Palestine West Virginia Sept 22, 2009
Every year our cabin becomes more of a home, in it's physical growth and also in our relationship to the community that we are building in. Bertie at the Reedy grocery store remembers us quicker, our friendships to the people we've met here through Tom deepens and we develop our own relationships. It's harder to spend only 2 months here, we've come to really care for people and for the land. Sitting here on the porch in the morning listening to birds, watching with Suki for critter movements ( right now it's lots of squirrels with mouths fat with nuts running eveywhere stocking up for winter ) We're coming onto the month before any serious cold nights and everyone is building sheds, chopping wood, making plans. It's been a long time since Dan or I have lived in winter. For us, winter means the work season, tourists arrive and the work trickles to us, directly and indirectly.
This year I will be doing a concert at The Studios of Key West, a wonderful space run by and containing the work of many artists and concerts. And I will be finishing, at last, the CD I started 2 years ago when we closed the Riviera Drive location of Private Ear Studio. This year I look forward to reconnecting with my jazz roots and singing with guitar, which is how I first started singing. Also in the guitar vocal music I get to share making music with a new collaborator Rob O Connell. Also I get to keep some of the Spanish repertoire going, just with different accompaniment. I have added some Piazzolla and Montsalvatge to my new CD, the rhumba and milongo seems to fit the eclectic songlist of that CD and I've always been drawn to and included Latin rhythmns in all my jazz performances. Perhaps this will also be the year I make the leap from understanding and speaking some Spanish, to really learning it, I'm so close and can use it daily in Key West if I choose.
Many differences this year in our cabin. The biggest change is that we wrapped the porch around the side of the house and have lifted the kitchen off the ground and added a roof for it. That added a 20 x 10 foot space to our place and because it's roofed, instead of tarped down to the ground, it is dry and has much more light. We've put our parrot party lights up there and it is confusing the hummingbirds who think the red ones should contain sugar water for them and they buzz me looking for me to fill them! Those little birds are small but pure muscle and very forceful. I hesitate to feed anyone ( but our human friends ) here as we are only here 2 months and I don't want them dependent on us. I truly wish we could adopt a cat though . Now that Tom is down to one happy cat at his place across the holler, we've been finding a lot of mice around. They especially like shredding toilet paper and if keep gettting into the bathhouse and starting nests. They will nest in anything, last time it was a ziploc bag , resourceful but filthy little cuties. We've had to resort to mice traps. One of the facts of life of living in the woods here.
With our porch wrapped around we have added a good deal of space and been able to move the table and chairs for dining into the kitchen area. With the cooking station and table it looks like a little cafe and has been affectionately named Melody's Wildflower Bistro. Thanks to Tammy's generous donation of a full size refrigerator and Buck's experience of using a grill as an oven for inspiration, I have a very sweet set up. Also another big change , a few weeks ago Dan built me a pantry closet. The kitchen is open air, but protected and now I will be able to pack up all the plates and cooking utensils, cleaning supplies in the pantry. We have now officially unpacked all the plastic tubs except the one with camping supplies, which we store under the house when we are here. It will make coming and going much, much easier. And because I have 5 shelves and a door that closes , I don't have a 6 foot table stacked with tubs and dishes. It's much neater and also opens up 4 feet of space. I would love to put a banquet or church pew with some storage under it in the future. Have to be careful not to build critter housing, but it's possible.
For more about the bistro and adventures in cooking open air, I've written a bistro blog with some photos.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Melody's Wildflower Bistro
West Virginia Blog 2
Melody's Wildflower Bistro
Last summer we wrapped our porch around the house and got my kitchen out of the mud. I now have a real roof, a wooden deck that is 20x10 . We've a working full size fridge, a great white tile and wood table and 5 wooden chairs and a wonderful pantry that Dan built for me just 2 weeks ago.
With the porch wrapped around, we've moved the table into the kitchen and it truly has a bistro feel! Check out the photos.
