hot diggity dog

We picked up a new canine friend from the Humane Society last weekend! He is a 1.5 year old black lab mix. His name? Francois! Il est un bon chien!

pierogies

I love making a mess in the kitchen! I really should take more pictures of that portion of cooking... This mess is the result of making pierogies. If you're unfamiliar with pierogies, just think of them as raviolis except in an Eastern European way. The outer shell is a simple flour, egg, water, and salt dough. The fillings that I chose were cheese & potato, mushroom & onion, and sauerkraut though there are many other options. To cook the pierogies, I boiled them for 3 minutes. Then I topped them with melted butter and sour cream. Then I devoured them.

Did I ever mention that I am supposed to work on a Vegetarian Eastern European recipe zine with some friends? I am. And then I don't. Hold me to it people!

bottled the ginger brown

We bottled our ginger brown ale that we started back in November. The recipe is on hopville, a nice calculator tool and way to keep track of recipes.

We now have a big enough collection of flip-top bottles to fit a 5-gallon batch of beer, without needing to use wine bottles (too big) or crown-top bottles (requires borrowing the capping tool). Conveniently, all of the bottles fit (just barely) in our dishwasher for sanitizing.

For a little experiment, we used three different priming sugar recipes (priming sugar is added just before bottling to create carbonation). One gallon was primed with blackstrap molasses, one gallon was primed with cane sugar boiled with 1 oz. ginger root for extra ginger flavor, and the remaining three gallons got half molasses half cane sugar for priming.

pumpkin pupusas

We finally slaughtered the larger of the two pumpkins we got back in October. It stored just fine on our kitchen counter. I say slaughtered because the process brings to mind the process of slaughtering a turkey (probably a bit easier and less messy though)--cut it open, take out the guts, and save the precious and tasty organs (seeds). The photo above is our 16 quart pot almost filled to the brim with pumpkin!

And what better way to celebrate the freshly processed pumpkin than with pumpkin pupusas! They are so easy to make. We used the recipe from the Vegetarian Planet by Didi Emmons. Basically you just mix masa harina with pumpkin or squash, grated cheese, and some water, form into patties and fry...very fast once the pumpkin is already cooked. Delicious with refried black beans, hot sauce, and sour cream!

wireless internet antenna (WokFi)

We got tired of paying $60 a month for internet, so we decided to try something different: "WokFi". We use a parabolic-shaped wok strainer as an antenna to boost our signal from a particular access point from 30-40% (-76 dBm) to 60-80% (-66 dBm). The strainer was $8 and the USB wifi dongle was ~$15. There are lots of instructions out there.

In review, using the antenna boosts us from a barely useable connection to a pretty strong connection, but it's not perfect; I found it has to be mounted outside to get the best reception. I'm guessing this is because our windows have a metallic coating. With this set up, we have to be plugged in and can't move around the apartment, but we're okay with that. And now we don't have to give $720 a year to any of the big telecomm companies.

Side note: The USB wifi device that I bought has drivers for Linux, but I found it easier to use NDISwrapper to install the Windows drivers.

movie night!

homemade shelves

Phew. Almost done building these shelves. I just have to apply a finish to the backer and attach it.... but I think that can wait awhile...

This showcase/storage shelf was my first attempt at building furniture. I am no novice to wood working though. In high school I built sets for theater and in college I built models for architecture presentations but those are much less precise or practical.

There are many things I would like to have done better on this project, but hey, you have to start somewhere. The shelves are made of red oak veneer plywood which is decent looking but reclaimed solid wood would be even sweeter. The cuts were done with a hand held circular saw so the edges aren't perfectly straight. I used low-VOC, water-based stain and lacquer. I tried to match the color of our dining room table but with the limited choices in low-VOC stain colors I couldn't exactly. The edges are joined with pocket screws which are my new favorite thing - no fancy dovetail joints for me! In the end, while I see room for improvement, I am also happy with how good my homebrew bottles and canning jars look now that they are off the floor.

By the way, the Boulder Tool Library did indeed open! It was too late for this project, but future projects will benefit! Yay!!!

raw hummus with flax crackers

Since beans are such a cheap source of protein compared to nuts, I decided I would focus my second attempt at raw food preparation on beans. I went with a basic hummus with a few raw modifications. The ingredients were the same - garbonzo beans, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, salt. One difference was that instead of cooking the beans, you sprout them. To do this you soak them overnight and then drain them. Then for 2-3 days you rinse and drain them every 8 hours until they have a little tail. You can buy raw tahini at a store or you can soak sesame seeds in water a couple hours before you blend everything.

My review - the raw hummus was pretty good, but I am going to stick with cooked hummus because it is creamy and delicious. Not having to boil the beans was nice though... I've read that many raw peeps make a "hummus" from zucchini or some other non-bean thing for the creamy goodness, but that sort of skirts my quest for cheap, raw protein.

Oh, the best thing I learned from this experiment was that raw flax crackers are delicious! We bought ours from the store but making them at home is supposed to be super easy - dehydrator, flax seeds, water, flavors. Good thing I just found a dehydrator at the thrift store!

make something day: ginger brown ale

The day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday, a day in which stores hype up the x-mas shopping season and crazy shoppers wake up super early to stand in long lines and catch some "deals". Eric and I do not participate. In fact, we are so good at breaking traditions that it is nice to sometimes create new traditions. Established alternatives to Black Friday include Buy Nothing Day and Make Something Day so we decided to make something!

For our first annual beer brewing extravaganza on Make Something Day, we made a ginger brown ale which includes cinnamon, cloves and orange peel. Mmmmm... Looking forward to this one!

pumpkin swirl brownies

Happy Thanksgiving! Perhaps these vegan pumpkin swirl brownies will satisfy your sweet tooth? I followed the recipe on Eating Appalachia.