#57 - Remote controlled power supply for our AV

Another one down.

We consume standby power in this household like it was wrapped in cheese.  In an effort to rein in some of that power consumption I bought a Belkin Conserve remote controlled power strip and hooked it up to the home theater system in our living room.

We now have the home theater receiver, subwoofer, DVD player, TV and turntable all connected to the remotely controlled outlets on the strip.  Only the DVR is connected to an "always-on" outlet, since it has to stay on to record programs as scheduled.

In theory, this should help reduce our electricity consumption and thereby our monthly bills.

While I was behind the entertainment center I took the opportunity to install a preamp for my turntable.  I haven't been able to use that since I upgraded the receiver (new receivers not bothering with phono inputs, since CD is supposed to be so much superior.  Pffffttt!)  Now at last I can pull out all those classic Jethro Tull LPs.

Anyway we will see how the next electric bill looks.  And then we'll have to see what we can do about the cheese.

#15 - Cure Some Olives

Last weekend while at the Wilkins' in Los Olivos, I decided to get a start on item #15, "Cure Some Olives, No Matter What Ails Them."

Doug and Sue have some giant-ass olive trees in their yard.  They are beautiful, but apparently the bane of Doug's landscape maintenance existence.  They dump their fruit indiscriminately about the yard creating a big purple mess wherever they splat.

I decided to help them out by taking a few pounds off their hands.  I would post pictures of the harvesting, but I didn't have our camera and Sue's pictures are posted on Kodak's photo sharing site where I wasn't allowed to download.  You can actually see the slide show by clicking on the link, but I am in several of the pictures, so how good can they be.  Anyway, the show features Doug standing on one of his drywalling ladders, stripping olives from the trees and me crawling around gathering them all up.

When we got home on Sunday I busied myself washing and sorting olives and dispatched Denise to Home Depot (primarily for railroad ties for my retaining walls) with instructions to pick up some lye.  I figured they would surely have it and if not, I assumed she could get it at Albertson's.  WRONG!  Lye is apparently very difficult to come by.  Turns out after a little online research that lye is apparently used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, so many places have stopped carrying it.

So, I gave up, temporarily, on the lye-cured olives I had planned and instead started two batches, one water cured (destined for Kalamata-ness) and the other salt cured.

As with most things, I have no frickin' clue what I am doing, but am forging ahead anyway, in this case with the assistance of a paper on olive curing from UC Davis.

The water-cured olives apparently have the advantage of being ready for consumption in a relatively short time, 5 to 6 weeks.  I started a batch last week (the jar with the reddish-looking ones) and today transferred them from their final water soak and into the briny concoction where they are supposed to remain for about a month.  These are tiny little olives, so I'm guessing they will be well brined in more like a fortnight.  (Is a fortnight anything like a dog year? New York minute?  One night in a fort feels like fourteen days?)  I also started a second jar of water-cured this morning (the black jar in the photo.)

The salt-cured ones will take a bit longer.  I am not truly optimistic about them, but what the heck.  I contrived a small curing container with a 2-liter plastic bottle.  I punched some holes in the bottom so that liquids could escape and lined the bottom with cheesecloth so the salt could not.  It seems like it might be working, although I am using Kosher and not pickling salt as prescribed by UCD.  They are supposed to get a weekly toss to redistribute everything, their first being this morning.  So, I can confuse people by telling them that I tossed my olives this morning.  Should that be cookies?  The olives seem to be coming along.  I hope they turn out to be worth their salt.

Not having given up entirely on lye-curing, I ordered some lye on line.  Sadly, it's kind of a dangerous chemical, so next-day air is not an option.  It is shipping UPS ground and god only knows when it will get here.  I'm afraid my olive harvest will be well past the point where it should have been curing by the time the lye arrives, but oh well, I guess it will wait until next year.  Or, I could always use it to make pretzels.  Or soap.  Or crystal meth, I guess.

Actually, since I've been ordering lye and researching lye's link to methamphetamine, I should be a little careful about those kinds of comments.  I'd be more worried is we were still under the Bush administration, but I suppose there's still some likelihood that the someone from the DEA or Riverside Sheriff could show up at my door.

