Rapture Food!

Waiting for the rapture can make a guy hungry! That is when I decided to cook up something that was hotter than hell and a little smokey, to get me prepared for those enternal flames!

I started with some Spanish Rice. About 3/4 cup of white basmati and 3/4 cup of brown rice, sauteed and lightly browned with 1/2 a medium red onion on a medium heat. Crush in 4 gloves of garlic after about 5 to 10 minutes. Later I'll add pureed jarred tomatoes, veggie boulian, paprika, cumin, black pepper and chipotle powder.

I backwards engineered a recipe that my friends Stef and Jimer turned me on to, which is a salsa/chutney made of carrots, red onion, ginger, lime, pineapple and habenero. I am going for more or less the same thing here, except I am using a bag of frozen yellow pear tomatoes from last years garden.

Put that whole mess into a blender ..

.. and put it on the stove to simmer and render down a bit. Also present is an enchilada sauce I whipped up from jarred tomatoes from last years garden and the Spanish Rice. I cheated on the enchilada sauce and used one of those French's taco seasoning powder mixes with my one quart of jarred tomatoes. In my defense, I would like to say that I did customize the sauce by adding about 1/4 cup of diced red onion, basil, oregano and black pepper to dress it up a little. Another quart of jarred tomato, the spices and about 2 1/2 cups of veggie boulian went into the spanish rice, we're it simmered until the rice was done. I put in a little extra salt I think, too.

Most of the pots stayed on the stove all evening while we we're out weeding, being stirred every so often. Then, I threw together enchiladas that had chili and kidney beans, cheddar cheese, and a line of that enchilada sauce on them. The enchiladas we're then drowned in the rest of the enchilada sauce and covered with cheddar and set to bake at 350 for about 30 minutes, when the cheese begins to brown.

Serve the enchiladas (forgot to get a picture of that) along side the rice with a tablespoon of sour cream or plain yogurt with a laddle full of the pineapple/ginger/habenero/pear tomato salsa/chutney over the top of the enchiladas.

This may very well be the best cooked meal I've ever created.

No lack of work - continued dome coverage, the garden begin, adventures in forestry. And Halloween!

Mt. Horeb is a neet little town. It has all the charm of a nice touristy town with no lack of gift and antique shops. I imagine it is a little of what living in Sturgeon Bay must be like.

However, the entire area is pretty special to me. They say there are several Wickan organizations in and around the area. Our township is quite progressive and politically active, which I like. There is just a certain kind of vibe that I get and that feels good to me, it resonates with me.

They do up Halloween pretty good, too, which I attribute to that bit about the Wicken vibe that I alluded to.

I found these photos on my camera that I finally found. These we're meant to make it to the blog long ago, but it never happened. Now, at almost the complete opposite time of year, I thought it would make for a good contrast.

Cool, huh? I'll do a better job of getting more next time.

Back to our place. The kids got a new trampoline! It was for Aiden's birthday I think. Or Lillian's birthday.

Progress on the dome paneling is still progressing slowly but steadily. Recent I cut 20 more boards, which are almost mounted. Mounting the boards is usually easy to do with only the occasional need to cut a little extra off of one of the tips. It's a lot of up and down on the ladder.

My latest project is to clean up the forest. This means cutting up fallen trees, cutting down and cutting up dead tree and generally cleaning up the path. One of my intents is to open space for a forest garden, which would consist of raspberries and various flowers.

Thanks to my friend Patrick, I was able to get a good start and a good education in chainsaws, which I appreciate very much. Thanks, Patrick!

More cut trees ready for processing. Kinda makes me feel like GDubya .. cuttin' brush .. heh heh ..

Here is an area I have been clearing of brush and useless sumacs. There are some impressive wild raspberry canes back here that I am eager to have exposed. Ideally, this area will be great for raspberries when I'm through.

This year our rhubarb is really kicking ass. Last year is just kind piddled out and didn't produce much, but this year there is quite a bit. Since moving out here, I have acquired the taste of rhubarb. You know what would be good?? A rhubarb chutney! Or my friend, Dr. Dave, makes this ghost pepper strawberry jelly that is just out of this world! Rhubarb and habenero something or another .. now THAT would be good!

