shopping :: housewerks

Housewerks is an "architectural werkshop" chock full of great items.

We're on a mission to find a few iron gates for the salleyway. This is a recently learned term - our house has a side alleyway, which is basically an outdoor hallway connecting the back 'yard' to the street out front. Because we're a middle unit and we don't have an alley running behind the house, this is a convenient way to carry trash to the curb.

We need two gates, one for the front to replace the current barn'ish wooden door and one for the back to keep the dogs out of the neighbor's space - who also has access to the same salleyway.

These look good, but too narrow:


I liked these more than Craig did, but they need some substantial modification to fit the space, let alone some serious cleaning up:


For now we'll keep searching, there are a few places to check this coming weekend.

Housewerks has all sorts of fantastic items, check out this sink:

And the main room:


Off topic, the garden is coming in nicely - and much less work than the yard at the previous house!

Cowpea leaves stir fry - Payaru elai chundal

When Sangeeth announced this month's theme for Eat Healthy event, I was googling to find the protein chart of vegetarian foods. I came across this link , where in cow pea leaf tops the chart with highest content of protein. Also refer here for the detailed nutritional facts. It turns out that the plant’s leaves are more protein-rich than its bean. Then I decided what to cook for the event. Luckily, I had the cow pea plant with some new leaves, after the rains, in my garden. In summer I was about to pull it off, but since it had some peas hanging on to it to be matured, thought will do it later. Anyhow it survived summer. After the brief monsoon we had, there were fresh tender leaves. We do cook the leaves when ever we have fresh supplies at home. This is a simple stir fry which is very tasty too. Now after reading all the nutrient info on the leaves, there is a new found love for that. I have reserved some mature seeds for the next season, mainly for the fresh leaves.

Have a look at the leaves

The leaves appear in three's

Separate the leaves from the stalk before chopping.
Washed and finely chopped cow pea leaves - 3 cup

moong dal - 1/4 cup

turmeric powder - 1/4 tspn

salt
green chilly - 2

fresh grated coconut - 2 tblspn

Seasoning

oil

mustard seeds

red chilly - 1 no broken

Pressure cook the chopped leaves, moong dal with turmeric and salt. Add about 1/2 cup of water for the dal to cook. The leaves are not the soft kind, so will not turn mushy on pressure cooking.

Heat a kadai and do the seasoning. Add the cooked leaves and dal (Drain the excess water). Grind coconut and chillies together. Stir in the ground paste. Cook for a minute or two. The leaves after cooking will not turn very soft. Serve as side for rice with sambhar/morkootan.

exposing the brick...

...is hard work.

Typically, the rowhouses in Baltimore are brick boxes. There are a few wood framed rowhouses still around the city - and we looked at one that was beautiful - but for the most part they're all brick. There was even a law at some point in the 1800's requiring the houses and buildings be constructed with brick because fires were much angrier then and entire cities would be destroyed in hours.

I like the fact that our 200 year old box is made of brick.

In most houses, the brick would be covered with plaster. In our case - and many others - drywall would be hung over the plaster. The drywall is typically the easy part. The plaster should have been outlawed along with the wooden houses. I've read some articles about how the plaster would fall off in large pieces. Our plaster holds on to the brick for dear life.

A few tips:
-Wear gloves, dust mask and safety glasses;
-Your brick might not be pretty - test an area to make sure it looks good;
-We used hammers, prybars, mallets and a good dose of elbow grease;
-A labradoodle could do this - DIY 100%.

We haven't committed to doing huge areas just yet. Here's what we have so far.
This is in what will be the living room:



In this area, rather than hanging the drywall on furring strips, it was glued to the plaster for added fun!


Eventually, the television will hang on the wall above the fireplace - oh my, I hate that wallpaper. Play Cornhole.


John McCain makes one angry.


Speaking of fires... do you think there may have been one in the basement at some point?

The next step is cleaning the brick, which creates an incredible amount of dust and sore biceps. More on that later.

Oh, and we have to do something about the dining room:


Meet Kanga and Jaxxon - renovations are exhausting, but plaster tastes delicious