Showing posts with label Laughing At Myself. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laughing At Myself. Show all posts

Friday, March 5, 2021

How To Ruin A Roast

I enjoy cooking.  But I can sure mess up sometimes!  Here's the way to do everything wrong.

1.  Buy a pork roast on a Monday.  Now, it was a cheap Boston Butt at $2/pound, so it wasn't like a Standing Beef Rib roast at $10/pound.  But it's big, so it isn't free.  

2.  Leave it in the refrigerator (planning to cut it up and smother it in dry rub "tomorrow")  for 4 days.

3.  You positively CAN'T let it go another day, so cut it into 2" slabs and cover it with the dry rub.  Put it back in the refrigerator to smoke tomorrow.

4.  It's "tomorrow", but it is raining.  OK, the rub will really soak in by "tomorrow"!

5.  Next day smoke the slabs for 3 hours (it's the next Monday by now).  I usually smoke the Butt outside for a few hours (no real benefit longer than that, the surface is impervious after that long) and finish it in the oven at 225F.  Set portable timer for 3 hours.

6.  Timer goes off while watching TV.  Yeah, gotta take it out.  Forget about doing that for another 3 hours.

7.  Suddenly remember the pork and take it out of the oven.  Well, it certainly is safely cooked!  Cut off a chunk to eat (dinner).  Put the whole tray into the basement refrigerator to chill.  

8.  No problems with the pork overnight, so I decide it is safe (and it was).

9.  Gotta cube and package it "Tomorrow".  Leave pork in refrigerator 4 more days.  This makes it 11 days since bought.  

10.  Take it out to cut it up.  It is hard as a rock!  Sharp knives struggle...  I cut some pieces off for stewing.  It "sort of" softened. but "chewy" would be too kind a description.

11.  Consider leaving it outside to punish wandering raccoons and possums.

12.  But decide to just wrap it up in a trash bag with cat litter (to discourage scavengers), place the bag in a box, and put the box in another trash bag.

I expect this will really confuse some future landfill archeologist.  One may find my roast centuries from now, intact, and be baffled by our current-day culinary practices.  And (considering the kitty litter I added to the bag) be amazed at our choice of "spices".  After all, who ELSE'S pork roast will still be around to compare it to?

Anyway, I still need cubed smoked pork for my stews and stir-fries, so I've added it to my shopping list.  At least I'll have good reason to remember to cut it up and dry-rub it THAT DAY and smoke it the next...  And cube it as soon as chilled)!

Hope you enjoyed this...  ;)

Thursday, December 17, 2015

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good:  I had planned to go to the post office to mail the Cat's cards and my own on Wednesday.  But I got up too late.  Don't laugh, I keep REALLY weird hours sometimes.  But then I realized it was going to rain all day Thursday and I figured that would keep the customer line short in the morning.  I was right, "maybe".

I walked in and there was NO line.  But before I got my turn at the counter, there there 10 people behind me!  So it was just REALLY lucky timing.  It took me less time to BUY the 52 domestic mail stamps and arrange for the 9 international envelopes than it took to APPLY the 52 stamps to the domestic mail envelopes than it did to arrange for the 9 international.

But thank you USPS for inventing peel&stick stamps!

More Good:  With the time I saved not standing in line at the Post Office, I was able to get to the meat&liquor store (a really neat place) before the lunch crowd rolled in to crowd up the deli counter.  I was in and out in 15 minutes.  If I get there with the lunch crowd or when the high school next door lets out at 2:30 it can take an hour!

The Bad:  I've been going a little nuts trying to mow the lawn.  Yeah, so that doesn't seem a big deal...  But I haven't since early September when I had the soil level raised and sowed new grass there.  The grass was too new and the soil was too soft until November.  I wanted the new grass to develop deep roots and deep roots come from high grass (they each power the other).  And then it has rained just some every few days since.  You don't want to cut wet grass (fungal diseases).  So I finally got 3 dry days and went to mow.

More Bad:  Dead riding mower battery since it hadn't been used for 3 full months!  Even the boat battery I keep in the toolshed was dead.  Fortunately, I had just bought and charged a portable power pack and jump-started it.  Started right up, so it wasn't old gas, fouled spark plugs etc.  Mowed the lawn and mowed it double.  Thats because I don't rake leaves, I shred them in place.  It's good for the grass and the trees to keep the nutrients in place.  The leave shreds disappear into the ground after enough cuts.  But the next day, the mower battery was just as dead as before.

I have to keep the power pack on the mower between my legs as I mow now.  &*@#  Everytime I stop the mower, I have to jump-start it again.  When batteries get too low, the charger won't detect the "too low" battery.   A glimmer of hope though:  I've just read that if you put a charger on a good battery and connect THAT one to a "too low" battery, the charger detects the good battery and the good battery transfers the charge to the Too Low battery.  I haven't tried that yet.

