Tiny House Ontario

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

Big Loss

Sorry I have not been good about updates in the past week.  Truth is, my grandmother died on Friday.  She was my mentor and best friend.  It has been rough and with being off grid, when I get somewhere I seem to always have other obligations.

I will post again soon.  I have to get the garden going, the eves trough up and the rain barrel connected.  So there are things to do and talk about.

Weather is nice and bike is fixed but I have not had the chance to even pick up poor Baby.

I hope all is well with my readers.

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The Calm – Journal Entry

The sun is just going down; it is a quarter to nine in the evening.  The dogs and I have just come back from a trip to our friend’s home up the road where we charged our cell phone batteries and laptop as well I traded my ice pack for a frozen one.  Before I sat down to write, I let the dogs out for the last bathroom trip of the night because they are small and a variety of predatory animals live here in the forest.

Today, I had a special visitor from Jamaica, and went to see Mindi Fillion play in Battersea with my best friend Liisa.  I meet one of my neighbours who says that they cut through my land on their four wheeler, and even though I am not crazy about this idea I agreeably say this is OK because I do not want any trouble with the neighbours and make a note to myself that I have to repair the fences soon.  I wish I would have mentioned that they have a huge tree half blown over right on our fence line.  It is perched dangerously and should be cut down and I worry about the children who live near and who roam through the forest here.  Now that we have met, I guess that I can mention it again to them.

It was a fun day over all and well deserved.

As I sit here writing, I hear a horrible rumbling in the distance like far away and serious thunder, I also hear very few birds singing but I don’t yet identify them by their call.  There is occasional rustling in the prickly canes which grow thick in front of here but the trees are as still as one can imagine.  Even the coyotes and wolves are quiet now.  There is no grouse or chicken sound either.  It is atypically silent here; I imagine it is a calm before the storm.

I have washed the few dishes that were unclean and put them away already but worry now that I did not put the propane cooker away so I get up to check this.  If this gets wet and does not work there will be no coffee in the morning for me.  Checking things, is a normal part of off grid living, I think.  I am glad for this on most days and tonight is no exception because even though the propane was away, I had left the cushions out on the cloth porch and they will soak through in tonights rain.  I make myself a cup of soup and a cup of tea while I am up.  It is too late to cook and eat a proper meal but I realize that I ate only about a cup or two of food all day and I am hungry so I keep it simple.

With the rain on its way, I admonish myself (without too much seriousness), for the day off.  I should have been working on the garden today before the rain comes.  It is May 27th now, two days since grandma died and I have to write her eulogy.  The garden should have been in weeks ago, but I had to wait for soil delivery for the raised bed.  It is very late now because the garden should have been in 4 weeks ago.  Still, I tell myself that a couple of days won’t make too much difference because I will put in started tomatoes and things with a fast turn around too, like lettuce, onion, radish and the long crops like squash and cucumbers will be fine with the new global warmed summers that we have now.  I hope that I can catch enough rain water to keep the planned small crop going.

Unbelievably shameful is that I am a little behind in my housework here.  It is tidy and organized but I have to take the furniture out and scrub the cement floors.  It is a job that I have been putting off for two weeks.  If it is wet tomorrow I won’t get to this either.

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Little Miss Muffet

I brought in my new ladder from the cloth porch and when I set it down IN THE TINY HOUSE W/C, a huge monster jumped off.  My heart rate tripled.

I have run away!  I am in town now and I am seeking a hero.  Anyone?  Doors are unlocked and this big furry bastard is in the new WC… guarding the fly swatter.  I think it wants the house…

It is HUGE and it jumps.

Categories: Tiny House Ontario | 5 Comments