Indoor sun-dried tomatoes?

What do you do when you have a bunch of delicious campari tomatoes and want to sun-dry them when it is freezing cold outside? Well you just out your food dehydrator you dingus

Slice them in half. Turn the thing on. Put the lid on. Wait...wait...wait

This is after 18 hours...

I bet these would go well on a pizza...

Holiday beer and glassware bundles

It's that time of year again. The time when beer and spirits makers bundle their product with a glass in which to drink said alcohol. It's a beautiful thing though because different beers are best drank in different glasses and how is the common man supposed to know which glass to use in Obama's America? Anyway, today I purchased one of these bad boys. Here it is:

Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout is one of the best beers in the world. It's true. This package was $11.97 for the three beers, a glass, two coasters, and a beer guide (not pictured) which is simply a map of different beers available from this capitalist. At $4-$5 per bottle normal price this was already a fine deal, but upon unpacking I discovered that the glass seems to be aggressively nucleated. Like on steroids.

Is this what I have been looking for for so long? I hope to enjoy a nucleated brew in this soon. I'll report back with the results...

Tomato Seed Saving Experiment

This will be an ongoing experiment. I bought some Kumato tomatoes from the store and decided to try to save some seeds. According to research I've done online, this is a terrible idea because this is a hybrid tomato produced by Syngenta. They only sell it to commercial farmers. Since its a hybrid, I guess, the seeds are not guaranteed to grow true to their parent. This means it could take multiple years and multiple generations to isolate a strain of tomato that tastes good. Well, I decided to throw caution into the wind and get busy experimenting.

Saving tomato seeds seems pretty straight forward actually.  The first step is to cut your best tomato in half (you want to carry on the properties of your best tomatoes, so you save the best) and scoop out the seeds. Place the seeds in an open container out of sunlight for a few days. This allows the seeds to get covered in mold and is called fermentation. Return to the seeds and scrape the top layer of mold off. Then rinse the seeds until clean with water. The next step is to dry the seeds. Accomplish this by letting them sit out on a paper plate for several days. Once sufficiently dried, place them in a container for storage until the next tomato growing season.

Please enjoy the following step by step photo documentation:

Tomato, halved

Innards removed and placed in container

Seeds, chillin'

Seeds covered in Saran Wrap with air holes, placed in the basement

Update Número Uno

So I definitely forgot about this for a number of days. Here are the moldy tomato seed pics:

Gross

Then I rinsed them with cold water in the faucet. Thankfully I own a perfect tomato seed strainer somehow:

Then I dried them on paper towels and transferred them to a clean paper towel.

Final update:

After a few days, once the seeds were sufficiently dried out, I moved them to ziplock bags for storage.

Let's Scrapple

Scrapple, also known by the Pennsylvania Dutch name panhaas or "pan rabbit,"^[1][2] is traditionally a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. The mush is formed into a semi-solid congealed loaf, and slices of the scrapple are then pan-fried before serving. Scraps of meat left over from butchering, not used or sold elsewhere, were made into scrapple to avoid waste. Scrapple is best known as a rural American food of the Mid-Atlantic states (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia). Scrapple and panhaas are commonly considered an ethnic food of the Pennsylvania Dutch, including the Mennonites and Amish. Scrapple is found in supermarkets throughout the region in both fresh and frozen refrigerated cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapple

Sounds delicious, no? Let's take all the bits and pieces and junk of the pig and mix it with cornmeal and eat it? Sure. The sad part is it's not even that much cheaper than sausage. I got a 1lb "loaf" for $2.30 on sale. I can get low tier sausage for $2.80/lb on the reg. Still, I bought some and ate it. Here are pics.

 

Ingredients: pork stock, pork livers, pork snout, pork heart, cornmeal, spices! Yummy!

Slice it and fry it. You really want it to get crispy as sin.

