Spicy Popcorn

I'll have another house update for you in a few days, I promise.  For now, I've mentioned a couple times (more?  Ok, more.) that my obsession this summer is spicy popcorn.  My friend Julie also blogs about her house (Follow this link!  It's a great read), which is in the woods in North Carolina and which she is spectacularly renovating, and she very politely asked about this spicy popcorn business.  Because I really enjoy and appreciate her blog and her general awesomeness, and because I thought you might all like to know, here's how to do spicy popcorn.

Really, my kids are pretty obsessed with popcorn.  I make a giant potful at least once a week, often more, and they destroy it utterly before we finish the movie we're watching.  I like good popcorn, but thought it would be fun to play with it.  I started first with just sprinkling a little paprika on top, and that was pretty nice.  I get smoked paprika from Penzey's, and that was even better, and regular chili powder was also ok.  All of these were missing some zing, though, and I couldn't figure out what to do until I had a snow cone from a stand downtown.

The stand makes Hawaiian style shave ice, and I ordered their fresh mango.  It was awesome, but what made it transformative was that they asked, "Chile on that?" and I was all, "Why not?"  They put some kind of chili-limey-salty stuff on top, and in between thoughts of , "MMMMM!" I also thought, "This is what I need on my popcorn."

So this is they key to spicy popcorn:

I do not know exactly what's in it, and I'm not sure I want to know.  It's chiles and spices and citric acid, though, and it's delicious.  It's easy to find in Texas at Fiesta grocery stores, but I bet in other places you can find it in whatever your Central American section/market is.  If not, I will gladly send you some.  PS--this stuff is generally awesome.  As the name suggests, you can sprinkle it on sweet juicy fruits (I really like it on mangos and watermelon), and I bet you could make some other-worldly chocolate stuff.  But for now, here's how I make spicy popcorn:

Start with a big, heavy pot and put it over medium-high-ish heat (about a 6, I guess).  

Put three tablespoons of coconut oil in the bottom.  If you don't have or want to use coconut oil, safflower and canola also work for me, but I like coconut the best.  

Put three kernels of popcorn in the bottom and let the whole thing get hot, giving it an occasional shake, until all three kernels pop.  Fish out the popped kernels, dump in 1/2 cup of fresh popcorn, and hold the pot by the handle and shake it for a few seconds until you hear some good sizzling in there.

Dump in 1/3 cup of sugar.  You can use unrefined or white sugar, but full-on brown sugar doesn't work that well, and I think succanat wouldn't really either.  Either shake the pot super vigorously to distribute the sugar, or give it a quick stir, but be careful to not destroy yourself with hot popcorn.  Quickly pop on a lid, leaving a little room for steam to escape, and let the popcorn pop, giving the pot a little shake every few minutes.

You'll know the popcorn is done when you've got two or three seconds between pops.  Take off the lid, dump the popcorn into a big bowl, and sprinkle your steaming hot popcorn with lots of chile para fruta.  Stir to distribute the spices, and keep sprinkling until it looks all spicy.  Then eat a bunch of it and share it with friends.  It is not called spicy popcorn for nothing, folks, so also grab a giant glass of limeade or a margarita to cool you off. 

So I don't believe in microwave popcorn; it's cool if you do, though.  I bet you could just sprinkle Chile Para Fruta on top of whatever popcorn you've got and it would rule, but this is how I like it, and I promise it's not hard.  I also think that if you can't get your hands on some chile para fruta, you could melt some butter, add some lime juice and zest, and dump that over the popcorn, then sprinkle some good chili powder and paprika on top, and that would be pretty awesome.

No, I didn't take a picture of the finished popcorn, I ate it all in about 3 seconds.  That's how good it is.  I bet you can't get a picture of it, either.  It's like the Loch Ness Monster of deliciousness.

Addenda

I realized today that I've taken several pictures of our new exterior back porch doors, but haven't shown them to you.

The top is the set of doors going into the house (through the mud room into the kitchen/family room), and the bottom is going into the garage.  We'll definitely stain them at some point, but for now they just have a sealant on them.  They're so pretty the way they are.  I love the way they bring light into the house, but still look substantial.