The Ugly:  The planting of tulip and hyacinth bulbs in vole&squirrel proof cages is WAY behind schedule.  The soil is what was below the ridge I had removed in September, and it is a lot harder to dig in than I expected.  My cages are 12'x14'x4".  They have to be buried  at least 8" deep.  It is taking 30 minutes per hole.  I acted like a crazed lunatic on one just to see how fast I could possible dig one.  and plant the cages with the bulbs and compost/topsoil mix and 2-6-3 fertilizer AND put a labeled styrofoam plate pinned with a metal tent peg.

20 minutes, and I was exhausted...  Best I could do all out fanatic crazy was 3 cages in 75 minutes!

Its the stones, tree roots, and clay.  And all the other details (sprinkling fertilizer, scooping the compost/topsoil mix into a bucket to pour over it all, and then covering it with existing soil takes a lot more time than I realized.  10 days of that (in non-rain days) and I have 11 of 20 cages planted.  And I have 150 daffodils to plant (which at least don't need cages, being toxic to mammals, and I can use an small auger for those.

But the worrisome thing is that tulips, etc, need chilling time, and the ground here is usually frozen by December 1st.  So it is possible that none of all these bulbs I am killing myself planting will bloom at all next year (they would grow foliage and bloom next year if there is enough chill-time), but climate-warming may make all my work futile!

More Ugly:  Winter is coming, and even though my 11 year Toyota Highlander is kept in a built-in garage, the battery routinely dies.  The experts say I just don't drive enough.  So I might be looking at 3 months of having to jump-start the car in the garage everytime I want to go anywhere (everything I need is within a mile usually and once every couple weeks I drive 10 miles to the meat/wine store).  I have to keep a fully charged boat battery in the car for jump starts.  It isn't the battery, new ones die too.

Hey, some people love to drive, I don't.

It begins with the first hard freeze and ends with the last hard freeze.  Yet the garage temperature never falls below 45F.  Drives me nuts.  I KNOW there has to be some car component that is drawing on the battery in cold weather, but I can't image what.  One of the many things Dad didn't teach me about was cars.  The experts at dealership and online just say drive it 30 minutes every few days.  ARGH! 


Monday, November 24, 2014

A Little Computer And Some Garden Problems

COMPUTER:  Well, first, I KNEW everything wouldn't be perfect on the new old laptop.  The thrill of connectivity deceived me.  Oh, it's not terrible news, but the "M" key came loose right away, and my feedly.com reader list keeps disappearing from the sidebar.  It sticks on the desktop but not the laptop.  I'm sure I'll find out how to stick it permanently, but haven't so far. 

And there are other annoying problems.  I'm sure most can be fixed, but some may just be part of using a laptop.  I was expecting that since I was only using the laptop for reading blogs (at the moment), what did I care about security?  There's nothing ON the laptop.  But then I started getting unending, nearly constant ads.  It was like "Whack-A-Mole"!  Close one, another pops up.  I went 15 minutes doing nothing but closing ads at one point, and even closing some of them seems to have generated some email responses to the ads even though I don't have any email set up tat I know about.  Probably some basic gmail embedded in the computer.

I went into the system preferences and made some adjustments which reduced the ads but haven't eliminated them.  I was hoping not to have to buy MacKeeper for the laptop (it can prevent pop-up ads among other things.  I may find free software that does that.  Apparently, I'm going to have to compare files on my desktop to the laptop, see what I can copy over, and maybe buy some simple versions of other software.

If anyone has Mac desktop and laptop equipment and some of those things sound familiar, please drop me an email with any useful advise, please!  Reattaching the "M" key is actually a priority, but the other long term stuff is more vital.

GARDEN:  We had an unusual 70+ day today, so I set about constructing the 5th of 6 framed beds.  I thought it would go fast, but NOOOOO....

I mostly have to laugh at all the surprises a project can offer.  Well, it doesn't help to complain.  Not that I don't both laugh AND swear sometimes.

I got out in the garden at 1:30.  First, I had to carry the precut boards  (by me, not the Home Depot guy after the first bad experience).  I carried one out to the garden, then decided to try using the dolly to carry 2 at a time.  Didn't work, they were too tall and awkward.  So I carried them all out one at a time.  2"x8"x7' preservative-treated boards are heavy, but on my shoulder one-at-a-time worked.  That part was fairly expected.

So the 5th frame was to go 2' from the last and since there had been old beds there before (full of good soil), I only shoveled soil enough to lay down the new boards (different sizes from the old and 90 degrees in rotation).

Dragged out all the usual tools from the shed, connected the 150' of electrical cord, set up the radio on Classical, and started to dig some trenches where the new frame would set level.  There are invading vines from a neighbor, and I have been digging them out as I go.  Dig, pull, toss, dig, pull, toss...  Only one looked odd out of the corner of my eye, so I looked at it.  A poison ivy plant!  Sure, why not?  I haven't seen a poison ivy plant in the garden for several years and I was holding it in my bare hands.  Might as well find one now. 

So I dropped it in a remote corner where it could die peacefully and went into the house at once to wash my hand.  Holding the hand up so that I wouldn't touch anything in the house with it, I got safely to the bathroom and washed with soap for 5 minutes (hurray for pump soap).  Then I washed again with rubbing alcohol.  If I'm not complaining of poison ivy in 5 days, you'll know it worked.