I'm cooking on 2 gas burners, a slow cooker and an inexpensive charcoal grill that has lasted 3 years now. I've taken inspiration from our friend Buck who said anything you can cook in the oven, you can cook on a grill, course he meant Weber, but we do with what we have. Anyway, it's true! I've baked pies, pizzas, roasted a loin of pork and this year made meatloaf on this grill. This weekend I'm going to try lasagna and a quiche. I'll let you know.
I found a blender at the What Not Shop for a few dollars and it's really come in handy. I've been making fresh breadcrumbs out of the good HealthNut bread we like and it makes a big difference . This year I tried making meatloaf on the grill. With finely chopped sweet Vidalia onions and fresh breadcrumbs and eggs , I also use fresh ground salt and pepper , fresh parsely and some dried thyme and smoked paprika. I mix a little bit of the adobe sauce that chipotles are packed in with ketchup for the top of the meatloaf and put it in a disposable baking dish covered with foil for the first half hour, then open the top the last 10 or 15 minutes. Delish, I keep making more for leftovers, but the most that's left has been 2 pieces! Using the grill as an oven is an ancient technique and quite logical. I ready the coals in a chimney ( hate using chemicals to start a fire , especially to eat off of ) . I put the hot coals in the grill and arrange them in a tight circle with a hole empty in the middle, or an rectangle open , depends on the shape of the baking pan. Then put the pan in the middle and put the lid down, making sure air gets in to keep the coals going. Also making sure that the coals are bunched together , if they are too far apart the coals will go out too fast. If something takes a long time more coals might have to be readied in the chimney.
I brought some chipotles in adobe sauce with me, although the Walmart in Spencer does have them in their Mexican food section. As much as I hate the politics of Walmart, they do have the best food selection within the closest drive for me. I've found good whole wheat bread, romaine lettuce, dark roast coffee, pesto and a few produce items that I like to cook with that I can't find in the local Foodland. I do have a culinary reputation to uphold!
Two years ago Diane showed us that you can bake a pie on a grill. You need to put in on as soon as everything else is finished and perhaps add some coals though. Also I discovered this year that a thinner crust is better. I've been using prefrozen pie crusts as I don't have a surface for rolling my own. Maybe next year we will build my cooking station. Right now I have a fold up 6 foot plastic table that holds a 2 burner gas camp stove, a toaster, Dan's expresso machine ( another What Not Shop find ) ,cooking utensils, a basket for fresh produce and lil things that end up there. It gets crowded and I have a small chopping board, need to work on that part.
The pots are hung above the table with nails on the rafters. I hope to build a table that stays and add a three burner cast iron gas stove top at least next year. We drooled over on at Cabela's recently. The two burner stove is challenging as if it's larger that a medium saute pan or sauce pan, 2 pots don't actually fit over the burners next to each other. I have to open the wind block sides and move the pots around to cook on different sides.
I do bring some spices and my favourite Henckel knife. Everything else is now here for cooking. I do need a larger chop space and also desperately need water where I cook. Right now I keep a pitcher and some shop towels for cleaning and wiping down some veggies, but I spend a lot, lot of time running back and forth between the sink outside the bathhouse and the kitchen. It's not too far, but is up and down stairs and tiring when you're cooking anything with more than one pot or two ingredients.
I do a lot of straight up grilling as well. Defrost, marinate, grill. We're so fortunate to have generous friends with gardens full of tomatoes, cucumbers and other fresh produce, yummy yellow squash this year from Dan B. Did manage to grill some chicken and make enchiladas this summer. The blender came in handy for that one. Made the sauce early on in the day and after grilling the chicken, assemble the enchiladas and baked on the grill. Yum. I will need some fresh chili spices this year. I order them online from New Mexico. Coming here with a good knife and spices does make a huge difference.
Tom is taking advantage of having a bistro in the neighborhood and if we don't see him early on in the day I just call him and tell him today's bistro menu.