Item B:

This is clearly not an updated picture, but you can still see how fluid the transition is between the house and the back porch (I hope).  It would be nice if it works out for the back porch to be an extension of the living area of the house in a meaningful way.

Also, I went by the house today in hopes of getting some better pictures of our shiplapped areas.  Some of the pictures worked,

But some didn't.

I do NOT know why I'm totally unable to take a clear picture of that shiplapped wall.  Maybe I'm subconsciously wishing to have some kind of super-fabulous reveal.  Anyway, you get a good impression of it from this picture.  I love it.  Love love lovey love love.  

And the middle shiplap picture above is our mudroom area (note the lovely doors to the left, kitchen to the right).  That shiplap will be the back wall behind our cabinetry "lockers" and bench, and I'm super excited that it will be there first thing I see when I come downstairs each day.

Number 3:  One more update, and kind of a teaser.  I'm contemplating exterior colors real hard.

I may or may not have gone a little nuts getting paint chips at the store.  The swatches are just so pretty!  I've narrowed it down to five, and I'll show you those once we get samples up on the siding.  I will never not want to paint the house all of these colors, and I will never not have a secret (not so secret now) impulse to paint a house the color of a whole card--darkest color or the bottom, lightest color on the top, all the shades in between in the middle.  Perhaps when I am old and wear purple I will.

Moving on

Thank you so much for the blessings you sent.  Even though the drywall dudes were eight thousand times speedier than I expected, I've been able to add some scripture, verses, and bits of text here and there all over the house, and those I didn't have room to write I tucked into a mason jar and squirreled away in the walls.  Our friends and family are our greatest blessing, and the house knows it as well as we do. Hugs to you!

Those drywall guys--like I said, speedy.

By Monday afternoon, whole rooms smelled of freshly sweaty socks and looked like a modernist's dream of stark architectural purity (WHY does drywall smell so weird, you guys?  I'll try to find out, and I'll report back if I do).

The put extra-specially awesome boards in the bathrooms

SUPERIOR.

And they even wire-meshed and mudded the wet areas of the bathrooms.

I'm a big fan of niches right now.

Some rooms were still in progress, but it was pretty clear they wouldn't be for long.

Our hundred-year-old shiplap, both the wretched (see those old termite trails? UGH!) and the sublime, was slipping back into its hiding place behind easily paintable, functional gypsum boards.  The whole house almost instantly took on a different character; a drywalled house, even if unfinished, feels like a house.  Ours feels like home, to me, but now it is just a house.  When it was just old shiplap and framing, the house had a cathedral-like quality.  The openness and purity of the structure was art, and I can see that part of the cause of the doldrums of the drywall phase is the loss of that sense.

Fortunately for me and you, the previous week I sent and impulsive e-mail to our contractor.  I admitted that it might be too late, but I asked him if we could leave one wall of shiplap in the living room exposed.

I haven't gotten a good picture of it yet because it's at the eastern end of the house and by the time I go by in the evenings the light isn't good enough, but it looks beautiful already and I can't wait to show it to you.  Before we started our house project, I had visited houses in the neighborhood that had left shiplap exposed after a renovation, and I have to admit I scoffed.  I thought it was silly, and too dark.  But I've gotten used to all this delicious oldness being on display in our house, and when it came down to it, I didn't want to give it up.  We'll probably clean it up and leave it unpainted, and I think it will end up being almost an art piece in itself on that wall.

And because my architect believes in the rule of three (read this *RULE OF THREE* with stars and sparkles) like I do, here's a little more shiplap hanging out in the garage waiting to be put other places in small quantities.  CAN'T WAIT.

Blessings

I think I told you long ago that our contractor gave us a chart at the beginning of our project to warn us about the psychological process of renovating a home.

And my veiny hand.

We're about to enter the valley of the shadow, you guys.  They start hanging drywall this week.  I would have thought that I was unique in being super excited about roofing and windows, but it looks like that's pretty standard.  It's also pretty standard to increasingly float in a sea of "Meh" about mechanicals.  Since the chart has been right so far, I'm steeling myself for some pretty serious doldrums over the next six weeks.  I think I'll have some choosing to do (exterior paint?) in the interim, though, and there will be trim and tile when we're through, so I guess I can muddle through.

