Spanish Fire

As I mentioned in a January 'Things Around Me', our house gets cold in the winter. We have the radiator-running woodburner downstairs and an open fire upstairs, but the open fire is not very efficient. Best Beloved loves it, I believe, for the psychological aspect: the Lord of the Manor in his Great Hall. When lit and roaring, it's an impressive sight... But I digress. Over these last few cold weeks, the house has been decidedly chilly, especially upstairs where the radiators really don't get much above lukewarm because the system is just too big for the fire.

Since the start of the cold snap, we have wrangled for hours about heating the upstairs: BB went to see Chris Hadjipetrou at Thermodynamics on the Polis road who had sold us the other two woodburners in the house, and Chris advocated putting one of his big burners in the open fireplace, but nothing he had would fit without knocking out what was already built and although BB and I might fight over his fireplace, we agreed that unless something fit without alteration, that idea was a non-starter.

“But we could install another fire,” my husband suggested. I cast an eye over the room, checking out the corners he had indicated as possible locations or envisaging a sexy Scandinavian in-the-round number in the centre of the living room, and finally said: “Yes, we could. Right behind my desk.”  Our house might be about to become a Thermodynamics Alternate Showroom, but at least I would be able to work at my desk in the winter without two jumpers, woolly socks and slipper boots.

Chris had several models that would work, so we settled on Tessa from the Spanish company Rocal – slightly raised, glass doors on three sides. BB and Chris discussed price to include installation, construction of a plasterboard backing with spotlights, and the moving of some electrical points, and settled on a delivery date.

Last week a large white van drew up at the front door and Don and Wayne, familiar from the installations of our other fireplaces, began setting up. They were done within the day, and blessings on them, swept up every mote of dust and picked up every scrap of packing, leaving the room spick and span. 

We couldn't light Tessa the first night as the cement was still curing on the chimney, but we did the second and felt a difference in the room. She is pleasant looking, easy to clean, and a joy to work in front of – and since BB provides all the wood from our tree demolition with his trusty chainsaw – cheap to run.

But I still felt cold upstairs. Was our top floor simply too big and lofty to heat at all?

The answer came Saturday.

“Manamou,” Best Beloved said to me mid-morning. “Come here.” He was standing at the kitchen sink, and he pointed up to the left, where the larder and kitchen walls converge. “Does that hole go to the outside?”

He had been standing at the sink, and hearing sparrows, had looked up, thinking that a bird or two had got into the house. Only then had he noticed that where the massive beams meet the wall, there seemed to be a space. Some hapless builder had never filled between the ceiling joists and the wall, and because of the darkness and natural colour of the wood and the angle of the ceiling, we had never noticed.

We collected the long ladder and he climbed up to see. Sure enough a space below the ceiling measuring fifteen by thirty centimetres has sucked out heat and let cold into our house for the last five winters.

BB called the contractor – who's also, luckily, a friend – and he sent some builders around the next day while the plaster board guys were doing the fire surround. The hole has now been filled and painted, and when I walked into the house that evening, Tessa had been going for an hour or so and the upstairs was actually warm. Not just 'not cold', but honest-to-goodness warm.

Glad we got that sorted!

Unfortunately there are 'During' but no 'After' pictures -- yet. Our plasterboard finisher is a real anachronism – a perfectionist who cares about the quality of his finished product. He is having trouble with a section of work, and will not sign off on it until it meets his specs. I grumbled about that at first: although Mr Mattheas cleans up after himself (a great selling point for Thermodynamics as most local workmen leave all their litter behind them), a fine layer of plaster dust from his re-sandings has been in this room for the last few days and he will not finish until tomorrow or after. Then I realised how lucky I am to have a craftsman who cares about his work and will strive to get it right: I haven't seen one of those for a while and will trade a bit of dust for the cost and disruption of repairing a bodge any day.

Going Bananas

Best Beloved has a cousin who grows bananas, and last week he was kind enough to give us some.  Not a few, not a hand, a whole freakin' tree's worth...  Now I'm not knocking this:  Cypriots are truly generous, especially with what they produce.  We get tons of yoghurt, anari, peanuts, citrus, and other things from relatives, and it is very welcome.  I try and keep up in mango and plum season, and with my offerings of hand cream, etc.

But when someone gives you around 150 unripe bananas, whaddaya do???

Well, I started out putting some sugar solution in the stem 'to make them ripen evenly' according to BB (who had initially said when I had asked, open-mouthed, what do do with them 'Put them in the compost, if you want!').  For want of a better place, I put them in the Back Kitchen -- on a par with the basement for organisation -- and kept a beady eye out for the next few days.

They did, indeed, change from green to yellow.  Then, alarmingly, their skins began to split.

