How to make tofu

Tofu is a food with origins in ancient China. It is not really a staple in a vegan diet (though it can be and no doubt it is for some!). It is lovely as comfort food and it is also very versatile. You can use it in sandwiches, cakes, stews, fry it, marinate it or eat it as a snack without doing anything to it! If you want to know more about Tofu you can click on the link.

A brief summary of the last couple of weeks

Lots have happened since the last time we wrote:

1. Quick visit to Europe - fun, enjoyed some sunny summer days :o) (and lots of work of course!)
2. Got fridge and kitchen (second hand of course ;o)) 
3. Got mattress for bed - great story behind this one but maybe one for another time! Involves dark alleys, old ladies and a German man trying to explain to them he wants an organic cotton mattress made for him (in spanish of course...)

Student IKEA for grown-ups

In the long-gone student days my house mates and I used to furnish our flat with the perfectly clean and adequate, but no longer wanted items that our lovely fellow citizens left in the streets the night before the bulk rubbish collection which the local council organised twice a year. We called it the 'Student IKEA' because the

Mario - our dog friend

Living in the streets can't be easy. There are several issues to deal with in Santiago that make things challenging:

1. The elements - rain, cold, wind, snow (or the opposite, just not so much at this time of the year when we are all grateful for some sun in the southern hemisphere ;o))
2. The cars - Santiago is a car jungle. From an outsider's perspective, the quality of life of the Santiaginos/as would  dramatically increase if they dealt with reducing the amount of traffic in the city significantly (smog, noise, stress, commute times, asthma and other pulmonary diseases etc)
3. The others - human beings can be (but often are not) very caring. The same applies to dogs.

Home sweet home!

Today we managed it! We have a permanent place to live in! :o)

It is a beautiful house with a bit of a garden where we hope we can grow some veg, have a compost  (link in spanish) or compost (link in english), a vermicompost (spanish) or wormery (english), a couple of dogs (rescued of course, that is not even a question) and a dog poo compost too... honestly, it is not that hard and you get the picture:

Cerro Manquehue - the place of the condors

From the apartment where we currently live one can see an impressive little hill - Cerro Manquehue. It is dome shaped but with a flat top and towers above all the high rise buildings around us. It is 1635m or so in elevation, or roughly a thousand metres higher than where we are. Wikipedia says it is an extinct volcano.

Meeting the carabineros de Chile

We ended up in the back of a police van today. Seriously...