A couple of years ago I bought the three burner big boy stove at Costco. It is made by a Utah company called the Great Outdoors. My model is the Expedition. It has three burners and works off of a portable propane tank. Its the same kind of tank that is used for gas barbeques.
The big issue for this set up is maintaining the burners. It has a nice stand and it will hold my biggest pot.
When you hook it up to get it going it is essential that all the connections be checked with a squirt of windex to make sure that the connections hold and that there will be no safety issues.
I check this out before we started making jam on it this year and all the burners checked out. I took the pipe cleaners to the little holes and the vent and it was great. Sometimes a spider takes up residence in the tubes and the little gas holes do not work that well.
By the time Linzi made it over to see us and to get the strawberry jam going there was a storm. The burners did not get covered. Only one of the three burners pushed the gas out with a blue flame instead of a yellow one. A yellow one means that the air is not adjusted properly. This puts more carbon out and causes the bottom of the pot to get soot all over it. Such was the case for the 17 quart pot. The area around the cooking surface was nice and clean but he pot got sooty.
The best way to clean the soot off the pan is with some comet sink cleaner and a scrub cloth. It did the trick and everything is back to being able to be stored in the kitchen until the next jam session.
Have a great weekend!
: ) Pat
Friday, May 20, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Making Strawberry Jam 2011
Its become a delightful Spring tradition.
Linzi comes over and we make the first batch of jam for the season. The Hmong fruit stand has beautiful strawberries. There is always a nice selection of other truck farm vegetables along with the strawberries. We bought an overflowing flat and half flat to start. Its been a rainy late spring and the berries have plenty of sugar in them. Some of them are not quite as dark red as they are some years but overall they have magnificent flavor.
I had gathered up all of the old jam jars that I could put my hands on in the house. They were tucked in all of the nooks and crannies of the various dishes. That was enough for the first batch. The next batch we were off to Target to pick up a set of one pint jars. We bought them out.
This year we are trying out a new pectin mix. Its called Pomona's universal pectin. One box uses 16 cups of fruit. The usual Sure Jell low sugar makes a batch with 4 cups of fruit. There is a calcium water component sin Pomona's that activates the citrus based pectin. It could be used for any level of sugar added jam or jelly. The pectin, or jam thickener is usually based on apple or pear starch.
The mountain of strawberries that we bought amounted to two huge batches. We used the outside stove to boil the jars and took the jam making inside this time because the outside gas stove was generating a little yellow on it flame do to water from recent rains in the gas system.
The calcium water was integrated into the strawberries to start. They the berries that were crushed in the food processor were heated to a boil. Sugar with the pectin was stirred in. The whole big pot was allowed to come to a boil again and as it was boiling, butter and my lemon juice ice cubes were added. We only used 4 cups of sugar for each 16 cup batch of strawberries.
It will be interesting to see how this all works out. The box and testimonials of people who have used this method are all very positive.
What makes it easy to make is my partner helping out. It also helps to have a 17 quart magna lite aluminum stock pot.
The chance to spend some time with my daughters is truly priceless. Thanks to Linzi coming down and a chance to meet up with Heather for a full weekend Mother's day we have had a great month of reunion with the family.
Thanks girls for taking some time in your busy lives to spend some time with us!
: ) Pat
Linzi comes over and we make the first batch of jam for the season. The Hmong fruit stand has beautiful strawberries. There is always a nice selection of other truck farm vegetables along with the strawberries. We bought an overflowing flat and half flat to start. Its been a rainy late spring and the berries have plenty of sugar in them. Some of them are not quite as dark red as they are some years but overall they have magnificent flavor.
I had gathered up all of the old jam jars that I could put my hands on in the house. They were tucked in all of the nooks and crannies of the various dishes. That was enough for the first batch. The next batch we were off to Target to pick up a set of one pint jars. We bought them out.
This year we are trying out a new pectin mix. Its called Pomona's universal pectin. One box uses 16 cups of fruit. The usual Sure Jell low sugar makes a batch with 4 cups of fruit. There is a calcium water component sin Pomona's that activates the citrus based pectin. It could be used for any level of sugar added jam or jelly. The pectin, or jam thickener is usually based on apple or pear starch.