One last note, as long as you're here anyway, I thought you might like an update on #25 - Grow Rhubarb.  My seeds are doing OK, despite my best efforts to raise them (my best efforts usually being fatal.)  Knock wood.

Look at how cute they are.  Their stems are evening turning a nice rhubarbic red already.

I hope I don't kill them.

#100 - Join a CSA

Last Tuesday (February 8) we received our first produce shipment from the Inland Empire CSA.  A huge array of produce, most of it unrecognizable.

Actually, with a little forensic analysis we figured that we had (spiraling clockwise from the top left toward the center in a whirling vortex of vegetation), green leaf lettuce, carrot-top cilantro, a couple pictures of the whole mass of produce, baking avocado, a bag of arugula, purple & green mustard greens, the box it all came in, some other kind of greens, broccoli leaves, some more greens, red leaf lettuce, radishes, a bag of spinach maybe, green garlic, spring onions, beets, and assorted citrus.  Oh, and there is some regular cilantro in there someplace.

Immediately applied some of the greens to a Sauteed Greens and Potato Gratin.  The recipe also incorporate some of the green garlic and spring onions.

To be perfectly honest, there is a lot of pressure to try to eat this much produce all in a single week.  We've been throwing together assorted sauted greens, salads, pasta dishes, etc.  Some Penne Pasta with Arugula and Pepita Pesto turned out pretty nice.  And Nicholas made a very nice Penne with Greens and Chick Peas.

So, this is fun.  And so far, so good.

#41 - Getting a Start on Brewing Beer from Scratch

I made a first feeble step toward this item today by making a pre-sale order for hop rhizomes from MoreBeer.com.

I ordered two each of the Chinook and Columbus Rhizomes, the web site having claimed that both varieties do well in hot dry areas, for which I'm sure Temecula qualifies.

Next up I'll have to order some barley.

So, now while I wait for the folks at More Beer to receive their order and then ship mine, I'm busy researching Hop Toxicity in Dogs.  Thanks to Lia, a frequent commenter on my Jake's Rehab blog, I'm aware that ingestion of hops can cause Malignant Hyperthermia in dogs.  A good thing that she mentioned that actually, because I probably would have been composting the spent hops from my homebrewing.  It appears that most, if not all, of the documented cases involved dogs eating the spent hops, which makes sense, because they'd be soaked in all that good wort which would likely attract any self-respecting dogs.  It also turns out that greyhounds are particularly susceptible to MH.  Leo is not very greyhound-like.

Interesting factoid: were you aware that there is a National Animal Poison Control Center.  I wasn't.

Anyway, I have explained to Leo that if he eats my hops he will be receiving a gastric lavage, an enema, activated charcoal, IV fluids, cold baths and a sternly worded lecture.  He seems to understand the concept, but I'll be fencing them in (or him out), just to be safe.

He's probably at very low risk: with my brown-thumb there's little likelihood that my rhizomes will actually produce.

#16 - Lost Moon

Thanks to the Temecula Public Library, I've now completed item #16 on the list, having read Lost Moon by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.

I have seen Ron Howard's Apollo 13 several (countless) times and always enjoyed it and also always noted that it was based on Lost Moon and always commented to myself, I'll bet that's a great book, I should read it. 

Having read it I can say that it is excellent and depressing.

Excellent because the book brings out all the details and technical complexities and interesting factoids about space flight that the movie can only hint at.  One example of an interesting tidbit is the "PTC roll."  I have never thought about this, but instead of flying straight to the moon, the Apollo spacecraft travelled in a constant 1 RPM Passive Thermal Control roll, designed to rotate the ship through sunlight and shadow, keeping the temperature of craft more or less even.  Who knew; I would have thought you just pointed the thing at the moon and lit the candle.

Lost Moon is depressing, because a few short pages into the book you (or I anyway) begin to realize that you are (I am) no rocket scientist.  On my good days I like to think I'm somewhat intelligent.  After a few chapters of Lost Moon I'm pretty sure I'm a moron.