For now, I have some small progress news, and a request.  

Y'all know I'm bookish, and I'm a big believer in the power of words.  It's not that I believe in magic spells, but I think intention, especially spoken or written, has a power of its own, for good or ill (and yes, I talk to my plants).  So I've been thinking for a while that I'd like to kind of vacuum-seal the good things and good thoughts we have about the house inside the walls with a house blessing.  Our church has had a party when they're finishing a new building to have people write prayers and blessings on the walls, so I thought we'd do the same thing.

Tonight, our family wandered over to the house with some sharpies, admired the fresh fluffy insulation, and spent a while thinking about our hopes for our home and our future.  We sang a few songs, said a few prayers, and we wrote blessings on the walls of our house.  It was private and homey, and lovely, and I really hope and really believe that the love and happiness we shared tonight will nest in the walls and help our house continue to be the place it's been for us for nine years, and for others for ninety more.  None of these prayers will be visible when the drywall is up, but I think the Power behind our intentions doesn't need to be seen to have strength.

So this is a terribly awkward thing to ask, like I'm wanting you to give me more than just your attention with this blog, but I also believe that love is infinite and bottomless, and the more you give, the more you have, so I'll ask for more anyway (I will also demand a high-five if I see you in person and I do something I deem to be awesome, like arrive kind-of on time, because you can never have too many high-fives.  That's just the kind of person I am).  If you have a good thought, a blessing, or a prayer you'd like to share with my family and my home, I would value the heck out of that.  You can write it down and send it to me, or comment, or e-mail or Facebook-message me--whatever works for you.  I'll print it out, or write it on some wood, and your message will be part of the unseen fabric of our house forever (or until the bayou takes back civilization, you know, whatever comes first).  Thanks for reading, and thanks for the blessing of your friendship in spoken and unspoken ways.

Fantastic Voyage

There are a bunch of descriptive words that real estate agents and contractors use to sell houses; "original" hardwood floors are the best, but "reclaimed" from another, presumably old place is also pretty good.  A "vintage" sink means it's special-old, though maybe a little worn, and "antique" is another standby that tells you that it might not work but it looks great.  I'm clearly a sucker for these buzzwords, and always have been; people like me are looking for an "authentic" old house.  It's been important to me in doing this expansion that all of the new parts of the house fit with the old parts of the house, so I keep using words like "authentic" and phrases like "in keeping with" the old house.  To be honest, though, I HAD an authentic old house.  I also washed in authentic cold water and authentically feared that the old wiring was going to cause a fire.  That wasn't for me, so I'm putting in all new stuff, and I'm mostly okay with that.  I can see that it doesn't necessarily make sense to want stuff to be old and not old at the same time, but maybe it's not so strange to want a house that looks nice and feels homey but works like it's supposed to?  Maybe I only think about this stuff because I was a teenager in the 90's when the worst thing you could be was a poser (or poseur?) and I'm still much too worried about being "real" (Shall I stop with the quotes? Nah. I have an English degree. Quotation marks are my jam).  Anyway, explore some authentic stuff with me.

We've been making some decisions about the detail work on the outside of the house.  You've seen how we decided to use Hardie siding on some parts of the house because it's practical, and pressure-treated wood siding on other parts because it looks like the original siding. It's nearly all on now, and I think the combination looks nice.

It doesn't look original, if it's even believable in the first place that a house in this size and shape could be "original" to the time the front of the house was built (I don't think it is), but the shape of the roof, the brackets, and the trim work that echoes the original house all work to make it look "authentic."  It looks like someone took his time with it; it looks pretty.  That's what's authentic about an old house to me.  