The mountain of strawberries that we bought amounted to two huge batches. We used the outside stove to boil the jars and took the jam making inside this time because the outside gas stove was generating a little yellow on it flame do to water from recent rains in the gas system.
The calcium water was integrated into the strawberries to start. They the berries that were crushed in the food processor were heated to a boil. Sugar with the pectin was stirred in. The whole big pot was allowed to come to a boil again and as it was boiling, butter and my lemon juice ice cubes were added. We only used 4 cups of sugar for each 16 cup batch of strawberries.
It will be interesting to see how this all works out. The box and testimonials of people who have used this method are all very positive.
What makes it easy to make is my partner helping out. It also helps to have a 17 quart magna lite aluminum stock pot.
The chance to spend some time with my daughters is truly priceless. Thanks to Linzi coming down and a chance to meet up with Heather for a full weekend Mother's day we have had a great month of reunion with the family.
Thanks girls for taking some time in your busy lives to spend some time with us!
: ) Pat
Monday, May 16, 2011
The Puerto Vallarta Photographer
I thought it was in interesting photo.
A guy on the Malacon was shooting a photo of his woman between two authentically dressed indigenous dressed characters by the arches. The man did not take time to put is beer with a couple of limes in it down before he took the photo.
I decided to paint this photo on a canvas prepared with the new "watercolor" grounds offered for purchase from Daniel Smith in Seattle. What this new medium allowed me to do it to take an acrylic canvas and paint watercolors on it. Without a proper treatment the acrylic canvas will shed watercolor like a duck.It is primed with the paint on grounds in a liquid medium and then allowed to dry.
There is a company that makes canvas treated for watercolors, Fredrick's but the canvas sizes are often limited. This painting called for a change in aspect(height to width ratio) so that the painting would be more horizontal than standard painting canvases. The local Michael's ran a special on canvases, half off their gallery supported acrylic canvases. I bought two and treated them with two coats of the watercolor grounds. I had to make sure that they dried between coats.
This is the first painting that I have made with these new grounds. The texture while painting them is great. The feel is similar to paper.Dry paint to dry canvas results a pleasant crusty feel and sound. It is also possible to scruble the texture right down the base if needed. I needed to do that to extend the line of horizon through the feathers for this painting. I also needed to do this to lift the charcoal shadows on the tile surface. My art teacher suggested that I do that since the shadows were reading too darkly and connecting them with the objects that they were to represent was difficult at times in this painting.
The figures were left to be loose as the setting and the photographer are supposed to be the important part of this painting.
Check to see how this painting progressed as shown in the flickr link connected on the the left side of this blog.
Have a great day! Pat
A guy on the Malacon was shooting a photo of his woman between two authentically dressed indigenous dressed characters by the arches. The man did not take time to put is beer with a couple of limes in it down before he took the photo.
I decided to paint this photo on a canvas prepared with the new "watercolor" grounds offered for purchase from Daniel Smith in Seattle. What this new medium allowed me to do it to take an acrylic canvas and paint watercolors on it. Without a proper treatment the acrylic canvas will shed watercolor like a duck.It is primed with the paint on grounds in a liquid medium and then allowed to dry.
There is a company that makes canvas treated for watercolors, Fredrick's but the canvas sizes are often limited. This painting called for a change in aspect(height to width ratio) so that the painting would be more horizontal than standard painting canvases. The local Michael's ran a special on canvases, half off their gallery supported acrylic canvases. I bought two and treated them with two coats of the watercolor grounds. I had to make sure that they dried between coats.
This is the first painting that I have made with these new grounds. The texture while painting them is great. The feel is similar to paper.Dry paint to dry canvas results a pleasant crusty feel and sound. It is also possible to scruble the texture right down the base if needed. I needed to do that to extend the line of horizon through the feathers for this painting. I also needed to do this to lift the charcoal shadows on the tile surface. My art teacher suggested that I do that since the shadows were reading too darkly and connecting them with the objects that they were to represent was difficult at times in this painting.
