Mystery Hooch

I finally did it, I bottled the mystery fruit mixture that i fermented last autumn. It doesn't taste like urine, and it doesn't taste like champagne either. It tastes like white trash wine at its finest. And it will be white trash sparkling wine.

I harvested 25 pounds of fall fruit and blended them into a juicy pulp in a cuisinart. The fruit consisted of 10 pounds of bland red delicious apples, and 15 pounds of asian apple-pears. The whole experiment was to see what I could do with some fruit a neighbor was giving away. He was holding a beer while telling me he couldn't think of what to do with all this fruit, and it gave me the idea, maybe I can make some use of it by fermenting it?

A boiling honey/cinnamon/clove mixture was poured over top the fruit to pasteurize it. Then when it cooled, I pitched champagne yeast in it. I supposed I was making cider or the recipe was actually similar to a "scrumpy" a Cornish cider with a rat in it (you can also use raw beef cubes if you actually want to buy a rat substitute). I chose not to add meat or raisins to this.

It tastes okay, i'm going to keep it bottled until this winter, and maybe age it a few years. It might be good and it might be awful. I tasted some of it and it's weird to say the least. It tastes sort of like spiced honey wine with mystery fruit flavors in it. I guess this is what i was thinking when I made it. Watching it ferment is half the fun, but next time I want to use enzymes to break down the fruit better.

Hungry?

If you're wondering what this is, it is a batch of tomatillos that have been roasted in the oven. They're going into a blender. There are fried tortillas waiting and i think it's going to be chilaquiles.

I'm starting to get really hungry.

We've been on vacation and it's a good time to be creative. I've been fixing things around the house, painting, setting up the mythtv pvr, plus some cleaning and gardening so far. I've got quite a list going.

Solar ovens, the new microwave?

Redding, California is a very hot place. In the summer, temperatures reached 110 degrees (43c) fairly often, and the hottest I've experienced was 120 degrees in the shade (49c). In these kind of temperatures, I'd go to my car after work and interesting things would happen. Cigarette lighters leak all their contents. Ice left in a wax-covered drink cup would melt, then the hot water would melt the wax in the cup, leaving a greasy slick on hot liquid. I used to think, what if I put a potato in the car all day? For one thing, dinner would be ready when I got off work.

I was onto something there. A few years ago I discovered that it's possible to cook food in the sun, and the results are excellent. It's not exactly a mainstream activity... there's a microwave, bread machine, and a crock pot in every home but a solar cooker??? Even in perfect climates like Sacramento or Redding for solar cooking, hardly anyone has even heard of the concept. I couldn't wait to try it.

The oven shown is the SOS sport solar oven. It was invented by retired 3m company scientists in Minnesota. It's made from recycled plastic soda bottles and is really effective. Also every oven that you buy sends one to people in poor countries where the amount of firewood and fuel saved is phenomenal. But we shouldn't underestimate fuel savings in the rich world where it's so easy to plug something into the wall, then the plug is plugged into something else, which is plugged into something else, which is plugged into... coal-fired plants in nevada?

Supposedly you can can tomatoes and fruit in it, and I can't wait to try it and report the results. Canning indoors in boiling water makes the kitchen so hot in the summer, you almost have to do it naked, which can be fun.

The solar oven makes very tasty and easy lasagna (no boiling of noodles required), I also use it to make jamaica (hibiscus beverage) and several other things: refried beans, moong or masoor dal, sour chickpeas, brown or white rice. And there are many many more things you can do. Supposedly dead animal parts taste fabulous when cooked in the solar oven. The solar oven society raves about corn on the cob in the oven, but i tried it and was not thrilled, it tasted like you tried to cook it aboard a space station.

One of the best things about cooking in the sun is dinner is ready when you get home from work. The kitchen stays cool so you save energy twice, once by not consuming gas for cooking, twice by not taking the heat out of the house you used for cooking with your air conditioner.

It's as easy to make meals in the solar oven as it is to make things in a crock-pot or microwave. Just about everything I make in it takes 5 minutes max of food prep. The lasagna is truly amazing that way. If you're a busy single person or family who doesn't like to cook, but you like slow home-cooked meals, solar cooking may be for you. These folks seem to like it. When I build the yurt commune to escape a crumbling society, I will need several of them to create multicourse feasts. Kumbaya!

Happy June 21, the summer solstice

Have a thoroughly enjoyable longest day of the year! Maybe it's a good time to celebrate, perhaps by slowly heating dead animal parts over a flame, then tearing pieces of muscle and skin off the bones with your teeth and swallowing them. Whatever you do, make it a pleasant day!

Low technology

This battery charger charges two AA batteries in about 2 sunny days. On a good sunny day this thing charges at the rate of 150 ma/hour. I set a pair of batteries out for a bicycle light and that took a week. Gradually the NiMH batteries are replacing all the remote controls and everything in the house.

It's pretty easy and kind of fun too. I particularly enjoy taking a nap with the radio on and letting the batteries run down without bothering to turn the thing off.

I also hate buying batteries and I'm kind of a cheapskate. Battery advertising is also particularly annoying.

I'm not sure if it's the solar charger or the nature of NiMH batteries, but some electronics and motors don't like the batteries. The batteries say 1.2v each on their side instead of 1.5 and this makes a big difference when you multiply cells (4.8 volts instead of 6 volts for example).

This tecsun R-97000DX is my regular travel radio. It can get any FM station you need, plus it has really good AM and shortwave. With analog tuning!

