When I moved to my 1907 four-square farmhouse a few years ago, I was pleased that it was equipped with a mudroom. In this particular case, the approximately 8-foot by 8-foot mudroom was part of a hip-roofed addition that had been made on the southside of the house in the late 1940s by enclosing a covered entryway. The addition included a small mainfloor bathroom of about the same dimension. Since the old mudroom housed the washer and drier as well as the hot water heater, it was barely more than a cluttered corridor that led to the kitchen door. I knew right away that I'd need to make a new mudroom before too long.

Just about a year ago, in the process of making several other changes around the place, the walls of the old mudroom were torn off the house -- I figured I had at least 6 months to make a new mudroom of the old space before winter arrived to freeze the exposed pipes. Since the house and the ground around it were already torn up, I decided to make the new mudroom larger than the original. My first step for making the new mudroom was to pour a concrete slab over an existing patio (complete with footings) to support the walls. I hired this done because concrete intimidates me.

Once I had the slab paid for, I commenced to frame the new space -- actually it took me until October to begin the framing. I used treated lumber for the bottom plates and regular stud-grade lumber for the studs and top plates and the like. I used blue Tapcon concrete screws and Liquid Nails construction adhesive to secure the the bottom plates to the slab. I didn't tear off the old roof until absolutely necessary to protect the existing bathroom, which is behind the aluminum-faced Celotex-clad walls.

In a more perfect world, I would have removed the old roof before framing, but this world is not perfect. By the end of October, I was just about ready to remove the old roof to frame up the new mudroom.

Framing under the old roof was a total pain, but I really was worried about rain ruining the bathroom.

Since I am not a very good carpenter (I don't know jack about creepers), I decided to go with a regular old gable roof instead of the hip. I am good at math so laying out the common rafters and cutting them was fun. Setting the ridge board all by myself was a trick, but it wasn't too difficult. It took me three days of vacation to get from the last photo to this one -- luckily I scheduled the vacation when Mother Nature scheduled 6 consecutive days without rain. Notice the interior framing of the new mudroom. The room to the right will house the hot water heater, washer and drier. The long room on the left will be the entry way and pantry. I got the thing shingled and partially sided by Thanksgiving -- and then the arctic blast hit.

When the weather turned bitter in early December, I hurried to get the windows and door installed. I wrapped exposed pipes with heat tape and insulation -- pipes still froze, but thankfully none broke. With the help of a propane-fired construction heater, I warmed up the space sufficiently to run wiring in the outside walls and in the ceiling. Then in January, I stuffed insulation between the studs and ceiling joists, and sheet rocked -- suddenly it was much warmer inside and pipes remained not-frozen, even on a zero-degree night. My partner in culinary crime helped with rocking the ceiling -- oh what a pain that was without renting a jack. I finished up the plumbing last week and need to mud some of the sheet rock still, but I can see the end in sight.

The mudroom still has a way to go -- and I need to adjust the siding on the house -- and install a new electrical drop to replace the gnarly wiring that I inherited with the place -- and oh so many other projects. But it's good to have projects.

Rarely has any book so moved me, or had me nodding my head so often, or reading out loud to my partner in culinary crime than Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture by Shannon Hayes. Wow! This book is likely to be my favorite pick for 2010 and here it is only March.

Radical Homemakers is eloquent, engaging, thorough – a veritable bumper crop of research, field notes and beautifully crafted arguments that are, quite frankly, tough to dispute. Shannon Hayes leads the reader through cultural evolutionary changes that reduced our homes, once bustling centers of production shared by all family members, to the cold, disconnected, consumption-driven places they are today. Radical Homemakers shows us that once we traded our survival skills and domestic skills for post industrial revolution cash, we became victims of our own need to consume to survive. And Radical Homemakers makes it painfully clear that consuming to survive, the way we do, has pointed us on a class-stratifying path of environmental and emotional destruction that is not sustainable, not healthy and not very forward looking (or thinking).

In Radical Homemaker, Hayes considers the real cost of owning multiple vehicles, paying for childcare so that two incomes can support a household and a belief that having more stuff will somehow make us happy – and makes a compelling case that the cost far outweighs any benefit in real happiness. To the contrary, higher incomes tended to correlate with higher stress and stress-related “issues,” higher divorce rates, lower feelings of security, more debt, higher feelings of vulnerability to debt, consumption-related anxieties associated with having the “right” stuff, anxieties related to how to store all that stuff, and more.

What to do?

