Grilled Chicken

Yesterday it was time to try the charcoal I made last week.

I picked up three chickens at the local market and cleaned them. Made a marinade from crushed black peppercorns, sugar, salt, lime and palm oil and coverered the chickens with it. A few handfulls of garlic, chilis and red onions was mixed with the rest of the marinade and stuffed inside the chickens.

Then I fired up my barrel grill with the newly made charcoal, and when it was ready the three birds was put indside and the lid closed.

A good friend showed up, and the next 90 minutes was spend talking and enjoying a few cold beers - which might be the reason I forgot to take a picture of the finished result. But I guarantee you, that these were the best grilled chickens I have made so far. Crisp on the outside, juicy and tender inside and very tasty and delicious.

Building a compost

For some time I have piled all my weeds, leaves, dead bananaplants and leftover organic kitchen waste in a big heap, and even though it has slowly decomposed at the bottom - and provided som nice compost, I have been thinking that it could be done a little more controlled and effective.

To keep it simple I decided to make it from coconut palm leaves, wood and a little plastic and metal wire to tie it together. Even though it will not last forever, it is allmost free and when it's done, it can be thrown into a new compost, when the plastic and metal is removed.

After measuring out 16 wooden poles was hammered into the soil, and everything was tied together at the top with the hard center from old dry coconut palm leaves.

One side is filled up with palm leaves and cleaned at the ends. To keep the palm leaves in place, I had to add some ekstra support made from the hard center of palm leaves.

Both sides are filled and one end is closed. I'll keep the other end open to use for removal of fresh compost.

And then it is filled up with the top layer from my old compost heap. On top of that a layer of compost, then a good watering and on top of that a few buckets of sand and then old bananaplant stems and leaves.

I haven't seen any of the locals out here making compost. Usually all weeds are cut down - or sprayed with chemicals - and burned when dry. My wife thinks I'm crazy piling up this amount of organic material, and says it will become a snake og rats nest. I just can't watch all this potential compost get wasted, and our red clay soil would benefit much from it - so for now I just have to compost.

Burning charcoal

Some time ago my wife gave me a charcoal kiln, made by a local guy from an old oil barrel, which I haven't had the time to try out yet. Last week we got a load of old hardwood logs from a familymember, and I decided that now was the time to try and burn charcoal for the first time.

I have now tried the kiln two times with the same result. About half of the wood is burned to perfect charcoal and the rest is inadequately charred wood.

After a lot of reading I think the problem is that my logs are to different in size - some of them too big for this small kiln. And then I'm probably closing the airintake too quick.

Anyways I still have a big bag of selfmade charcoal, that I will soon use to make grilled chicken.

Opening the kiln for the first time.

Half the wood looked like this.

Tilapia fish farm visit

The floating cage system seen from the riverbank late afternoon.

Yesterday I visited a friends cousin, who has a cage system fish farm floating in the Nan River. After a short inspection of the floating farm, fish was catched, killed and cleaned. The rest of the day was spend in the shade on the riverbank steaming, grilling, eating and enjoying cold beverages.

Below some of the pictures I took during the day.

Growing pumpkins

Pumpkin flowers.

Recently I decided to try and grow pumpkins, and saved two seeds from a pumpkin bought at the local market. The seeds were put in pots and germinated well. Actually most of the seeds - which were tossed on the ground beside our outside kitchen - germinated, and we now have several pumpkin plants growing wild.

The two plants in the raised bed.

The two seedlings I made, was put in each end of a raised bed together with 10 small chili plants and the soil was covered with compost and leaf litter to keep the weeds away and retain some moist in the soil.

It turns out that the chilis was not the best choice for this bed. Even though they have managed to grow out over the top of the dense cover of pumpkin leaves, the pumpkins are to big and fastgrowing for the chilis. For several weeks every morning I have had to release the chilis from being strangulated by the pumpkin tendrils. I think papayas will be a better companion for the pumpkins.

The first little pumpkin.

The pumpkins are doing very well and are growing fast. With the help from some bamboo sticks the wines have been guided to grow around in the bed a few times - and after that outside the bed - still using some sticks to try and keep the plants in a controlled area. Not doing that I would have wines growing in 10 different directions. The flowers are plentifull and the first small pumpkins are starting to pop up. Now it's just watering, feeding and waiting before we can hopefully harvest lots of big pumpkins.

Cleaning buds and wines.

And while we wait, we have started to harvest buds and the fresh wine tips, from the plants that grew from the seeds tossed outside the kitchen. After cutting away the hairy and hardest parts of the stems, it is fried together with chili, garlic and fishsauce for a very tasty sidedish.