The figures were left to be loose as the setting and the photographer are supposed to be the important part of this painting.
Check to see how this painting progressed as shown in the flickr link connected on the the left side of this blog.
Have a great day! Pat
Sunday, May 15, 2011
The Office Chairs
A couple of weeks ago Sue and I were in Modesto pawing through the Goodwill.
Its in interesting avocation. It satisfies Sue's need to shop, yet nets little in terms of cost.
There are two major Goodwill stores in Modesto. One is located on the famous "cruising street", McHenry. The other is out near Vintage fair Mall adjacent to Hwy 99. This store front form has had many children toys that are in really good condition. We have been gathering these up for Heather's child care facility in the city. There seems to be more diversity of items at this store then the other. The McHenry one has piles and piles of blue jeans. I thing that the ebay shoppers have a close eye on this one.
So a couple of weeks ago we were in the Mall Goodwill and there were a couple of office chairs in be back. They seemed to be sturdy and had comfortable bent backs. On closer inspection there were tags that identified them as furniture from an Oregon based insurance company. The tags on the seats indicated that the chairs were Bolin chairs.
Bolin chairs were made in Siler North Carolina. They made carriage struts in the early 1900's and then switched production to chairs and furniture. The chairs from the good will were made in 1969. They continued to make chairs until 1990 in Siler. There are not many of these chairs in the antique market. Someone that did the research on them speculates that people are just keeping them and they are passed down through the generations.
The price on these chairs was 8 dollars each. They were a handful to drag out of the store. They took two trips because of their weight and bulkiness.
Yesterday I started to tackle the refinishing of these chairs. Every time that I do this, I am reminded again that this is a process that requires a good deal of patience and a careful eye to detail. It is good for character building.
The chairs were covered with a gunky faux walnut oil stain. The years of cleaning them with wax oriented cleaners have left their toll too. The arms had some cracking on the surface.
The other part I was thinking about was the number of people that have sat in these chairs waiting for an insurance based decision. Will the company pay? And to what extent will it cover my costs? Insurance chairs may have a story of their own.
Formby's to the rescue. I have used this process to redo several fine pieces of furniture that did not have a poly urethane finish. I went down to my neerby Lowe's and invested in the jugs. This process does not pull out the patina generated by the chair over the years like stripping does. It is still a rubber gloved, steel wool process where the first coat goes on and breaks up the surface crud. The next coat gets into the finish and some of the stain. It has to use steel wool to scape and then be wiped clean with a rag. The cracks and the connections of the pieces of wood as it meets with the legs has to be been more carefully scrubbed and not allowed to maintain the darker stain. The refinish solution has a general smell similar to hair dye.
Once the overall finish has been removed, a couple coats of tung oil gets wiped on and a allowed to dry.
So far one chair has been done. It has cost about 40 dollars in materials to bring the chair up to refinished standards.
Take a look at the difference on the flickr pages and the facebook pages.
Have a great day.... Pat
Its in interesting avocation. It satisfies Sue's need to shop, yet nets little in terms of cost.
There are two major Goodwill stores in Modesto. One is located on the famous "cruising street", McHenry. The other is out near Vintage fair Mall adjacent to Hwy 99. This store front form has had many children toys that are in really good condition. We have been gathering these up for Heather's child care facility in the city. There seems to be more diversity of items at this store then the other. The McHenry one has piles and piles of blue jeans. I thing that the ebay shoppers have a close eye on this one.
So a couple of weeks ago we were in the Mall Goodwill and there were a couple of office chairs in be back. They seemed to be sturdy and had comfortable bent backs. On closer inspection there were tags that identified them as furniture from an Oregon based insurance company. The tags on the seats indicated that the chairs were Bolin chairs.
Bolin chairs were made in Siler North Carolina. They made carriage struts in the early 1900's and then switched production to chairs and furniture. The chairs from the good will were made in 1969. They continued to make chairs until 1990 in Siler. There are not many of these chairs in the antique market. Someone that did the research on them speculates that people are just keeping them and they are passed down through the generations.
