Another apple cider press!

Some nice folks emailed me awhile back asking for my thoughts on building an apple cider press of their own, similar to the one I built.  We talked back and forth a bit and discussed stuff I liked about mine and stuff I would do differently if I were to make another one.

Attached are some pics of their finished product and a bit of text describing their setup.  I think it is super exciting to make homemade cider so congratulations to my new web friends on a job well done!

from the builders…

“here are some pictures of our press.  We ended up making ours a lot shorter, because the bottle jack wouldn’t reach.  The holes in our pot were 5/32″ diameter one inch apart around the bottom, and two inches apart in two staggered rows up the side of the pot (the blue tape is just so that I can keep the height semi-even).  I love your set up it was very inexpensive, and easy to build.”

3 Comments

warren, September 15th 2010 | Tags:
Posted in Awesome, Food

I am a veggie-saurus

I haven’t said much about it but I decided to become a vegetarian as of June 1. I am not really interested in crusading for any causes, but I decided to become a vegetarian for a few reasons. Mainly I want to get my cholesterol under control. I am following a regimen of eating a low fat/low cholesterol vegetarian diet that has worked for some folks to control or regulate their health. I have no idea yet whether or not it will work for me. Still I expect to remain a vegetarian regardless. Again, I have no intent to crusade about this and the rest of my family still eats meat. For me though, I like the lower environmental impact that eating vegetarian requires. I have seen commentaries and debates one way and the other about the topic. I have no interest in debating the topic but this just works for me and I am all about “live and let live”.

I am not sure why I feel compelled to even talk about this subject with so many qualifiers but I suppose it’s because I am fully aware that food and environment and green topics often result in “religious” debates on the topics (that is, people hold their opinions on these topics somewhere very close to their hearts).

Anyhow, I was pretty worried at first. I like fruits and veggies and beans and grains and all, but could I live on those things? Would I lose a lot of weight? Would I lose all my strength? Would I be more gassy than the local Exxon? Yeah, just shooting straight here. Anyhow, I discovered that with some work, it’s not too difficult to eat a healthy, not overly processed, tasty vegetarian diet. I also get more protein now than I ever did when I ate meat. The stuff I eat often takes care of that very well. And that list I gave above…well, it’s a mixed bag, but I gotta tell you, it’s been well worth it. I never feel bloated or crampy or sick after I eat now. I have plenty of energy and I just plain feel better. Aside from the potential health and environmental impacts, I will remain a vegetarian because I flat out feel 10x better than I ever did when I ate meat!

So, just like the humble brontosaurus, I am now a veggie-saurus! I surely hope I fare better than my reptilian cousin!

12 Comments

warren, September 14th 2010 | Posted in Food, Green, Thoughts

Practically Perfect Pumpkins

We grow all sorts of stuff in the garden…we grow beans and corn and peppers and tomatoes.  We’ve grown gourds and squash and zukes too.  This year though, we tried pumpkins.  Last year we bought an absolutely perfect pumpkin at the local farmers’ market.  We carved it up and roasted most of the seeds.  I saved a few though figuring I would give it a go this year.  Holy cow those seeds made more perfect pumpkins this year!

Most of the garden is pretty well done for us this year.  I expected  that pumpkins would take much longer to develop…you know, so they would be timed right for the coming of the Great Pumpkin (Charlie Brown).  I suppose real pumpkin farmers plant their seeds a bit later than we did.  Anyhow, our pumpkins turned orange and were looking awesome last week so I decided to harvest them.  They are winter squash so I expect that they will last a good long time (’til Halloween at least I hope!)

I have enjoyed thinking about saving seeds and have done it some but this year I was impressed and really see the point of saving seeds from the best fruits.  We’ll keep seeds from the best of these pumpkins again this year.  I’ll be playing Gregor Mendel with pumpkins here in W-by-God-VA.  Mark my words folks…WV pumpkins are gonna be incredible in a few years!  You can say you heard about it here first!  Well, either that or I will end up living in a monastery when Emily gets fed up and throws me out…I am hoping for the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!