Serve with egg, toast, and liberally apply tobasco. The great thing is that you think you are eating sausage, but it's mostly cornmeal so yeah it's weird as hell when you eat it.

Overall: I'd eat it again if it was cheaper.

I have the power!

If you're like me, you stream entertainment a ton. Whether it's Netflix, Hulu, or some third thing, no one likes it when a show stops to buffer. This is the problem I've been facing when streaming with my PS4. I believe my wifi is fine. My laptop, phone, even my PS3 all work great. I've come to believe that the PS4 just has a shitty antenna. I always try to be hard wired when possible when it comes to my home network but sometimes it's much easier to go wireless. Well, there's another option.

I've been doing a bunch of reading about powerline adapters. Essentially what they are are two adapters that plug into a normal electrical outlet and turn your home's wiring into a really long network cable. What this allows you to do is extend your hard wired network into any room in your house. So how do you set it up? It's easy. You plug one adapter into an outlet near your router. Then take a network cable and plug it into your router and into the adapter. Then you take the other adapter and plug into an outlet near whatever electronic device you want to have network. Then plug a cable from that adapter into said electronic device. Bam. You now have a hard wired connection. No more dropping of signal strength and other issues with wifi. You do get a slight drop of speeds compared to if you just a ran a typical network cable to the electronic device from your router, but length can be an issue. Also you don't want cables just lying about. I have heard of things like the washer and dryer, or microwave potentially creating slight drops in speed as well with powerline adapters. We'll see if I run into issues.

So I did a couple of speedtests on my PS4 and laptop that I typically stream from, both before and after the powerline installation. Before install, the PS4 was getting tests of 16, 4, and even 2 Mbps. Wtf. The laptop was much much better with 60, 62, and 61 Mbps. As a comparison, my main computer that is plugged straight into my router gets 92 Mbps. After install, the PS4 got 34, 32, and 35 Mbps. That's a ton better but still not great. The laptop got the tiniest of nudges up to 68, 66, and 70 Mbps. Not bad.

At $70 for the Netgear PL1200, I'll see if I end up keeping it. Knowing that I get 90+ Mbps on my main computer and my laptop getting the best at 60+, that's a 30% drop off that I'm not sure I can live with. I may have to bite the bullet and finally run a network cable under the house into the living room.

Gutter Guards

There are many mature trees in my neighborhood, which I enjoy, but one negative of this is the constant need to clean the gutters.

I cleaned the gutters last week, and here is what they look like today:

I was thinking about installing some gutter guards to see if that would help. I was at Menards today when I saw them on sale for $1.68 per section with a $1.68 mail in rebate. So for some reason they are giving these away for free. After scratching my head for a few minutes I shrugged my shoulders and bought the maximum amount of sections allowed under the rebate. Then I went home and installed my free gutter guards.

The end.

Herbs

Got a peanut butter jars worth of parsley and a good amount of oregano. 

DIY

Started a new DIY project with my boy today.

What's this?

A bed for Corduroy!

Garlic!

Garden Log

Today's Date: 10/15/2015

Description:  Today I planted 1 lb. of garlic bulbs.  The garlic bulbs were purchased from Keene Organics dot com.  I purchased the medium garlic variety set.  To plant, I first tilled the soil, added compost and fertilizer, then planted the bulbs six inches from eachother.  Next, I covered the garden with mulch and watered.

Day 0

And here I have listed the varietals.

Tomato Sauce

How to make tomato sauce or it's time to get tomato based sauce back on your radar.

First, the ingredients.

Pictured above are the tomatoes, the basil, and the oregano from left to right. I thought it would be fun to make an all garden fresh tomato sauce.

Step 2, peel the tomatoes. To peel the tomatoes cut the tomatoes in half or score the bottoms. Place them in boiling water until the skins loosen from the flesh. Then drop them in ice water and move them to a separate bowl to dry. This should loosen the skin and allow them to be peeled more easily.