I knew that it was time to start using them, so I made banana bread.  I googled the recipe, used the first that showed up, and tweaked it by adding cardamon and walnuts.  That took care of nine bananas... except that, although yellow and with splitting skins, they are still a little hard.  When I put them in the Kitchen Aid and turned in to the lowest setting, bananas -- whole and parts thereof -- erupted from the bowl and whizzed around the room.  I returned them to the bowl and held a tea-towel around it, mashing this time without hazard...

Turned out tasty.  Now, what to do with the rest?  Muffins, pancakes, more bread -- for the freezer this time -- gifts for friends, and if the worst comes to the worst, the compost is always just 30 steps away!

Recycling Wine Bottles

When he was about twelve, my older brother discovered a new source of income: he spent hours cutting wine bottles into drinking glasses. Some of these stayed in the family, others were made into sets of matching colour and size and either given away as presents or sold. They were practical, cheap, and tough, and making them to sell taught him a lot.

About ten years ago, I'm sure that I saw an identical cutter in the catalogue from the Centre of Alternative Technology Eco Store in Wales, but my life was too busy for me to even consider buying it, let alone embarking on the hassle of removing the labels from bottles, etching the cut, alternately heating it over a candle flame and rubbing it with an ice cube (and cleaning up the attendent mess); then, if the cut was a clean one, sanding the edge so that lips are not sliced to ribbons. The process, I remembered, was not particularly profitable given the time spent, but it did assauge my parents' dismay at the throwing away of the quantity of bottles that they accumulated what with their own consumption and their entertaining.

So a year or so ago I decided to find a cutter and start making glasses – or maybe turn the project over to Zenon so that he could walk in his Uncle's footsteps. My first stop was the CAT catalogue. No sign of a bottle cutter. So I contacted CAT. “We have never had such a thing in our shop.” Ebay? Nope. I had enough things to do, so I pursued the quest no further.

Until the Instructables. Lots of ideas come from this magnificent website, and thank goodness I didn't un-sub from their mailing list when I did a mail clean-out some time back. Because about a month ago instructions for making a bottle cutting jig showed up on their weekly newsletter. The plans looked ok, but I didn't want to start a woodwork project just then. But I found the website for Green Power Science, and, watching their video I decided that, though it was expensive ($45), I would buy their jig and try their technique -- using boiling and cold water alternately until a clean break occurs along the line of least resistance, the thin etched line in the glass. The international postage, at $23 felt steep, but I decided to take the plunge.

It arrived ten days later in a box marked US Postage $11.39.

“Hmmm,” I thought, taking a deep breath and feeling a little 'had'. “Where's the $23 in that?”

“Don't waste your time, Manamou,” Best Beloved said when I mentioned writing to complain. “They'll tell you that the rest of the shipping money went on the box and on someone to take it to the Post Office.” But I persisted and wrote a polite note asking where the remaining $11.67 was, then put it out of my mind and started cutting bottles.

My cutting was not very successful. Unlike Dan Rojas, the man behind GPS, who gets a near perfect cut with most of his bottles, none of my cuts were smooth, and most were unusable with downward cracks . The glass on some of mine was thinner than on standard bottles, but the heavier bottles (champagne and proseco) cut much more evenly.

So, putting aside the cutter after some experimentation, I removed the labels from a host of empties and planned a day on the learning curve for Wednesday. My lack of success had not discouraged me, I just figured that I needed to master technique, and to find which thickness of bottles cut best. A pleasant email from Denise Rojas told me that they were refunding $8 to my PayPal account – the other $2 witheld to cover the cost of the box (“Two dollars?” I thought. “More like nearly four where I learned to add...” But I decided to quit while I was ahead, and sent her a nice note back thanking her and telling her I was enjoying my cutter. Her response that evening was along the lines of “Nice to hear it, let me know if you need any more help.” So I congratulated myself on not having followed my first instinct and been nasty, but instead had laid the foundation for a postitive relationship...)

In the first light of Wednesday morning, I heard Stumpy miaowing outside the kitchen window, and, eschewing the door, I let him in the window – something that I almost never do. His front paw tangled with a strip of window draught-proofing that was on the sill awaiting installation, and that in turn, tangled in the jig. As I lifted the cat off the sill (he doesn't manage jumping from heights well as he has only one front leg to absorb the shock), the whole lot crashed to the ground. I picked it up, fed Stumpy, and forgot about it.

...Until everyone was at school. With only the murmur of Galena's hoover downstairs and lunch in the oven, I sorted out all the clean new empties into bottle shapes and sizes, picked up the jig, and sat down to cut. But instead of a thin white line appearing on the glass where the wheel was etching the line along which the break would happen, nothing appeared. Puzzled, I looked closer at the jig, and where the tiny cutting wheel should have been caught between two edges, a gap mocked me. The wheel was gone, knocked out of place when the jig fell off the sill that morning.

