Hello from Uganda

[cannyfradock]

Re: Hello from Uganda

Hello Janine

Although fairley new to FB forum, I have read your postings from the beginning of your project and I am truly impressed in what you have achieved with the tools and materials "at hand" to build such a beautiful wood-oven. It goes hand in hand with your work in Uganda. You are a true Trojan

Best of luck in 2010 with your culnary creations and good work in your community.

Regards, from a cold and snowy South Wales

Terry (C.F)

[Janine M. LeGrand]

Re: Hello from Uganda

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to Everyone at this thread!

For those of you having a white Christmas, enjoy the beauty but on the other had you probably aren't using your WFO Here on the equator it is still nice and warm and my WFO is still getting a lot of use--as much as I can find time.Here you see me taking out a batch of mango curry pocket pies. I collected the fruits from one of the mango trees by my house (behind my head you can see the trunk). More mangos than I can possibly use even with dehydrating them when I have the time. (Aside from snacks, I plan on putting dried mango in breakfast muffins, yum.) Using some of the fresh fruit, I made mango pocket pies using a recipe from Alton Brown (Good Eats) which were delicious.
For Christmas I did a 2 layer cocoa cake in the WFO then frosted it with white buttercream icing and decorated it with red and green piped icing. Sorry no photo but I was in a rush to get it to the Christmas party where it was a big hit. I've also been doing some savory pocket pies, and tonight I used up some leftover fillings by throwning the bits in a quiche. This quiche included wild spinich, mushrooms, onion, gouda cheese, white sauce and some leftover roast chicken. I know some people are hesitant to do a quiche even in a regular oven, but they are not that tricky and mine cooked just fine in a well heated then somewhat cooled WFO. I'm finding lower heat cooking a bit tricky at times (still haven't remade the door yet) but the quiche worked well with the oven somewhere around 275 - 300 deg F guesstimated. (Ok, so that's not a real word--but it should be). I'm finding that I also need to be careful how much flame is present--actual flame as opposed to heat from embers. I think the flame thows off a lot of radiant heat leading to lots of browning (or burning the top if too much) as opposed to convection and conductive heat from the burning embers. So I am starting to adjust my fire based not only on temperature but on amount of flame to get my desired results. Also, you need to keep in mind how much heat the oven walls/floor have had a chance to store up. The quiche was cooked after the oven had been hot most of the day with other cooking and then had had some time to cool a bit. I kept the flame pretty small and off to the very far left edge of the oven away from the quiche. Getting what you want out of the oven is an artistic sort of thing--part science but a lot of educated instinct too at least for me as I'm flying blind with little.
instrumentation such as those fancy IR thermometers and all. It's pretty fun actually. I still think a nicely made dish in the WFO usually beats what comes out of a typical indoor oven hands-down in taste.
Anybody else play around with the amount of open flame vs non-flame heat (e.g. embers, stored heat)? Of course having an open flame will affect the temperature but I'm finding the relationship more complex. A hot oven with no visible flame doesn't surface-brown food as much as a cooler oven with lots of open flame in my experience. Note that surface-browning is not the same thing as cooking through--so you need to watch both... Please let me know your experiences as I haven't heard anybody talking about this difference.

Your in Christ,
Janine

[Janine M. LeGrand]

Re: Hello from Uganda

Thanks everybody for the "get well" wishes. Darius, come on over for a meal anytime; its only about a 2 day trip by plane Yum...white chocolate sounds delicious. Why don't you bring the dessert?
--Janine

[Archena]

Re: Hello from Uganda

Feel better soon, Janine!

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: Hello from Uganda

Hey Janine,
Glad your on the mend... Feel better

Cheers
Mark

[KINGRIUS]

Re: Hello from Uganda

Sorry you got sick Janine! Glad to see the oven's really getting used. Your food looks really awesome. What day would work best for you for my wife and I to come over and help you eat some of that fire-roasted grub? We could exchange recipes. I going to try my flour-less chocolate torte(with white chocolate mousse) in the wfo. It's melt in your mouth delish!

Thanks for the update and stay well!

Darius

[Janine M. LeGrand]

Re: Hello from Uganda

Hi everyone!

No, it wasn't the snakes that got me, it was the mosquitoes! I came down with malaria. Then either from the malaria or the meds to treat it, I got something called labyrnthitis, which is an irritation on the inner ear that causes vertigo and balance problems. Not much fun being mostly laid out flat when you are alone in a house which at the time had no working power or water. But trust in God and lots of friends helped me get through this and I am almost well. I am able to get around and do most things but I haven't tried riding my motorcycle yet. I have fallen twice while walking due to poor balance, and the second time I sprained my ankle, but that also is healing. Even through all this, the oven is still getting used a fair bit. One of the women here whom I taught to make pizza has made me several. She also has baked breads, muffins and rolls for me (with a little advice here and there). My security guard, with a helper has also built a roof over the oven. [ATTACH][/ATTACH] As you can see, they needed to first build a ladder to reach the roof. When my helper made two pizzas we had a little left over dough, and from that I made cinammon rolls. Just spread out the pizza dough in a rectangular-ish shape, smeared it with margarine then sprinked on sugar and cinnamon. I rolled it up to a log and sliced off rounds and baked. Yum!

