Month: February 2018

Healthy Pizza or Unhealthy Hummus?

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ Leave a comment

I have had an ongoing love affair with pizza as long as I can remember. I have had a disdain for foods like hummus for almost as long. That is quickly changing (my dislike of hummus, not my love of pizza). Strangely enough, this change is partially due to my engineering background.

I’ve always thought pressure cookers were a neat concept. Why not? They use physics to trick mother nature into allowing water to boil at a higher temperature. I never had one to play with, but my sister bought me and my wife an Instant Pot for our wedding. It seemed that beans benefited the most from this process, hummus is mostly beans, so here we are.

Returning to my love of pizza: over the years, I’ve experimented with pizza variants. One of the biggest disasters was my attempt at making pizza sausage. Note that I wrote pizza sausage, not sausage pizza (image to the left). To all of the naysayers that said it would never work, you were correct… at least thus far.

Now to pull my stories of pizza and hummus together. While looking for bean and hummus recipes, I discovered that there were people making pizza hummus. I thought that would be a great way to test out our new pressure cooker, looked at some recipes online, picked one, and started playing around.

The base recipe came from www.wholenewmom.com, but I decided to make some changes. You can see some of the iterations in my notes to the right (no, I am not a doctor). I really liked the last batch, so I am finalizing the recipe.

 

Pizza Hummus

  • 8 oz (half bag) of dry garbanzo beans cooked 45 min under high pressure
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • a bunch of peeled garlic (8 -10 cloves)
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 3/8 cup  +/- water from the cooked garbanzo beans
  • Small can tomato paste (8 oz)
  • 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
  • 2 tsp red peppers
  • 1 tsp fennel
  • 4 tsp basil
  • 1 1/2 tsp oregano

Put all of the ingredients in a food processor and beat the heck out of them.

Procedurally, I have learned some things that might be helpful:

  • I find it necessary to mix for much longer than I would have thought necessary, 10-15 minutes on high.
  • Some people peel the beans for a smoother consistency, I just pummel them into submission.
  • Since the garbonzo beans seem to take the longest to beat down, put them in the food processor with the oil and start abusing them while you measure everything else out.
  • I minced the garlic when I began playing with this recipe. Now I just peel it and throw it in while the food processor annihilates the garbanzo beans.
  • Once close to the final amount of water, a little bit goes a long way towards adjusting the consistency. Save some of it to slowly add at the end to obtain the desired consistency.
  • The red peppers add much more heat to the hummus after it sits for several days.
  • I started grinding up the last 4 items in a coffee/spice grinder (red peppers, fennel, basil, oregano) to increase the smoothness. These also seems to release the heat of the red peppers immediately.
  • Use the food processor to thrash the garbanzo beans just a little more.
  • The hummus will thicken upon cooling.

If things go well, a post in the near future might be titled “Healthy Wings or Unhealthy Hummus.” Any guesses what it will be about?

An Egg-cellent Drying Rack?

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ Leave a comment

There is quite the online debate about washing fresh eggs versus leaving them unwashed. I sometimes find “nastiness” (most polite term I can think of) on eggs when I retrieve them from the nest box. I feel the “nastiness” should be rinsed off, but there is also something called a “bloom” protecting the eggs. Some feel the bloom should be retained at the expense of the “nastiness”. I personally don’t want the blooming “nastiness” in the fridge, so I rinse the eggs.

Debate aside, I needed a way to dry the eggs after rinsing and before storage. I searched the intergoogles and found all sorts of egg stands, but I couldn’t find one that exactly met my needs:

  • Open to allow the surface of the eggs to dry
  • Minimal points of contact to allow water to drip off of the eggs
  • Something to catch the water so it doesn’t make a mess

 

I finally settle on the design shown to the left that uses about $1.50 worth of materials. It is simply a couple 2×4’s with some holes and a few dowels glued through them. It comfortably holds 4 eggs, uncomfortably holds 5, and can accommodate 6 in a bind. The width is matched to a paper towel which is used to catch the drips and can be disposed of after several uses. It has also been stained and painted with polyurethane for sanitary purposes.

In retrospect, I wish I had made the stand a few inches wider and fitted to some sort of drip tray. I might save up another $1.50 to make a better one if I get more chickens or time.

