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.

Glock Stipple

I have wanted to stipple a Glock for a while now. Well I finally stepped up and did it.

If you choose to do something like this MAKE SURE YOUR GUN IS UNLOADED!!!!!!!!

Since this is the first time I have tried anything like this I did it on an old Glock that is one of my beater guns.

Before starting you should practice on something you don't care about. I used an old AR15 grip and a Glock magazine loader that I am never going to use for anything else. As you practice you can try different patterns and see what you like. It's also a good time to see if the pattern you like gives you the amount of grip that you want. You can see my practice grip below.

I guess this is a good time to discuss what you will need to stipple a Glock or any other plastic item.  You have to have something hot to melt the plastic with.  Some people will use a Dremel instead but that removes plastic and that's not something I want to do.  For this project I used an old wood burning tool that my wife bought years and years ago but never used.  The tip that came with the tool was fine but if you want more variety or other patterns you have to get creative.  I went to the hardware store and purchased brass screws that have the same thread pitch as the original tip.  I then used files and sandpaper to create different points.  Then it is a simple matter of screwing them in and stippling away.  Once again I cannot stress how important it is to practice first before starting on your gun or other expensive item.  Below you can see the wood burning tool and the various tips.  You may also want a few sheets of sandpaper in various grits.

Ok on to actually stippling the gun itself.  This is the part that takes guts.  The first step is scary but after that it really isn't that bad.  MAKE SURE THE GUN IS UNLOADED!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The last thing you want to do is become a gun injury or death statistic.  Double and triple check your gun!!!!!!!!!!!

First I smoothed out the texture that was already present on the grip.  I used the flat part of one of the tips to smooth everything out.  This should help make the final stipple look more consistent. I sanded the grip slightly, but when I do this again I probably won't sand.  I think it was a waste of time.  I smoothed the the front and back of the grip.  I also knocked off the edges of the side grip texture. 

 

One thing I forgot to mention until now is be super careful.  You will be working with very hot and possibly sharp objects.  Make sure you keep them out of and off yourself and others.  I say this from experience.  I managed to cut myself with one of the tips.  The up side is that it was hot and cauterized the cut while it was happening. 

You need to make sure you have a plan before you start melting everything in your path.  Some people lay out the gun using masking tape or markers.  You can also just free hand it like I did.  Either way you choose make sure you have a plan.  Don't just start blindingly melting stuff.  I would grip the gun and study my grip to see the contact points between my hand and the gun.  That way I could tell where to texture for the most gain in grip. 

Finally we get to melt some plastic.  Select the tip you decided to use, let the tool warm up and start stippling. As you probably found out while you were practicing, you do not need much pressure.  The heat does most of the work.  Try to be as consistent as possible in the spacing and alignment of the texture.  Or you can try to be as random as possible.  Either way just be careful not to melt through the plastic.  Never let the tool linger too long in one place. 

I find that my reaction hand thumb hits the frame of the gun just above and in front of the trigger guard.  I textured that area to provide a reference point for my thumb. 

I try to grip the gun very high so I started on the side of the grip near the top of the frame. 

From there it is just a matter of filling in the rest of the grip with texture. 

I made sure not to go too high on the back of the grip.  If you texture the grip all the way up it can rub the web of you hand raw.

While I admit that this is not the prettiest stippling job I have seen, I am happy with the way it turned out.  I am a form follows function believer.  I would rather have an ugly gun that fulfills a specific need than a pretty gun that is less capable.  That is what this gun has become.  It is an ugly gun that is more usable now than it was before the stippling.   The stippling adds a ton of grip to the gun.  Before I began this process I didn't think stippling would make that much of a difference.  Boy was I wrong.  The difference is dramatic.  I plan on stippling more of my Glocks in the future.