These turned out to be not the sweetest or butteriest of leafy greens, but they were my lettuces…that I’d watered and sheltered from the toxic slime of snails and pulled from the ground 15 minutes before supper.

I don’t do water above the ankle line until it’s 26°C (that’s 78°F).  One of our neighbors feels strongly that I should be braver about things.  Well…

We bought a couple; stuffed them with brown rice, a mince of beef and pork, and a mixed dice of carrots, courgettes, mushrooms, and onions.

While the rice cooks, you saute the mince and the vegetables.

Then, you introduce the sauteed goodies to the rice.  Let them shake hands with some salt and pepper and dried herbs like thyme and/or oregano and/or parsley.   Spoon the stuffing into the top of the peppers which have been divested of their stem and seeds and white membrane.

Pour a glug of olive oil into a baking dish, place the peppers in the baking dish, give the pepper skins a good polish of olive oil before putting them under the oven grill at 350 degrees.

I honestly can’t tell you how long the peppers need to cook except to say that it might be 25 minutes, it might be 40 minutes.  Your eyeballs are your guide.  The pepper skins should be wrinkly and soft, looking a bit like on they’re on the verge of collapse, and a little charred and oozing juice from the odd pore or ten.

Pour yourself a nice glass of table wine.  No need for high falutin vino because stuffed peppers aren’t.

While the wine acclimates to the new surroundings of it’s cup, carefully place a pepper on a plate.  Slice it open.  Take in the spellbound half-moment that follows as the rice mixture spills every which way, steam curls into your face, and the aroma of herbs merged with capsicum smack your nose in the rightest of ways.

After that, there’s nothing else to be done but apply knife and fork, choppers and mandibles in honest pursuit of honest belly joy.

Thought a boot of beer wouldn’t be a bad way to make amends.

I often hear the first howl erupt when the sun still hasn’t cleared the top of Cap d’Or and a sliver of the moon is still visible in the sky.  They sound, these howls, like they start in the belly, like the tension in his body is nearly unbearable until he tosses back his head and lets one rip.

The release must be heaven.  Sometimes I’m sorely tempted to join him.

The weird part of this house renovation experience has been what it’s triggered in me.  My inner house took this opportunity to reveal the run-down and crumbly within, and that there’s no time like the present for at least recognizing what’s ripe for refurbishment.

People are like houses but are not houses.  Some qualities of our architecture can’t be improved by other people.  Help along the way can be gotten, of course, but ultimately the bulk of the task is solely ours.  We can hire people to make us prettier but not taller, more aware but not wiser, more skillful but not talented…some of our walls we have to bang out and rebuild ourselves.

I’ve decided to spend some time ruminating and writing about this renovation experience as a whole, being a bit more honest and braver and curious in how I examine it. Odds are I won’t be wielding a sledgehammer.  I’m fairly certain, however, that I’ll see firsthand what it’s like to create open spaces.

PS:  Happy St. Patty’s Day!

This feeling is due, of course, to the renovations we voluntarily put in motion at the beginning of January.  In fact, we bought the house knowing full well that life would boing into being pear shaped for a time because of said R-word.

Of what it would be like to live on site while the work went on we had inklings.  People advised us it would be worse than we imagined.  Like worse x 100.  It’s not that we disbelieved them.  Yet, even the most dismal and scary descriptions were more like partial explanations.

Until you experience it firsthand, you can’t quite grasp how COMPLETELY crappy and uncomfortable it is to be in a house where rubble rules…and grit conquers all…and you are left with one room in which to eat, sleep, work, find warmth, regroup, etc…and you have one bathroom you share with the builders.

Not even food lands with its usual levels of solace.  (We don’t really have much of a kitchen anyway, given that half is generally fuzzed with brick dust at any given time.)

Anyhow, this is why I’m on the run from the house even as I spend much of my time in it.  Because we have to be on site even if we don’t want to be, at least at this stage of things.

So, the bedroom that’s become our all-purpose room also has to serve as my growlery*.  Actual growling has happened.  It’s superbly cathartic.  Although the dog is not into hearing me make sounds that are his turf.

And, I’ve stopped trying to look for the upside and the silver lining.  They’re there, but at the moment they’re covered in sand.

And, every morning I get up early – at least an hour before the builders arrive – so that I can have my tea and staring time and free write for at least 10 minutes.

In these free writing sessions, I haven’t been able to detach from what’s going on around me.  It would be nice if I felt called to scribble about warm woolen mittens and cupcakes, but inevitably I circle back to the crusty exposed pipes and cement. As you do.

* “Sit down, my dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “This, you must know, is the growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.”  – From Charles Dickens, Bleak House

I was a queso fundido virgin until a former Virginia Highlands hotspot called Sala.

Sala, it should be noted, had killer mojitos to match the canapes. We toddled home many a Sunday afternoon after having ignored vows for mojito/fundido restraint made earlier in the day.  Unfortunately Sala went the way of the Dodo bird a couple years ago. Still, this dish triggers a little homesickness.

Ah, home. Home, sweet home. Used to be a place with central heat and air, and with a tumble dryer that didn’t cost a fortune to use. Until recently it was relatively tidy, and not where I meet the morning with grit beneath my slippers.

We’ve entered the next leg of our renovation project. The builders are back for phase two, a much bigger ado of dust and demolition than phase one. Renovations are wonderful to experience in the abstract…retrospect scores even higher.

Oscar, having "a moment".

When we were an Atlanta household populated with three cats, one dog and one man, we were a hairy household. Sunbeams showed me when it was time to sweep. In the springtime we might have also been a pollen-ous household, what with yellow clouds of the stuff billowing off the pines. A yellow coating on the windowsills showed me when it was time to wipe.

That sort of dirt I can live with. It’s quiet dirt. Cleaning according to the decibel of crunch is a change-up I could readily live without.

Rescue eats, such as this queso fundido (melted cheese) with chorizo piquante and jalapeno pepper provide some comfort that we’ve brought this mess upon ourselves.

For many reasons I crave something smoochy like a queso fundido in stressful times.

Let’s start with the shopping list: just a few ingredients – cheese, sausage, pepper,  and tortillas.

No flatware beyond digits+ thumb.

Only one pan.

A cooking time kind to short attention spans.

Double and triple-dipping of tortillas into queso are appropriate manners

As is eating the queso with the pan still on the stove. It tastes as good standing up as it does sitting down, so why risk the cheese getting cold because we forgot to wipe the bits of concrete off the dining table?

If you want a recipe recipe – as well as a good backstory – mosy over to the Homesick Texan blog and peruse the Queso Flameado. Same concept as what I’ve mentioned here but with a variant name and an optional fireball.