Cream
9. Seitan
10. Kimchi

I don’t know if this is the optimal order of execution, but it’s clear that making these all from scratch at least once would be a substantial accomplishment of (s)elf-reliance.  Of these, I have only made mayonnaise and bread.  Tonight, I teamed up with Kim (La Casa ’08 welcome back to town Kim!) to make both mayonnaise and bread again, but the bread didn’t turn out perfect, so let’s talk about the mayonnaise!

Like Kristina before me,  I used the basic mayonnaise recipe from Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything: mix an egg, some lemon juice, some mustard, maybe some salt and pepper to taste in a food processor. Pour in a cup of olive oil in a slow stream—if you pour too fast you’ll get runny mayo! This time I used half olive, half canola oil, but it still tasted too too extra virgin for me. Still, one of the better batches I’ve made.

NOT a photogenic food

I used the mayonnaise in Deviled Eggs, which of course involve more eggs and more mustard.  They turned out great:

Delicious!

Sometimes I like to proceed by innocence. I have never made a music video before. But this track totally needed one. Enjoy.

“Kleismic” refers to the Kleisma, a musical interval made slightly more significant by this composition.

Remember: If you reject or even ignore Christmas, you are still using it.

Anyway, Sandor Katz is the wild fermentation maven. Here’s his website, starting right off at the recipe for kraut: http://www.wildfermentation.com/resources.php?page=sauerkraut

This is the batch I made just a few days ago, dedicated to Dan Schreiber:

Cabbagecarrotconfetti

A bit of sauerkraut spirituality fun

Julio giving the kraut crock some L-O-V-E

I hope you make some of your own and you love it!

During our last house meeting, Maggie led us in an activity that I thought was pretty cool and worth sharing here on the blog.  A few weeks ago we agreed it would be a good idea to reorganize the living room to better fit the ways in which we’d like to utilize it.  We hadn’t really gotten a chance to put our heads together and figure out exactly how to do that.  So, during last Sunday’s meeting, we spent some time reflecting on what we individually wanted to experience – first, in our home as a whole, and then, in our living room specifically.  The collective results of that exercise, the various themes and commonalities, were a pretty interesting reflection (to me, anyway!) of the group we have living here currently.

As the newest member, I’ve been here a month, and so far I am still thrilled to be here!  I keep being warned that this won’t last, that I’ll soon become bitter and disillusioned (okay, no one actually said THAT, exactly), but until then… I really do consider myself fortunate to be able to experience life at La Casa.  Now…back to the activity!

We were first directed to write 3-5 FEELINGS we wanted to experience in our home.  We performed this task individually and anonymously. Here were the results. (fyi, I tried to consolidate repeat words, those are shown bigger with the number of how many people wrote them)

Feelings.  Home.

We were then asked to write 3-5 ACTIVITIES we wanted to see happening in our home.

Activites. Home.

At this point, Maggie read to us the list of words we had written collectively, first for the feelings, then for the activites.  Next, we were to write 3-5 FEELINGS again, this time for our living room specifically.

Feelings. Living room.

Finally, we wrote 3-5 ACTIVITIES we wanted to see happening in the living room.

Activities. Living room.

The living room has gone through its first transformation since then (with the help and inspiration of a little tequila, so I hear).  Next time you get a chance to pass through, these might be a few of the things you might see happening there!

JP flying upside down

Becky gets flown by Maggie

Embryonic sweat

Cold sweat

Ice meditation, great cure for hangovers

सिद्धार्थ गौतम

My son, Josh, chillin'

Out of La Casa & into a little rental house on Franklin St.  Now Franklin St is a strange little street — a dead end poking almost obnoxiously into Crystal Lake Park.  Obnoxious from th point of view of th park district, who’d like to see all th houses on th street torn down & th street turned into a parking lot!  But for th few residents who live here, in these 8 houses, it’s a strange & magickal anomaly.  And also not La Casa.
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Ok, first person now.  I moved in with my partner Carey & her soon-to-be-ten-year-old daughter Kaleigh (who, as I type this, is spending some days in Springfield with her Dada and her friends — Springfield is where she moved from on September 2, 2010).  So we’ve been settling in.  There are domestic things to figure out — child care, unpacking, washing dishes, making “supper” (that’s what they call it around here), digging garden beds for winter greens!  And there is love, passion, creativity here.  Carey & I continue to fall deeper in love and surprise each other.  Yesterday we harvested nine pounds of edible mushrooms!  And Kaleigh & I invented a board game last week called CrazyPlay!!, which she took to Springfield with her and is hopefully surviving lots of games (it needs to be laminated, but we haven’t laminated it yet).  We’ve also drawn & painted together, made bound books out of scrap paper, taken walks with Sophie, cast magic(k) spells with sticks.  And it’s not always easy.  As we settle into a new place with new people, there cannot not be turbulence.  But there is also patience and love to soothe it.

C & K get up a lot earlier in th morning than I do.  I’m getting used to it.

Today, with Kaleigh in Springfield and Carey at work, I’m doing some things that are important.  Blogging is on my list (check!), and so is composing music, turning th compost (check!), taking a bath, re-reading a Gregory Bateson article, doing yoga in th park, & washing some dishes.

I miss my friends at La Casa.  It’s nice to find excuses to go over there.  It can’t happen every day, which makes it special when it does happen.  When I lived there, I wasn’t in th habit of giving everyone a hug every time I see them, but now I am!  I look forward to future La Casa events: potlucks, concerts, workshops, birthday parties….  It’s a nice circle to be in.

Much love,

Andrew, La Casan at Large.