New rows of beans going in.

Here is my hops trellis. I am happy to report that this year the hops is really taking off.

Here is a close up of the hops. We need to weed around it, but you can see it's making it's way up the cable.

Inside the dome, our grapes are starting to flower. We we're bad parents and have not trained these grapes properly.

Apple blossoms.

Here, Jason has dug a trench, loaded it with compost and is putting the soil back over it. Then, we will be putting in more beans and peas, which should appreciate the compost beneath.

More of that trench.

New Dome Action

Spring is finally here! And I hope that I can get enough time to get what I need to get done with the dome before Fall hits again! I swear, I've had this recurring dream where alluvasudden it's Autumn again and it dawns on me that we haven't gotten the greenhouse ready for cooler weather and we barely even planted for Summer!

So, the thought has been turning in my mind about how best to cover the dome. If I we're to build another dome, I will do it with 2x4 boards with maybe PVC connectors. This would have given me an easy surface to attach paneling to, but instead I built this dome out of electrical conduit .. pipe. How do you attach flat paneling to a round surface like conduit?

The answer is above. Or, one of the answers is above. Perhaps the wrong answer is above .. that is the wonder of science and of trial and error. I think it's going to work out, though.

Each conduit strut on the dome will have one of these mounted on it. The channel on the bottom is where the conduit will fit into. The other side provides a surface to mount the paneling on. Each end of one of these boards is cut with 36, 30, or 27 degree angles depending on which conduit strut it is covering. The top surface is planed along the center at 10 degrees. Additionally, each tips' angles are also cut with the table saw blade at 10 degrees.

Here, we can see the dome with a good number of these boards mounted.

A view of the mounted boards from inside.

Your's truly, setting up to cut a triangular panel to be attached to the top of the mounted boards.

Me again, up on the ladder fastening a panel to the mounted boards.

There is a little slop in this process. Like Dad is fond of saying, we're not building a clock. But, there is some precision that must be put in place to at least get a feel for what the general tolerance of the structure is.

To cut 15 of these boards it takes me a little over 4 hours. Probably another 4 to 8 hours to get them up there, paneled and sealed. At this rate .. I figure I should be done-done by mid Summer.

A friend of mine asked about the material that I am using to do the paneling. It is called Solexx and it is truly magical material! Here is one roll. The other is still sitting in the front of my house so as to keep the neighbors and passers-by continually confused and perplexed.

More to come ...

Racoon tracks!

Croicky! It's 2 AM and it looks like raccoons have been here! Two raccoon named Katie and Greg to be precise. An impromtu muchies jam yielded a baked casserole-type dip consisting of spinach, artichoke hearts, Parmesan cheese, garlic, lemon and mayonaise. Mmm Mmm .. Just like how mom used cook .. When she was crocked at 2 AM!

Labor Day Deck Building

Last weekend I managed to get the general support frame together for the back patio / deck. Not much else happened over the course of the week.




Progress over Labor Day weekend. Tedious work!


We got a double rainbow in the usual location! I didn't get the camera quick enough and it began to fade.





We decided to widen the top platform and extend the stairs as out fully, which should give a cool complimentary angle to the look of it.





This is Leo. Er, no, I mean say hello to Leona. She is a girl it turns out. She is also a stray that wandered into our yard. We suspect, given her tame nature, that she was abandon here at our place. Seeing the play-set and kid paraphernalia littering the yard, they must have known that we would find it difficult to simply get rid of her. She was going to be our 'out-doors kitty' but .. we are having a change of heart. She may turn into our 'inside kitty' instead! Or both perhaps.


Stairs are on!




All that is left to do here is to finish the top platform, the last few deck boards leading up to the stairs, and put some sort of face boarding on the top and on the bottom of the stairs to pretty it up.

So far we're talking something like ... $1,200 in building material ... 60 some hours of labor ... about 2 cases of beer ... hmm!

More crazy 'maters - new deck!