Step 3, place the peeled tomatoes in a pot or dutch oven. Add herbs, chopped and simmer for an hour or more. Stir and break up the tomatoes to your desired consistency. If you want smooth sauce, run the tomatoes through a food processor or blender.

And that's all there is to it, although you should add salt to taste.

Compost

A neighbor was discarding a compost bin earlier in the summer. I thanked my lucky stars and put it to use. Here she is:

We keep a 5 gallon food grade bucket in the garage to fill throughout the day and then make sure to add it to the compost before it gets ripe.

Just add any organic plant matter. Since this is a photo blog, here's a picture of some clementine peels.

And the daily coffee grounds. Go ahead and add the whole thing, filter and all.

I haven't been worrying and fretting over the compost, as my goal is too have some for use next spring. You need about equal parts kitchen matter "green" to yard waste "brown," I've read. And you need to keep things hot and aerated. 

Updates to follow as the seasons change and nature takes its course.

Got eggplant?

What do you do when your Japanophile-friend from the lab has a bunch of asian eggplant and offers you some? Make pizza of course. This was inspired by a middle-eastern dish I had and hope to make some day, but for now we have eggplant Parmesan pizza!

Notice how the asian eggplant are small and narrower than the ones we are used to.

Slice them up and get ready to roast in the oven. Not too hot! Maybe 300 deg.

After a while they look like this. Nice and soft.

Puree in a food processor.

Add garlic, whole milk, and parmesan cheese into a pot you just used to cook sausage in. The grease will lube up the pan and the cheese will help to thicken up this sauce.

Spread on pizza dough! Looks good.

Final product! Tip: if you want to enjoy a storebought frozen pizza caliber crust, use about 25% corn meal in the dough and use it immediately after rising. Not good. We like fermented dough man. Fermented dough is key.

Until next 'za.

Tomato Update

Harvested the first crop of San Marzano tomatoes. Check it out:

Unpaid Ting Advertisement

I have used AT&T for years, and always felt I was overpaying.  I didn't want to switch to Verizon, the other large telecom provider and have been interested in switching to a discount provider.

I was; however, somewhat worried that the quality of the network would somehow be terrible on a discount provider.  I heard enough positive reviews for Ting and learned that they use Sprint's network, figuring the third largest telecom network in the nation by 2015 should have all the network infrastructure in place that I would need, so I decided to make the switch.

If you are unfamiliar with Ting's business model, rather than reinvent the wheel, I will provide the following summary from Ting Inc's wikipedia page:

"Ting's business model does not subsidize phone sales, or require contracts beyond month-to-month. Pricing is in separate tiers for voice minutes, text messages, and data, each of which is adjusted month-to-month to match actual usage. There are no "regulatory recapture" fees added to bills, in contrast to the practice of some of the large mobile companies."

If you are interested in playing around with what the rates might look like for you, you can see the pricing for each tier on Ting's website:

https://ting.com/rates

Another feature of their website, is a savings calculator, that allows you to input your actual usage and fees paid based on your prior three month bills.  You can access that here:

https://ting.com/calculator

As I am just three days shy of my first month's billings for Ting, I thought I would provide this summary.  Here is a screenshot of my account.  At any time, you can login to your account and check what tier's you are in with Ting and estimate what your monthly bill will be.  You can also set alerts to email or text you in the event that you are about to exceed one data, text, or message tier to allow you to plan your usage accordingly to end the month in your budgeted or targeted tier.

 

The black bar will show you your usage for each device (ommitted for privacy).

 As you can see, the bill for two devices on Ting looks like it should be just $38, or $19 per person in my plan.  I anticipate that in future months I will use more minutes and data and fall in a larger plan, but this is the beauty of Ting.  Your bill is based on actual usage.  You don't have to commit to prepaying for the maximum amount of minutes, messages, or megabytes you think you might you, and then get penalized for going over that threshold.

For reference, the AT&T bill under my old contract would've been approximately $110.