And someone did take his time with it, for sure.  They designed these little soffit vents to let air in and out of the attic:

Each one of those little rectangles is a piece of coated metal, framed with lumber, hand cut and hand assembled, fitted perfectly to the space between the walls and the roof.  They even added them to the old part of the house, and since every thing there is kind of wonky with oldness, our guy had to measure each individual space and then cut and make a vent to size.  We used to have some little tacked on metal vents that fit so poorly we had to constantly stuff steel wool and expanding foam around them to prevent squirrels from having a party in the attic.  This kind of perfect craftsmanship, especially in contrast to what it replaces, blows my mind; I don't have the character for that kind of detail work (but I'll write you a poem about it once it's done!).  So there's another detail that's not original or vintage but shrieks of being authentic to me.

Here's another side of this issue:

This is the wood roof-y bits on the front of our house (I think the real name is the fly rafter).  See that little circular notch in the end?  Our architect thinks that our house probably had a detail on each end that a lot of other houses in our neighborhood have, so he included it on the other fly rafters elsewhere on the house:

It looks really cool, right?  That's the kind of little detail that makes a bungalow a bungalow, and that defines the whole Craftsman design.  It's pretty, simple, and deliberate, and it's definitely authentic to the style and probably the history of the house.  

He offered that we could replace the fly rafters on the front with new fly rafters that match these, and I think that would look pretty awesome.  But I refused, and I know my thinking here is convoluted.  The detail on the rafters is probably original; the house used to have something like that there, and at some point, some one cut it off because it wasn't fashionable or was in the way of gutters or it rotted off.  If we put the new rafters on, we'd be restoring the original look of the house.  BUT we'd have to remove the actual original pieces of wood to restore the original appearance, and I just couldn't feel right about that.  Is that too first-world problem for anyone else to follow?  Are you appalled that I just wrote a zillion words about the tiniest dilemma in the world?  I am, a little, but maybe it's interesting to you--is the original more authentic, or is a replacement actually original?  Anyway.  Detail work.  I like it.

And here's a little bonus teaser for something I'm excited about:

My seats for the island came in from Chicago!  They're not original to the house or even authentic style elements from our era of houses, but they are authentically old!  I ordered two cast-iron and wood swing-out seats from old industrial cafeteria-style tables, and we're going to attach them to the island for seating.  I'm excited that they're old and awesome-looking, and I'm super excited that I'll never have to move stools to sweep or trip over stools because they're in the walking path after my children have gotten up and run off--these puppies will never touch the floor, but just swing coolly out to be a seat then tuck back in when they're done.  Hopefully they'll look even awesomer when you see them in all their glory.

Going to Hogwarts

I fear that the HVAC, plumbing, and electrical wiring in our house are the Harry Potter in our muggle family.  It's all so useful, and special, but I just don't appreciate it enough.  And before you know it I'm going to lock it all under the stairs (or inside the walls, you know, whatever.  Don't spoil my analogy with your logic).

I know that this is the stuff that's really accomplishing what I wanted out of a home renovation, but I have to admit, I just keep looking at it and thinking, "Eh. Wires."

"Hm, more ducty things.  I wonder when something exciting will happen."

Really, I know, this is about as exciting as it's going to get.  Air Conditioning?! I'm not sure how they guy who brought that to Houston didn't get a Nobel Prize.  I'm also not sure how people lived here before he did.  I would have to lay around like a puddle, groaning in misery, if I had no A/C.

So I take art-y pictures of wires and pipes.  I'm not the greatest arty-picture-taker for sure, so making an image that I can find beauty in takes some doing.  And while I'm framing what I see, I lost a little of first-world ennui.

"There's the thing that's going to make my house NOT smell like fish for three days after I cook fish."

"Wow, insulated pipes! So THAT's how other people don't have to wash their hands in 35 degree water on 35 degree days!"

"That looks legit.  I may not have to worry about my house exploding due to a gas leak (as much)."

Everything is in order, inspected , permitted, and approved.

I'm not certain what all the wires are for, but they'll be covered in insulation and then walls before I know it, and I'll magically have a functioning house.

In the words of Dumbledore the Quotable, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."  Here's my moment of pausing in my dreams of pretty tiles and paint colors and schoolhouse lights to find some joy in the stuff that will make my everyday awesome without getting any credit.  And I will hopefully not end up with a pig's tail for not appreciating it more.

