Using Up Leftovers

So, I know this is a bit of a departure from what I usually post here, but I thought I would talk about how to use up some leftover spaghetti in a way that doesn't feel like you have to muddle through it. This came from the fact that the new Farmville Reality Project is about a fifty minute commute now and when I get home during the week, having something that can be easily warmed in the microwave is very welcomed. It also is very much the philosophy of the project to be creative in how things are utilized. Since the project started with its focus on growing all kinds of food, to its current phase of restoring an old farm house, creative utilization of what was on hand has become a necessity. The first two pictures show the starting point for this dish. About once a month, I make a big pot of spaghetti sauce on a Sunday afternoon. It works well with the house restoration activities since the "kitchen" is out in the shop. The shop is where the noisy, loud machines are that cut and shape the wood for the various jobs going on. Keep in mind that a hundred years ago, there was no Home Depot or Lowes to pick up materials at. The majority of material available today is not of the exact dimensions as what was used back then, so just about every piece needs to be custom cut to size match with the existing parts of the house. Throwing together some sausage, ground beef, garlic, onion, herbs, homemade wine, and tomato sauce in a big pot and simmering it with a quick stir every now and then fits perfect with the work going on. As you can see in the second picture, we like to use traditional spaghetti noodles around here. We've tried the fancy little twists and shells, even the whole wheat stuff, but there is nothing like twisting your fork into a pile of spaghetti smothered in homemade sauce and trying to get as much in your mouth as you can and realizing the best you can do is getting slightly more than half of it in and the rest is hanging down your chin. A warning to any subscribers to Miss Manners, you'll probably not enjoy our Sunday night spaghetti dinners because one way or another, the sauce drenched noodles that struggled to make it in the mouth directly from the fork do in time get to where they need to be and it's not a pretty sight...
The great thing about having all this massive quantity of spaghetti as mentioned before is it makes for easy-to-heat leftovers during the week when I sometimes don't get home from work until late. The downside is around Thursday, one finds oneself a wee bit tired of leftover spaghetti. One thing growing food instills in you, because of the large amount of physical effort it takes, is to never waste things. After working in the fields as a teenager (meaning I did plenty of grunt work and didn't spend my time on a fancy tractor) I became keenly aware of the amount of resources it took to get a piece of produce to a store shelf. By resources I mean everything from the land and water to get the crop growing, to the fuel to power the tractors that keep the field from reverting back to a jungle. Then there was the manual labor aspect. One of my first jobs was to pass out the boxes the produce would be packed in and then staple the tops shut. After the hundreds of boxes were packed and stapled shut, we would load them onto a truck moving slowly through the field. Sometimes situations would come up so that it wasn't possible to get a truck into the field and we would carry the packed boxes to the truck on our shoulders. This type of work accomplished two very important things for me as a teenager, it saved me gym membership dues which would have been hard to handle making minimum wage, but more importantly, it taught me that every product represents the hard work of someone. And for that reason, wasting leftovers simply because you're tired of them is not a good thing. OK, a bit preachy and long winded but I firmly believe it to be an important thing to practice regardless of how prosperous you become.