7 Comments

warren, September 10th 2010 | Tags:
Posted in Food, Garden

The HOT light is on!

Isn’t it strange how sometimes your brain follows some stream of consciousness and you end up someplace completely different from where you started?  Yeah, well, welcome to my life…actually, welcome to my lovely wife’s life putting up with me.  Anyhow, Monday morning we started off planning to make some sort of healthy vittles where we end up hungry again a half hour after eating.  Well, a bunch of twists and turns went through my head and we ended up making homemade donuts in one of the world’s most ingenious creations – The Magic Chef Donut Bakery machine!  I am not sure how I got there but I suppose the idea of eating some sort of fru-fru breakfast sparked some sort of ancient survival mechanism deep within my hindbrain…something screaming, “give me donuts, not some fruity-I-am-still-hungry food”.

It’s really hard to beat hot donuts.  Isaac was born at Baptist Hospital in Nashville.  His birth was complicated so we spent a good bit of time in and around the hospital.  Our room overlooked the Krispee Kreme donut factory so whenever the “Hot Now” light came on, I hustled down and bought a dozen.  I don’t know how many meals of donuts we ate but Krispee Kreme stock hit its high point when we were active consumers.

My parents had a version of the Magic Chef Donut Bakery machine though theirs made only three donuts at a time (but they were larger).  Anyhow, somewhere between 8-10 years ago, I was at my brother’s place in Indiana.  We were bored so we went junkin’.  We trapsed around town and looked over other peoples’ junk.  I didn’t expect much but under a pile of 8-track tapes, I saw it…the Magic Chef Donut Bakery machine…and it was marked $1…and it worked!

So, like I said, the stream of consciousness this weekend somehow reminded me that I had that glorious donut maker tucked away behind the pile of 8-track tapes I bought in Indiana.  We broke out the recipe and made a gigantic batch of cinnamon donuts.   Sometimes my streams of consciousness make for some pretty fun times and this time, I found that the “Hot Now” light is on!

7 Comments

warren, September 8th 2010 | Tags: ,
Posted in Food

Purple fingers

It seems like this time of year finds our fingers all sorts of different colors. It really just depends on what we’re picking at the time. Last night was no different really. A co-worker of Emily’s has a bunch of grapes growing at her house. She has picked a ton and canned/preserved them every way she knows how. That’s where we come in. The grapes are still plentiful so she gave us a bunch of them…and there are more to pick so we are hoping to be able to go and harvest a bunch more. It’s hard to beat real concord grapes I think!

this is just a portion!

We cleaned them last night and are making grape jelly with the ones we have now. Do you remember when you were a kid and even the store bought grape jelly had flavor? I have tried some recently and it seems like the grape jelly is completely without flavor. I guess it’s like everything – homemade is really hard to beat. But gee whiz, the store stuff isn’t even fit for slug bait!

Anyhow, does anyone else gather grapes? What do you do with them? I remember my Mom and Grandma canning grape juice but they always left whole grapes in the jars. It freaked me out because I could have sworn they canned eyeballs!  Oh, and don’t get me started on when they canned whole tomatoes…eeek!  Anyone make raisins or juice or wine? I’ve nibbled on wild grapes but does anyone do anything more specific with them?  I’d love to know what options I may have!

9 Comments

warren, August 25th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Canning, Food, Nature, WV

What is this?

We have a compost pile in our back yard.  We throw all sorts of stuff in there, but I always know what it is when it goes in.  This year we had volunteer tomatoes, catnip and a mystery squash come up.  I have absolutely no idea what kind of squash this is but I know we have never thrown anything like that in the pile.  We have thrown pumpkin and zucchini and cushaw and yellow squash parts into the pile but none of those particularly look like this fruit.

For a bit, I considered the possibility that someone was playing a compost pile prank…but who on Earth would do that?  Too bad I don’t have any composting friends though…could be interesting.

