Garden Update

I bought some six-packs at Putnam Farmer's Co-Op Sunday.

As they forecast for the next couple days is lows in the 40s, highs in the low 60s, overcast and/or light rain...looked like perfect weather to pop them in this afternoon.

And it's still officially April :D

Repaired the section of fence torn down last fall, a deer must've gotten inside and panicked. Rototiller fired up on the third pull :) Still a lot of weeding to do on this very unusual year when Forsythia, Dandelions, and Rhodendrons all bloomed at the same time...though I had the joy of seeing one weed that got frostbit last night! Then it was planting time:

Cabbage:


If you look veeeery carefully you can see the Onions popping up between the weeds:


Interesting...the light greens are Lettuce from my attempted fall planting :D


Broccoli, Cauliflower, Red Lettuce, opposite side of trellis Green Leaf Lettuce, middle are peas.


Got the manure pile from last year leveled off. There used be four raised beds from the driveway to the fenced in portion. Now I've managed to fill it in to a flat area (it's all gravel fill under the area so I have to work for every bit of topsoil!)

Mickey Lives...

So Mickey Mouse I'm waiting for Disney's Lawyers to serve me an injunction. Muffler held on by bar clamps, and a switch taped to the dash to turn on and off the electric PTO clutch until I have a good rainy day to troubleshoot the wiring harness which had already been hacked to heck and back. But it got the lawn mowed! Man I have a lot of clean up work on the yard to do though.

Asparagus Lunch

Was actually supposed to be dinner last night, had the steak marinating, but I ended up eating a sandwich at 4pm when I got real hungry and didn't feel like dinner:



Steak isn't anything special -- just some local London Broil from Cambpell's Farmstand, but the first asparagus was SPECTACULAR -- quite frankly the best I've ever had. Usually the asparagus flavor is overwhelming and I can only eat a couple spears. This stuff was a much more diffuse flavor -- each piece tasted like asparagus, but not intense. I could've eaten it till my belly was full!

Steak marinade: Olive oil, fresh squeezed lemon juice, parsley, basil, Badia steak seasoning. Put in a ziploc bag, and flipped every so often. Was supposed to be in it ~12 hours but ended up more like 28 hours because I didn't make it for dinner as originally planned. Seven minutes high, flip and five minutes medium.

Asparagus was just thrown on the grill on high, couple minutes and turned.

Sweet & Sour Pork

First attempt at this, probably overcooked ~5 minutes. May have had too much water in the bottom of the frying pan, too.

Put oil in pan, medium heat.

Mix 1Tbsp corn starch + 1Tbsp Soy Sauce.

Cut up pound of pork, mix well with coating above, put in pan to brown.

Chopped up vegetables, about 5 to 6 cups worth total (just piled high in a bowl :))

-- Carrots
-- Broccoli
-- Celery
-- Green and Orange Bell Peppers
-- Onions

Turn meat while cutting up veggies so both sides brown.

Add enough water to cover bottom of pan.

Add veggies.

Season with ground ginger, ground clove, parsley

Cook on high ~10 minutes, stir, cook and stir another 5 minutes

Add can of chunked pineapples.

Cook another 5 minutes.

Done when carrots & broccoli are crisp (soft?) enough for your taste.

Little bit of Sweet & Sour sauce on the side to be used as desired.

My first white pizza...

Bacon, Ricotta, & Broccoli Pizza with a White Sauce instead of tomato. Plus while the grill was on I made chicken for the week...between these two, probably be Sunday before I need an oven or grill again!

Excellent map of Westeros

Games of Thrones & Mad Men...the two TV shows I look forward to each week. Mad Men has less nudity and bloodshed. Otherwise, not sure of the difference.

More Steampunk

Steampunks Rule!

I...um, mostly drool.

Garden Update

Peas & Onions planted...April 2nd! Weather is so nice this year, I could've planted two weeks sooner if I had my act together. Will try for lettuce this weekend.

Peepers are here!

Thought I heard them late last night...they're definitely here in force tonight!

Geez...daytime highs pushing 80 all this week!  Haven't had the woodstove burning since maybe Saturday morning?  Fired up the propane grill to make this beauty this morning:

Pizza!

My first attempt was...ugly.

