A note on Ants

There appear to be several distinct varieties of ants that live in the house. The first live in the kitchen and although small and black are capable of moving large amounts of meat around. They congregate around the kitchen sink and seem to shift large things in and out of holes in the wall. The second live in the dining area and tidy up around the table, where they will patiently wait for you to finish your meal before invading the table and move whatever debris they find. Then there's the small house ants, that, as noted previously, dismember the cockroach or spookily ate out his innards before being disturbed.

In the garden are several more varieties, including large red ants. The tricky ones however, are smaller and capable of climbing up a stick you are poking them with, wriggling onto your body and then choosing a choice spot to bite. This is inevitably suicidal, and hence these ants are obviously motivated by extreme territorial beliefs, and possibly some sort of religion. They all use some sort of community belief system which leads them to operate collectively. Have you seen a queen ant? Very possibly, it is a worm like thing that lives inside a stick; which, when said stick is pushed into a mud oven to make heat for baking bread, creates even greater suicidal vigour amongst the commune ants.

Incidentally, out here if you find ants in your pants, it means you are a diabetic.

Cockroach Conclusion

Seven hours later the house ants had not made much progress, the insect was still largely intact unless they were *shock* removing things from the inside. Picture shows unlucky beast shortly before being swept up by the housemaid, who's nickname is even more frighteningly Bullet.

House Ants Move In

Less than one hour later, unlucky cockroach is being recycled by an army of house ants. Lets hope a house lizard doesn't come first.

Philippine Cockroach Meets Early Death

I've seen bigger ones in Africa, and more spooky ones in the dark, but this one simply wasn't quick enough today and got the splat from the slipper.

I shall now await the house ants to move in and oxy-acetylene the beastie and take him away. Where and what they will use him for, I do not know. But I do know there are a billion of them and only one of me, so we shall not fight.

Long live house ants. Those other fuckers in the garden have a war on their hands.

A Mud Oven in the Philippines #7 Heating and Cooking

So far I've cooked pizza, roast chicken and lamb. All rather satisfactory. I'm still learning how it works so here's how I am managing for now. Firstly the fuel: for now, mostly charcoal. Its available cheaply locally. Basically I light a number of small fires near the entrance, I spark up the charcoal and (occasionally) wood with kerosene. Once its good and going (i.e. charcoal has a grey ash over it) I sweep it inside the oven. Same if its wood. Normally about 3-4 of these fires is enough to heat it up. Occasionally an additional fire is needed later on.

1. When the insulation layer or main layer is still damp, the oven loses much of its heat to the water, which evaporates. Hence, early firings are not good for cooking.
2. The principle of the oven is to store heat in the 6 inches or more of sand and mud mix to radiate back down into the cavity to roast. So far, this has not worked for me. For my cooking, basically I sweep the coals and wood to the back and sides of the oven, and place the baking tray in the middle of this. Once its totally dry I might get a stored heat effect.
3. Using the door tends to limit oxygen into the oven, so can actually cool it rather than keep it hot with the air going in.
4. Do not light fires in the oven, especially if you are using kerosene! It will make the thing stink and stick to the inside of the oven. Includes: plastic or any other crap you may be thinking of burning. Light the fire outside, and sweep in.
5. Prep time: 2 hours for firing and getting your food in. Then sit by it and smell the smell of home mud roasting!

Pizzas: 5 mins, chicken: an hour and a half, lamb shanks about 2 hours.

A Mud Oven in the Philippines #7

Nearly there! After this yet another couple of firings. The door was made from local wood guesstimated at the right size for the hole. It too was insulated with half an inch of clay mud on the inside. The trick with this was, once the door was made, to bang nails about half way through the side facing the heat, leaving about half an inch of nail protuding. Press clay mix over this, and let it dry and the nails hold it on. It will fall off eventually but you get a good grip in the meantime. And in any case the material is recycleable so can be just pushed back on when its wet.

A Mud Oven in the Philippines #6

The insulation mix: Coconut husks, sand, and mud. Takes forever to mix.