Still lots more I want to do, such as the low-firewood option for the oven, moving the chimeny, making a door etc but very busy now trying to catch up on my work. We will have a medical team arriving on Sat and I am trying to check on all the preparations. If I have any lingering medical problems, I can get them to check me out too.

Yours from Uganda
Janine

P.S. No, I haven't heard of those beads. Kampala is a ways from here and there are lots of groups working to help here in Uganda. Thank you though for caring for these people and helping!

[Archena]

Re: Hello from Uganda

Hi!

I bought a bracelet from Bead for Life last Saturday. Ever hear of them? They're based in Kampala.

How's the oven working out? Still love it?

Inquiring (i.e. nosy) minds want to know!

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: Hello from Uganda

Hi Janine,
Havent heard from you or your oven for a while.... Hope the snakes didnt get you ??

Hows it going in UGANDA,,, any progress ??

Cheers
Mark

[KINGRIUS]

Re: Hello from Uganda

I really wasn't "offended" at your pics guys, especially since I knew it was used as food. I was just afraid others might join in with their pictures and tales of how many copperheads they just killed under their shed. It doesn't take much to get some folks started... There's relatively few on the side of the snake so we have to stand up for them.

I've followed your thread from the beginning Janine, thanks for all the coverage of your build and the pics of the great food you've been making!

Darius

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: Hello from Uganda

lwood, no ofense taken,(from me at least) Janine

Cheap and abundant insulation: ash. As long as it remains dry it's actually an excellent insulator and you have the added advantage that you're gonna be making it on a regular basis anyway.

archena bricngs up a good point here.... also, there are a ton of articles on sawdust kilns and stoves, You could fire bricks in the sawdust kiln,, Now if you only had access to some sawdust.... didnt you say in the begining you had access to pozzolanic cement ?

The first known pozzolan was pozzolana, a volcanic ash, for which the category of materials was named. The most commonly used pozzolan today is fly ash, though silica fume, high-reactivity metakaolin, ground granulated blast furnace slag, and other materials are also used as pozzolans.

I remeber reading somwhere (looking for it) that pozzollanic cement had some refractory qualities... Maybe you could use that to make rocket stove bricks as well,,,


Will let you know if I find anything good....

Health for Masindi: Blog of Janine LeGrand for those who missed it the first time around here is a link to Janine's blog.... pretty interesting stuff

cheers
mark

[lwood]

Re: Hello from Uganda

Thanks Janine for clearing that up. I think i'm safe to say, no one here advocates killing anything. But when they invade your space and become a threat, something needs to be done. Killing is not the first option, but is an option when the situation calls for it. Janine is absolutely correct that the local belief is to kill any snake you see. I have had to stop workers from killing them many times. We have a many beautiful snakes here and I do what I can to coexist with them. Sorry for posting the pics, didn't mean to offend anyone.

[Frances]

Re: Hello from Uganda

Not that I wish to tread on anybody's toes, but I don't see so great a difference between the snake picture and one of a steak, slice of ham, whatever - specially considering the snake was used as food afterwards.

But yes, killing animals just for the sake of it would not be a very nice topic.

Facinating thread, Janine - Keep up the good work and as far as I'm concerned you can stray off topic as much as you want, I love reading about it all!

[Janine M. LeGrand]

Re: Hello from Uganda

KingRius,
Sorry if the pictures offended you. I am not advocating going out and hunting snakes. The one we killed here was venomous, wild, heading towards me and a few feet away from me, so I won't fault my guard for killing it. Actually I am slowly trying to educate the local people here on snakes--the general belief is that all the snakes here are poisonous and most people here do kill them on sight due to that false belief. From a health standpoint it is good to be able to tell if a wild snake which bit a person is venomous or not. There are a lot of "unusual" treatments for snake bites here (such as kerosene and "blackstone") I think thats because many of the bites were non-poisonous and people think whatever they did (e.g. apply kerosene) worked.
One challenge of using a WFO is that I need to keep a lot of wood around, and piles of loose wood are just the type of place snakes (plus other critters/insects) like to hide in. I try to look before I reach, but snakes can hide quite well at times, such as the one inside the wood I picked up.

[KINGRIUS]

Re: Hello from Uganda

ACK!! Pictures of DEAD snakes!? I really like snakes alive much more than dead. I understand they can be a nuisance to farm critters and such, but please don't let this become a snake killer story telling line.

Darius