Earth Hour, 2011, Chile

We have just finished our Earth Hour here in Chile.  We started with my husband and I sharing sushi by candle light.  We chatted with our oldest daughter, while she tried not to check her Ipod to see what her friends were doing in the dark.  Then the three of us went outside to look at the stars.   The milky way was a blaze across the sky and we saw three shooting stars to make wishes on.

I would like to say we spent the rest of the night in darkness sharing stories, but it is 15 minutes past “lights on” and we are already on the computer and listening to the radio.

Still, if everyone does a little bit, it will all add up.

Cooking with the sun

A couple of years ago I was the president of the “Parents Association” at my daughter’s school.  This was a two year position, (that actually slid to two and half), and entailed a lot of work, mainly raising money for the school.  However, the “Centro de Padres” was lucky enough to win a grant which we used to learn how to build and use solar and adobe ovens.

With 15 other mothers we spent a year building solar and mud ovens, learning to cook with them, participating in workshops and demonstrations, and getting to know each other better.  It was a great experience, if not a bit stressful because it was a government grant with my name on it.  These are a few of the pictures I took to document the process.

 

Mothers learning how to make solar ovens with the teachers and students watching.

 

Students working with us. It was the first time many of them had used power tools, they had a great time.

 

The girls also had a go with the tools.

 

Getting dirty building the adobe wood burning oven. It uses wood more efficiently than an open fire.

 

Empanadas cooking in the oven.

 

All of us at the end of the project, me in the middle.

We all received a solar oven that we could continue to use in our own homes.  When you drive through the “pueblo” you can see some of them in use during the summer.

I have used mine for cooking, but also use it for dying wool, especially in the winter when the temperatures are lower.  I put hand spun yarn in jars, (or a big pot), with different leaves, flowers or onion skins.  The water does not boil and I can leave the wool “stewing” without worrying about over cooking.  It brings the water up to temperature very slowly, and then in the evening I leave it to cool slowly through the night.

We are now into autumn here and so last week before the temperatures dropped I cooked a black banana bread.  The recipe is from the internet, but it is just like one my mom used to cook when I was little.

 

Banana bread cooking in my oven.

It cooks at a low temperature for two and a half hours, but because the sun wasn’t strong it took longer and didn’t go as dark as it should have.  It was very sticky, (instead of moist), but still yummy.

 

Banana bread cooked in the solar oven.

What’s in a name?

 

Spider in our garden before laying her eggs.

Why the Spider’s Workshop?  Well, I am a spinner, knitter and weaver, and identify with spiders.  I love to watch them making their webs in the morning, and follow their cycle through the year as the females grow fat with eggs.  Of course those are the pretty spiders I have in my garden, here in Chile.  The spiders I have inside my house, are not pretty.

I hate to kill spiders, (they make threads like me!) and when I first moved onto my Dad’s farm I would catch the spiders and take them outside.  I asked the men working on the farm if the spiders were la araña de rincón (corner spider or brown recluse, poisonous but timid spiders), and they said no.  So for years I was living and catching these spiders, until we upgraded to a better Internet connection and I saw a picture of a brown recluse…my house was full of them.

With all the spiders and my spinning I called my house el Taller de Araña, the Spider’s Workshop, playing with the Spanish for a spider’s web, tela de Araña.

With two young daughters in the house I had to start killing the spiders.  However, they keep coming back into the corners, and I keep spinning, so it is still el Taller de Araña.

Underside of garden spider and her web.