My Home Among The Hills

Chocolate truffles are God’s gift to humankind I think.  I am sort of picky about the chocolate I like.  For instance, I do not like any chocolate ice cream (really, I don’t like any ice cream), chocolate milk, or hot chocolate.  When I see truffles, though, I am willing to pass through fire (except that it would melt the chocolate) to get to them.  We have a local chocolatier family in Charleston, the Holls.  They own Holl’s Chocolates and make some really great truffles and chocolate goodness.  As much as I love their confections, I can’t really afford to eat their stuff as much as I would like.

Of course, that means it is time to improvise.  I have found a few recipes for homemade truffles that are really pretty amazing and simple to make.  I doubt I will be putting Holl’s out of business, but it surely satisfies my need to be cheap and well-chocolated.  Here is a recipe that we discovered in a flier sent out by Kroger. 

Peanut Butter Truffles

1 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

24 oz. melted chocolate chips (we used semi-sweet though milk chocolate would be good too)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup powdered sugar (optional - for rolling)

1/4 cup cocoa (optional - for rolling)

1/2 cup ground peanuts (optional - for rolling)

Heat Cream with peanut butter in a saucepan.  Whisk together as peanut butter melts.  Meanwhile, melt chocolate in a double boiler (or microwave as I did).  Combine peanut butter mixture with melted chocolate.  Add vanilla and place in refrigerator to set (recipe says 10 minutes, I say 3 hours).  Once set, scoop truffles with a melon baller (or use a spoon and ball them in your hand) and roll in powdered sugar, cocoa, peanuts (or nothing as we did).  Return to refrigerator and let them set again.  Keep chilled until you serve them.

I don’t really know how many truffles this recipe makes because I ate a ton of the mixture as it was setting.  I also made Shrek-sized truffles, much larger than a typical candy.  One is basically a meal in itself!

I only make truffles in November and December for some reason but we’ll make a bunch of them and add to our hibernation weight!  There are lots of other recipes out there and all are simiar and simple.  This is the time of year for experimenting!

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I last posted a week or so ago about my solar furnace.  I mentioned that I needed to install the system in my window and get the fan/thermostat working.  Well, my friends, wait no longer!  This weekend I finished the installation of the solar furnace and even powered it with a small solar panel…but I am getting ahead of myself. 

My downstairs family room has 5 windows, 3 of which face southward.  A south facing panel is optimum because it gets sun almost all day as the sun progresses across the sky.  I read that 20 degrees from due south results in a 5% decrease in performance.  Luckily I have south windows but if I didn’t have due south, I would still try the furnace.  A 5% decrease would still make things interesting.   In addition to the direction, you have to consider the angle from horizontal of the panel so that it gets optimum sunlight in the winter when the sun is lower in the sky.  I have read various thoughts on the optium angle but the easy one for me to remember is “latitude + 10″.  Here in Charleston, our latitude is 38 degrees.  According to this calculation then, the optimum angle from horizontal is 48 degrees.  Using my trusty eyeball, I leaned the solar panel along the south wall of my house and tilted it at precisely 48 degrees.  To be more exact, you should consider doing a site survey to make sure you really have things right. I will probably just mess with it until it gets the best sun. In a more permanent installation, you would want this to be much more precise. Mine is easily movable. 

Anyhow, I built a box (which I insulated) to run a warm pipe and a cool pipe through my window.  The thermostat and fan are inside the warm pipe inlet so the warm air should automatically rise and slowly flow across the thermostat.  The rise in temperature should kick on the thermostat/fan and move the air a little better through the system.  As the warm air evacuates, it will cool the thermostat and turn off the fan. 

I mentioned in the last post on this topic that I could not drive the fan with a super cheap solar cell.  I was rumaging through the junk bin at the office when I found a pair of fans (actually, quite a few fans) that were lower amperage than my original one.  Anyhow, my new fan is rated at 12 volts and  0.16 amps.  I know it will run at 9 volts so I figured I needed a solar panel that would produce 1.44 watts (i.e. 9 * 0.16).  Harbor Freight sells a solar panel used for trickle charging auto batteries for $19.99.  Actually, the website has it for $14.99 but in the store it is more.  If I would have taken the printout to the store, they would have reduced the price.  Apparently the store and website are somewhat independent.  I didn’t have a printout and it wasn’t worth driving back for it so I paid $19.99.  Ok, back to the story - it will produce 1.5 watts which will run my new fan.  I don’t know if it always just produces 12 volts and the amps vary (because it produces differently depending on the strength of the sun) or if it produces 0-12 volts and constant amps, etc.  All that is to say, I don’t know exactly what wattage is driving my fan but it turns it.  It occurs to me as I write this that I should measure the output with my mulitmeter…but really, for now, I don’t care.  The fan turns fine in sun and that is my main goal.  Unfortunately, the fan will not blow the dryer vent louver open. I had planned to use a dryer vent to close the inflow when not in use.  I will have to resort to the “plastic over the hole” method I mentioned in the earlier post, to prevent back-syphoning.  And let me tell you, back-syphoning is real and a problem if you don’t deal with it…I quickly learned a lesson on that topic!

