A Day for Cooking

Today was a cold, gray day. A perfect kind of day to spend in the kitchen.

The day started at 5:30 this morning, when I got the hankering to make homeade buttermilk biscuits from Greg's Southern Biscuit recipe  found at allrecipes.com.  They didn't rise like I would have liked, but the flavor was incredible. I think I rolled them out a little thin, which probably explains the lack of leavening.  I made a batch of homeade sausage gravy to go with them.

Tanner decided they were so good they made his eyes cross. 

This afternoon I decided to whip up a pot of split pea soup. Let me say that as wonderful as this soup tastes, it is NOT pretty.  But paired with my Hawaiian Sandwich, it is incredible.  

Here is my recipe:

Amy's Split Pea Soup

2 1/2 cups split peas

8 cups water (or broth)

1 cup diced carrots

1 cup diced onion

1 cup diced ham

1 bay leaf

salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a soup pot, bring to a low boil, then decrease heat and cover, stirring occasionally until peas are cooked completely.  

Hawaiian Sandwich

1 Hawaiian Sandwich roll, or 2 slices Hawaiian bread

2 slices havarti cheese

2 slices ham

1 pineapple ring

Arrange ham, cheese, and pineapple ring on bread. Butter outside surfaces of bread and grill in panini press or skillet until cheese is melted and bread is toasty.

We enjoyed a lovely cold weather meal, and then my daughter and her friend decided they wanted to get in the act and bake some chocolate peanut butter chip cookies.  I think there was more goofing going on than there was cooking but they sure had a fabulous time.  

The highlight of my day occured when I received my mail for the day.  Happily tucked into the box were the books that I've been waiting for for about 2 weeks.

The first, More Straw Bale Building: A Complete Guide to Designing and Building with Straw has me daydreaming about building my home... again.   The second is How to Build Small Barns and Outbuildings.  I love to sit with my books on these nippy winter evenings. Can't wait to curl up with these tonight. In fact, I think I'll go and do that now!

Natural Building Techniques

For quite some time I 've been reading up on various natural building techniques, including Cob, Adobe, Earthbag, Cordwood, and Strawbale.  With the possibility of being able to buy land soon looming, I have become more pressed to make decisions about what I want, and how I'll achieve my goal.

My primary goal is to build a home with my own two hands (and those of some friends), that is molded from all natural materials, off grid, utilizes passive solar techniques, and incorporates both indoor and outdoor living areas.

 Some time ago, I thought I had settled on earthbag construction.  I fell in love with the curves, circular designs and the fact that they are very inexpensive to build.  I found these pictures at Cal-Earth. One of my favorite sites to study for earthbag building is Earthbag Plans.  There are so many neat ideas, many not realistic for me, but fun to look at just the same

Recently I have begun reading more about straw bale homes. What I love about them is the use of thermal mass to insulate, faster erection of walls, and availability of straw, since I live here in rural Oklahoma.  In addition,  you still have the creative freedom to sculpt your home through the plastering process. I found a lovely site that shows the process in detail at House of Straw.

I realize that my biggest challenges will be the actual cost of building, and the manpower of getting the job done to make it the most economical choice.  

My plan is to first find a piece of  land.  When I find the piece that speaks to me, I will spend a year just  observing the land during the seasons for changes - become familiar before building, spending plenty of time there simply absorbing the landscape. I know this will help me not only make better decisions, but will also give me the time to begin saving the money to do the actual building.  

Of course, seeing as I'm still learning this whole process, this plan may change many times between now and the completed process. But I promise to keep you posted along the way!