 My second attempt though:
 
Had a frozen dough ball (the other half of the mix from the first attempt), which I put on the counter Friday then in the fridge overnight when I didn't get to baking it Friday.

Threw some wheat bran down on the stone, the dough spread very nicely by hand (much nicer then fresh). Spaghetti sauce, Parmesano-Reggano, Mozzarela, Pepperoni, and Sweet Sausage.

I lit the grill, set it to medium, put on the stone w/ pizza, took 25 minutes:   

Guessing about $3 worth of ingredients there...compared to the cost of pizza I'll make back the cost of the stone in about 10 pizzas.

I'll need to make up some dough balls to freeze so I have a ready-made supply!

My first real bread!

Bought a cast iron Dutch Oven last weekend. Though it came factory seasoned, it's spent the last week on my woodstove as I'd periodically apply more peanut oil to season it more thoroughly.

Found this recipe/video, which while they made it in a Dutch Oven in a regular oven, I figured I'd try on my woodstove:


The recipe written down:

3 Cups flour
1/4 tsp Yeast
1-1/4 tsp Salt

Mix the dries together.

Mix in 1-1/4 cup water.

Let sit 12 hours.

Bake 30 minutes covered, 15 minutes uncovered.

My dough came out OK. Seemed a bit on the dry side; still had some flour that didn't get wetted. I may have been off on my guesstimate of 1/4 tsp yeast, too. But since I haven't used yeast at least since 8th grade Home Ec (and probably not even then)...figured it wasn't too bad for a first try :)

Got up at 7am and loaded the stove smaller "cook wood" I knew would get it hot, fast. Tended to my yogurt, did other morning stuff, and by 8:30 the dough had been rising for 12 hours and the Dutch Oven was hot:



First 30 minutes is lid on, the bread needs the steam from itself. Then 15 minutes cover-less:



The bottom burned, but the rest came out really good. One of the folks on Facebook said it was missing a glass of milk and some honey...gonna have to try that next time because that would've gone so well with the fresh bread for breakfast!



I think next time I'll take it off the woodstove at the 30 minute mark and leave to bake in the Dutch Oven on a pad. Or if I can find a trivet (wonder how long it would take Pam to notice one missing from her kitchen decorations...), once the Dutch Oven is hot, right before I throw in the dough put the trivet under it on the woodstove.

I'm figuring it used 60 cents of flour (3 cups of King Arthur bread flour @ $3.79/5#, about 4 cups to the pound), and maybe 5 cents of yeast and flour.

Crock Pot Yogurt

Was reading The Feast Nearby on my Kindle and the author had a recipe for making yogurt in the oven.  Hmmm, never thought of that before.

Bit more research I found "crock pot yogurt" which seemed even easier to make.  I have a little 1 Quart crock pot Karen gave me for Christmas (?) years ago that would be perfect for it.

First thing you do is heat the milk to 185º, which takes a couple hours.  This kills the existing bacteria, pasteurizing it.  You don't want to go much higher then 185º so watch the temperature!  Stir it once in a while when you check on it.  I used the aluminum foil to keep the candy thermometer standing upright.

For milk, I used a combination of raw milk from Baldwin Brook Farm in Canterbury and since I knew the the bottle only had a couple cups left I had picked up a half gallon of pasteurized, homogenized milk from Mountain Dairy in Mansfield (which sells through local convenience stores).  What you don't want is "ultra pasteurized" milk which has been heated to temps that break down the natural sugars.


Once it reaches 185º, take it out of the heater part of the crock pot and let it cool to 115º.  The yogurt bacteria are killed at 115º so it can't be warmer then that for this next step!

Once sufficiently cooled, I whisked in half a cup of Chobani yogurt as a starter.  Any yogurt with live cultures should do (and you can either use a bit of this batch for next week's batch, or freeze some for future starter use in the next few months!)


The bacteria (I guess "live culture" is the marketing term :) ) do best warmer then room temperature.  So put a lid on the crockpot, wrap it in a bath towel, and (optionally) pop it into a turned off oven for 8 to 12 hours to work their magic.


The next morning I have the whey (remember Little Miss Muffet eating her curds and whey?) on top.  I probably should've just poured it off, I instead made a mess squeezing it through a cheese cloth!  Oy.