Anyhow, back to the subject at hand…does anyone have any idea what this is?  Maybe a mutation of some hybrid pumpkin or something?  Ginny chomped on one, but quickly left it alone (and you know, my dumb dog eats poop so that ‘s saying something!)

We have found other weird stuff in the course of gardening…

11 Comments

warren, August 13th 2010 | Tags: ,
Posted in Food, Garden, Nature

It’s purple…and huge!

So…ahem…the blackberries are in full glory right now and we found a newish place to pick and this year’s berries are as big as I have ever seen (including those pretend ones you can get at the grocery store).  We have picked several “messes” of berries and I have enjoyed 2 blackberry pies that my delightful wife has prepared.  She made some good ones 2 years ago, but this year, the berries are purple and huge and AWESOME!

Of course, we live in West-by-God-Virginia where mountain goat commandos go to train.  Our new location is significantly more hilly than previous years so picking in our new secret spot has been interesting and a little prickly.  I have to wear soccer cleats so I don’t slide down the hill through the briers.  I really wish I was more successful at that.  Anyhow, because of the danger (yes, the hills are steep enough that it is dangerous), the kids are not picking this year.  They mostly run around and look for new spots for me to scale.  I think they have grown up a good bunch though.  They still fight like mountain goat commandos and mountain lions, but not while we are working on berries…and that’s worth a big hee-haw from me!

so much for focus...

Aside from the hills being interesting, our new spot is farther into the woods and we have been assaulted by a few ticks this year.  Ticks suck.  I think I hate ticks and roaches more than about anything…not sure why because bugs in general don’t offend me, but I am personally offended when I see either of my nemeses.  Alas, I shall push on in pursuit of the berry.  The blackberry pie calls to me…I must heed its call!

Time to go picking...

10 Comments

warren, July 7th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Food, Nature, WV

(not) Strawberry wine…(not) 17

Last Sunday we picked a powerful lot of strawberries and canned most of it as jam.  We were all jammed up (at 53 or so jars which should last us a year) and still had plenty of berries left.  My beautiful and loving wife finally heard my subtle hints that a strawberry pie was in order.  Though subtle, my wife understood my need for pie.  She just knows what I need…because I was subtle after all!

We looked around at various recipes, some from family and some from cookbooks, but we (meaning she) decided upon one from the Interwebs.

Anyhow, Deana Carter sings about strawberry wine and being 17 and all that stuff.  I am not too old but I guess I am not 17 either…I’ll take strawberry pie and 38 any day!

Still, this is a cool song:

Anyhow, so here is the recipe:

  • Eight cups of strawberries
  • One and a half cup sugar
  • One and a half cup water
  • Six tablespoons of Cornstarch
  • Half teaspoon salt
  • A baked Crust

Take a bowl and put two cups of strawberry in it. Crush the strawberries completely and add one and a half cups of water to them. Pour this mixture in a pan and bring to boil. Let the mixture simmer for about five minutes. Next, strain out the juice from the mixture and add about one cup of water to it. Add one and a half cup sugar, six tablespoons of cornstarch and half a teaspoon of salt to the pan. Pour the strawberry juice strained earlier in the pan too. Bring the mixture to boil, let it simmer till it becomes thick. Remove the mixture from the stove and let it cool. Take a baked crust and put some whole strawberries in it. Pour the mixture prepared earlier on it. Refrigerate for a few hours and serve the strawberries chilled.

(from here)

12 Comments

warren, May 28th 2010 | Tags:
Posted in Food

Lots of strawberries…some on the floor

We went to a you-pick strawberry place in Cottageville, WV on Sunday.  It’s about 35 minutes away (though for the kids, it was a 2 year long trip) and was a nice Sunday drive.  We got to Hartley Farms and found a huge field of the biggest and best strawberries I have ever seen (though I didn’t know that part right away).  The proprietor took us over to a row and told us to, “have at it”.  I fully expected to have to search and dig and really work to find a few scrawny strawberries.  We picked 2 years ago at a place closer to home and it was pitiful.  Hartley Farms was $0.55 per pound cheaper and there were hundreds of big fat berries everywhere!

