SUSTENANCE: Rice Bowls to the Rescue (and green building dreams)

Too hot to cook? Cold crispy rice bowls to the rescue. This one has seven-minute steamed front yard farm jammy eggs, fresh garden greens (baby napa cabbage, lambsquarters, purslane, radish greens, thai basil), carrot cabbage slaw, radishes, sesame seeds, chili-crisp, and a soy ginger vinaigrette.

It’s a fresh and refreshing pick-me-up that won’t weigh you down, and a great way to use up leftover cooked rice or other grains. It’s fast fuel for fun in the sun (or a nap in the hammock).

And another one: this time with fried eggs (over easy), cold stir-fried carrots and cabbage, homemade kimchi, sliced greens, and sesame seeds. And since it’s so hot and humid it feels like a sauna, I stole one of the birthday books I got for K — Rob Roy’s cordwood sauna building manual (you know you picked a good partner when you can shop for their birthday presents by buying a big stack of used books that you also want to read?). If we live in a sauna now, might as well read about living in a better sauna in the future (a small guest cabin sauna, while we figure out what and how to build next).

While he’s always dreamed of living in Montana (and I of anywhere wooded and not *flat*), it’s looking like even if we win the lottery and could maybe afford enough acres to have a self-sustaining woodlot and farm, the pace of the climate emergency (and accompanying wildfires and drought) means we’re not sure that’s where we’d want to go anymore even if that were an option.

We’re probably looking at the UP now, or MN, which would be a much easier move, more central to where our families and friends are, and while we may not escape fires there either (Canadian forests are burning just over the border, and parts of the Boundary Waters), we’ll probably still get enough snow to keep K happy (and it’s grown on me, too, now that I have proper gear) and enough wild and green spaces for us both. And while we’re stuck here in the city for at least a while longer (K is finishing his degree, and we both have some planning to do to figure out our exit strategy), it’s close enough to consider.

I’ve been reading and researching green building techniques for years, but never really paid any attention to cordwood. I was aware of it, but never really looked into the particulars- it didn’t look like a long-lasting technique, with mortar abutting wood, but there are plenty of them still standing after over a century of use.

There is a lot of cordwood in the UP and northeastern WI, and hence, a lot of cordwood building. It’s well suited to a low-cost owner-builder project, especially if you can source logs on-site (or use cut ends from commercial logging or reclaimed posts), and performs well in the climate of the region- dense mass walls that can be built thick and insulated for R-values approaching Passivhaus standards. Rad.