Of course, it's also more than a little sad to think of Jim Lovell and Fred Haise (another interesting revelation, watching the movie I would have just assumed Hayes) losing their chance at a moon landing, but then if they had landed safely they'd be quickly forgotten like most of the rest of the men on the moon.  As it is now, they're immortalized in print and film.  Not that that is probably a fair trade as far as they are concerned.

Anyway, I'm glad the Gumbilist finally forced me to act on my impulse to read the book.  This having gone so successfully I may have to read Gone to Texas, the basis for the film The Outlaw Josey Wales.  It's another I keep telling myself I should read.  And it might be a good idea anyway; if it's bad enough, maybe I will feel somewhat intelligent again.

#36 - Black Bean Burger - Third Time is the Charm

I think we have a winner...a minor variation on the recipe that I've been making all along, as it turns out. Tapioca flour seems to have been the secret ingredient that binds the whole mass together, without turning into a big doughy mess like the vital wheat gluten in early recipes.

Black Bean Burger Patties

• 2 cans Black Beans
• 1/2 cup Bulghur
• 5.5 oz Tomato Juice
• 1 Tbsp Bragg's Liquid Amino
• 1 egg (actually egg replacer in this instance)
• 1/2 cup Italian Bread Crumbs
• 3 Tbsp Tapioca Flour
• Canola Oil (or the rendered fat of a clubbed baby seal, whatever works)

Drain and rinse the black beans.  Bring tomato juice, liquid amino and bulghur to a boil in small sauce pan, remove from heat and let sit for about 10 to 15 minutes.   Reserve about 1/4 cup beans and place remaining beans, bulghur mix, egg and bread crumbs in a food processor.  Pulse until all the ingredients are combined.  Begin adding tapioca flour, 1 Tbsp at a time until the mixture becomes somewhat firm.  Move the mixture to a bowl and kneed in the remaining beans.  If the mixture is too moist add more tapioca flour, 1 tbsp at a time until the mix is the right texture.

Form into relatively thin patties (maybe 3/8 of an inch thick) and fry in oil over medium heat, about 4 minutes to a side.

Serve as you would any other burger.

In our case, we served...

...Black Bean Burgers with Black Bean/Tempeh Chili.

The black bean/tempeh chili was not on the 101, but since sampling it at Stone Brewery Nick and I have been inspired to rip off the recipe.  The first effort was just this side of horrible, but this time we just about nailed it.

• 8 oz Tempeh, crumbled up
• 2 cans Trader Joe's Black Beans with all that beanie liquid
• 4 Tbsp Tomato Paste
• 1 Tbsp Chili Powder (plain old McCormick or whatever chili powder, nothing special)
• 1 tsp Cumin
• 1/2 tsp Crushed Red Pepper
• 1/2 tsp Cayenne
• 1/2 tsp Bitter-Sweet Smoked Paprika
• 1/2 tsp Chipotle powder
• 3 cloves Garlic, crushed or finely minced
• Salt and Pepper

Combine all ingredients in an oven-proof container.  Bake, covered, at 325 degrees for about an hour.  With a stick blender (potato masher, whatever) partially blend up the chili, leaving it nice and chunky.

Nicholas and I are apparently not very bright, or at least have a short attention span, because we were taking photos of the entire assembly process and then spaced on the final product.  So no pictures of the Black Bean Tempeh Chili Black Bean Burgers.  Fortunately, we have leftovers of both the burger mix and chili, so maybe we can sneak in photo a wee bit later.

Serve on a burger with cheese, pickle, onion, tomato, lettuce and yellow mustard (just like Tommy's) or scoop into a bowl, cover with grated cheese and throw under a broiler for a few minutes to melt the cheese.  Tasty!

#26 - See a Play - Spamalot!!!

Another one bites the dust; Spamalot!!!  Saw the Sunday matinée at the Fox Performing Arts Center, Riverside, CA, with Denise, Jean, Joe, Nick and Tee.   I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me.

Followed up the matinée with dinner at Sevilla in Riverside.  Only just fabulous.

I'd write more, but I promised Nick he could blog about this one; http://nickandtees101things.blogspot.com/.  But he's on a deadline; if it's not posted by Sunday, all bets are off.