The third picture shows the ingredients you need to transform your leftover spaghetti into a whole new dish. Maybe the Food Network will hear about this transformation and give me my own show. Similar to the ones they do on HGTV about whole house makeovers for less than X amount of dollars, mine could be about whole leftover makeovers for less than ten bucks. I'm just joking. I've yet to see anything really useful come from watching a half an hour show that fast forwards through the hardest part of the process and then at the end, everyone is smiling and talking like they truly did snap their fingers and the end result magically appeared. The ingredients for this casserole of leftover spaghetti are pretty simple and most of them I always have on hand. As a matter of fact, that's the reason cottage cheese is used instead of ricotta. Since I have cottage cheese almost daily for breakfast and I just don't see eating ricotta for breakfast as enjoyable, cottage cheese wins this round. If for some reason you have ricotta, it will work too. I chop up a few cloves of garlic and some onion. In the picture you see red onion but any onion will do. Make sure the dice on these is fairly fine so their flavors come out easily during the baking part. If the chunks are too large, the garlic and onion flavor will stay in the chunks and not get melded into the dish. Some might like it that way but I like casseroles that display the flavors of all the ingredients in every bite, not just the bites you happen to have got a big chunk of onion in. The amounts of onion and garlic are not critical and highly dependent on personal preference, so use your best judgement of your tastes or those that will be eating with you. In the mixing bowl with the garlic and onion, add about half of a 24 ounce container's worth of cottage cheese and two eggs. Then take a 9 ounce package of spinach leaves and chop them up so most of the pieces are no bigger than a fifty-cent piece. If you're like me and haven't really seen a fifty-cent piece in many years, as you would expect, it's about twice as big as a quarter. Now you will need to pre-cook the spinach and get rid of the water in it. If you use it without pre-cooking, the casserole gets soggy. I use a nonstick saute pan so I don't have to add any oil. Remember, the other stuff in the casserole already has plenty of fat to keep the dish from being bland. The spinach will wilt down quickly and it helps drive the water out if you push everything to the perimeter of the pan and slightly up the sides. This lets gravity drain the water cooking out of the spinach to the center of the pan where the pan is hottest. You should see the water steam off quickly. Let this cool a little bit and then add to the cottage cheese, egg, etc mixture. The throw in about 12 ounces of mozzarella cheese and mix with a wooden spoon. You can use plastic if you want but the dish won't be quite the same. Not really but it sounds cool when you specify the material people should have their kitchen utensils made of. It takes your expert quotient way up there.


Now for the assembly part. You might think I'm kidding again but this part is important even though it sounds like you could do it another way. When I oil the casserole pan to assemble everything in, I pour a little olive oil in and use a smashed garlic clove to spread the oil all around the pan. It's a little thing and some scientist will do a study to prove there is no perceptible garlic flavor on the bottom of each finished piece of plated casserole, but I still do it anyway. My belief is the little things you pay attention to during prep work add up to bigger things when the dish is finally served. After the bottom and sides are oiled, put just enough red sauce to "paint" the bottom. You want to keep the noodles from getting dry and sticking but the real benefit of the red sauce is to trickle down through the casserole while its baking, so make sure you don't use too much here and not have enough for later. Then put a layer of noodles and smear some of the cheese mixture over that. It's a bit messy and a rubber spatula helps. Then ladle some red sauce and another layer of noodles, repeat the cheese mixture and more red sauce.




When finished, it should look like the fourth picture. I leave the top layer with red sauce so the oven doesn't dry things out. Put this in the pre-heated to 350 degree oven (I know all recipes tell you to pre-heat the oven but I don't, I figure you'll turn the thing on when it makes sense for you) on the middle rack with some foil loosely tented over it. This provides further insurance against the dreaded drying out I seem to be so paranoid about. After about 40 minutes or so, the whole thing should be bubbling and looking like it's getting hot and gooey throughout. This is the time to take the small part of the mozzarella cheese left in the bag, I'm assuming you bought the super convenient 16 ounce size bag, but if not, do the math and you come up with about 4 ounces of cheese to use. Take the foil off and sprinkle the cheese uniformly over the top. If you have some Parmesan, this would also be a good time to sprinkle some on. Keep it in the oven about ten or fifteen minutes more to let the topping cheese melt and slightly brown. Each oven is a bit different so keep an eye on it. You don't want to scorch the cheese or in the case of a cooler oven, let it go so long that the cheese doesn't brown but the casserole starts drying out. I know, the drying out thing again. I guess I've had that happen one too many times and there is nothing enjoyable about a casserole that cuts and eats like rice crispy treats.

The last picture shows the finished product. It also makes for convenient leftovers and is super easy to take in your lunch if you have access to a microwave at work. When I make this, we literally get an entire work week's worth of meals from one afternoon and one evening's cooking effort. The economist side of me could fill up another lengthy post about how efficient this is and could help this country find its way back to a 1950s type of prosperity, but I won't. I'll just let you take my word for it. Enjoy!

Are We Making Things Better?