So I was back out at the garden and set out the corners for the 5th bed.  Which meant clamping a long straight board to the end on the previous bed so that they all stay even with each other.  Naturally, I had brought the small clamps back to the house for a different project, so back to the house I went.  That 150' of walking back and forth adds up!  So I clamped the "straight-edge board" and set some corner bricks to support the lower lever of the frame.  Yes, I've developed a routine after the first 4 beds.  Experience accumulates.

The distance to the far end of the 5th bed was farther than I eyeballed it, so I had to rip out more of the old frame boards and dig off more old garden soil into the existing beds than I had expected.  More time gone.  And then I hit a 3" tree root from my neighbor's junk trees.  And I mean "junk".  He just let whatever grew, grow.  None of them are good trees, just invasive ones that grow thickly and unhealthfully.  Someday, I may ask him if we can just cut them down and plant nicer smaller ones like dogwoods and crabapples or whatever he likes.

But it meant I had to find my ax to cut the invasive root, which was back in the house, of course (for a perfectly good reason).  Then I remembered that the ax was a bit dull, so I had to sharpen it.  And the bench grinder on a stand was behind a bunch of stuff moved when the insulation guys worked in the basement, and by the time I got access to it and sharpened the ax to "OK" that was another quarter hour gone.  And of course, the root was loose in the ground so chopping it with the ax took some time.

An hour and a half and I still hadn't gotten the first board in place for the 5th bed...  I used some bad words.

But I was finally able to start with the frame.  Previous frames, I leveled first and constructed later.  I tried constructing first this time.  If you place bricks angled at all the corners, you can get all the board corners to match.  That worked pretty well.  I got the lower layer of the frame attached in only 30 minutes.  That sounds long, but I am obsessed with getting all the corners matching as perfectly as possible.  These beds should last 20 years and I'll be looking at them a lot, so why not go for the best appearance?

To construct each layer of the framed bed, I set the long boards on a brick at the corners.  The brick also holds the short end boards at the same level.  After that, I can use long clamps to loosely hold the 4 boards together.  After that, I tap the boards until the square ends match up.  Sometimes the boards are not exactly the same width, so I wedge one up to match the next.  I used little twigs on the first few beds but realized the axe blade was very good for that.

I have 2 drills for the project.  One is a standard electric drill for drilling pilot holes for the long screws that go though both boards at the corner.  The second drill is a cordless drill with a screw setting (has a slower speed and a torque control to not overdrive the screws in).  But most importantly, it means I don't have to keep changing the drill bit for the screwdriver bit.  And I'm using lubricated star-drive screws designed for preservative-treated boards.  Those resist the P-T board chemicals AND go in easier.  They are worth the very slight extra cost.

I got the lowever level of the framed bed finished and saw bad news.  The sun was on the horizon!  It was only 4:15!  But my horizon is not flat horizon.  The land slopes up radically on my west side.  But I had all the tools out, the 2nd level of boards ready, and I wanted to finish the 2nd level today.  It supposed to rain tomorrow and get colder.

And wouldn't you know it, my box of screws was empty.  Back to the house...  I thought, and correctly, that I had another box of them "somewhere".  Took only 15 minutes to find them.  Yes, they were in an obvious place, but not obvious to ME today...  LOL!

So back outside in the fading light.  Fortunately, the 2nd level of boards is WAY easier than the first.  And I found a few quick tips to make that easier.  I had used a square piece of 4"x4" to establish square corners on the first couple of 4' wide framed beds.  I found that using 4" bar clamps on the 3' wide 3rd and 4th beds was easier.  I tightened them loosely, tapped all the corners flush, then tightened the claps more and drilled the holes.  Worked great. 

Except the 5th and 6th beds (like the 1st and 2nd beds) are actually 4'3" wide and the 4" clamps are JUST too short.  Well, guess what, you can hook 2 clamps together!  So I attached a 4' clamp and a 12" clamp across the beds at both ends and locked all the corners tight after making them flush in all directions*

After that, and with the sun over the local elevated horizon, I got the last of the screws in!  The framed bed isn't complete.  The 2 levels are not attached to each other.  I uses a 1"x6"x6' P-T board for THAT.  I attach it on the inside of the long boards.  Half the width above the seam between the frame boards and screw it on.  Then attaching screws in that 1" board below, draws the 2 levels together beautifully!

Tomorrow isn't going to be as nice as today.  50 degrees vs 75.  But 50 is OK  I might get the last  LAST, LAST LAST framed built finished tomorrow.  If it doesn't rain...

So close to the end, and chasing the decent weather to the finish, LOL!

But you know, if there weren't surprises all the time in a project, it probably wouldn't be worth writing about it.    Seriously, how exciting would it be to just write "I built 6 framed beds this year"?


* I still had to tap boards around in all the corners until the matched up evenly horizontally AND vertically.  THEN I tightened the clamps hard and drilled pilot holes for the screws.

Pictures in a few days when I finish...




Looking Up

 While I was outside with The Mews, I laid back and looked up.  I thought the tree branches and the clouds were kind of nice. Nothing import...