Ok, lots of words to describe all this.  The only problem is, I have not had a sunny day since I got this thing installed.  I wanted to post about this progress but I don’t have any real results yet.  I will have to post again with results.  I know it will make a difference, but I don’t know the extent.  Stay tuned!

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Abigail was talking to my Mom tonight as Emily and I listened in on the conversation and grabbed these tidbits:

“Mom says I have the smooch”   

“Dad thinks farting is cool…so does Isaac…I do not”

“Carly is a G-I-R-L, not a B-O-Y”

Now let me clear up a few points…

-Abigail has croup, but she is an affectionate child also.  I know she has croup…she may have the smooch as well.

-We are boys…what else can I say.  I do hate that my 5 year old daughter knows the word fart but various family members who shall remain nameless gave the kids some books about Walter the Farting Dog.  Actually, they are pretty funny and they have expanded the kids’ vocabulary!

-With current fashions and naming conventions, even in kindergarten, it is important to clarify!

There is a category of electric critters called vibrobots.  I hesitate to call them robots , but I guess they are autonomous moving things.  Anyhow, as usual, I have bits of junk laying around that tend to rear up and get in the way now and then.  I have an old motor I salvaged out of a vcr or something.  I also had wire insulation hangers from my crawlspace insulation project.  That’s about all you need to build a junk vibrobot.  I bent a paperclip in an L-shape and taped a screw to one end of it.  The screw attached off center of the motor shaft throws the balance of the motor off so it vibrates.  Since it is attached to rigid, skinny wire feet, the vibrations through those feet on a hard surface translate into motion…random motion!  So, I zip-tied the end of the paperclip without the screw to the shaft of the motor.  I then bent the insulation hangers in an arc and zip-tied the 2 sets of legs around the motor.  I hooked a 9-volt battery to the motor contacts and away it went.   I tried putting little rubber feet on it but the bare wire on hardwood jittered the best.

 Mo, our silly cat had to get in on the fun.  The kids had a blast running the v-bot around Mo.  They had it timed perfectly so he would jump in the air when it started spinning.  For a cheap toy, it was quite a bit of fun!  Just a word of warning though…if you do this on your dining room table, be sure the cat is not around.  Also, be sure your wife is not around as she will not be impressed with the cat on the table or with the little scratches the v-bot feet leave.  Of course, this is certainly not the first time I have scratched the dining room table…but that’s another story.

 

 Junk Vibrobot: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here are some other vibrobots that other people have made.  I have seen some that are solar powered, some that look just like bugs, and some that are made or worse junk than mine. 

Itty bitty vibrobot
Bristlebot
Minty vibrobot

I was reading the Y-2K Hippie blog last week and saw they had posted a recipe for fortune cookies.  I love Chinese food but am usually not brave enough to eat it at a Chinese restaurant.  That leaves us with typically not eating Chinese…but the homemade fortune cookies seemed like a really cool idea so we decided to make some and along with a Chinese entree.  I cut come strips of paper and asked the kids to write some fortunes.  Being young and inexperienced at it, they quickly ran out of wisdom to impart. 

I said, “just write anything, draw a picture…just fill out all the papers.”  Well, they made up in ink what they lacked in content.  Isaac drew all sorts of epic battles on his half-inch wide sheets.  Abigail wrote things like, “dog, dog, cat, cat, Dad, Dad, Mom, Mom”.  Oh, the fortunes we’re great fun.  They were certainly cryptic which made them feel more fortune-like.  Anyhow, we mixed up the recipe :

Fortune Cookies
1 cup Margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3 1/4 cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
I kneaded it some and then rolled it out thin (though not thin enough….it needs to be really thin).  We cut circles with our biscuit cutter, added the fortunes, then folded the circles in half, then in half again.  We baked at 425 for 10 min….and then 5 minutes more. 

Ok, the most important part was done. We also stir-fried some beef and broccoli with a seasoning packet we bought at the store. Based on the fact that we had to add soy sauce and some other stuff, I am pretty sure we just bought a packet of corn starch with Chinese lettering. As we cooked, Mohinder our cat bravely wandered into the kitchen. He made a lot of racket and never realized the fate he could have met.

Anyhow, Emily and I stirred and tended the stuff with bamboo cookware (just to be authentic - plus, it is all we have) and bowed to each other a lot (apologies to all my Asian friends for all of the terrible cliches and inaccuracies).

It was a lot of fun! Anyhow, it cooked up great along with some delicious fried rice. We plowed through every bit of what we cooked as well as a plate full of cupcakes the kids and their Momaw decorated. Our fortunes were interesting, but I am sure I found my real fortune in good food and good times!