Composting

(Originally posted on Saturday, June 24, 2006 by Tim)

I?ve managed to get bitten by the composting bug. I think the start was when the 2 cubic yards of topsoil I ordered was only 1 to 1.5 yards and was full of nails. Actually, it?s probably a result of the garden bug and having orange clay two inches down in our yard. I?ll write more about the garden later.

While I was reading up on composting I found a bunch of advertisements for these bins that you turn every day or so to get compost for the garden in two weeks. ?Wow! Compost in two weeks! I?ve gotta get one of those!? These were my exact thoughts including the explanation marks. I was a man on a mission. I then looked at the price of these bins. They range from $150 on up and I?d have to wait for it to be shipped (and shipping cost, don?t forget shipping cost). They are just plastic containers mounted on a frame with an axle that makes them easy to turn. I figured that I could build my own cheaper.

What I had in mind actually involved no building at all. I could just buy a 50 gallon garbage can and roll it around the yard every day or two for mixing. Solid in my plan, I drove to Home Depot to find they didn?t have any cans over 32 gallon. Curses! Fortunately, we live in strip mall heaven so I got back in the car and drove to Lowes and was able to find a 45 gallon can.

The first thing I added to the can was grass clippings from the yard mixed with leaves left over from last year (or the year before but who?s counting). To my dismay, I filled the can with only 25% of the clippings from mowing the front yard alone. Hmmm, maybe I need more cans. I decided that I?d best see if the can idea worked before I set up platoon of cans in the backyard.

In the end, the can idea works. It takes longer than two weeks I think, but I stopped rolling the can around in the yard weeks ago. I had done a lot of asking around about how different people did their compost bins. To one question, I always received a uniform answer.

Q: How long does it take your system to generate compost?
A: I don?t know.

There?s an important realization imbedded in this answer. People don't know how long it takes to make compost because they don't use it very often. The only time I would use the stuff is in Spring when I turn the garden. Once the excitement of starting a compost pile wore off, I realized this. Rolling the can around the backyard isn?t much fun either. There will be no gaggle of compost cans in my backyard after all.

So now my goal is to build a compost bin. As usual, I?m trying to do it in the cheapest way possible. My first idea was to build a ?box? by restacking the wood pile in a shape that allowed a cubic meter of compost pile. This idea was a bit of a disaster. Not only was there barely enough wood for two sides, but there was poison ivy growing on wood pile. Three weeks and an intense treatment of anti-inflammatory steroids later, I?m ready to make another attempt at building a compost bin.

This time, I?ve decided to build the bin out of used pallets. I called around multiple places and it seems that most everyone is good about recycling these things these days. There are a couple of industries in Christiansburg that bring their pallets to the dump, but I never managed to get in contact with them. I finally managed to find a source of pallets at a receiving warehouse.

I first attempted to pick the pallets up last week. I figured I would put one or two in our Honda Accord and make 2 to 4 trips (I figure I need 4 pallets). Unfortunately, all the pallets available were too big to fit though the doors or in the trunk. I asked the guy at the warehouse if they had an smaller pallets and he (while looking annoyed) said that they rarely get smaller pallets and they don?t hold on to them when that happens. Discouraged, I drove home thinking about how I might borrow a truck without too much effort.

While recounting my woes to Cat, she mentioned that I could strap pallets to the top of our Honda Civic. If you?ve seen our Civic, you will have noted that it has been lacking a garage for most of its natural life. In addition, it has lived in Los Angeles (high ozone) and I?d swear that someone decided to apply wax to it using a medium grit sandpaper. Needless to say, we?re not worried about any damage to the paint as a result of the transport of pallets on its roof. Once again, I set out for the warehouse to obtain some pallets.

My plan was to pick up four pallets in two trips. I would do them on separate days as the warehouse is on my way home from work. When I showed up yesterday, I poked my head into the office and asked the guy if it was still OK to take the pallets. He said it was fine, but was generally grumpy in the exchange. Now I?m not sure if grumpy is his baseline state or if he was regretting agreeing to let me have the pallets. I figured I?d best get while the getting was good and take all four pallets in one trip. The result is in the picture above.

First, I placed a piece of cardboard on the top of the car. While I don?t really care about the paint job, I?m not going to go out of my way to destroy it. This turned out to be a better idea than I thought as the pallets had some slightly protruding nails. Next, I stacked all four pallets on the roof (wondering if the roof could take the weight) and poorly secured them with one loop of rope. Pallets are heavier than I thought and I didn?t want to ask any of Grumpy Guy?s staff for help. Go go weight lifting. Maybe that?s why I?m a bit sore today. I then drove home trying to not go faster than 45 miles per hour in fear that the pallets would blow off. Being that I live in rural Virginia, I ended up with Bo and Luke revving the engine of the General Lee behind me for the last few miles. Fortunately, I made it to the turn off to my house before they broke out those dynamite tipped arrows they are so fond of.