I felt ill. Sixty dollars gone because I'd done the cat a favour and let him in the window... Of course I looked on the floor, but I'd swept earlier, and Galena had hoovered the sweepings. Any other day and I would have found it.

So I got back on the Net and emailed Denise... After all her last words had been “if you need any more help.” “How much would it be,” I enquired. “For you to send me an extra cutting wheel?”

I haven't heard back yet. But in the meantime I've been back on Indestructables and found several different plans for jigs that don't look that difficult after all: $10 - $12 (make that 15 Euros, probably, given that things are dearer hear) and an hour or two's work.

Time to rethink bottle cutting. Meanwhile I will take my more successful attempts up to Turtle and Moon Studio where Lise has glass grinding equipment:  I tried paper, but although it smoothed the clean cuts well, it is not able to clean up the jagged edges.   Watch this space for developments!

O Xeros Potamos -- 'The Dry River'?

This morning when I went to make breakfast at six, I saw that we were out of milk so I set out in the car for the nearest place that would be open, the Market at Mandria Junction.  Crossing the bridge over the river below the dam, I realised that something had changed.  Instead of the usual dark chasm of earth and rock, the space below the span was white and swirling, and even though there was not light enough to see, I knew that the dam had overflowed and that the river was coming down.

A few hours later, I set out under (relatively) clear skies to have a look... Along with, it seemed, the rest of Paphos and his donkey.

First stop was the river side, where I joined an elderly gent who was videoing from his phone.


"O Xeros Potamos?"  I asked him.  "The 'Dry River'?  That's its name, right?" I asked him in Greek.  He snorted.  "That's what they say!"  Then shook his head in wonder... "Πολύ νερό, πολύ νερό..." A lot of water, yes indeedy!

Atop the dam, the populace and the press was out in force.  Even when the hail began.  The Highway Department has blocked ingress from one side of the dam, but a steady stream of cars, icecream vans, fruit sellers, and donut and snack vans kept arriving from the other side, parking, leaving, hooting...  The buying, selling, photographing, laughing, continued unabated.

"Κοίτα! Ξανά χαλάζει! (Look!  Its hailing again!) yelled one man, grinning, and turned his face to the sky.  Lightning flashed, thunder cracked, and hailstones gathered in the folds of my jacket.

By this time my shoes were wet and my jeans soaked to the knee.  I decided that I had had enough and ran for the car.

Asprokremnos Dam

Yesterday, Leo did not have a tennis lesson: as soon as we reached the court the rain started again, so his teacher shrugged, pointed at the sky with its complement of lowering grey clouds, and waved goodbye.

“Can we check out the dam and see if it's overflowing yet?” Leo asked. So to assuage his disappointment (Leo loves tennis – a passion I cannot find it in myself to share) we headed for Asprokremnos on our way home.

It seems like a lot of Paphiots had the same idea: both the ice-cream van (“Mum, who in their right mind would buy an ice cream on a day like today?” Pause. “On second thoughts, I would. Can I have an ice cream?” “Are you in your right mind, Leo?” “No!” “Well, no. Sorry.”) and the loukomades van were there, as well as a number of people who, like us, parked on the dam wall to look over the side and cheer on the water level.

I only had my phone camera, and that was a little wet, so the pictures are a little... lumpy.

The rain continued all last night and was still falling when I went to collect Galena the Cleaner at seven-thirty this morning. I didn't want to come back on the motorway, so we mosey-ed back on the old road, and just before the dam turn-off I said: “Let's go and see if it's full yet.”

This morning there were more people than last night – and the ice cream van was still there! A man from a blue pick-up truck and I found ourselves side-by-side looking at the water, now only half a metre below the spillway lip. “Another day or two?” I said in Greek. “Nah,” he answered. “Later today!” It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he wanted to put twenty Euros on the question, but I was too shy. Chances are, we would have had a good laugh over it, but I didn't want to seem too forward.

As I dived back into the car (the sky was chucking down cats and dogs and I didn't have a jacket on), even more people arrived to look at the spectacle. I guess there's nothing much to do around our neck of the woods when it's pouring with rain just before eight on a mid-week morning.

Natural Skin Care -- for Pennies, not Pounds

About twelve years ago, working from intuition rather than recipe, I made a beeswax and olive oil handcream and gave it to my Ukranian cleaning lady whose husband's hands had chapped badly and cracked from his job in construction. I didn't think about it again until some time late last summer when Galena casually mentioned to me that they had never found anything nearly as good in any shop. And shortly after that (synchronicity at work!) while looking at one of my favourite blogs, Root Simple, I found the recipe for an olive oil - beeswax cream that I had to try.

