Cannoli success!

Yep, I made cannolis tonight, gluten free too!

Archives and House stuff

So greenspree.ca has moved to a new tumblr account home and all the old posts are located here.  In moving the content a lot of the photo links will be broken and the categories were all deleted.  I have gone through and re categorized the house posts so you can find them all here.

I will be updating the posts and basically rewriting the story of the house construction with photos again on the new site as time allows.

Chest Fridge Update

So after living in the strawbale home for a year and a half I realized that I never posted the results of one of themost talked about and controversial aspects of our plans, the chest fridge!

From chest fridge

Here is the fridge, it’s a 10.5 cubic foot (actual dimensions, it’s labelled a12 cubic foot) and has a Brewers Edge temperature controller attached:

From chest fridge

I’ve attached a Kill-a-Watt meter to it for the last 8-9 days and measured the consumption:

From chest fridge

From chest fridge

2.36KWH in 205 hours works out to be about 100KWH per year.  Compare that to my previous research that suggests a comparable upright refrigerator of the same size would use about 350KWH and you can see it has made a difference in our energy bills.

From chest fridge

Inside you can see that it is about as full as a comparable sized upright fridge and we find the usability to be about the same as a regular fridge.  We do put in a damp rid type product (Calcium Chloride) and have to clean the fridge about as often as a regular one.  Here is the damp rid tray:

From chest fridge

Alsmost time for a refill!  You can see some rust from the first couple weeks we were using it and didn’t use the damp rid in it, since then we haven’t had any problems!  We also have a 15 cubic foot freezer in the utility room/pantry for freezing things.

In our Energy market 250KWH a year is about $35, not exactly a lot of money, but every decision we made like having switched outlets to reduce ghost loads, drainwater heat recovery system to reduce the amount of electricity the hot water heater uses and CFL and high efficiency halogen lighting all add up to a good amount of savings per year.

New 5K Running Program Started April 25, 2010

The program I started April 25th.

Learn to run 5km – weekly plan

WEEK ONE

Day one: 3 min walk, 1 min run, repeated 5 times – Done Monday April 25th
Day two: 3 min walk, 1 min run, repeated 6 times – Done Wednesday April 27th
Day three: 3 min walk, 2 min run, repeated 6 times – Done Saturday April 30th
Day four: Rest

WEEK TWO

Day one: 2 min walk, 2 min run, repeated 8 times – Done Monday May 2nd
Day two: 2 min walk, 5 min run, repeated 3 times – Done Wednesday May 4th
Day three: 1 min walk, 3 min run, repeated 6 times – Done Saturday May 7th
Day four: Rest

WEEK THREE

Day one: 1 min walk, 4 min run, repeated 6 times – Done Monday May 9th
Day two: 3 min walk, 10 min run, repeated twice – Done Wednesday May 11th
Day three: 1 min walk, 5 min run, repeated 5 times
Day four: 3 min walk, 10 min run, repeated twice

Switch to C25K week 6 day 3: 25 min run – Done Saturday May 14th

WEEK FOUR

Day one: 1 min walk, 8 min run, repeated three times
Day two: 2 min walk, 10 min run repeated three times
Day three: 1 min walk, 10 min run, repeated three times
Day four: 20 min run, 3 min walk, 8 min run

Switch to C25K week 7:

Day one: 25 min run – Done Wednesday May 18th (Monday and Tuesday rained out!)
Day two: 25 min run – Done Friday May 20th
Day three: 25 min run – Done Friday May 27th on the beach at dawn in Rehoboth, Delaware!

WEEK FIVE

Day one: 15 min run, 2 min walk, 15 min run
Day two: 1 min walk, 10 min run, repeated three times
Day three: 20 min run
Day four: 30 min run (5km)

Switch to C25K week 8:

Day one: 28 min run – Done Monday June 13th (big gap in training there, was rough!)
Day two: 28 min run
Day three: 28 min run

Add WEEK SIX (C25K week 9):

Day one: 30 min run
Day two: 30 min run
Day three: 30 min run

Soufflé Omelette porn

I am sitting at my kitchen table looking out the window at a snow storm:

From Drop Box

Having an oatmeal stout.

But what I really want to show you is the two egg soufflé omelette I made this morning with feta and spinach:

From Drop Box

Delicious looking no?

Some new photography plus bonus sketch

Some recent new photography and a quick sketch. The sketch is really rough and I really need to work on my proportions and symmetry/alignment. I haven’t really done any artwork since high school and I miss it terribly, I just need more time and inspiration to just draw more often.

Elimination diet – success?

So I am two weeks into an elimination diet to see if it improves some dermatitis issues I was having. Over the last 5 years or so I slowly developed some seriously irritated skin on my face which led to redness and flaking (ew).

So I recently gave up wheat, dairy, caffeine and alcohol.  I was pretty sure it wasn’t caffeine and alcohol as I have given them up before but just decided to add them in as well.  Looks like it was indeed some form of food sensitivity as the symptoms have almost entirely cleared up.  The question  now is which one(s) are the culprit and I shall start adding them back one at a time.

I think I will start with wheat, as it’s the only thing I have never even cut back on before and see whether that brings back symptoms.  While staying clear of wheat I actually also didn’t eat hardly any grains related to wheat either (spelt, rye, etc…), but I did make oatmeal pancakes with rye in them yesterday.  I plan on making some bread this week and seeing what happens as I slowly reintroduce wheat.