One funny thing is that it rained last night. I was too lazy to unload the pallets when I got home. I just pulled the car, pallets and all, into the garage. Our garage is small and short, but I made it with several millimeters to spare.

Outside of composting, I?ve been continuing to work on beans and rice recipes. My current favorite is the one below. It?s a little bit bland if you don?t go heavy on the cheese and salsa.


Beans and Rice

½ lb dry black beans
1 small onion, diced
1 jalapeno, diced
2 cobs corn, decobbed
¼ cup cilantro
salt
black pepper
2 cups brown rice (dry)
cheddar cheese, grated
salsa

The night before, place black beans in a pot, cover with water, and cover pot. Allow beans to soak overnight. The next morning, drain the beans and combine them in a crockpot with the onion and enough water to cover the mix. Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours. Add diced jalapeno and decobbed corn. Increase crockpot temperature to high and cook for an additional hour. During this time, cook the brown rice according to the directions on the package. After hour, add the cilantro and salt and pepper to the beans to taste. I add 1-2 tsp of salt, but I like things salty. To serve, add one scoop of rice to a bowl. Add one scoop of beans on top. Add a layer cheddar cheese (the amount depends on how cheesy you are, I add lots). Top the mix with a dollop of salsa.

Help, I can't see my toes!

(Originally posted on Saturday, June 24, 2006 by Cathy)

Help! I can't see my toes!

For that matter, my ankles have been on vacation all week, so I haven't seen much of them either.

Oh sure, if I spent half of every day on my side, I could probably get my ankles back, but lying on my side is a good recipe for napping, and how many hours a day can you nap?

(Nevermind, don't answer that.)

I can't see my stretch marks either. They're all on the southern hemisphere, and I can't see that low in our bathroom mirror without standing on the edge of the bathtub.

Standing on the edge of the bathtub isn't seeming like a good idea, considering I can't see my toes.

Therefore: no toes, no ankles, no stretch marks either.

Problem solved.

Birth Plan

(Originally posted on Friday, June 16, 2006 by Tim)

Sorry for the long hiatus on blog posts. I had a goal of one a week and I?ve somehow fallen off the wagon. One would assume that a wagon moving at a speed of one blog post per week would be pretty easy to catch up with. Somehow it hasn?t worked out that way for me. I think the subject would make a pretty good unit conversion problem for my Chemistry 101 class.

?You are on a wagon moving at a speed of one blog post per week. As a result of too many gin and tonics, you?ve fallen off the wagon. This is followed by a bad case of poison ivy and too many video games. This gives the wagon a two month lead on you. If you can type at a speed of 40 words per minute, how long will it take you to catch up with the wagon??

As you may know, Cat and I want a natural birth. It?s difficult to achieve this in many hospitals and we don?t have a lot of choices for health care here. We have decided that our best chance to have the birth experience we want is to have a home birth. We have a midwife we like and we?ve taken natural childbirth classes to prepare for the big day. However, there is still some chance that we could end up in the hospital. Cat could go into labor before Wednesday of next week. This would place Dalton at less than 37 weeks and our midwife would expect us to go to the hospital. We also could have some sort of emergency. To prepare for these possibilities, Cat and I have written up a birth plan to hand to the staff at the hospital.

A birth plan is a series of requests to the birth team, doctors and nurses, at the hospital. Ideally it is polite and aimed at convincing the team to respect our wishes during the birth. Here?s my first draft?



?Dear Medical Establishment Drone,

We wanted a home birth. The fact that you are reading this means that we are profoundly disappointed. We might have considered a hospital birth, but the poor quality and selection of medical care in this area obviated this as a rational choice. Obviously, since we are here, things are a bit messed up. Please review the series of guidelines below to help prevent your screwing things up further.

1. No pain killers. We don?t want any painkillers. These things disrupt the normal course of labor, they make it hard for the mother to push naturally, and they cause respiratory depression in the baby. In addition, when you turn the things off right before delivery, things are much more painful for the mother as she hasn?t had a chance to build up natural endorphins. Don?t offer us any painkillers. We don?t want to hear you say the words epidural, lidocaine, procaine, demoral, or morphine. We know that you hated organic chemistry and kept losing points for drawing carbon with more than four bonds. If you can?t explain the biochemical mechanism of action of a compound, you really shouldn?t be administering it. If we feel any of these compounds are necessary, we will let you know.