I assembled the ingredients and equipment, and in less than half an hour I had six 125 ml pots of light, pleasantly scented and easily absorbed hand or body cream.  I gave Galena some and she was happy. And over the next few days the idea for my Christmas gifts took root and I trawled the Net finding more recipes for skin cream and lip balm (always in use in our house and so expensive at 5-7 Euros for four grams – never mind the ingredients which include mineral oil and parabens). The kitchen, throughout November and December, became a lab as I experimented with the balance of ingredients for natural salves and also for scented drawer sachets and potpourri. I decided that my Christmas gifts for the extended family would be mint lip balms and 'spicy aroma sachets' for the men, and luxury natural hand creams and 'floral and musk aroma sachets' for the women.

Saint Basil's Day (January 1, the traditional day in Cyprus for the exchange of gifts) came, and we went as usual to Mili and Phil's for the Big Family Feed. Our presents -- Zenon had made everyone tie-dye t-shirts and Leo had baked for each household a batch of either brownies or chocolate chip cookies -- were added to the pile of gifts surrounding the tree in the corner, and after the meal, distribution began. Zenon's and Leo's contributions were a real hit; mine required more explanation, but once it became clear that I had made them from natural ingredients and carefully researched combinations of scents, enthusiasm flowed, especially from Sil and Bridie. The men of the family were a little more skeptical, but at least if the sachets don't end up scenting their drawers or softening their lips, chances are that wives and girlfriends will find a use for them.

I had no feedback for a while. Then, last weekend Best Beloved was over at Bill's house and Sil told him how thrilled she was with the Christmas Cream. “I had horrible rough patches on my hands,” she told him. “But now they're completely gone!  Is Asproulla going to be making any more soon?”

When I went to see Auntie Maroulla last week, I took a jar from a later batch that I had made. It seemed a poor exchange: 125 ml of cream for one carrier bag bursting with mandarins, another that overflowed with peanuts, yet a third full of black-eyed peas, and half a kilo of fresh anari, not to mention the 10 kilos of mandoras that I picked from the orchard on the way out, but Maroulla has a truly loving and generous heart and does not keep score.

Two days later I had a report from BB who had been to his mother's for coffee. “Maroulla gave some of the cream to her daughter's father-in-law who had cut his fingertip while pruning and nothing seemed to help. Well apparently it's better now, so everyone wants to know if you sell the creams, or if you can give them the recipe. Please go and see my mother and sort it out...” So I went over to Mili's and invited her to come and see how it's done and yesterday afternoon we had a cream making party.

When we had finished,  BB mentioned that Maroulla, (older than Mili by nearly a decade) recalls their mother making the almost the same cream for universal family use, although Mili has no memory of it.  "Now we have to bring 'foreign experts'," he said.  "To remind us how we used to do things a generation ago!"

***

As a basic recipe and for method, I use Root Simple's Olive Oil Whip (back in November I had bought Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Industrial World and had started working on many of Kelly Coyne and Eric Knutzen's ideas and recipes – there is also a Kindle edition, for those of you who read on Kindle) but with a tweak to include coconut oil (I find that one part coconut oil, one part beeswax, two parts olive oil works nicely for the right consistency), Vitamin E capsules as an anti-oxidant, and essential oil for scent. We have boatloads of oil from past years' harvests, and I buy pure (though not organic) beeswax from the local ecclesiastical candle maker. The dearest ingredient is the organic coconut oil from the health food shop. Lip balm uses the same ingredients but a slightly different method and works out at cents, rather than Euros per gram for all-natural ingredients. Anyone wanting natural skin care on a budget should really check out Root Simple, A Sonoma Garden, and other blogs, books, and publications dedicated to natural living. Like me, you might not want store-bought again.

Wise-Eyed Fishing Boat, Pomos

The prompt from The Gallery this week was 'Eyes'

Soon after I bought my digital SLR, a Nikon D-80, my family and I went for a day trip to the northwest area of Cyprus near the village of Pomos. Pomos has a wonderful restaurant set high on a bluff above the small shelter for fishing boats. You can bet that your lunch is fresh!

On the way to the beach we walked around the tiny harbour, watching men repair their nets and dodging children who ran with icecream cones in hand.

This boat reminded me of the children's book The Story About Ping, the tale of a duckling who lived with his mother and father and brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins aboard a 'Wise-Eyed Boat' on the Yangtze River.

Far from having a duckling in mind, the boat's owner was probably taking precautions against the Evil Eye in a custom that has long predated Christ in these parts. You'll often see eyes on boats here, but usually they're smaller and a single eye is more common than a pair.

Please follow the link at the top of the post to enjoy others' work on the same theme.  Why not join in, too?