Lazy Weekend

 No big projects this weekend, we weren't terribly energetic but still managed to try a few new things.  On Saturday I made silver dollar pancakes for brunch, yu choy (we know it as rape) for dinner and laid out a pattern for a box-joint coaster caddy.

We bought yu choy thinking it was gai lan (Chinese Broccoli), they look very similar, but yu choy doesn't have the slight bitter flavour of gai lan.  I think I prefer the gai lan (especially with oyster sauce.)  I stir-fried the yu choy in oil with a pile of garlic (10 cloves!) and steamed it with chicken stock.

Several months ago I went looking for some simple slate coasters, just squares of slate, really.  I was able to find all sorts of hideouosly overpriced ones, usually with 'quaint' touristy stuff on them like puffins, etc.  They cost in the range of $30 - 40 for a set of 4!  Seyoung mentioned that she had seen some in the dollar store, so we picked up a few sets, for the much more reasonable price of $2 /set.

photo from Wikipedia

I was looking for a coaster caddy to keep them in, but couldn't find anything that suited what I had in mind.  Everything was either the wrong size or not what I was looking for.  I wanted to have something like a rice measure (I have a couple of these and there's something appealing about their simplicity.)

Since I wasn't able to find anything, I bought some red cedar planks (for barbecuing) from the dollar store.  These aren't very thick, so I'm not sure how good they'd be for grilling, but they're just about right for making a little box out of.  The wood is pretty hard to work with, it's easy to crush it with hand tools, but I got a decent enough result and made my first finger-jointed box.



On Sunday we got out to feed the ducks at a small pond not far from where we live.  They're pretty tame.

Poopy

This is our cat, Poopy.  We adopted him from the SPCA in Singapore and brought him back to Canada last year.  He's polite, good tempered (although not cuddly at all) and he's fairly smart (for a cat).

The post behind him is the only thing he ever claws, he knows that it's his and he sits on the base of it because it is *his* furniture.

He is a large cat, about 7 kg or so, although he looks smaller in pictures because his eyes are huge.

Mexican food week

This week we seem to have fallen into a Mexican food theme.  We made tacos from a kit, salsa and rice from scratch.  Next time we make tacos we're just going to buy the tortillas and make our own seasoning, the kit was okay but we can make better seasonings and salsa ourselves.  I wanted refried beans with the tacos so I bought a can, but I want to make them myself -- a can of refried beans was almost $4!

Here are the recipes we used for the salsa and rice.  They are variations of other recipes I've found and combined.

Salsa Fresca

Ingredients

5 roma (plum) tomatoes, diced

½ spanish onion, diced

½ medium red bell pepper, diced

½ medium yellow bell pepper, diced

1 bunch cilantro, finely minced

1 tbsp lime juice

1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon oregano

3 jalapeno-type peppers or to taste

Method

Chop all ingredients to a fine dice and mix in a bowl, add seasonings and let stand for 30 minutes.  Eat.

Mexican Rice

Ingredients

1 c raw long grain rice 

1 tbs olive oil

1 c tomato (canned or fresh), chopped

2 tsp chili seasoning

½ onion, chopped

¼ green pepper, chopped

1 tsp salt

1 c water

1 tsp smoked paprika, sweet or hot (optional)

1/2 c sweet corn kernels (frozen/canned/fresh) (optional)

Method

Brown raw rice in a frying pan, add other ingredients and stir for a few seconds, add water to just cover the mixture.  Bring to a boil and lower heat to a simmer, cover pan and cook for 30 minutes.  DO NOT STIR.
Remove pan from heat after 30 minutes is up, the rice should be cooked and no liquid left in the pan.  Fluff the mixture with a fork and serve.

Notes: Make sure you're using raw (uncooked) rice.  I usually use canned tomatoes and replace some of the water with the juice from the can.

Cutworms

We've been having trouble with cutworms.  Seyoung had been finding a dead seedling or two every morning, the stems chewed through.  I bought cutworm bait and that seems to have done the trick.  As an extra measure I've made some metal collar to place around the plant stems to keep the worms away.  I chopped up a few pop cans to make some thin aluminum strips.

I should have tried it earlier, the bait seems to have done its work and Seyoung has even found dead cutworms next to the bait stations.  One tablespoon per box in a small pile with a rock laid on top.  I'd looked up a few recipes for making your own bait, but it was easier to just buy a box of this stuff.

First Harvest

Our first greens from the garden, this is from a week or two ago.  We have enough stuff growing for the occasional salad now.  The greens are much better than anything we typically get in the supermarket.

Seyoung made a pizza and some cheese bread for dinner, too!  She used some blue cheese on the cheese bread and it was really tangy.  The pizza looks kind of small but it was delicious and very filling.

Bed Project (un)Finished

For the past few months I've been slowly building pieces of a new bed.  For several reasons -- limited space, noise, etc. -- I used only hand tools: chisels, brace and bit, planes and saws.  Every time I build something this way I learn something new and end up with something useful at the end of the process, almost as though the result of the project is just a bonus.

The frame is built of poplar wood with blind mortise and tenon joints, the side and centre rails use bed hooks and right-angle joiners (from the wonderful people at Lee Valley) so that the bed can be knocked down for moving.

The cleats and slats are laid in place and held in position by the web strapping stapled to the slats.  Each end slat and one in the centre are screwed to the side cleats to hold the whole assembly in place. 


It isn't sanded yet, I plan to sand and apply tung oil for the finish. I'm waiting until July so that we can put the pieces outside to dry.   The weather hasn't been very pleasant until now.

I've got a few more things to build but I haven't finished figuring out how I want to make them yet.  I approach woodworking the same way I approach cooking (and a lot of other things): read a few examples, find some material I like, make sure I've got the tools I need, and then juggle it all around in my head for a while until I understand it all.

I plan to build a knock-down trestle table and benches and a simple spice cabinet next, then maybe a jelly cupboard and a wall desk.  Somewhere in the middle I'll put together the pieces for a cat tower.

Making Stuff from Wood

A cleaned out mortise.

For the past while I've been assembling the tools and materials to build a bed frame.  I've got a bunch of poplar wood and I'm using blind mortise-and-tenon joins for the head/foot baords.  The side rails will be held in place by some bed hook hardware (from Lee Valley) that will allow it to be disassembled easily for moving.

Our current bed is an old box spring and mattress that is more-or-less bowl shaped and provides lots of sleep exercise in the form of clinging to the edges of the mattress to keep from falling into the bowl.  I prefer a platform bed with slats supporting the mattress, it's firmer than a box spring and supports the mattress better.  Most box springs seem to break down after a while and slouch to one side or turn bowl-shaped.

So far I've got the wood for the footboard cut, jointed and assembled (not glued yet.)  The posts for the headboard "on the bench" waiting to have the waste wood cleared out of the mortises.  The shoulders for the headboard rail tenons are cut, but I'm waiting until the mortises are finished before I pare them down to size for gluing.

I find woodworking with simple hand tools immensely satisfying.  It probably comes from the same place as my love of mechanical watches, fountain pens, cooking from scratch, and drawing come from.  I haven't drawn anything in a long time, but I'd like to get back into it.

I'll post some pictures of the bed when it's finished.  Probably in a week or two.