The price on these chairs was 8 dollars each. They were a handful to drag out of the store. They took two trips because of their weight and bulkiness.
Yesterday I started to tackle the refinishing of these chairs. Every time that I do this, I am reminded again that this is a process that requires a good deal of patience and a careful eye to detail. It is good for character building.
The chairs were covered with a gunky faux walnut oil stain. The years of cleaning them with wax oriented cleaners have left their toll too. The arms had some cracking on the surface.
The other part I was thinking about was the number of people that have sat in these chairs waiting for an insurance based decision. Will the company pay? And to what extent will it cover my costs? Insurance chairs may have a story of their own.
Formby's to the rescue. I have used this process to redo several fine pieces of furniture that did not have a poly urethane finish. I went down to my neerby Lowe's and invested in the jugs. This process does not pull out the patina generated by the chair over the years like stripping does. It is still a rubber gloved, steel wool process where the first coat goes on and breaks up the surface crud. The next coat gets into the finish and some of the stain. It has to use steel wool to scape and then be wiped clean with a rag. The cracks and the connections of the pieces of wood as it meets with the legs has to be been more carefully scrubbed and not allowed to maintain the darker stain. The refinish solution has a general smell similar to hair dye.
Once the overall finish has been removed, a couple coats of tung oil gets wiped on and a allowed to dry.
So far one chair has been done. It has cost about 40 dollars in materials to bring the chair up to refinished standards.
Take a look at the difference on the flickr pages and the facebook pages.
Have a great day.... Pat
Friday, May 13, 2011
Movie Song of Sparrows
A very intriguing movie is out on Netflicks DVD.
The Song of the Sparrows is an Iranian film about a rural man and his family whose job is to manage an Ostrich farm in a rather barren area of Iran.
The man's family,lives a short distance away interacts with the story line.
The man's daughter has a hearing aid that accidentally falls into a surface cistern used to hold excess water. The neighborhood boys, seemingly all under 12 proceed to look for it. The dad arrives and through the gunk they find the hearing aid. It is broken. Their dream is to clean it out and develop a way to propagate goldfish and therefore become millionaires. The hearing aid eventually has to go to Teheran to get repaired but there is no money to fix it.
The man loses his job as an ostrich escapes from the compound and he has no way to retrieve it even on his motorcycle. He finds himself in Teheran and people think that he is a motorcycle taxi driver and hop on the back. Most of the people pay him and some take advantage of him. His wife is worried the motorcycle is going to break down and then what would they do? The interaction with the neighbors and his family and scenes of living room life provide an incite to the rural culture.
This is a rich but understated movie and provides a glimpse of growing Teheran, and the entrepreneurial fiber in many of the people of Iran.
Its well worth the viewing.
: ) Pat
The Song of the Sparrows is an Iranian film about a rural man and his family whose job is to manage an Ostrich farm in a rather barren area of Iran.
The man's family,lives a short distance away interacts with the story line.
The man's daughter has a hearing aid that accidentally falls into a surface cistern used to hold excess water. The neighborhood boys, seemingly all under 12 proceed to look for it. The dad arrives and through the gunk they find the hearing aid. It is broken. Their dream is to clean it out and develop a way to propagate goldfish and therefore become millionaires. The hearing aid eventually has to go to Teheran to get repaired but there is no money to fix it.
The man loses his job as an ostrich escapes from the compound and he has no way to retrieve it even on his motorcycle. He finds himself in Teheran and people think that he is a motorcycle taxi driver and hop on the back. Most of the people pay him and some take advantage of him. His wife is worried the motorcycle is going to break down and then what would they do? The interaction with the neighbors and his family and scenes of living room life provide an incite to the rural culture.
This is a rich but understated movie and provides a glimpse of growing Teheran, and the entrepreneurial fiber in many of the people of Iran.
Its well worth the viewing.
: ) Pat
Saturday, May 7, 2011
The Rowing Machine Arrived and is a presence
It currently stands in our living room.
Its resting state is nearly 8 feet long.
It is made of wood and has a large enclosed ball of water.