Winning the war on Natural Gas

With our electricity now 100% renewable and the purchase of an ultraefficient car, we're now going to concentrate heavily on natural gas, because this is now where it's easiest to cut our carbon emissions. In fact, we're at "war on natural gas" for the next two years. So far we haven't been able to do much because many of the structural changes to our life will be in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. Or have we?

I looked at our gas bill for last month, and we reduced our May consumption from 2.8 cubic meters of gas to just under 2 cubic meters. A 30% reduction? How did this happen?

I'm thinking it must be the new showerhead which I love. It works really well and this thing cost only $12 at real goods which is a lot cheaper than new windows, or a new water heater or furnace.

My wife said that she didn't like how it rinsed her hair, but this was the last complaint I heard several months ago. She's been fine with it since then. The old showerhead is still in a drawer in the bathroom and can be reinstalled any time. All these things we do are completely voluntary, and in our house, we are not ascetics... we love luxury, but we make luxury efficient.

The great thing about this showerhead is that I don't ever think about "taking too many showers". I'll take 2 or 3 a day on weekends when i go bike riding or mowing the lawn.

In addition to it being a low-flow showerhead, it also has a shut-off button. For me I'm tall so it takes forever to soap up. I've acquired a new habit of shutting the thing off while I soap up, that must be where the 30% is happening because it takes a while for me to get soapy.

Pay us a visit, the more the merrier! We'll never run out of hot water!

Killer cat strikes again

As I was saying... my cat Mei likes to kill mice and eat them. This just happened a few minutes ago.

Don't be fooled by the sweet face

This creature is actually a vicious killer. I've never had a cat that catches so many mice as Mei-guo/Mei-day. And never birds, crickets, or moles, just mice and one rat. We think her dark face camouflages her head at night, but it may also be that she's very fast and athletic.

The rat happened last week, it was not killed but caught-and-released, much to our dismay. She was very proud having it by the neck, but she decided she would let go of it in the house and play with it awhile. She lost track of it and when we showed her where it was under the bookcase, she lost interest and was even afraid of it and left the room for us to shoo out of the house.

Then there are the times when she doesn't completely eat a mouse and I step on a mouse liver or spleen when I get up in the morning. I suppose you really have to like cats to put up with this kind of thing.

The summer beverage of 2006

Solar Jamaica Aguafresca

Hibiscus sabdariffa

"Roselle or rozelle, sorrel, red sorrel, saril, Jamaica sorrel, Indian sorrel, sour-sour, Guinea sorrel, Queensland jelly plant, lemon bush, rosa de Jamaica, flor de Jamaica, Jamaica, quimbombó chino, Florida cranberry, oseille rouge, oseille de Guinée, sereni, agrio de Guinea, viña, viñuela, vinagreira, curudú azédo, quiabeiro azédo, zuring, carcadé, bisap, and hibiscus flowers -- and there are more!"

This recipe is for each "sport" solar cooking pot. I use both pots and make a large batch. Summer directions (38 degrees N latitude, cloud-free day):

1500 ml water
30g hibiscus flowers (calyxes)
Cane Sugar

Add hibiscus flowers (calyxes) to cold water in the pot in the morning, put in solar oven in the sun. Oven should reach 212F/100c in the late afternoon. Around sunset pour hot brew into large iced tea jar. Stir in cane sugar to taste. Add cold water and dilute to taste, about 1-2 liters. Allow to cool awhile then refrigerate.

This is great over ice, tons of vitamin C. Deep ruby red color. Delicious with beans/rice/tortillas. Also great mixed 1/1 with lemonade.

No the drier is not broken...

This is an ongoing art piece. Since it's 96 degrees outside (38c) and very dry and sunny, we figure we would just go ahead and use some of the free energy from a huge nuclear fusion power plant that is 93 million miles away.

I read somewhere (probably not such good information) that Californians have a major stigma about hanging laundry outside. Californians think "tenement yard" instead of saving energy and common sense and saving the planet.

Sometimes we hang just jeans and towels, and the shirts I would hang anyway. Why not hang them wet instead? Then put all the underwear in the dryer, it saves like half the electricity. We have renewable power but this helps pay for it.

Severed head flies out of pickup truck during collision

Severed head flies out of pickup truck during collision

Mrs Potato Head!

This is a scene from the city that changed my life. This is a triple-decker parking lot for bicycles in front of Centraal Station in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. You can get anywhere by bicycle in Amsterdam, and when you wake up in the morning, what you hear are birds singing, not cars.

When I got back to Sacramento, I decided I would use my bicycle just as much. The weather in Sacramento is paradise compared to the Netherlands. Bicycle riding is instant joy to me, it costs nothing, and there's something about the speed and endorphines combined that lead to a special kind of happiness that non-riders just would not understand.

Additionally, my bicycle is helping my independence movement. What can be a better protest against the war than to stop buying products from the people that brought this war to the world?

I ride only a mile to work, but after a few years of doing this since the war began, I lost 15 pounds. There are so many benefits to bicycle riding that it's almost too many to list. I'll try.

Lose weight
Keep money out of the pockets of oil-war-pigs
Fight inflation
Reduce carbon dioxide emissions
Quiet down your neighborhood
No parking hassles
Bliss

What does independence mean to you? What does it mean to be independent? This blog is about sharing ways i'm trying to be more independent. Well, it's about a lot of things.

I believe the way we Americans have been taught to use fossil energy developed in a time when there was a lot around and nobody else could afford it. If we blow it, we'll miss out on affording the next energy revolutions. I believe what we are in is partly an inner revolution.

I think leaders may not come around for what we need to do, that we may have to lead ourselves first and be examples to others. We lead ourselves by changing our chemical relationship with our planet and our great-grandchildren.