Also, in the interest of completeness, Ting does not offer any promotions to get you a free phone, but of course, you know that AT&T et. al. are charging you each month for that discount, they just hide it within your bill.  We opted to buy older model refurbished phones and move to Ting.

In summary, I highly recommend Ting so far, and am really impressed with this business model.

Evolution of a Lunch (or Lunch Update)

Currently, my weekly lunches alternate between a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a turkey sandwich, an apple, a couple big carrots, and maybe some no salt tortilla chips.

One thing I've noticed, and, we've all probably heard before, is how much more work it is to chew an apple with the skin and raw carrots than it is a bag of chips or French fries.  I mean I can fill a full ziplock bag with a couple carrots, eat it for 10 minutes, when it seems like I could eat the same volume of potato chips in a couple of minutes.

This really drove home the idea that this convenience food is practically "prechewed" for us, and the result is eating more high calorie low nutrient foods.

So basically, I need to focus on eating more raw fruits and vegetables high in fiber content if o want to be all that I can be.

Here is an article and an excerpt from it on this subject:

 Food manufacturers are always searching for the perfect “mouthfeel,” which is why fat is so prevalent in processed food. Fat not only bestows crunch, creaminess and contrast, but it also blends flavors and even acts as a lubricant, allowing people to eat faster. “Fat adds to a smooth, even bolus (the wad that forms when you chew food) in the mouth,” says Kessler.

Another texture trick is to presoften food by mashing it. “The substrate of today’s foods has been removed, meaning processed food is basically prechewed,” notes Kessler. This allows us to eat things like chicken tenders more quickly and easily, which can lead to unconscious eating — and overeating. 

“We used to have foods that took more work,” Civille explained in a recent NPR interview. “In the [45 years] that I have been in the food business, we used to have foods that we chewed 15 times and 20 times and 30 times before we swallowed. Now, there’s rarely a food out there, outside of a sweet, chewy candy, that you have to chew more than 12 times before it’s gone.” Instead, after a couple quick chews and a swallow, “you’re in for the next hit to get more pleasure.” (For more on exactly how the food industry manufactures the perfect texture, see “Anatomy of a Chicken Nugget” below.)

https://experiencelife.com/article/scary-food-science/

Let's Froth

So ever since I went to France I have been enjoying lattes or cappuccinos or whatever. I have been trying to replicate them at home and was inspired to buy one of these battery powered milk frothing wands.



However, the one I ordered didn't work quite that well and a friend from the lab said he has a frother and said the youtube reviews are not realistic. There had to be a better way right?

So I followed some instructions I found online and decided to mod my frother. The plan was to take a standard USB cable and use the 5V leads to supercharge this mofo. Two AAA batteries at 3V? Lol, lets go for 5V with no power drainage.

Step 1: find old USB cable, cut one end off (the correct end) and find the leads.

Step 2: Skip ahead. I soldered the leads directly onto the motor and did some cleanup.

Step 3: put back together.

Step 4: Hot glue the cord onto the back end to relieve tension on the soldered leads.

Step 5: acquire milk

Step 6: achieve 3x volume increase!

Step 7: enjoy the froth

I am still finding the right balance of heat, milk fat content, and container size for optimal forthing. However, I am now frothing as well as in these videos and better than I can get at Dunkin or Hatebucks.

Meeces to pieces

Mice. Another very important piece of computer hardware. I have rocked the Logitech MX518 for so long. I love it so much. A couple bonus side buttons for quick Bone Spear in Diablo II is so amazing. It's always felt just a little small in my hands though. My fingers tend to scrunch up in the front in order to click. Maybe I'm holding the mouse weird. With keeping up with my recent keyboard purchase, I decided to buy a new mouse as well.

I found the Logitech G502 Proteus Core while googling "best gaming mouse." Tons of people say this thing is super comfortable. I had some Best Buy gift certificates to burn thorough and this thing was on sale for $60 so I figured why the hell not.