We filled 7 ice cream buckets to overflowing and weighed in.  All told, we had about 32 pounds of berries!  The best part is that the kids even helped pick!  We jumped in the car hoping to get home before Isaac ate every last strawberry.  Though he made a run at eating 32#, we did make it home with a few berries.  All four of us started making jam though the kids were tired after a batch each.  They wanted to take a jar to their teachers that they had made.

Emily and I continued on into the night making jar after jar of jam.  Isaac in particular like strawberry jam so the 43 half-pints we made may last us the year (and may not).  We still have somewhere around 8 pounds of berries to go…not sure if that will be jam or something else yet.  We have a fair bit of cleanup yet to do.  Of course, it is impossible to make jam without making stuff sticky and our floor is sticky indeed.  I have mopped it several times but my socks still leave little fuzzy footprints when I walk in the kitchen.

And by the way, when you make strawberry jam, make sure you use a huge pot to boil your mixture.  We forgot since last time and we boiled a pot of sticky strawberry syrup over the edge of the sauce pan we had and onto the hot burner on our (wretched) glass-topped stove.  You guessed it…it caramelized and tried to burst into flame.  We never saw fire, but our house was full of smoke before I could get the mess cleaned up…so, word to the wise, use a huge pot to boil the mix!  Luckily we had a better pot so subsequent batches were fine!

It was fun to clean up too!

10 Comments

warren, May 24th 2010 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Canning, Food, WV

The “Deuce” is not on the menu

I mentioned last week that we got a new dog from the shelter.  She is a super sweet dog now that we got her all fixed up.  You see, she came to us from the shelter with parvovirus, fleas, ear mites, and maybe kennel cough (she has that now but it may have come from the vet).  So, first thing, I am pretty disgusted that the Kanawha/Charleston shelter doesn’t deal with it’s ickiness better.  A few months ago, they had to put down masses of animals because of disease. I have talked to several people who got dogs from there that had parvo and died.  Apparently it is a common problem for that shelter, but I think it is unacceptable.  I get that it’s a big and busy shelter, but gee whiz, it is what they are all about.  Parvo kills a lot of dogs, especially puppies, so not treating/testing/quarantining animals effectively makes them a high-rate kill-shelter depending on how you look at it.

Ok, sorry, I have strayed a bit.  So, Ginny came to us and within 2 days she was obviously very sick.  Many hundred dollars later and we are fortunate to have a mostly healthy dog.  But I wonder…you see, she has taken to eating poop from the yard.  We have some less-than-prize neighbors who let their dogs run and poop all over the neighborhood, but that only provides Ginny access, not inclination.  We walk Ginny on a leash every day and she has started searching out and eating other dogs’ poop!  Did something happen to her brain when she was sick?  I am not positive about this, but I suspect that poop doesn’t taste all that good (especially compared to the food she seems to like) so I cannot come up with an explanation why my sweet Ginny would eat every pile of deuce she comes upon.  ”It’s number 2 Ginny…run away!”  Nope, not my dog.

She's sitting on Emily's back as she tries to sleep

It’s been a long time since I had a dog so maybe this is the new trendy thing that all of the young and hip dogs are doing nowadays…surely not.  No, I can definitely say that eating poop is a bad thing.  Come to think of it, I may have a new alternative saying for my kids.  No longer will I have to say, “Would you jump off a bridge if all of your friends were doing it?”  I can now say, “Would you eat poop just because all of your friends are doing it?”

Maybe I am being over-reactive.  She’s a puppy and I know puppies are crazy.  I hate to say it, but I would prefer she would chew on my shoes rather than the biohazards in the yard.  I guess we will have to work on her manners some.  The first trick I am going to teach her is “shake”.  You see, I can shake her paw without hesitation, but she is definitely not getting kisses from me!

10 Comments

warren, March 26th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Food, Fun, Nature
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