I'm enjoying being out of the rain and mud, previously I was on the ground and we had tarps coming out from the rooftop to the ground. With the porch and roof extended , there is a lot more light. The walls are open and it's a delight to have the breeze coming through on 3 sides ( the fourth wall being the house ). Also this year we put up a rain gutter. This will make my grill place and under the house where our bedroom is much drier.
I say we loosely. It was primarily Dan and Tom doing the rain gutter work. I did get to strap on my new toolbelt ( finally found one that fits girls! ) . Mostly I measured and hit a few nails. I have to say if you need to hit a nail more that 2 or 3 times, you are in trouble. It's hard to center a hammer repeatedly for more than that and also takes more time. I did put a few in and also had to take a few out. I seriously need some hammer and drill practice time to build up my skills! I do have the perfect toolbelt now though, I even have an attachment for the drill!
We have to redo the front of our trailer in Key West, so it will come in very handy. Thanks to Tom and his patience and his attitude of “ if I can do it you can” Not really always true as he's at least twice as strong as I am and fearless on a ladder, but encouraging none the less. Dan is less patient with me, but he is very skilled and also has to deal with my apprentice skills a lot more than 2 months out of the year. Well, he's also not known for his patience with me either, but that's another story. My biggest contribution to the building is remembering measurements and running around fetching things the guys have forgotten on the ladder, or holding the other end of things, but hey GOG ( Girl on Ground ) does come in handy and makes me feel useful and involved. I've definitely learned a lot building this place and I'm always happy when I'm learning new things.
Melody's Wildflower Bistro
Last summer we wrapped our porch around the house and got my kitchen out of the mud. I now have a real roof, a wooden deck that is 20x10 . We've a working full size fridge, a great white tile and wood table and 5 wooden chairs and a wonderful pantry that Dan built for me just 2 weeks ago.
With the porch wrapped around, we've moved the table into the kitchen and it truly has a bistro feel! Check out the photos.
I'm cooking on 2 gas burners, a slow cooker and an inexpensive charcoal grill that has lasted 3 years now. I've taken inspiration from our friend Buck who said anything you can cook in the oven, you can cook on a grill, course he meant Weber, but we do with what we have. Anyway, it's true! I've baked pies, pizzas, roasted a loin of pork and this year made meatloaf on this grill. This weekend I'm going to try lasagna and a quiche. I'll let you know.
I found a blender at the What Not Shop for a few dollars and it's really come in handy. I've been making fresh breadcrumbs out of the good HealthNut bread we like and it makes a big difference . This year I tried making meatloaf on the grill. With finely chopped sweet Vidalia onions and fresh breadcrumbs and eggs , I also use fresh ground salt and pepper , fresh parsely and some dried thyme and smoked paprika. I mix a little bit of the adobe sauce that chipotles are packed in with ketchup for the top of the meatloaf and put it in a disposable baking dish covered with foil for the first half hour, then open the top the last 10 or 15 minutes. Delish, I keep making more for leftovers, but the most that's left has been 2 pieces! Using the grill as an oven is an ancient technique and quite logical. I ready the coals in a chimney ( hate using chemicals to start a fire , especially to eat off of ) . I put the hot coals in the grill and arrange them in a tight circle with a hole empty in the middle, or an rectangle open , depends on the shape of the baking pan. Then put the pan in the middle and put the lid down, making sure air gets in to keep the coals going. Also making sure that the coals are bunched together , if they are too far apart the coals will go out too fast. If something takes a long time more coals might have to be readied in the chimney.
I brought some chipotles in adobe sauce with me, although the Walmart in Spencer does have them in their Mexican food section. As much as I hate the politics of Walmart, they do have the best food selection within the closest drive for me. I've found good whole wheat bread, romaine lettuce, dark roast coffee, pesto and a few produce items that I like to cook with that I can't find in the local Foodland. I do have a culinary reputation to uphold!