OK, I guess the title of this post could be a little bit self serving. It would be very unlikely I would pose that question in the title unless the answer was solid "yes". I guess the real reason for showing these two pictures is to reinforce that we are making progress. Sometimes things seem to bog down and it can cause a person to wonder if they really are making progress. Between Lynda and I, the front yard has had a fulltime irrigator working on it since the middle of August. Last weekend, after I ran the lawnmower over things, I paused and noticed the front yard really was looking pretty nice. To shamelessly demonstrate just how much we have greened up the front yard, I dug up the picture from about a year ago when the place was for sale. At that time, it appeared nothing had been watered for a long time and it showed. We still don't have the place even close to where our vision is, but I think this shows we are making things better and we both have bruises, skinned knees and elbows, and sore bodies to prove it. As has been said before, we wouldn't trade it for anything else.

Making Progress... Sort of

The title of this post might give you the idea that I'm losing steam and maybe even burning out on this whole restoring a hundred year old farm house thing. Not to worry, quite the opposite as a matter of fact. I titled this post because I do find it ironic that you can work hard all day and then when you describe what you've accomplished, it doesn't sound like as much as your body feels it's done that day. Maybe it's age catching up, I don't know. I do know these projects wear me out and I sleep like a baby at night. Except when the cats get hungry early in the morning, then sleep comes to a halt until they have food in their bowls. Their antics could fill up another blog and then some though, so we'll stick to the subject matter at hand.

As you can see, the bathroom is coming along nicely. I know it wasn't that long ago I mused about having it functional by July 1st, but that was before I got help with that delusional part of my personality. Now that has been straightened out, I'm proud to say the hall bathroom is fully functional and we achieved that status by August 15th. It's not anywhere near finished though and I'm not even going to stick my neck out and throw a target out there. I do know the upper three feet of wall above the subway tile and board-and-batten wainscoting will not be painted until November. I gave my word on this and those who know me well know that is about as rock solid as it gets.

The picture of water coming out of the shower head demonstrates just how functional this bathroom is now. It also shows the tank for the toilet mounted six feet up on the wall. The high tank toilet doesn't necessarily make the bathroom more functional but it takes the cool factor way up there. The shower also is pretty cool to use. It's quite a bit different than what most of us grew up with but every time I use it, I can't help but think about how it must have been over a hundred years ago. I'm sure a tub/shower set up like this was not found in every household back then, but those of us using it in this old farmhouse sure do appreciate it.

The last picture is of the French doors leading into what will someday be the kitchen. Before we had these installed, there was an out swinging door leading right into a wall. Because of that, the kitchen was boxed in and dark. After some wall removal and the addition of these doors, the area for the future kitchen is open, naturally well lit and easily accessible from the back part of the property. That's pretty important for us because we plan to grow lots of vegetables in the garden and we don't want to have to navigate complex walkways and entryways to get these veggies to our kitchen.

All in all, we're making good progress on restoring this old place. It just feels like there should be a whole lot more completed for how sore and tired my body feels every weekend. Truth be told though, I wouldn't trade this for anything else.

Lynda's Birthday

The picture of the antique school desk was Lynda's birthday present. We actually got it a couple months ago and very cleverly hid it in the cab of Kevin Jr's truck with the blown up engine. Yes, the same truck that was the subject of a blog post last year about taking the transmission out and living to tell the story. As you can see, a desk like this is a perfect fit in our house. The desk, much like the house, has a very high "cool factor" rating and because of that, it gets to be part of the craziness of our project. This blog post will give you an idea of what it's like to celebrate your birthday at the Farmville Reality Project. It's not for everyone but I do believe the birthday girl had a great day.

The pampering began very early that morning with me making sure she got to sleep in until almost 6:15 am. About that time, the cats were acting like they needed to be fed or they would simply kill and eat us, so we got the day started. A quick happy birthday card exchange, usual morning routine of coffee and tea, sort of healthy breakfast food stuff, and we were on our way to tile a bathroom floor. I know what you're thinking, this guy goes far beyond ridicules when it comes to helping people celebrate their birthday. I guess it's one of my strong suits.

Once we got to the house and gathered the tools, we did a quick huddle to make sure we knew what we were doing and what the final product would be. The final product would be an 8 foot by 8 foot floor of one inch white hex tiles. At very well thought out locations, there would be black hex tiles arranged in a snowflake pattern. The idea for the floor came from a blend of many different pictures we had looked at the past few months, actual places we went and visited, as well as what materials we could find in our price range. That led us to the tiles I posted pictures of and described in this post, http://thefarmvillerealityproject.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html. Through a strange twist of fate, today, Lynda's birthday was the day to get these installed.

