In the past week and a half we have fermented and pressed a half ton of grapes, fostered three hens, made four different kinds of cheese, and continued to work our regular jobs. Although it sounds like we live on a farm and maybe know what we are doing, we in fact live in Los Angeles off a busy street behind a bowling alley - and we are completely winging it.
We moved into a one bedroom house in July that we rent from our landlord/neighbors. We finally have some space and we are maybe a little too eager to figure out what to do with it. It all started with designing a 20' by 4' garden bed, and then another garden bed...and another. There were an old pile of cinder blocks that our landlord had left in the corner of our property - perfect garden bed building materia
l. With the help of some friends we were able to quickly build the garden beds. In the garden we planted lettuces, tomatoes, peppers, squash, potatoes, radishes, raspberries, strawberries, watermelons, pumpkins, and lots of herbs. It was quite clear that we had garden fever.
Then we planted a few fruit tress to complement the impressive array of fruit tress already on the property. We planted a lime and fig tree to go along with the giant old avocado, persimmon, orange, loquat, and mulberry trees.
The garden took off very well almost immediately. Andrew built and started a compost bin with three separate containers so that the compost could be moved easily. We have a farmers market across the street and we go and collect coffee grinds and corn husks to put in the compost to add to the scraps that we collect at home.
With the garden under control we made a fire pit out of cinder blocks. It is a rustic fire pit but it works quite well. It took MANY hours for the final determination to be made if this was indeed a safe way to have a fire pit and how the cinder blocks should be laid.
We moved on to other parts of the yard deciding that we wanted a cabana. We found a canopy on Craigslist that we bought from a woman who was moving back to Sweden after having this set up in her yard for more than a decade. I was a little skeptical but it seemed like a good deal even though we had to pull down the canopy from a den of spiders that had taken over. It wasn't until we got home that we realized how bad of a condition the cover on the canopy was in. The slightest pressure would rip the fabric. Clearly not very efficient for keeping out rain water. We looked into buying a new cover and it turns out that they are about as expensive as buying a whole new canopy.
How could we fix this we wondered? A tarp, could we throw a tarp over the whole thing? Yes, clearly we could but that would not look very nice. I ended up pinning up a tarp on the inside of the canopy and zip tieing it to ever corner. I then put up fabric and valances so that it billowed on the inside. It looked great. But would it last? There was a fatal flaw in the design. When we tied up the tarp we only used ONE zip tie - the "holy zip tie."
It looked great for about a month and half and then a few days ago we had heavy rain in LA. The cabana did not fair so well. Water built up on the top side of the tarp as we expected and brought down the "holy zip tie." Water built up and the tarp sunk down in the middle full of water. It slowly trickled out over the next couple of days as neither of us were home long enough to fix it. We still have not fixed the cabana, it is a project for a day when we have time. We have been busy making cheese and pressing wine, oh yeah, and working.
At the same time as the cabana was being constructed Andrew and his friends were refinishing the Tikki Bar that he built while in medical school. The bar had seen better days but they managed to get the bar part looking very good. Then there was a varnish tragedy, when the varnish did not dry properly and left the bar sticky and wet. We were having a party the next day - what would we do with a sticky bar? We saw that we had two options - either to not use it or to cover it with old Russian posters. You can imagine we chose the later and the bar was functional at the party.
A week or two later Andrew and a friend refinished the top of the bar again and the tikki bar was re-frowned to be the bar seen below.
We have been entertaining a lot at this new house, for the first two months we lived here it seemed we had people over constantly, partially because of all of the projects we had going on.
I received a call from my mother about a month ago that she wanted to buy us tickets to attend LA Food and Wine Festival for a clambake. The clambake was very expensive. We thought that was too much to pay so we said that we cold throw a better clambake for a fraction of the price. She agreed to front the money for the event and we set off on an adventure to figure out how to throw a clambake. We had no idea, not a clue, neither of us had been at one since we were little kids.
After a lot of goggling and asking around we purchased a 20 gallon metal garbage can.
Now the crucial question: do you start the fire in the garbage can or keep the fire going below it?
The clambake worked to our great surprise and great success, we turned the garbage can into a steamer, we threw in potatoes, corn, lobster, clams, and mussels all layered with seaweed (that we ultimately bought at a Japanese market, because the seaweed on the beach was disgusting)and the whole thing cooked perfectly!
This is just a sampling of our adventures and a little background on why we have started this blog. Please stay tuned.
Oh yeah, and purely gratuitous - this is our cat, Theo:
