Bits and Pieces

Sigh.
It’s been one of those weeks (and weekends), my little wombats. So you get odds and ends, bits and pieces, random thoughts, and whatever I’ve cleaned out of the fridge. Lucky you.

If you are from the Southern Hemisphere, them please forgive the following statement which is on the one hand, one of those obvious items but for you folks, it’s rather cruel since you are basically burning up and have dead bats falling out of the skies and kangaroos dropping from heat prostration. My condolences.

But for those in North America, I can safely say, without fear of contradiction, that it has been cold. Brass monkey cold. And here at Chez Siberia, it has been ten days of energy discoveries the likes of which I am sorry to say, have taken us by surprise. The house was not only cold, it was ‘crouching over the oil heater and choosing which side to cook first’ sort of cold.

For those of you who have followed us since we got started here, you’re probably asking yourselves, “Wait a moment there, Aunty — you folks gutted the house and put in massive amounts of insulation in the walls and replaced all the windows and doors and shouted “Halleluiah”. How could you be cold?

This, my little cupcakes, is a reasonable question. And rather timely and a reminder to us all. You will see up at the top a not very artistic picture of one of the ducts which goes from our old fuel oil furnace in the basement to some particular part of the house (probably the livingroom but that is not important here). As you can also see, it is NOT insulated (you can get special batts to wrap ductwork so that you are not spewing (my word for the day) heat into places where you are not. We’d always planned to do this (cue violins) but never got around to doing it in the front basement (versus the back basement which could be rented out as a meat locker even under the best of circumstances, and which we did insulate – not only the ductwork but also underneath the floor joists under the dining area (known in the house as ‘Fairbanks, South’).

Now, here is another, also unartistic shot. which, other than the foam insulation around one of the copper waterlines, shows the underneath of the subfloor for our first floor.

Also, uninsulated and also something we had always planned to insulate.

Now, when we first got all the work done on the house, it made a HUGE difference in warmth and comfort upstairs. It really did. Why is it that now, the first floor feels like a garret? Besides the horrific cold weather we had?

One thing changed, and it was one thing that we did not take into account when we did it.

We stopped using the furnace in the basement (ahhhhhhh). We installed a wood pellet burner in the fireplace in the livingroom. We love it and it puts out tremendous amounts of heat (it also dries out the air in the house like fury so we have to run a humidifier as well but that’s another deal entirely). But, it’s obvious that what happened was that when we ran the furnace in the basement, that was heating the basement and that was heating up the subfloor and regular floor on the first floor, making the first floor much more comfortable. I never thought about that issue.

So now, with no furnace going in the basement, it’s extremely cold down there (I measured it this morning and it’s 45 degrees F. What it was during the “Polar Vortex” when the wind chill factors here were minus 35 degrees F, I don’t know and don’t want to know), so the subfloors are cold, which makes the floors upstairs cold, which makes the house chilly and uncomfortable.

Lesson learned. Next big project: Insulate the subfloors in the basement. Since we have a certain amount of humidity issues down there, we will be using foam insulation and for the moment adding wool sweaters for everyone.

Odd bit number two (and a more pleasant one): Another bit of comfort food. Here’s a dessert I have not made in a very long time but which is just lovely. It can be eaten as/is or dressed up with a bit of whipped cream, vanilla ice cream. It has the added benefit that if you are cooking with little ones, they are amazed that you just dump everything in the baking dish, throw it into the oven and voila.

Denver Chocolate Pudding

You’ll need: Some sort of 2 quart, deep baking dish. I use a Corningware(tm) casserole.

Ingredients:
Sift together:
3/4 c. white sugar
1 c. all purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
3 T. baking cocoa

Melt: 2 T. butter and throw that into the sifted ingredients along with 1/2 c. of milk and 1 tsp. of vanilla and mix up with a fork.

Spoon into a greased baking dish. Then throw on top:
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
4 T. baking cocoa
1.5 c. cold water (or, if you want to live on the wild side and have it around ‘at hand’ (as my Mum used to say), use cold coffee instead)

Bake, uncovered in a 350 degree F. oven for 40-50 min. The signal that it is done (you don’t want to overdo this) is in the picture above – you will start to see the chocolate sauce stuff coming through the crusty top of the cake.

Serve by spooning up the cake at the top and cover with the chocolate sauce that will be underneath.

Enjoy.