It can be rolled around the house with built in wheels.
The monitor is pretty impressive.
Most of it came pre assembled
It arrived in two boxes on our porch. The smallest one was about 65 pounds. It had handles carved into its cardboard sides so that it was not that hard to carry in.
The handles came in a extra box.
The pulley set up was already assembled. It dropped easily into the rails.
The instructions were in English and warned of being too illustrative. It took me about an hour to hook it up. The instructions said that it would only take about a half an hour. They said the same thing about assembly in a futon.. and it took twice the time for me. Its a good thing I am not trying to make a living as a mechanic.
So its up and ready to roll.
: ) Pat
Its resting state is nearly 8 feet long.
It is made of wood and has a large enclosed ball of water.
It can be rolled around the house with built in wheels.
The monitor is pretty impressive.
Most of it came pre assembled
It arrived in two boxes on our porch. The smallest one was about 65 pounds. It had handles carved into its cardboard sides so that it was not that hard to carry in.
The handles came in a extra box.
The pulley set up was already assembled. It dropped easily into the rails.
The instructions were in English and warned of being too illustrative. It took me about an hour to hook it up. The instructions said that it would only take about a half an hour. They said the same thing about assembly in a futon.. and it took twice the time for me. Its a good thing I am not trying to make a living as a mechanic.
So its up and ready to roll.
: ) Pat
Saturday, April 30, 2011
The Rowing Saga
It started innocently enough.
Linzi and I signed up for a class at the community college across the street in circuit weight training. She also through that it might be nice to get some free weight training in as well. One look at the football team training with the free weights outside sent her running back to set up the circut weight training class with me instead. We took the orientation class and learned to do the shuffle from one station to the next and it circulated in and out of a bank of treadmills and stationary bikes. Also on the ground for aerobic use was a rowing machine. It was a wind resistance model and it was pretty cool in getting the heartbeat up and not pounding joints and knees and other fragile bits of the body.
That was about 1999. I have have been doing do diligence and began looking for something like that that I could work out on either in a gym that had better operating hours without a big contract and a sales pitch or to get one for home use and use it to supplement my 2to 2.5 mile daily walking routine.
Everywhere I looked it said that this is the greatest exercise machine around. It won't do much for your lower body but it is great for the abs and the upper body. The action is generated by pulling the handle toward your chest as you push yourself backwards on a tiny sled seat that follows the track.
The gyms either don't want this on their floor or it may be too hard to maintain or who knows. These machines do not seem to be available at any of the commercial gyms.
The cheap ones would not handle my weight. So I was after one that could accommodate by 350+ weight and not break down. Linzi said that she has used them in a gym and they work well. She recommended that I get a commercial gym quality one. That means that I was looking at ones that were around 1200 to 1800 dollars minimum. After a lot of web spec shopping and no local outlets for shopping, I decided to buy one through Amazon. It is made of hardwood and carries for resistance water encased in polycarbonate ball with internal paddles that press against the sides.
Amazon would not require me to pay for shipping. No taxes and they would see to it that delivery was made. They would take my Amx card and Amx would even give me a 1 percent rebate for using it. If I ordered the length of time before delivery looked like about one week. When I actually made the sale,the delivery was set at 10 days. At the end of two weeks I contacted the company that Amazon uses for its equipment asking about when I could expect delivery.
I got an email back saying that each of these were hand made on an individual basis in Rhode Island and they were indeed very high quality and that I would be very happy at the results. But they had not received any indication that mine had been made or even started. They would let me know as they assured me that they made them for all clients and they were going to get to mine in the most expedient manner possible.
They understood my concern and were refunding me 20 dollars since they could not refund the shipping as Amazon had made it free for me. They also wanted an acknowledgement by email that I had received this and understood what was going on. I thanked them for their research and waited.