It produced a little less then a quart of finished yogurt.  The plain yogurt is a bit more liquid then store-bought -- where they add other ingredients to stiffen the texture.  And it's very un-sweetened compared to flavored yogurts.  But add in some fresh fruit and granola and it's scrumcious.


I remember Papu trying to get me to eat something very similar to this -- I can't remember if he called it homemade yogurt or something else; I know he got a starter culture from one of his friends and then would keep it going during the summer. Since I used relatively expensive milk (raw and half-gallon convenience store) I worked my cost out to $3.15 for a quart.  Still cheaper then buying 6 ounce cups for a buck each, maybe about the price of a quart size of plain yogurt.

Whoops...

Had a lot of un-popped kernels of popcorn in the plastic container I was eating the popcorn out of, so I fished a lid for it out of the cupboard, put it on loose, got decent re-pop running it through the microwave.

Then when the four minutes was up and I went to remove the container...I discovered it was not microwave safe.  Now I get to scrub melted plastic off the glass tray when it cools!

FML

Homemade Microwave Popcorn

I'm not even sure where I read about this idea this week. I tend to read a lot of books and articles on food, homesteading stuff, food economics and such.

I can eat pretty darn well on $35-40/week at a supermarket and do far better then most people (though an extra $10 can let you buy more local stuff, and the garden in the summer really helps!), though I still have a lot to learn. The lack of skills in preparing food and how to shop in this country is tragic...what I see being bought on Food Stamps far too often makes me shake my head (especially if it was a week I was really working to meet the $35 limit).

Something that stunned me I never knew before: You don't need "Microwave" popcorn to microwave popcorn. You just need popcorn, and a paper lunch bag:
 

Threw in a bit of popcorn and couple dashes of salt. Roll down top of bag, nuked on Popcorn setting (3:30 seconds). Decided after I tried it to take a tiny plastic cup and nuke a pad of butter for 20 seconds to pour over the top...not much at all, maybe what I'd use on a single slice of toast.

So easy any kid who can nuke packaged Microwave popcorn can do this. Don't see any reason you couldn't pre-measure and salt the popcorn for your kids to throw in for snacks if they have a hard time judging how much to put in the bag on their own.

1) The popcorn is a little cheaper, and my guess is careful shopping would let you find a really good bargain, but that's not where you save the big bucks, that's the next reason.

2) You're not stuck with the single size of Microwave popcorn. Just make up what you want (and need!) which is probably 1/4 to 1/3rd as much as a microwave pack. Watching a movie with folks? Pour it in a bowl and re-use the bag to make more later so you're not munching on cold popcorn half way into the movie. That's saving money AND eating less -- you're not either over eating to finish the bag the companies make for you, or throwing out half a bag of popped corn.

3) You're not eating that nasty artificial butter stuff.

Last Chuck Tonight

It started off as mindless but fun TV in Season 1, and sucked me in with Season 2 -- just a great season.  And excerbated fans during Seasons 3, 4, & 5!  Always on the bubble as their budgets got cut and they never knew if they'd be renewed.

But I'll still miss them -- the cast defined chemistry.  And they introduced me to a lot of great music!

Alan Sepinwall sums it up better then I can:

Most of all, though? It was, in spite of the potential for great heartbreak given the Sarah situation, happy. And if there is one emotion I associate with "Chuck" above all others, it is joy.

"Chuck" was a show with a lot of moving parts, mixing a lot of tones and styles and genres into a blender. Some weeks, everything worked. Some weeks, only some parts worked. Some weeks, we basically had to wrestle our brains to the ground to accept that the plot could actually work the way it did. But "Chuck" was a show where we forgave a lot because the joy of the show — both of the people making it and that we could feel watching it — was always so palpable. These people loved making this ridiculous show, and we loved them for it.

Thundershirts & Dog Anxiety

This is really cool:




Reminds me immediately of Temple Grandin and her work with Squeeze Boxes (ok, not the best video about squeeze boxes but awesome movie):



Autism Hug Machines

The Day the LOL Cats Died

Figures I waited until after midnight to remember to post this:

Little more office progress

Got the window sill painted, put up Levelor blinds, and a valance:



Should be invoicing a side job this week that will pay for the wood floors...so hopefully I'll have those in by the end of February and can start on building the desk :)

Dunbar Numbers & Human Units of Time

I can't remember when I started having my hair cut by Dick at Razor's Edge...4? 5? I did need to use the board used as a booster seat to fit into the barber's chair.