As mentioned above, these are small, one inch hex shaped tiles and to get the snowflake pattern, it meant taking some of the black ones from some sheets to use in place of white ones on the sheets where a snowflake was to be. We did this prep work a few days prior so there were empty spots where each of the two different colors needed to be relocated to. The plan would be to install the sheets and put the relocated tiles in place as we moved across the floor.

Like all good plans, this one was little short of being realistic. We spread a section of thinset (you do remember that stuff, don't you?) and placed four sheets down. After a few minutes of over-the-top perfectionist type of adjustments, it was time to place the tiles to finish the pattern. This went fairly smooth except the thinset dried very fast in the heat, so we had to smear some more on each little tile before putting it in place. This made a bit of a mess that had to be cleaned because once thinset dries hard, it is literally like cement. Much easier to clean goopy excess up while it's still wet. Now onto the next four sheets. This is where things started going downhill. The small amount in between the tiles sticking out had dried and needed to be scraped up and new thinset troweled down so the new row of tiles would set correctly. About the only tool that worked right was my finger. A knife, screwdriver, or trowel tip were too awkward. If you misjudged and caught just a little bit of the edge of a tile already laid down, it would break its bond and cause it to pop up. The problem with using your finger is it is not as durable as the metal tools and it wears out over time from the abrasiveness of the surfaces being cleaned. Long story short, bloody finger tips that hurt really bad. That tends to slow things up. We kept plowing along though. We would spread thinset, place sheets of tile and then to the painstakingly, labor intensive process of filling in the snowflakes. As time went on, we seemed to go slower and slower. I asked her more than once if she was having a fun birthday and she always said yes every time. I hope she isn't hard at work planning something as equally torturous for my birthday next year.

As darkness forced us to scrounge up work lights, we did a survey and both of us agreed we needed to keep working and get the floor finished. By this time, some of the lay out lines were not lining up right and the thinset seemed to be drying almost instantly as it was troweled down. I could go on about how we kept our heads down and kept working but truth be told, only one of us did that. It was a she, if that helps solve which one us worked tirelessly without complaint. Don't misunderstand me, I kept working too. One thing every one who knows me will agree on, I never quit working until the job is finished. I just complained the whole time about how tired and sore I was. Somewhere pushing 10:00pm that night, the last tiles went down at the point where the doorway meets the hallway and we both breathed a huge sigh of relief. We had completely blown past the stage of being tired and were exhausted. I did what I do best at that point and grumbled about some of the places that got crooked and didn't line up right. Lynda looked at the floor and said it looked great to her and then we drove the long drive back to find refuge in a nice soft bed for our tired selves.










As you can see from the picture, the snowflakes turned out great and I have to admit, they were well worth the effort. The floor of our bathroom truly does give it a historical look and we both know it's durable enough to last a hundred years into the future. Hopefully someday, many years from now, folks will appreciate how a birthday was spent making such a beautiful floor in this old house. Happy Birthday!