A Mud Oven in the Philippines #5

So, after two firings, the oven needs another layer, which is the insulation layer. I read that this involves manure, straw and the same clay-sand mix we had before. Well, I wasn't about to be the only European walking around with sacks of poo, so I abandoned manure, and looked for ingredients that happened to be around. We had: lots of leaves and coconut husks. So, with the same mud-clay and sand mix made before I mixed in coconut husks (pulling them apart) and dried leaves again found in the yard. This makes a more difficult mix, but again with cement-mixing method and squidging by hand, it works. Coconut husks have to be pulled apart by hand to get the threads out, but make a good combination. Over a dry oven these get slapped on for another 2-3 inches of layer. The picture is about two thirds of the way up when I'd stopped for (yet another) San Miguel.

A Mud Oven in the Philippines #4

After this I cut the door using a bread knife. It needs to be just under two thirds of the height of the dome. Get your hands in and scoop out the sand. There's lots of it! I had sand still clinging to the roof (some of which came out after firing), hence the plastic bag would have helped. Basically I had to cut it out with a machete and my fingernails (until I found mud), until it was gone. From what I read earlier, a slow drying out is neither here nor there, so I decided to fire it. Swept up again round the yard to get fuel and started to fire it. Basically this means lighting a fire on the front, waiting till its good and going, then sweeping it into the hole. This means for an oven this size, about three to four modest fires lit, then swept in.

A Mud Oven in the Philippines #3

Then, finally the oven gets totally covered. After this stage I left it a day before cutting the door. You can just see the hollow block at the bottom which would determine the width of the door (i.e. big enough for a pizza). I read that you can cut the door earlier than a day, but some of my clay mix was a bit wet (i.e. prone to cracking on drying), and in any case its as humid as hell down here. So I gave it a day.

A Mud Oven in the Philippines #2

The (previous) picture includes a tile on top of the dome which I used simply to make the outer surface smooth. Other posts will tell you to put on newspaper on top of this dome, if I did it again I'd use a plastic bag, as its probably easier for pulling out the sand later on. Anyway, to the rest of it: I then dug out clay from garden. Here, its virtually all clay. How to tell: it doesn't break up. You can mold it if you wish. So a few sackfulls of clay with all the other crap that came with it. This then needs to be mixed with sand. The ratio I used varied considerably as frankly I wasn't very confident, but I think I was about 50% sand and 50% mud. I mixed it more or less as you would a cement, i.e. using a spade to chop, then turn, then mix into the middle, then chop then turn again. Water added to make it mix up, and make it malleable.

So lots lof mixing. But I didn't use the paddling or puddling technique described in the other sites, just normal cement mixing technique. However, when I handled it, I did give it a good squidge around with my hands. Then this goes round the whole structure, in a spiral, and aiming to push down against the floor rather than against the sand dome. So, up and up, until the whole thing is covered. I think the wall thickness at this point was roughly across my knuckles and then some, i.e. 3 to 4 inches.

A Mud Oven in the Philippines

Unlucky or lucky. I don't pay council tax any more, TV licence, or other crappy taxes that add up to a whole lot per month, but I am staying in a house near a town called Antipolo in the Philippines. Cooking here is done on a gas-fired range with two rings, which means that everything is either boiled or fried. Which makes for some tedious cooking. And the Philippines is not renowned for its cooking. When was the last time you went to a Filipino restaurant in the UK? Right. Indian, Italian, Greek, even Ethiopian cuisines are distinguished. The Philippines is not. Probably a result of colonisation by the Americans. And a gas oven available in a local store is really rather expensive, as it has to be imported. So. After digging the garden and discovering a rather clay soil, the solution was to turn the clock back a few centuries and create a wood or charcoal fired oven in order to make things like bread, pizzas, roast chicken, roast (imported) lamb, basically: a decent meal. Here's what I did.

Firstly, I checked out the available information. There are two good sites which provide advice on creating mud ovens. http://handyprojects.blogspot.com/2005/04/mud-oven-project-part-2.html is where I started and the basis for my design. Additional advice was found at http://clayoven.wordpress.com/ although this is a bit advanced. I.e. it includes innovations such as a chimney. But is rather helpful on materials and general encouragement.

I used stuff I found around the place. The only thing paid for was sand, and I needed more than I originally budgeted for. The base was made out of breeze blocks or hollow blocks they call them here, basically concrete I found around the yard. Found some fugly frogs using them as a home as well when I dug them up. There were about five of these, which provided a base. Some were broken.

On top of this, I built the sand dome. This was more or less shaped like the rough end of an egg, and took about 6-7 bags of sand to construct. The sand here is grey. Its builders (sharp) sand.