Cherry Mushroom

Finally a short video. This will be the last mushroom video. At least for a while.

Dogwood Mushroom

This is the video of the Dogwood mushroom I turned. It's super long so click around in the video to see the different angles. I watched the whole thing but I don't expect you to. Let me know what you think.

Paduak Mushroom

I have not posted in a long time, so I decided to do a few videos. The first is of me turning a Paduak mushroom on my Lathe. This wood is really pretty and has an interesting texture. The mushroom turned out nice. I ended up making two of the Paduak ones. I will post videos of the other mushrooms I made also.

HOT Sauce

As I said earlier we have a lot of peppers.  What do you do when you have a lot of peppers?  You make hot sauce of course.  This is the first time I've made hot sauce so I had to experiment a little.  Below are some photos of the process.  The sauce is not done yet.  It will "age" in the fridge for a couple of weeks then I may filter it to have a thinner "store like" hot sauce.

From Hot Sauce

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Hot sauce

Well we have tons of peppers so I guess we should make hot sauce.

Sketch of the garden.

Garden Pictures

I was playing with my new Asus Transformer Tablet today and I took several pictures of the garden.

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Storm

We had a storm pop up suddenly and drop a lot of rain on our garden.  Mongo wanted to go outside but he couldn't get anyone to go with him.

Melon Harvest

We harvested a cantaloupe and a watermelon today. These are the first melons that we have successfully grown. The cantaloupe was a little over ripe but the watermelon was really good.

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Huge zucchini

Wow this is the biggest one yet. We don't try to get them to grow this big, but if you miss them while harvesting they get out of control.

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More on the homemade pickles

I decided to make a longer post about the homemade pickles.  We used Ball Dill pickle mix and the recipe on the bottle.  We went with the "enjoy now" recipe.  It does not involve actually canning anything.  The pickles should last up to three months in the fridge with the "enjoy now" recipe.  (After tasting them I don't think that will be a problem.)  I plan on trying the actual canning recipe next time.  When canning the pickles they can last up to a year.  That is for another post.  This "enjoy now" recipe was super easy and if the pickles that we tried were any indication, the finished product will be delicious.

In order to make pickles you need cucumbers.  Well good thing for us we planted some in the garden.  Also luckily we just harvested some today.

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Next of course you have to make the cucumbers look like pickles.  No one would believe that they were pickles if you didn't cut them up some.  (Just kidding. I know some pickles are whole.)  We cut some of the cucumbers into small slices and some into spears.  Here is a picture of the slices.  You will see the spears in later pictures. 

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Next you have to heat the pickle mix up to boiling.  After you mix the ingredients together throw them on the stove and heat them up.  In case you don't have a bottle of the pickle mix in front of you and you are curious what goes into the mix, I'll tell you.  The Ball Pickle mix (various spices and other groovy stuff,) water, and vinegar.  I read that if you use apple cider vinegar it can cause the pickles to darken slightly. It also said that if you use clear vinegar the pickles will stay whiter and turn slightly translucent.  We used clear vinegar this time. I may try cider vinegar in the future to see if there really is a difference.

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When the mix gets up to boiling you pour it over the cut cucumbers and let the whole thing cool to room temperature.  While we were waiting for the mix to boil we had a slight emergency.  There was a dog that had gotten loose and was on the run.  Before you get too worried it wasn't one of ours, so don't fret too much.  It did however give us the perfect excuse to pour the mixture over the cucumbers and leave it there for about an hour and a half.

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Next is packing the pickles.  Before I break into a "Frank packed a peck of pickled...etc" let me say that we tried a few at this stage and they were pretty awesome.  This step is pretty basic.  Grab cucumbers and stick in jar.  Most folks will excel at this step.   Just try not to eat too many of the danged things, you need to fill the jars not you stomach.

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Ok once you have the jars packed, and you have stopped eating, ladle the pickling mix into the jars.  No matter how good the cucumbers tasted in the last step, don't be tempted to drink the pickling juice.  IT IS NOT TASTY.  Ask me how I know.......

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After the ladle comes the lid.  Seal that sucker up.  If we were canning there would be quite a few more steps.  As luck would have it we are not canning so we are done.  Here are the final pickles in their jars.

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The recipe says that the pickle will develop their best flavor in about three weeks.  We shall see.  They were pretty darn good today.

Pickles!!!!!!!

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Harvest

Today's harvest.

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Garden update

First cucumber of the year. It was delicious.

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Garden

Here is our garden. We have only harvested a few radishes so far but there's lots of good stuff on the way

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New Microtechs

I bought my beautiful wife a new Microtech UTX-70 and I couldn't bare to be outdone so I had to get myself a Microtech OD green Ultratech.  They are awesome.  Here's a video showing a comparison of the two knives.

Taco Mac

We are at Taco Mac cheating. The queso is gone and the Death wings are on the way. Luckily I have a Great Divide Denver Pale to wet my whistle. Since the my wings are Death hot I have a Great Divide Claymore Scotch Ale as a back up.

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Rocket Stove!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I made a very small Rocket Stove out of an old coffee can.  We then cooked flank steak and had tacos with beer.  Wow talk about a great lunch.  The weather was perfect and the dogs were awesome as usual.

There is a chopped together video posted below.  Yippee!!!!!!!!

We will post pictures later.

Edit 022811.  The more I think about this stove I realize that it isn't really a rocket stove at all  It's more of a "hobo" stove.  I will be making a true rocket stove in the next week or so and I will make sure to post a video of it when it is done.

Whole Wheat Bread

Well we are back to baking bread.

This time we are baking whole wheat bread.  It's nice to have healthy bread to eat.  The best thing is that we know exactly what is in this bread.


Look for future videos of our bread.