Turning the Corner...Sort of

As you can see by the pictures with this post, some pretty good progress is being made in getting the bathroom ready to be functional. In fact the title of this post came to me while working on the subway tile walls. Being under a big time crunch to get this room finished so we can move in, my judgement can be a little bit to the left of that place everyone calls "good judgement". The excuse for my poor judgement is too many things to deal with and not enough resources to use in dealing with them. The biggest gaps in resources for this particular adventure were time, running water, and common sense. Time still seems to be an issue with most everything I do that involves completing a project. Then again, the common sense thing comes up more times than it should in this area too. But the running water part of this thing is solved. As you can see in two of these pictures, there is a brand new pump delivering water to our relocated Farmville Reality Project. Enough water, as a matter of fact, that we could probably run a hose out to the dry creek bed a little west of here and run enough water to get a few salmon interested in spawning. OK, maybe I exaggerate just a little.... It is nice to have this detail taken care of since the old pump was not working well enough to even get a small part of the Bermuda grass lawn green. The new set-up also has an outlet valve aimed right toward where the orchard/vineyard/garden/pasture will be in the future.
Now back to to topic of this post, turning the corner. My previous mention of being short on resources happened when I decided to tile the walls with subways tiles. I had already helped the pump guy get the humongous water tank out the building so he could use his boom-truck to swing it around and into its new location. That meant he could get busy pulling the old pump out of the well and put the new pump down in there. Using my superior math skills, it was determined I had a few hours to get started on something and tiling a wall in a subway pattern came up from a Google search, so that was what I went with. That's the part where common sense could have come in handy. Even though there was no running water, there was water in a couple 5 gallon jugs. I had already measured and scribed the layout lines on the wall, so I figured spreading tile adhesive (thinset to those who do this for a living) and sticking tiles on the wall would be a pretty easy way to spend my afternoon. With this thought in mind, I poured a generous amount of water in the bucket and poured almost the entire bag of dry thinset mix in there. This is when I discovered the first clue this might be a long afternoon. I couldn't find the big drill I use the mixing paddle on to use in stirring this stuff up. Looked high and low and still haven't found it. Since the other drills are too small and would burn their motors up if I tried to make them do this hard of a job, I mixed the thinset up the old fashioned way, by hand. After the second mixing and most of the lumps gone, I only paused a couple seconds to admire the Popeye-like muscles you develop by mixing this stuff up manually and went to work. The first couple rows went smooth with only some minor mishaps. That was about the time I noticed the thinset was getting very stiff and dry. When this happens, you need to stir it up but should not add any water to thin it out because that ultimately weakens its bonding ability. No problem. I'm a little tired and the afternoon heat has settled on that side of the house but if it needs to be stirred a couple minutes then so be it. It's actually good exercise for those that need a good workout. Think of stirring 50 pounds of bread dough with a big spoon to try and keep it from rolling up into a ball. Kind of like that. Then onto another couple more rows and it needs some more stirring. This time (and every time after that, but don't tell the tile police on me) I sprinkled some water in there to help get this goop back to a state where it could be spread and troweled onto the wall. Did I mention how tired I was at this point and how hot it was? Did I also mention how much would not stick to the wall if you didn't push the trowel with superhuman strength? The stuff that didn't stick would usually fall all over the rows that had just been set and cleaned. I could go on and on describing this but I think we've achieved some basic understanding that tile work is not fun, especially at the end of the day when you're already tired and the room you're tiling is like a sauna. Needless to say, by the time that wall was finished and the big bucket of thinset was all used up, I felt like I had been trampled by horses and tossed from the roof of a one story building. Oh well, at least the longest wall was finished and I had the next day to knock out the other two smaller walls. Of course, to be able to tile this wall in the too few of hours available before darkness set in, I had to skip the corners because every tile needed to be cut to fit. It seemed like a better idea to save that for the next day.

The next day came and that's when I settled into cutting all of the corner tiles. Still being worn out from the day before, this seemed to take a very long time. It really seemed like a lot of work and very little progress. That was up until I set the last one to finish the corners. Once that one was in place, it's funny how "complete" the walls now looked from just that one part being done. As I looked at the now finished corners, it seemed like the bathroom project as a whole was turning the corner from the torn up mess of demolition to now actually resembling what it is destined to become. It's funny how one small step can take you from a part of the journey that feels like no forward progress is being made to another part where the destination starts to come into focus. The focus for the hall bathroom is starting to get clearer and that is a very welcome sight for all of us.

Sidetracked, Just a Little...

The reason for the this title is to add context to the picture of the tomato field being irrigated with a quarter mile wheel line sprinkler system. Most of you that read this blog don't really know what I just described, but you have to have faith that I don't make these things up. That IS what it's called by those who bust their knuckles and sweat in the hot sun putting the pipe together to bring the magic of "rain" to thirsty crops in July. During the recent 4 day "surge" to get our house in a state to be able to live in (read functioning bathroom), I had to take one little mental health break. For some that might mean heavy drinking and going to Las Vegas, but for me, it means taking a drive through farm land. There will always be something about fields of crops that grounds me. The picture in this post shows tomatoes getting a much needed dose of water, but I drove past many other noteworthy fields. On this drive (Which only added about another 20 minutes, but I did have a a crazy beagle with me) I saw sunflowers, corn, cucumbers, squash, rice, honeydew melons, tomatoes, alfalfa, dry beans, walnuts, almonds, grapes, and many other crops that escape me at the moment. Since I have spent most of my life kicking dirt clods to make something grow, this break did me good.

