torley manor

My ever lovely nieces have started the seeds we sent for Christmas!

And back in the home garden, the peony we transplanted last summer (when my sister moved away) has survived! I thought for sure we’d shocked and killed it but look! New, brilliant red growth!

And in other transplanting news, my dad dug up two blueberry bushes for us to transplant!

Last but most certainly not least, the things we find in our soil never cease to amaze. We think we’ve dug up everything we’re going to find, and then:

Our soil was under lock and key!

I don’t really use recipes to cook a lot of things, but really you don’t need anything more than the most basic outline for making gravy. I occasionally consult a cookbook for seasoning inspiration, but here’s a gooder:

• 3 T margarine
• 1/3 c flour
• 3 c vegetable stock
• a handful of mushrooms (6 or 7 button mushrooms, or maybe one small bella cap), shredded with a grater or sliced thinly

Start the gravy your standard way — melt the margarine (or butter if you’re into that) in a saucepan, add the flour and mix it up till it’s thick and pasty and cook it gently for a minute or two before adding the stock slowly — no lumps!

Bring that to a very gentle boil, to start thickening the gravy, and then add the mushrooms. Add your seasonings, and then keep stirring your gravy till it’s a thickness you like.

Now, as far as seasonings go, it depends a little bit on what you’re putting your gravy on. With this meal, we made some basic mashed russet potatoes and pan-fried tempeh (steamed first in a bit of stock. We currently have an abundance of stock.), so I shook in a few teaspoons of tamari, a shake or so of nutritional yeast, and about a teaspoon of dried thyme. In the end it needed a tiny bit more salt, so one extra shake of tamari would’ve done the trick.

Some very fine gravy! And some very fine roasted brussels of love.

I often add a bit of minced garlic and onion when I make a Gravy With Things In It.  One of my favorites is to do a marjoram, thyme, and tarragon seasoning.  I have often thought about adding a little bit of miso for its salty tangy taste but haven’t tried it yet, for no good reason. Nose around your cookbooks for flavor combinations that seem appealing to you, but really don’t sweat it. Gravy needs no recipe.

As many of you already know, our world lost a wonderful soul in the passing of our good friend Rick Gribenas. When I heard the news that he had died, I left work and headed home. The most fitting tribute that I could think to do at that time was to sit and listen to the record that Rick and my old band collaborated on together. While listening to those songs, I read the words that Rick wrote for the booklet. After reading these words and listening to the many wonderful things that people within our community have had to say about Rick, many whom only had the chance to meet Rick or work with him briefly, these words stand out:

I looked at the issues that are important to me, and the invariable questions asked of me when I talk about my work. “Where do you get these ideas?” And, “What inspires you?” My answer is always these people – i.e. Eric, Q, and Jim. They inspire me: their actions and choices encourage and help drive me to make my decisions. They are part of what helps me know that there is hope in this struggle.”

Rick always showed the utmost faith, trust, support and love for myself and so many others. He encouraged people to follow their heart because he believed in the power of each of us. Continually he showed me and countless others that there is indeed, hope in this struggle.

Thank you Rick for sharing your ideas and inspiration. You will be missed.

Please check out Rick’s work at www.gribenas.com

long may you run.

We’ll miss you.

Scrappy Dog (real name: Brownie) lives around the corner from Torley. He is one of our favorite local dogs. He doesn’t hang outside during the winter months, so we were really stoked to see him back outside again. He is noted for barking and running across the lawn as you approach but then becoming almost immediately disinterested in you once he gets to you. Go Scrappy Dog, Go!!

Somewhere in the course of the last week I accidently knocked out the cord to our chest freezer, making it thaw out and ruin a bunch of food.

(not so) crowded tomb

The victims:
– 3 bags and one container of peppers (including jalapenos, bell and sweet banana peppers)
– 3 large bags and 4 small bags of whole blueberries
– 2 containers of homemade applesauce
– 1 container of homemade tomato sauce
– 6 containers of sliced peaches
– 17 containers of string beans (from the Torley garden)

You see, back when we got our chest freezer late last summer, we realized that where we had room to put it in our basement there weren’t any outlets. Sooo, we opted for a temporary solution of plugging it into an extension cord. The available outlet was near my workbench in the basement. We realized there was some risk that the cord could get knocked out, but I was fairly diligent in making sure I didn’t accidentally unplug it. That is, until sometime this week.

Sad as it is, it was a gamble we knew we were taking and we lost. Lesson learned. Luckily it happened in the spring (almost!) when the freezer was getting empty rather than in the fall after it had just been filled. Now we will get a little wiring run in the basement and we’ll give the freezer its own dedicated outlet.