2. Intermittent listening as opposed to constant fetal monitoring. We know how much you love the machine that goes ping. In addition, it was very expensive and you need to keep billing the insurance company to pay it off. The problem is, you monkeys just can?t read the thing right. Multiple medical studies have shown no predictive power in the use of constant fetal monitoring. In fact, the literature supports that intermittent listening is just as good for preventing poor outcomes and that constant fetal monitoring increases the rate of cesarean and instrumental delivery. Look, your attention needs to be focused on the mother, not on a TV screen with fun graphs. We all know you couldn?t plot data correctly in college and that you?re no better reading it now.

3. Free access to food and drink during labor. For goodness sake, labor is 14 hours long for first time mothers. What on dog?s green earth makes you think that depriving the mother of food and drink is a sane course of action. Of course mothers get exhausted and you need to pump them full of chemicals and perform cesareans when you don?t let them eat.

4. No augmention of labor. We know that you want to deliver the baby so you can make your second golf game of the day. Look, you?re not good at golf. Your golf partner knows this, your wife knows this, we know this. If you type ?worse than the Three Stooges at golf? into Google, your home page comes up as the top hit. I?m not trying to hurt your feelings here, well not much, but it?s unreasonable to be so hair triggered on inducing labor. Medical studies have shown that there are no adverse effects associated with letting labor go as long as it needs provided there are no signs of distress in mother or baby. We?ve attached the studies in the appendix. Yes, we know reading is hard and, gasp, thinking while reading is even harder. The attached papers are devoid of graphs and structures of molecules so it shouldn?t be really scary. In addition, we?ve highlighted the relevant sections for you to make things easier. Please look them over. You can go in your office and close the door so as to not be embarrassed by the cleaning help catching you trying to follow the tables with a strained look on your face.?



I figure this ought to do the trick. How could they resist my persuasive intellect on the matter?

In the end, I?m really hoping we don?t end up in the hospital. After Wednesday, if we?re in the hospital, something will be fairly wrong. It?s unlikely that we will be able to reasonably avoid interventions as they will be necessary.

Shower pictures!

(Originally posted on Tuesday, May 23, 2006 by Cathy)

Here's the photos from last weekend's shower. We clearly have some work to do on figuring out how to take good, non-blurry pictures with the camera Gail (Tim's mom) gave us. I suspect that turning on the flash would have been a good start. :(

If anyone does want to print or save the the high res version, click the thumbnail, then click the larger photo again.

And finally, here's a movie of some opening of shower gifts. (Warning, LARGE! ~40 MB)

Bigger and better

(Originally posted on Saturday, May 6, 2006 by Cathy)

Latest photo, just in case you were doubting that I'm starting to look decidedly preggers. We're still trying to make a movie of the flailing and thrashing that seems to be going on in my abdomen 99% of the time, but this baby is camera shy, I swear! He'll be kicking up a storm, but he stops whenever we break out the camera.

195!

(Originally posted on Saturday, April 15, 2006 by Tim)

Remember a few weeks back when I said I would tell you once I managed to bench press 185 pounds? Well?I lied. I actually managed to lift 185 pounds shortly after made that post. I was very excited at the time and raring to make a quick post. Then I got the idea I should make a quick graphic representing a barbell with 45 and 25 pound weights for the post. Shortly after that, I looked at the clock, remembered that it was a school night, and went to bed. Two or three busy weeks preparing for and presenting at a conference followed (note the lack of posting last week) and here we are.

As you might guess from the title, I?ve managed to bench press 195 pounds at this point. I?d be real excited, but that was three workouts ago. The last two workouts have been pretty poor. I think it?s a combination of bumping up the weight of all my exercises and eating too much before I lift.

It?s spring here and everything is blooming and starting to leaf out. The dogwood in the front of the house has flowers, we have daffodils and tulips in the yard, and all the trees I planted last Fall are beginning to get leaves. I heavily pruned the grape vine in the winter and I?m relieved to see that it is starting to flower. Even the woodchuck is running around looking fat and happy in the back yard?at least when the dogs aren?t out.

I?ve also fashioned a slow watering device I plan to use on the trees and grape vine. It?s essentially a 5 gallon bucket with a small whole drilled in the bottom. It delivers the 5 gallons of water slowly over 30 to 60 minutes. This gives it plenty of time to soak into the ground around the tree as opposed to running off. I think it will do the trick.

As another sign of Spring, the War of the Dandelions has started again. The little yellow buggers have arrived in force this year. I carpet bombed them with weed and feed early last week. Their side has started to take heavy casualties. The next phase of the operation will involve surgical strikes with a bottle of Ortho. I found a web site that generates random names for military operations. Using it, I decided that the name of this year?s campaign will be Merciless Ocelot. I?m not sure what the dandelions have named their campaign. Probably something lame since they don?t have internet access.