On to the important stuff. Once again I am facing a deadline that is defined by information found on a calendar (mine happens to be hanging on the wall in the livingroom and was issued by the Pro Bull Riders Association, but this story already has enough things that don't make sense). This deadline is much like the last one where I need to have everything done in the bathroom so we can move in. I'm happy to report that the plumbing and electrical stuff is all finished. What's left is to pass a county inspection, get a water heater installed, have the propane company hook up its feeder pipes, tile the walls and floors, AND put the door back on! I think I can manage this is T-minus 12 days. The operative word here is "think". Wish me luck!!!!!

The pictures of the tiles are to give you a sense of how the bathroom will look once this whole thing is accomplished. We bought hex tiles with the flower pattern so we could "steal" the black tiles from some and use them to make snowflakes throughout the entire floor. Part of being able to do this is to visualize. That's why we we laid out the square footage of the bathroom in the diningroom. Now we can work on fine tuning where the snowflakes will be and doing the very labor intensive task of moving the tiles around to fit the pattern. I know this sounds like a bunch of work but everyone involved in this project feels like it's worth it to remodel in a way that's period appropriate. Snowflakes were very popular a hundred years ago. I think we are hoping to do justice to this fact and make this bathroom look like it existed a hundred years ago. Wish us luck!!!!

We Have Walls...Sort Of...

The reason I say "Sort of..." is it's just the corner of one room, but it is still reason to celebrate. Considering we have spent the past several weeks taking walls and floors apart in this project, it feels like progress when we start putting things back together. Before I dive too deep into this progress report, I do have to admit to not making the self imposed deadline laid out in the last post. It is almost the middle of July and the functioning bathroom needed to move in has not happened yet. The new target is the end of July for completion.

The first picture here is the new utility room. Remember that this was formerly a closet, so this is one big transformation. The second picture is what this looked like when it was a closet, so hopefully you can get a sense of what a change (for the better in our opinion) this space has gone through. The door you see in the middle of the back wall will let us come in and out from the outside without going through the main part of the house. The concept is to keep the dirt contained to this area since there will be a washer and dryer here. When kicking dirt clods and doing other equally important farm chores, your boots tend to get a bit dirty, so having this access should help. To the right of this room will another bathroom too. That way we can come in after a hard day of dirt clod kicking, throw our extremely dirty clothes in the washer, take a shower, and change into clean clothes without ever setting foot in the "fancy" part of the house. The reason the corner of this room had to have the walls sheet rocked is so a water heater can be installed in this corner. This water heater is necessary for the previously mentioned functioning bathroom, so we finished out enough of the corner to provide a place for it and our attention is now back to getting the hall bathroom finished.

The third picture shows where things are at right now. After gutting the walls and floor, we shored up the framing and also discovered some damage from water and insects. This led to taking the wall apart into the room next to the bathroom and tearing out the damaged wood. All the damaged framing was replaced and some new pieces were added to add strength so this bathroom can survive another hundred years. The foil you see on the wall insulation serves three very important purposes. The most important is it will keep moisture from migrating through the walls and damaging the framing. Bathrooms always generate a bunch of moist air that can condense on the back side of the exterior siding during the cold part of the year. Moisture behind the siding is always a bad thing. This insulation is installed so there is an air channel to help any moisture back there to dry out and the foil helps keep too much of it from getting there as well. The second thing it does is act a radiant heat barrier. Since this blog is not focused on providing physics-based explanations, we'll just say this helps it be a better insulator than without it. The third thing all this foil does is help keep aliens from outer space from practicing mind control experiments on us while we are in the bathroom. Foil does a good job deflecting their evil gamma-rays back at them.

Let's keep our fingers crossed for smooth sailing the next couple of weeks and maybe we'll see a post with a picture of a finished bathroom.