Other photos of the carnage…

Taking out the dead…bucket o’ string beans

Feeding the compost…many many string beans

Sad moldy peaches that’ll never get to become pies

The pancakes will miss you, departed blueberry friends

Today I finished the thresholds for the upstairs hallway project. Here’s some close-up shots of how they turned out…

Earlier in the week I started some seeds — tomatillos, parsley, brussels sprouts, basil, and chamomile. Today I noticed the first seedlings popping up from the brussels sprouts. 4 out of 6 are just beginning to pop up out of the dirt. SPRING!!!

Back in December we unveiled our “finished” hallway project, but there were still a few loose ends to complete. Basically the only real construction left was to put a kickplate/edge at the top of the stairs and the thresholds in the doorways.

Being that I work at an ironworks, I got the idea to use some steel to take care of these pieces. At the top of the steps, I decided to use a piece of 1/8″ thick 2×2 angle iron. I had to use an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel attachment to cut out the notch where the 1/4 round trim is along the wall. I’m generally very comfortable with powertools, but let me tell you, an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel is a scary animal. I’m still working on the finish. Tonight I went to the shop and worked on it a bit, wire wheeling the surface and using a gun blue product to darken it, but i’m not 100% happy with the finish I got. Nonetheless, I came home and screwed it into place to see how it looks. I think it’ll work out just fine.

The edge piece in place. Note that notch work on the left hand side

Originally I had just planned to do some simple store bought thresholds for the doorways, but there were several problems:
1) My trip to Home Depot showed a pathetic amount of options and I wasn’t really into what I found.
2) I made some mistakes in how I cut the flooring in the doorways. For whatever reason, I didn’t make the hallway flooring go all the way to the inside of the door jamb, instead I cut it to only go midway into the jamb. Thus, when a door would be closed, it would leave about a 1.5″ gap that wouldn’t quite look right.
3) Leaving just the plywood as is would be problematic since it was just a normal pine plywood leaving an exposed edge would likely not handle traffic well, likely splintering and wearing down. Also, one of the doorways I cut very poorly and it was nowhere near straight or clean.

My solution was to get 1.5″x.5″ pieces of oak to abut to the edge of plywood flooring. I put a clear coat of polyurethane on these pieces to protect them, but otherwise left them their natural color. This provided a harder edge to the threshold that should wear better. However, this left a crack in between the flooring and this threshold trim. For this I decided to make some decorative steel straps to go overtop the crack.

For these I used 1/8″x2.5″ steel. Much like the stair edge, I wire wheeled these pieces and began to darken them using a gun blueing agent. Once again, I didn’t quite get the finish I was after, so there is still some work to do. Once I get the finish right, I will be putting these in place using decorative nails. I think this should provide a pretty interesting transition from the hallway flooring into the individual rooms.

Longview of one of the thresholds

Closeup of the threshold. Note the hole drilled for where the decorative nail will go

And this is the type of pyramid headed decorative nail that we’ll be using to secure the steel strips

The cilantro I planted a few weeks back is up and looking good. It leans towards the window wanting to soak in as much of the radiant sun as possible. I can identify with that.

Tonight I swung over to the Cyberpunk Apocalypse house where the Fun-A-Day show will be on saturday. I went over to hang both Emma’s and my pieces for the show. Its a nice little house. Nobody is living in it at this time and they didn’t have the heat on, so as I worked on making masking tape rolls to hang up my 31 individuals drawings, my hands froze and turned a fairly bright red. Warmer temperatures and a furnace that will be turned on for the event on Saturday should make it much more pleasant to visit then. The address for that again is 5432 Dresden Way in Lawrencville (a 1/2 block off Butler Street). Things kick off at 6pm and run until 10-ish. Please come check it out.

This morning I was quite sniffly and sneezy. I have made it this far through the winter without any significant sickness. I did have a brief stint of something between xmas and new years, but even that was pretty mild, mostly just one day of snottiness, then lots of being tired. So I was really worried that the sickness was going to catch up with me just as the temperatures were getting warmer and Emma was getting back into town. The sneezy-ness left me by lunchtime and the runny nose slowed down, but i’m still a bit sniffly. Here’s hoping that I can avoid this thing.

Eric The Red and I played music again for the 2nd time in two weeks last night. Just guitar and drums. We actually started putting together something resembling a song last night. Damn it feels good to be playing drums at full volume again!! No solid plans on what might become of this practicing yet, but I guess we’ll see what happens.

Seriously, I would normally just buy the generic orange juice, but I was a bit transfixed by the new design of the Tropicana cartons.

Slightly retro, subdued colors (not the normal bright bright oranges screaming out at your from your average OJ carton), a classy glass of OJ on the label split between 2 sides, a fun font. The grapefruit carton was even more stunning because the colors were even more subdued, like they were hardly even there (too bad I don’t really care for grapefruit juice). So I bought the Tropicana instead of the Shur-Save brand just so I could show it off to you. Suckered. Yeh…but it looks nice in my refrigerator.

Also, Eric requested a photo of more of the fastnachts. Here’s one of the batch that I took over to share with him and Bethany.