Another thing that happened this week is that I discovered yogurt and granola. While I?m not going to claim this is original or creative, it is quite yummy. Here?s the ?recipe? I use.

Yogurt and Granola
1 cup Dannon vanilla yogurt
1/3 cup granola cereal

Mix ingredients together in a bowl.

Cathy purchased some plain yogurt for making this last night. It?s good with plain yogurt too, but I like the vanilla better. I think that fresh blueberries with the plain yogurt might be pretty good. We?ll have to try that next week.


On the annoying side of things, our house got egged sometime last week. They actually broke a window in the upstairs bedroom and ruined a set of curtains. I?m currently debating whether to hire someone to fix it or try to do it myself. We have five groups of suspects. It has to have been one of the following.

1. One of Cathy?s students
2. One of my students
3. Some local kids
4. The spaniel mix next door
5. The dandelions

A comprehensive approach to the problem seems best. I?ve decided to strike back at all 5 groups to make sure that I don?t miss the culprit. To account for the possibility that one of our students egged the house, I have decided that Cathy and I should fail all our students this term. I?m having difficulty convincing her of this course of action for some reason. If you get some time, send her an email.

To retaliate against the local kids, I?ve decided to start supporting efforts to remove soft drink machines from the schools.

To get even with the dog next door, I?ll give her a stern ?Bad dog? next time I see her.

Finally, to settle the score with the dandelions, see above.

You might wonder why I suspect the spaniel mix next door. First, she barks at me when I?m out. More importantly, there was some dog poo next to a pile of egg shells in the yard. It was located on the street side of the fence, so it couldn?t have been our dogs. Coincidence? I don?t think so.

Tofu and veggies baked in parchment paper

(Originally posted on Saturday, April 1, 2006 by Tim)

I found a hilarious article on the BBC web site today. Apparently, some artist has made a statue of Britney Spears giving birth to her son on a bear skin rug. She is naked and on all fours. The statue is supposedly a tribute to the pro-life movement and the artist has been taking flack from both sides. The pro-choice people are protesting because it?s pro-life. The pro-life people are protesting because it?s got naked people in it. The best part of all is that Britney had a cesarean section.

It?s been a big week for cooking here. I think we have made three new meals. Cat made a tasty corn chowder and I made the two other meals. The meal from last night was rice and beans. The triumph on that meal was that I cooked the beans from scratch while deftly avoiding burning the house down. To accomplish this, I used a high tech gadget called a crock pot. Outside of the lack of copious amounts of smoke, the recipe didn?t turn out the way I wanted. I was aiming for Mexican style beans and I ended up with something closer to spicy baked beans. I plan to cut the sugar in half and add some cilantro and cumin next time. I?ll post a recipe once I have something I like.

The other recipe that I made was fennel and tofu baked in parchment paper. It?s a modified version of something I found in a magazine while Cat was getting new glasses at the optometrist. The original recipe called for scallops, but the tofu from our Kung Pao tofu recipe made a fine replacement. The fennel root gave the dish and interesting flavor. I was expecting it to be very licoricey. Instead, the fennel added some heat with a mild licorice background.

Tofu in Parchment
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 15 oz can of white beans (drained and rinsed)
1 fennel bulb (halved, cored, and thinly sliced)
½ cup fresh parsley (chopped)
2 tsp olive oil
½ tsp salt
½ tsp fresh ground pepper
1 lb Kung Pao tofu

Kung Pao Tofu (just the tofu part)
3 cloves crushed garlic
2 tbs Japanese rice wine or sherry
2 tbs cornstarch
½ tsp salt
Lots of fresh ground pepper
1 lb extra firm tofu (cubed)

The day before the meal, mix all of the Kung Pao ingredients except the tofu. Toss the tofu in this mixture and marinade overnight in the refrigerator .

Pre-heat oven to 400^oF. Place marinated tofu in a greased baking dish and cook until the outer coating begins to just slightly brown. Remove tofu from oven.

Mix tomatoes, beans, fennel, parsley, oil, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Place 4 sheets of parchment on the counter and spoon the bean mixture in the center. Top the bean mixture with the tofu. Cover with 4 more sheets of parchment. Fold up sides of parchment to seal edges and bake at 400^oF for 15 minutes. Remove from oven, cut parchment open, and spoon the contents onto plates. Make sure to be careful of the steam when you cut open the parchment package.

Working with the parchment was a pain. It didn?t hold the folds I made very well. I?m thinking of using some of those black office binder clips on the sides next time.

I was surprised by how well this recipe turned out. I didn't expect it to be all that good. Cat's comment was, "If you didn't think it would be any good, why did you try it." I guess I just wanted to play with parchment parchment paper. It's like bubble wrap for your oven.