Time to tame the beast, and I’m not talking about either Supa or Old Milwaukee. The main rhubarb plant in the backyard has reached the point of being unruly, so its time for a haircut. More or less before I headed out of town this past weekend. I pulled out all the monster rhubarb stalks and left the babies to fend for themselves. After chopping off all the leaves and tossing them on the compost pile, I had a plastic grocery bag full of trimmed stalks. And a rhubarb plant that is now about half the size of its former self. Continue reading
Author: AuSable
Holding off on upgrading to WordPress 2.8
Well I tried to upgrade from 2.7.1 to 2.8 and it didn’t go well…..pages not loading, scripts not working, plug-ins stalling. I ended up having to re-install wordpress 2.7.1, just to get things working again.
It looks like they might not have gotten all the kinks out of the beta releases for 2.8 (which I thought about test installing for miia monthly, but now I’m glad that I didn’t) before shipping out the production release. I don’t mind working with software on the bleeding edge (Mozilla/Firefox in the early years), but not when it totally crashed right from the get go.
Potato Chip Review – Lay’s Monterey Pepper Jack
Now these chips were good! Part of it might be that I had very low expectations after the whole Wisconsin Cheddar debacle. But here is the lowdown.
Right when I opened the bag the first smell that hit my nose was peaches n’ cream corn topped with butter, with a very faint after hint of Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion. Just the main corn smell started to make my mouth water craving some Iowa sweet corn. It really wasn’t until about an hour later that I started to pick-up a hint of the sour cream and onion. But really it was so faint, that it was very easy to miss. Continue reading
Picked up June/July 2009 Wine Club Shipment Monday from Domaine Carneros
So once again I had to hold my wine shipment for pickup at the UPS Depot, since I was out of town when the shipment was scheduled. As usual with the mixed club that I subscribe to, I got a bottle of sparkling and a bottle of red.
The sparkling this shipment is a 2003 Le Rêve Blanc de Blancs, which is a blend of 98% Chardonnay and 2% Pinot Blanc. And the red is a 2007 Domaine Carneros Estate Pinot Noir.
One interesting item that I noticed in this shipments newsletter, were all the large format bottles that they have available, at pretty reasonable prices compared to their range of 750ml bottles. For Vintage Brut they have a Magnum(1.5L), Jéroboam(3.0L) and Methuselah (6.0L). For reds, they only have a Pinot Noir as a Magnum. It would be pretty sweet to get the Methuselah, 8 normal sized bottles in one very large bottle. Now thats a party!
Off for the weekend
I’m taking a break this weekend for a little R&R…..yeah just kidding. I’ll be busting my ass most of the weekend helping out my sis with her garage sale and general repairs around her house. But don’t worry I do have a couple of posts in the pipeline that I’m wrapping up and will post next week. Here are the draft titles:
-Weeding the garden – Week 2 June 2009 – Johnny Storm style
-Making the Hershey’s Kitchens – Ranch Style Shrimp and Bacon Appetizers
-Cinder block smoker or compost bin?
Later gang.
My salad with chicken, and not a chicken salad
I don’t understand what people see in the mayo version of chicken salad; you know what I’m talking about, crap like this! Something about “normal” chicken salad just makes me wonder. It doesn’t even look appetizing to me, just a big white pile of mush. Kind of like American style potato salad, which doesn’t hold a candle to warm German style potato salad. But that is a story for another time. Personally I’m not a big salad fan to begin with, due to a couple of bad personal experiences. But I haven’t written off salad completely, it just makes me pickier about the salads that I do eat. Continue reading
Ciabatta pics version 4 – update
Some pics of the crumb of the ciabatta. And making some cheesy garlic bread with a ciabatta roll and some smoked provolone.
Heavy Hops = String breaking
Now that the centennial hops are really starting to fill in. I thought that it might be a good idea to replace the two year old twisted poly-string holding up the hops with a 3/8” braided rope. Well I came up with this idea just a tad bit late.
After I lowered the hops to the ground, the plan was to use the old string to pull the new rope up and through the top shackle. Well about half way up the trellis the old string broke in mid-air. So now I have to put on my thinking cap to come up with a solution.
The trellis is about ~18’ tall and I can’t lean my 20’ ladder against it, since it won’t hold that kind of weight. And when I stand on top of the multi-ladder that I own, I’m short at least 4’ from the apex. So with those two options gone. I had to run a couple of scenarios in my head about how to get that rope threaded through the shackle at the top of the trellis. And the only one that made sense was to take off the top part of the pyramid. After about 10-15 minutes of muscling off the top part of the pyramid (the easy part), then putting it back on (the hard part), I got the new rope threaded. Now that the new rope is run for the hops, let hope that it holds up.
Hops – start of June 2009
By popular demand, some more pics of the hops. You can really see the difference now between the leaves of the centennial and the golding leaves. The centennial even seems to be getting ready for some cone production. Bring on the hops bitches! Continue reading
Ciabatta pics version 4
The forth time around they turned out a little bit better. I had a little bit of a deflation when the plastic wrap became stuck to two of the rolls. I need to come up with a better method to cover the ciabatta to let it rise before baking. I’d get a proofing cover, but I have a tiny kitchen and what else could a use a proofing cover for other then proofing bread? Continue reading