Two weeks later I got an email from them saying that they had received an invoice on mine and they would forward the shipping info as soon as they got it and I could expect this info my Monday. I got a note from Amazon asking me since I bought this thing on April 4th if I could return a survey on how it all went. I ignored this and sent an email on the next Friday to the company. They responded with, didn't Amazon send you the shipping info? I wrote them back saying they did but it was awfully general and thought that you might have something more specific. The Amazon shipping info had a Fed Ex ground number that I followed up on and it just indicated that shipping info had been sent from them to Rhode Island. No goods had been shipped.
The company sent me a shipping notice again. When I ran this one through it showed that the goods had made it from Rhode Island to Connecticut. It even gave me an arrival date of May 3. So I am in anticipation of 85 pounds of exercise equipment arriving at my doorstep next week.
Then comes the salient question, which room do I set it up in.
My guess right now is the Art room, with its small HD TV and a sound barrier if the sloshing gets too tough.
Wish me luck!
Love
Pat
Linzi and I signed up for a class at the community college across the street in circuit weight training. She also through that it might be nice to get some free weight training in as well. One look at the football team training with the free weights outside sent her running back to set up the circut weight training class with me instead. We took the orientation class and learned to do the shuffle from one station to the next and it circulated in and out of a bank of treadmills and stationary bikes. Also on the ground for aerobic use was a rowing machine. It was a wind resistance model and it was pretty cool in getting the heartbeat up and not pounding joints and knees and other fragile bits of the body.
That was about 1999. I have have been doing do diligence and began looking for something like that that I could work out on either in a gym that had better operating hours without a big contract and a sales pitch or to get one for home use and use it to supplement my 2to 2.5 mile daily walking routine.
Everywhere I looked it said that this is the greatest exercise machine around. It won't do much for your lower body but it is great for the abs and the upper body. The action is generated by pulling the handle toward your chest as you push yourself backwards on a tiny sled seat that follows the track.
The gyms either don't want this on their floor or it may be too hard to maintain or who knows. These machines do not seem to be available at any of the commercial gyms.
The cheap ones would not handle my weight. So I was after one that could accommodate by 350+ weight and not break down. Linzi said that she has used them in a gym and they work well. She recommended that I get a commercial gym quality one. That means that I was looking at ones that were around 1200 to 1800 dollars minimum. After a lot of web spec shopping and no local outlets for shopping, I decided to buy one through Amazon. It is made of hardwood and carries for resistance water encased in polycarbonate ball with internal paddles that press against the sides.
Amazon would not require me to pay for shipping. No taxes and they would see to it that delivery was made. They would take my Amx card and Amx would even give me a 1 percent rebate for using it. If I ordered the length of time before delivery looked like about one week. When I actually made the sale,the delivery was set at 10 days. At the end of two weeks I contacted the company that Amazon uses for its equipment asking about when I could expect delivery.
I got an email back saying that each of these were hand made on an individual basis in Rhode Island and they were indeed very high quality and that I would be very happy at the results. But they had not received any indication that mine had been made or even started. They would let me know as they assured me that they made them for all clients and they were going to get to mine in the most expedient manner possible.
They understood my concern and were refunding me 20 dollars since they could not refund the shipping as Amazon had made it free for me. They also wanted an acknowledgement by email that I had received this and understood what was going on. I thanked them for their research and waited.
Two weeks later I got an email from them saying that they had received an invoice on mine and they would forward the shipping info as soon as they got it and I could expect this info my Monday. I got a note from Amazon asking me since I bought this thing on April 4th if I could return a survey on how it all went. I ignored this and sent an email on the next Friday to the company. They responded with, didn't Amazon send you the shipping info? I wrote them back saying they did but it was awfully general and thought that you might have something more specific. The Amazon shipping info had a Fed Ex ground number that I followed up on and it just indicated that shipping info had been sent from them to Rhode Island. No goods had been shipped.
The company sent me a shipping notice again. When I ran this one through it showed that the goods had made it from Rhode Island to Connecticut. It even gave me an arrival date of May 3. So I am in anticipation of 85 pounds of exercise equipment arriving at my doorstep next week.
Then comes the salient question, which room do I set it up in.
My guess right now is the Art room, with its small HD TV and a sound barrier if the sloshing gets too tough.
Wish me luck!
Love
Pat
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