Two years ago Diane showed us that you can bake a pie on a grill. You need to put in on as soon as everything else is finished and perhaps add some coals though. Also I discovered this year that a thinner crust is better. I've been using prefrozen pie crusts as I don't have a surface for rolling my own. Maybe next year we will build my cooking station. Right now I have a fold up 6 foot plastic table that holds a 2 burner gas camp stove, a toaster, Dan's expresso machine ( another What Not Shop find ) ,cooking utensils, a basket for fresh produce and lil things that end up there. It gets crowded and I have a small chopping board, need to work on that part.
The pots are hung above the table with nails on the rafters. I hope to build a table that stays and add a three burner cast iron gas stove top at least next year. We drooled over on at Cabela's recently. The two burner stove is challenging as if it's larger that a medium saute pan or sauce pan, 2 pots don't actually fit over the burners next to each other. I have to open the wind block sides and move the pots around to cook on different sides.
I do bring some spices and my favourite Henckel knife. Everything else is now here for cooking. I do need a larger chop space and also desperately need water where I cook. Right now I keep a pitcher and some shop towels for cleaning and wiping down some veggies, but I spend a lot, lot of time running back and forth between the sink outside the bathhouse and the kitchen. It's not too far, but is up and down stairs and tiring when you're cooking anything with more than one pot or two ingredients.
I do a lot of straight up grilling as well. Defrost, marinate, grill. We're so fortunate to have generous friends with gardens full of tomatoes, cucumbers and other fresh produce, yummy yellow squash this year from Dan B. Did manage to grill some chicken and make enchiladas this summer. The blender came in handy for that one. Made the sauce early on in the day and after grilling the chicken, assemble the enchiladas and baked on the grill. Yum. I will need some fresh chili spices this year. I order them online from New Mexico. Coming here with a good knife and spices does make a huge difference.
Tom is taking advantage of having a bistro in the neighborhood and if we don't see him early on in the day I just call him and tell him today's bistro menu.
I'm enjoying being out of the rain and mud, previously I was on the ground and we had tarps coming out from the rooftop to the ground. With the porch and roof extended , there is a lot more light. The walls are open and it's a delight to have the breeze coming through on 3 sides ( the fourth wall being the house ). Also this year we put up a rain gutter. This will make my grill place and under the house where our bedroom is much drier.
I say we loosely. It was primarily Dan and Tom doing the rain gutter work. I did get to strap on my new toolbelt ( finally found one that fits girls! ) . Mostly I measured and hit a few nails. I have to say if you need to hit a nail more that 2 or 3 times, you are in trouble. It's hard to center a hammer repeatedly for more than that and also takes more time. I did put a few in and also had to take a few out. I seriously need some hammer and drill practice time to build up my skills! I do have the perfect toolbelt now though, I even have an attachment for the drill!
We have to redo the front of our trailer in Key West, so it will come in very handy. Thanks to Tom and his patience and his attitude of “ if I can do it you can” Not really always true as he's at least twice as strong as I am and fearless on a ladder, but encouraging none the less. Dan is less patient with me, but he is very skilled and also has to deal with my apprentice skills a lot more than 2 months out of the year. Well, he's also not known for his patience with me either, but that's another story. My biggest contribution to the building is remembering measurements and running around fetching things the guys have forgotten on the ladder, or holding the other end of things, but hey GOG ( Girl on Ground ) does come in handy and makes me feel useful and involved. I've definitely learned a lot building this place and I'm always happy when I'm learning new things.