In Radical Homemakers, Hayes offers a glimpse of hope for reversing (at least to a manageable level) the consumption craze. Her model begins with an assessment of what we really need to be happy and accepting that the home needs to be a center of production – at least to some extent. Radical Homemakers is loaded with anecdotes and reports from people who are living happy, fulfilled, safe and healthy lives, with incomes that the kings of consumerism would scoff at. It turns out that producing your own food, reducing your transportation needs to one older vehicle, learning how to surround yourself with helpful community, bartering, etc. isn’t so bad after all.  In fact, it turns out that we don’t need to be entertained every step of the way either. One of the key points in Radical Homemakers is that we have forgotten that it is possible to make our own fun, right at home.

While most of what Hayes has to say resonates well with my way of thinking (not always my way of doing) her method is one of encouragement and nurturing. I really appreciate this. Unlike many other radical thinkers, her tone isn’t strident and she presents her case with balanced analysis, rather than setting up the status quo as her straw man. The concept of radical homemaking can stand on its own as a guide for living a humane life; and as Hayes points out in Radical Homemakers, there’s no harm in taking baby steps or even partial adoption of the plan.

Will Radical Homemakers make some folks uncomfortable? Sure enough! I think that’s part of its importance. Even if you can never see yourself living outside of the consumerism-conventions we’ve been brought up with, Shannon Hayes, at the very least, make us all a little less comfortable believing in the resource hogging, and human spirit demoralizing, economic model that we now call home.  Order your copy from the author here.

My partner in culinary crime stopped at a local buffalo (bison) farm early last week to lay in a supply of one of my favorite grassfed meats. We sampled a couple of the tenderloin steaks that very evening, but saved a lovely 2.5 pound buffalo chuck roast to have some fun with Saturday night. Our slow cooker recipe for buffalo chuck roast was inspired by friends Carolyn and Bryan Welch. They served us an awesome supper way back in July of 2009 that included generous helpings of delicious, stringy, tender, beef barbeque fresh from the slow cooker. That the meat in question was pure, clean, grassfed Kansas beef, raised right on the Welch's farm added greatly to the experience. My adoration of pure, clean, grassfed meat really hit home a few weeks ago when I ordered a steak at a restaraunt and was inadvertantly forced to eat feedlot meat. In all honesty, I actually had trouble gagging the gorgeous-looking steak down -- but gag it down I did because I believe it's immoral to waste meat.

My slow cooker recipe for barbeque buffalo, as inspired by friends Carolyn and Bryan, and delivered via by my partner in culinary crime goes something like this.

1. Defrost a magnificent piece of grassfed buffalo chuck or pot roast.

2. Whip up a batch of your favorite barbeque sauce. My recipe, she calls it Will's Big-10 Barbeque Sauce, goes something like this:

Place 2 tablespoons of safflower oil into a heavy bottomed saucepan, add 1 finely chopped onion (I chopped it super fine) and 3 minced garlic cloves to the oil and set the works on the flame -- medium heat is probably enough. Stir often.

Using a glass bowl, mix 2 cups organic apple cider vinegar (she'd reduce this to 1.5 cups and add .5 cup of water, but I love vinegar sauces so ...), 1 can of tomato paste, ¼ cup Worcestershire sauce, ½ cup light brown sugar, ¼ cup regular molasses, 1 tablespoon chili powder (I used Rancho Gordo New Mexican Red because it is very yummy) and ½ teaspoon of cayenne (I could have gone hotter, but I didn't need to eat the entire thing myself).

Use a wisk to mix all the ingredients -- be sure that the tomato paste is completely dispersed.

3. By the time all the fussing around is finished, the onions and garlic will be nice and soft and clear. Now add the contents of the mixing bowl to the sauce pan and turn the heat down to low. Simmer, partially covered for about 20 minutes until the sauce is thick enough to suit you.

4. Place the buffalo chuck roast into the slow cooker, carefully pour the homemade barbeque sauce over the meat (be bold, use the entire batch of homemade barbeque sauce), cover the slow cooker and turn to high for several hours, then turn to low for several more hours.

5. We called the slow cooker barbeque buffalo chuck roast finished when we came in from our evening chores -- after about 7 total hours of cooking. You will know the buffalo chuck roast is ready when you can lift the bone cleanly out of the slow cooker and separate the beautiful meat (that's left behind) into sumptious strings with a fork.

We used this slow cooker recipe for barbeque buffalo to create the main course -- lemon-zest Yukon Gold potatos grilled on real charcoal, a spinach salad with homemade vinigrette and Girlscout Cookies (I know, I know -- its a not wasting food thing) rounded out the fare.

Author Photo: Courtesy Karen Keb

Barbeque: iStockphoto.com/Craig Uglinica

American Bison: iStockphoto.com/R Sherwood Veith