This mouse is nice. It has weights that fit into the bottom of the mouse. They can be placed on either side or towards the front or back of the mouse. Each one weighs 3.6 grams which is not much at all but makes a world of difference. I have one towards the back to give a nice balance to it.

It has different DPI settings so you can change it up depending on what type of game you're playing. It even has a "sniper" button that you hold down to bump the DPI down to carefully get that perfect headshot and then let go to go back to normal. In addition to two side buttons, it has another on top and a scroll wheel toggle that switches between the scroll wheel clicking with each scroll or a smooth scroll. I really like the finger spacing too.

All in all, I am pretty happy with my purchases. Really wish I had the Razer keyboard but I love my mouse. Now I just need a new desk and chair. Here's a pic of my setup.

Das fur

I game a lot. 90% of the time it's on PC with a mouse and keyboard. So when it comes to keyboards and mice, I'm constantly looking for comfortable and nice feeling equipment. Plus I've noticed my wrists hurting just a bit after gaming sometimes. I take breaks but decided to upgrade my keyboard to a mechanical keyboard. I've read some articles that they can relieve the amount of stress on your hands by not having to push the keys all the way down in order to register a key press. Plus I love that click sound that they are known for. Reminds me of being in grade school and typing on the old Apple IIe's. So I decided to try two different ones out.

After reading this article (Five best mechanical keyboards according to Lifehacker readers) I picked a Das Keyboard to go after. Then I saw how expensive they were. So I waited. And waited. Finally woot! had a deal on a refurbished Das Keyboard 4C Professional for $90. Not bad. Now while I was waiting on this to ship I bought a Razer BlackWidow Ultimate for $118 just to try out. I bought it from Best Buy so I could return it within 14 days. I'll list the pros and cons of each one.

Das Keyboard

Pros:

• Compact. This is nice as it doesn't take up a whole lot of room on my desk. It's kinda weird getting use to not having a numpad on the side but I don't miss it.
• Cheaper. The Razer is $110-130 depending on where you buy it.
• MX Cherry Brown switches. So the whole point of mechanical keyboards (besides the sound) is that you don't have to press the keys all the way down in order to register a key press. There are different switches that have different actuation points and the amount of pressure needed to depress the keys. Here's a really nice article on MX Cherry switches. So I chose browns because they still have a slight click but are not obnoxiously loud. They were also already out of the blues by the time I bought one :( .
• It has a ruler for a stand because why not.

Cons:

• I like the brown switches but they feel slightly stiff on the Das Keyboard. I don't know if it's because it's a refurb or what. Still love typing on it though.
• While they have a slight click, I do wish they were a bit louder. I really like that sound.
• Not backlit. I didn't think I would mind this but I really do.

Razer

Pros:

• Green switches. Razer created their own switches for their Ultimate keyboards. They have green and orange. People say the green are like blues and orange are like browns. This one had greens while Razer's Ultimate Stealth has oranges (Get it? It's quieter so they called it Stealth). I would say this is very accurate. The greens had a very sexy click with each press. I fucking loved it.
• Backlit. The back lighting on this keyboard is so insane. It was adjustable from all the way off to eye melting bright and everywhere in between. Very cool. Each key had it's own light too. Awesome.
• Software. Razer has software for personalized keys launching specific applications to macros. It was pretty robust.

Cons:

• This thing was huge. I have a big mouse pad and this keyboard was intruding on top of it so the angle was just slightly off kilter.
• I feel like the key spacing was a little wide. Maybe it's just me.

So they we have it. If I could, I would return the Das Keyboard and pick up the Razer. Although, I have read some bad things about Razer's quality and their things breaking after a year or two so at least I feel good about the Das not breaking down. Oh well. You live and you learn. Another thing I have noticed about typing on a mechanical is that I make a lot fewer mistakes than I did on a normal one. My typing speed has also increased. I love typing and gaming on it and would highly recommend them to anyone.