West Virginia 8/29/09
The dirt and gravel road running into our property has been named by the county. This is to make it easier for emergency vehicles to find people supposedly, but at the moment is creating more confusion. Previously, we were just a box number on Rural Route 1, the paved road off Route 14 just past the Reedy iron bridge. It's taken 2 weeks for the newspaper delivery man to call and ask where is “Wildflower Lane” ? When I explain it's the cluster of mailboxes about a mile up on the old Sanoma Road, he says “ Well why didn't you tell them that when you ordered your paper, I'da had it there 2 weeks ago! “ I've ordered the Sunday paper for the next 2 months. Suki dog and I will walk down to the mailbox tomorrow morning and see if Mr Dillon has found us.
It's the time in our annual hurricane get away months from Key West where we are in between construction projects or visiting friends and family. I am falling into a routine of sitting on the porch in the morning drinking coffee and reading for hours. Mornings tend to be magazines, afternoons and evenings books. Today the weather keeps changing, clouds drift over the ridge and block the sun and it's dark and cool, then it clears and the sun's out and it's hot . It's been low 80's in the day and mid 60's at night, except for the dark rainy days . Cool front's coming in tomorrow and I'm glad we have a few extra blankets around.
Over the winter our friend Tom and helper Andy drywalled our 2 room cabin. For 2 summers we've been looking at the framing stuffed with insulation and covered by plastic. It's the only part of the construction we didn't actually do ourselves and it was strange to see it so different. When we first arrived we did some finishing on the front room. Originally designed to be Dan's creative room and a small studio it's now transformed into the music room where we keep our instruments ( guitar, bass, keyboard, marimba and new harp ). It also houses Dan's computer where he is diligently working on programming the kiosk to display his teleidoscopic photo art.
Our first project was to paint the room, hang a ceiling fan, lay a floor and stain and put up the trim. I've put some pictures up of what we've done. At the moment we've got both rooms in the one room as a few days ago I painted the floor in the second room, our makeshift bedroom which was originally designed to be my practice room, with some leftover oil based barn paint. We did hang a fan in there and it's still airing out. Let's see I painted on Wednesday and it's Saturday now. I'm hoping we can move back in tomorrow, although having the bed in the finished room with our new sheets has made it seem like staying in a hotel. Although I don't normally hang my PJ's on the marimba at those.
Every day I spend a few hours at the harp. Learning a new instrument is a true test of patience. I thought it would be more painful as well, but aside from the tedium of playing everything very simply and slowly, the calluses are building up naturally and I can practice as long as I can concentrate. I always take some time later in the day to just play as well. A few Celtic tunes, variations on Pachelbel's Cannon and Ode to Joy and just jamming.
We picked up the harp on the way up and got to go the workshop where it was made and met the designer and his apprentice who actually built my harp. It was exciting for him too as he doesn't always get to meet the people he makes the instrument for. The harp is a Dreamweaver and is from Heartland Harps in North Carolina. It's a 34 string harp and made out of laminted birch, so it's very light weight ( 21 pounds ). It has a clear lovely sound and I am getting very comfortable with it. Playing the harp is so intimate, it snuggles up and leans on your right shoulder and you bring your arms around it and play it's strings. The notes and music make perfect sense to me. The mechanics of placing your hands and playing are taking some time. It's been just over two weeks now so I've come a long way quickly, but still ache to play with more fluidity.
Monday, April 6, 2009
talkin bout Spanish Rhapsody/hablo de Rapsodia Española
my first blog! I want to create a place where I can talk about the details of my shows. I have a new one coming up at the San Carlos Institute in Key West, Florida on Sunday April 26 called Spanish Rhapsody.
I sing and this concert features the music of Spain, Argentina, Brazil and Cuba. I'm joined by pianist Sergio Puig, the amazing pianist who is also the assistant conductor for the Florida Grand Opera.
And I'm also joined by Caribe, the hot Latin trio in Key West.
more news on this concert to come!
I sing and this concert features the music of Spain, Argentina, Brazil and Cuba. I'm joined by pianist Sergio Puig, the amazing pianist who is also the assistant conductor for the Florida Grand Opera.
And I'm also joined by Caribe, the hot Latin trio in Key West.
more news on this concert to come!
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