Alas, the summer is winding down and we are scrambling like mad to freeze, can, jar dehydrate or use all of the vegetables that have been popping up. We always seem to bite off more than we can chew, so there is always some amount of loss .. be it cucumbers that turn into Louisville Sluggers, peppers that rot on the vine, etc. For the most part, though, we have been on top of it and have been socking away many jars of tomatoes and pickles and have been making our 'summer soup' consistently for a month now.

You recall the mammoth tomatoes in the grow dome from the last post. This is what we are talking about now - tomato plants overflowing from the windows!

The back yard still looks a bit like a demilitarized zone. Slowly, we have been moving the various piles of dirt to places in the front yard that need it. Grass seed to follow.

Katie has spent a lot of time pruning the plants on the inside of the grow dome. You can see the hollowed out section that she pruned through. This way, she can literally walk inside and pick the tomatoes from the inside of the mess!


This house supplies us with an never ending stream of projects. A while ago we cut out the old patio deck, which was in the final stages of sublimating into a vapor state. The last straw was when Aiden went through a rotten deck board up to his hip. Now, we are finally getting around to putting a new patio deck in. Last week - every day after work - I dug post holes and prepared posts. This Saturday and Sunday I put in full 8 hour days in the hot sun getting the basic structure in place. This shot is from Saturday morning - the posts awaiting the support structure to come.

A lot of preparation went into just getting to this point. Aside from simply needing a deck, there are issues with rain water flowage. This meant grading ground beneath the deck to shunt moisture away, putting down plastic and bringing in gravel. Once the deck is complete I will put in large gutters and down spouts which will carry the water under the deck and down hill away from the house.

As the afternoon progressed, I was able to discover where my level line would be and begun hanging 2"x6" joists.


By the end of the day Sunday we had a plan for how to arrange the deck boards. It's actually starting to look like something! When we are through, we will probably rebuild the stairs and use that space more fully - what is there currently was just a temporary solution. We'll hide some of the ugly under stuff with some lattice, too.

Big-booty tomatoes!

Hmm.  I'll repost a few of these pictures, as some do not have links to the larger version ..

I've been promising my friends that I would post some a picture or two of the tomato plants that I have been ranting on and on about.  Finally, I make good on the promise.  Taken from the tire wall just on the other side of the grapes, this panoramic shot attempts to give you some idea of scale of what is happening in the green house.  BIG growth on tomato and pepper plants alike.  The basil and other herbs seem to be enjoying themselves as well.  I know I can't wait to enjoy them!

Lillian was excited to take a picture of use standing next to the tallest.  She took a good shot, but you still can't see just how far the tomato reaches toward the sky.  There have been a few nights now where I have been derailed from whatever I was in the middle of (finishing the outside of the green house) and made to scale the inside of the dome in order to string these huge tomato plants up.  Now THAT would have been a photo, except that my cursing would not have been captured fully .. 

Getting some red ones, now.  Pretty soon we'll be up to our eyeballs in tomatoes, which we will do our best to consume, jar, freeze and dehydrate.  We just used up the last bag of frozen tomatoes from last year in my (in)famous black beans and wild rice recipe.

Hop to it!  This is a tower that I built for growing hops.  They are getting a slow start, as I had a delay in getting them in the ground.  With so much to do, I had to fight with myself to make the time needed to assemble and plant the tower.

Hops growing up one of the wires.  I may not get many buds this year, but next year I'll have established vines that ought to produce a healthy amount of hops buds.

A shot of the back garden from underneath the huge mulberry tree, from which we harvested quite a few berries.  It's a little messy with weeds, but the tomato, pepper, eggplant and herb plants are doing pretty well.  Well .. the tomato plants out there are getting blight on them, but we ought to be able to pull off many good tomatoes from the looks of it.

Advice for stringing up 'maters: metal fence posts.  The kind with little notches.  Makes stringing up 'maters very simple.  Simple is good.  So are 'maters.

In front of the garage / chicken coop we have expanded the garden.  Katie's "lasagna garden" worked beautifully last year and we expanded from that.  Out there be bush and pole beans, onions, asparagus, black eyed peas, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, a few apple trees, pear trees and currant bushes.