Beetroot wine brew

Here is another one of the experiments that I am developing in these days: it is actually my first brew ever! So I have just made treasure of the words of wise friends and expert parents and tried to play around with some interesting local elements...

This is a 5 liter bottle of beetroot wine...

The magic of red cabbage

In these days I have started (or actually continued...) to experiment with natural food coloring using a few different vegetables and flowers to add a little creative touch to our daily meals. I have always loved red cabbages!

This is the red cabbage "tea", the liquid that is left over after boiling the vegetable. The one on the right here on the previous picture is the full 100% cabbage-tea, on the left it's diluted with lots of water.

In the next picture you can see how it turned regular dehydrated-soy-protein nuggets: the cabbage-tea was poured when it was still boiling hot, adding a good pinch of japanese hijiki seaweed and letting it there in the pot with the lid on, for about 15-20 minutes.

In the next picture the final meal, ready to be served: burmese noodles with hijiki and red-cabbage sauce. The texture of these noddles it's really interesting and tasted very good: there are round in section, quite fat and long.

This is the only instructions that where in the package. Beautiful design, isn't it? Giving big thanks to the kind gift that brought it on our table. Buon appetito! 

Handmade pots

Here is a quite nice and easy way to make your own garden pots. Well... if you have the right hand tools and especially the right raw materials!All you need it's a pair of garden scissors, a stick (in this case a reused bamboo stick), and the right palm...

Monorail sliding door

Here is the first setup of our bathroom sliding door. Extra diagonal supports are definitely going to be needed and it's going to be alright... zero budget for this, after scoring the piece that became the main rail from a good neighbour's wood pile!

The decorations are hand drawn by my son... it's a crowded monorail train with all kinds of animals and funny characters! Blends in very nicely even from far away... I like it!

 

Insect kirigami

Walking around in the garden, here's what I spotted! An interesting kirigami... made by an insect. Quite wild as it happened by total chance.

Kitchen ready!

Yeah, plus/minus a few little touches our kitchen it's all functional since last night! Drain still a bit leaking but it's hard to do it without a proper sealing glue... 

Dinner, breakfast and lunch already tested and enjoyed so... we are ready for guests anytime!

Bikes on a bike

Yeah... these pictures are really taken by myself while I was driving... I know it's a bad thing to do but I was alone and riding at a reasonably low speed. Anyway this guy had an crazy load on his vehicle!
 

Clean-up before yourself

There are many useful solutions that ripe in your mind after having to repeat on-and-on the same boring thing! Some of these many handy tricks may look like as obvious as:
be safe, take good care of your tools, work in a comfortable position...  
It's all really important stuff and on the long run they are really going to improve your results, whatever job you're trying to accomplish. But there is one thing that is going to improve right away...

Kitchen top growing

The birth of a kitchen top was just a few days ago. Now, after taking out all the propped pieces, the tricky part is to redo the sink's tap and catch this good chance to extend the pipes carrying water to the back side of the garden.

Resident lizards compost tea

In these days of high heat, all the rain is very welcome and lots of activity keeps happening all around: it maybe because of the full moon coming up for tomorrow too, but anyway lots of local friends are getting busy and active all day... some are busy all night but it's not easy to take pictures at them!

 

These two pictures and those that follow were taken in the day time at very lucky moments around our place, in Pai. Experimenting now using their droppings to make some sort of a liquid compost for our plants. Check it out!

Wild bees castle

Some days ago, during a nice hike in the forest we bumped (not really actually, otherwise we would have destroyed it...) in an amazing insect nest popping out of the ground...
  

What is this?

The birth of a kitchen top

In these days I have been working hard to prepare the first pieces of the kitchen top that we need in our place. The challenges are (1) to keep the investment as low as possible, (2) to use just the very few hand tools available (or kindly borrowed) and (3) to use recycled materials, local teak wood or bamboo. 

This is the layout of the first pieces... all just propped together for now.

The first rain of the season

It's been raining... the first rain of the season in Pai, northern Thailand: what a gift for all of the living beings! Giving thanks for the elements, for the Sky, the Earth and all the Nature itself! 

Spirulina feast!

In these days we've been treating ourselves really well with super healthy food... we feasted on spirulina using three different kinds of it, from different sources: two dry and one fresh too... which is really an amazing super food!

Waw! the Barbapapa' shake...

Hey check this out! The Barbapapa' shake... what a treat! We all really enjoyed it and we're looking forward to make more as soon as we get some other essential supplies! Guess, guess... guess... it's not strawberries in it, what could it be?! ;)