Cloth Porch

Food Culture

Yesterday My cousin Tracey came from the city, my husband HJ came from Hamilton, and my sister came from Saskatoon and I planned to make a meal for them.  I bought ingredients and then decided while I was still in Kingston that I felt too overwhelmed to make a fuss, so I stopped at the Pasta Shelf in Kingston and picked up a huge vegetarian pasta dish, some extra red pepper sauce, some roasted garlic as well as garlic bread and put it all on the BBQ to heat.

I know it is LAZY, but sometimes one has to allow themselves such conveniences.

The meal was nice, but I could not really eat, actually, only my husband ate well, so over half of the pasta is left over.  I think that this means that I don’t have to cook today either.  Just warm.

So… the problem is that I still have ingredients for a meal for four hungry people.  Having grown up on a farm, I always find that I over prepare food.  This over preparation, always thinking if there are no left overs that people did not get enough to eat, caused a funny situation in my marriage for the first few months.  I would cook big meals and my husband who grew up in a culture where leaving left overs is not acceptable… caused confusion.

I would cook bigger and bigger meals and he got fat a little bit at a time.  Finally, I said, “I think you might be eating too much” and he said, “I think you are cooking too much”.  Turns out that the poor man was in agony trying to get through these meals in order to prove to me that he enjoyed what I cooked him.

A funny cultural difference, I think.  Now I prepare proportionate meals unless I have guests, or I remove what will be for the next meal before I put anything on the table.

Categories: Cloth Porch, Friendship, Off Grid, Tiny House Ontario | 2 Comments

A Different Angle

I took a photo of Tiny House Ontario that I find so absolutely initially terrible looking that I almost don’t want to show you.

Still… it is too weird and funky to keep to myself.  And if you look past the TYPAR covering, you might see this photo as interesting, as I do.

The light filtering through the trees is gorgeous and also my sweet husband is the shadow in the cloth porch.

Life is worth living here.

 

Still, I hope we can get Tiny House Ontario sided this year.  A new white food grade barrel will go up this weekend on the WC roof to meet the hose (you might see it) there.

Onward, we move.  One foot in front of the other.  

Categories: Cloth Porch, Environmentalism, Forest, Magical, Off Grid, Tiny House Ontario | 1 Comment

Again: The Cloth Porch

I know, I have said it a hundred times already, but I want to emphasize that I use the cloth porch more than I imagined I ever would and it seems to be not just my favourite hang out but the favourite of all of my visitors too.

Last year I put up the remaining spruce that was left over from the inside but I did not have enough to finish the job.  This year my husband and I broke down and bought 6 more boards.  They are not weathered so they look a little different than the ones from last year.

It makes the cloth porch feel a lot more like a room and a lot less like an after thought.  Here is what it looks like when you look in from the South

Categories: Cloth Porch, Nature, Off Grid, Simple living | Leave a comment

Outdoor Kitchen, Pasta Salad

Finally, I have taken the time to lower the outdoor kitchen.  It was about 8 inches to high when I originally built it and I just put up with it, because I thought it would be a huge task to adjust it because of the heavy marble top.

Turns out it was easy.  Took about a half hour or maybe an hour to do the whole thing.

Today, I made a pasta salad on it and I did not get a pain in my shoulders.  Woot!

Categories: Cloth Porch, Off Grid, Ontario, Simple living, Tiny House Ontario | Leave a comment

Sunday Morning

At 6:45 am, the sun filters into the bedroom window at Tiny House Ontario.  Many birds are singing and the grouse thumps, the temperature is warm but not yet uncomfortable.  The breeze rustles the canopy around us.

“I had a crazy dream last night”, I tell my husband.  I won’t bore you with the detail of it, but the long dream involves rescuing a miniature ape from a helicopter and finding out that it is a very important animal whose hospital wings around the world, are ready for him should anything happen.  Oddly, the ape belongs to my brother and sister in laws who live in Germany, but I don’t know that this animal exists until now.  There is a long snake who tries to bite me but misses and the crash is on my home farm, which is a place which I choose not to be a part of.  It is convoluted.  Still it fills the peace of the forest with a detail of life, no matter how off the mark of reality it is.

We climb down the ladder stairs and I start the propane element on the BBQ for bodum coffee and pat the dogs with my husband while we wait for the kettle to boil.  We settle on yogurt and granola for breakfast, feed the dogs and listen to rustling in the forest.

It is a typical morning at Tiny House Ontario.  There are no electronic interruptions.  There is no news from the outside world.  We know nothing of the last 12 hours as we quietly sit and eat breakfast, chatting.  We pat the dogs some more, laugh at the silly Bad Little Wolf who is harassing his sister and jumping around.  I break the pattern to record this Sunday morning at Tiny House Ontario for you.

I took a clip on this morning from the top of the BBQ with my computer, but I do not know how to upload videos.   Sorry!

Here is a photo of our cloth porch breakfast.

Could you get used to this?

Categories: Cloth Porch, Forest, Off Grid, Ontario, Open your eyes, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario | Leave a comment