While getting my haircut before Christmas I was talking with Dick; I'm one of his longest running customers -- having gone to him either 36 or 37 of the 38 years he's been in the business.

It will be traumatic for me when he's no longer cutting hair, I believe in those 36+ years I've had my hair cut by someone else once, when he was on a vacation and his partner cut my hair for a wedding or some such thing.

Dick then mentioned with a sense of pride and awe he had just passed another milestone in recent weeks -- he had cut the hair for the fifth generation of the same family; and while the oldest members had long since passed away he's now cut the hair of a Father, Son, Grandson, Great Grandson, and the grandson had just brought in the Great Great Grandson for his first haircut.

There's two interesting concepts with how humans interact with each other and across time which that reminded me of. The first is the somewhat better known Dunbar Number. Most people maintain an extended social circle of around 150 people; much above 150 and groups tend to break up into smaller units. Or since we tend to live as individuals instead of tribes today, once you hit 150 you'll drop someone out of your social circles as you add a new person.

Now as anyone whose played Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon know a person may fit into more then one group especially over time...but the group each person assembles around themselves will max out around 150 (from close friends to friendly acquaintances).

The second is the Human Unit of Time. Things like millions of years, or even a couple millenium; even going all the way back 250 years are fairly abstract concepts that people have a hard time understanding. But the Human Unit of Time is Five Generations, just like Dick's career milestone with that family.

The Human Unit of Time that people can reasonably understand how things have changed and how they will change, and what they most care about, because it's in terms of people you care deeply about stretch two generations on either side of you -- from your oldest Grandparent, to your youngest Grandchild. There isn't a precise definition of this in years; it's more then a century, less then two. 160 years -- 80 years back and 80 years forward -- is a good guess.

These define two dimensions -- a quantity (150 people) and place in time (80 years in the past to 80 years in the future). There's got to be a third dimension, something about quality...but I'm not sure quite what it is or would be.

Happy New Year

Fortunately I'm not a punny feller, because if I was I'd have to make a corny wood cutter joke about finally getting a nice piece of ash on New Years: Picked up a box of kid's chalk for 99 cents at Target -- works MUCH better then a carpenter's crayon, but you have to be careful to hold it low less it breaks. And working my way down the trunk. Cut the tree down a couple years ago and I've slowly been working my way down. I don't like working on hillsides but not much choice with this one. Awkard to stand on, made worse that there was a line of stones crossing this elevation (not sure if it's just the tip of a ledge or an ancient stone wall). No easy + safe way to roll this puppy either, so I use the wedges to keep it from pinching and try not to let the tip of the bar hit dirt as I finish the cut. I believe the official load count is at 14-3/4. ======================= Hmmm...just realized I'm behind on the blog :) Thanksgiving weekend I modified a cart so I can store my saws neatly but roll them out of the way in the garage. There's an old tractor battery to counterweight it: 12/10: Hauled some logs up from further down the hill. I cut these to 8' and they were relatively small diameter so they were very easy to pull: For these smaller, lighter logs having a grab hook shackled to my hitch worked out well. I don't have enough chain for the whole length, but between the tow strap then the chain to adjust the length it worked well: Looks like a lot of wood! ...err, maybe not :( That's ALL off the wood in previous photo blocked up and loaded in my truck! The main woodpile as of 12/10: And the same day I rototilled the garden! Holy Hell, it's December 10th and I'm rototilling! Ground should have frost in it by now! It did start to consistently drop into the 20s at night starting that evening: On the 11th I saw one of the strangest things I've ever seen. Had a huge flock of black birds up on the very top of the hill (Prince Hill & Gorman Road) when I was out cutting firewood. Even heard them come down flying towards where I was working before they turned and went towards the town park. The next day I had a Alfred Hitchcock seen as they descended on my hillside -- picture doesn't do it justice, they covered the entire slope you could see from the house. Spent about 90 seconds just tearing it up. Acorns? Worms under the leaves? I don't know! About an hour later I went out again and there were a bunch of chickadees, blue jays, and robins gleaning the area. And even a couple woodpeckers up on the trees!