Time to Sit Back and Unwind

We spent two years in the planning phase of renovating/expanding our house, as I've mentioned before, and after all that time, we certainly were able to work out pretty much everything with our architect to everyone's mutual satisfaction.  Everything except the front porch.  Our plan called to expand the porch beyond its original footprint and move the front door, and I'll admit that I just took a deep breath on this one.  For some reason all of the other changes to the house really seemed to make good sense, but I just couldn't be sure we were doing the right thing.

I think my hesitation came because a house's front porch is like its face.  Above all, I want our house to remain the home it's been to my family for the past 9 years.  All of the other addition and expansion is some pretty drastic plastic surgery, for sure, but I accepted it more easily because sculpting or changing a friend's figure doesn't seem to change who they are or how you engage with them.  If you change a person's face, though, they may seem like a different person, and I think I've been suspicious of this figurative nose job on my house's beloved face, even if I can be ok with some lipo and butt implants elsewhere.

Tell me that's not what this metaphorically is.  Really big implants.

 I couldn't imagine how I'd use this big porch, and I thought it might change my house's face too much, and you might remember that I was nonplussed when they took out my former master closet to start the expansion.  I'm not a person who reads the ends of books first, I swear, but I can tell you that they're substantively finished with the porch, and I am so pleased with the loving and skillful surgery that's been performed that my fears are dismissed.  When everything is done, my house's face may be different, but it's still right, you know?  It's still my house, new porch and all.

To start, the back wall of the porch was gone, and the floor was mostly gone.  It was not a good place for anyone but my children, who loved to give me extra gray hairs by sprinting along the springy lumber that bridged the gap in the floor.

When they put this siding on the wall, it helped.  One of the things I love about old houses (besides their awesome oldness) is how well made they are.  It doesn't seem like people put a lot of time or care into making anything anymore, so to get something well-made, it needs to be old.  But for this porch, the guys put in the time.  They took care to get things right.

This is some old siding from our house that was saved, stored, and carefully moved to make the siding on the side of the porch where the front door is (south wall) seamless and original.

I'm so sorry that I only have a poor-quality picture, but I promise that if you had looked at that wall in person you would be unable to tell that that siding was not originally in that place.  I had to remind my husband, even, who lived here, that the siding used to stop just to the left of the window, because that's where the right angle was to make the other wall of the porch.  They cut and moved and reinstalled that siding so seamlessly that it nearly wiped my memory of how the porch used to be.

And just look at how beautiful that new siding is.  Do I need to sing an ode to 117 profile lumber?  Better yet, should I write the epic ballad of the awesome carpenters who made sure the old siding and the new siding lined up at the corner so beautifully that the corner piece (another something that probably has an actual name, but I don't know what it is) looks like a sculpture?  Because I can.  I look at these pictures and pet the actual house and practically break into song a la The Sound of Music, but with less actual talent than Julie Andrews.  But this siding starts to make me feel like I'm  in a gazebo in the rain holding hands with this porch.  It's real.

Then, while I'm still weak-kneed over the walls, they took out the old floor and built a new one.  It's even prettier.

Shiny new pressure-treated joists resting on top of solid, 100-year-old-possibly cypress beams is art and music in itself.  You'd think that smooth tongue-in-groove planks lined up to make a diagonal between the post corner and the wall corner would be just gilding the lily, but it's not.  It's just extra pretty, like a cherry tree at sunset.  It might be so pretty it hurts, but it's not too much.  And they're not even done yet.

There's the beadboard ceiling, with the spot for the ceiling fan ready to go.

And rails, to fill in a gap where rails used to be, long ago, and to bridge the gap between old and new. 

Doesn't it often happen this way at least in movies?  You encounter a new acquaintance guardedly.  You don't plan to spend time where they are, but you keep running into them, and each time you notice something new about them, something interesting, something lovely.  Before you know it, you're totally in love. 

I am totally in love with this porch.  They've covered the floor to protect it, and it wants paint to make everything match, our porch swing is still in storage, and soon it will also have some porch lights and a pretty fan (and maybe a new vintage letter box door?), but it doesn't need those things for me to love this place and the face it will be for my house.  I almost can't believe I wasn't fully on board with this place from the beginning, and I look forward to spending many rainy afternoons together.