Pizza! Propane! Pepperoni! and Science?

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ Leave a comment

During my time on this planet, I have picked up a number of things:

  • The Earth is probably not flat
  • It is likely that man once landed on the moon
  • 2+2 is mostly 4
  • Pizza is the best foodKIMG Renamed (81)

While the first few items are debatable, the 4th item is a well established scientific fact.

 

 

I typically prefer the simplicity of getting pizza from a local purveyor, but I also like to tinker with making it at home. Knowing that that dedicated pizza ovens at restaurants go to 700+ degrees Fahrenheit , I’ve toyed with the idea of modifying the controls of my kitchen oven to get to those levels. While I have used a thermocouple to measure the oven temperature during a cleaning cycle at well over 900 degrees F, the insurance companies and sensibility frown at such behavior. I decided to take it outside.

I once got distracted while my propane grill was heating up, and I left it on high for a bit too long. When I got back, I noticed a burning smell and that the temperature gauge was maxed out. This made me curious about two things:

  • How hot did it get
  • How hot could it get

I couldn’t figure out the former, but I could definitely figure out the latter. I made an enclosure with some bricks and got it to about 1050 F. It took a small optimized (open on the bottom) enclosure to get to that temperature, but I figured a pizza sized enclosure could get to an ambient temperature of at least 700 F.

I initially attempted using a piece of granite (a drop from a countertop manufacturer) set on bricks as the top of the oven and another rectangular granite drop as the cooking surface. I really thought that the granite would crack and all would be for naught. It  did not crack, but as a cooking surface it acted too much as an insulator. The heat went around it rather than heating the cooking surface.

For my next attempt I bought a round pizza stone from Wal-Mart for about 8 bucks, cut it to fit with an abrasive masonry blade, and tried it out.  I don’t know if it was the round geometry letting more heat by or if it was the thermal conductivity of the pizza stone, but it worked great.KIMG0117

 

Shown above is the last iteration. It has bricks supporting the granite drop for the top of the oven and the pizza stone as the cooking surface. It maintains about 750 – 850 F and will evenly cook a pizzas in about 4-5 minutes after heating up for about 20 minutes.

I still want to make a wood-fired pizza oven sometime in the future, but I don’t know when that will happen. The design is still being over thought and over engineered.

Project Pantry : Freedom Cleat

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ 1 Comment

I live in an odd house that is slowly becoming less odd. It was originally a small residence, then it was a slightly larger residence, then it was a business, and now it is reverting back towards a residence (or possibly compound). Needless to say it still has some quirks.

One of the areas I’ve been slowly addressing is the pantry / laundry room. It originally had a place for a washing machine, but the dryer was in a shop space about 50 yards away. KIMG0203I have moved some things around for the pantry to include a dryer with the washer, but there has always been a large gap behind the appliances (shown to the right).

I wanted to fill in the gap for quite some time, but I didn’t have a solution I liked. Initially, I planned just to mount a shelf to the wall to at least provide some storage. I planned to build an enclosure under the shelf since there would be a large open space, but I was worried about access to plumbing and electrical connections.

My basic design requirements were:

  • Easily access (to plumbing and electrical connections)
  • Sturdy (able to support a load)
  • Inexpensive

I was going to use hinges and complicated fasteners for access, but I thought about it some more and found a simple solution. I am posting it because someone with a similar issue might find it useful. It involves a French (or preferably Freedom) Cleat.

A French Cleat is basically a mounting system in which a matching pair of 45 degree pieces of molding are used to hang objects on a wall, such as cabinets or televisions. They can easily be made by ripping a 1×4 in its long direction with a table saw set at 45 degrees and mounting one piece to the wall and the other to the item to be hung. They can hold quite a bit of weight and the 45 degree ramp holds the object firmly against the wall. A google search will provide numerous examples. In the past, I have found French (Freedom) Cleats to be an excellent, simple, inexpensive, quick way to mount flat screen televisions.

The gap between the appliances and the wall behind them is shown above. It is hard to tell from this view, but the gap is about a foot wide. The picture also shows the half of the cleat that is attached to the wall behind the washer/dryer.

KIMG0204The picture to the left shows the underside of the shelf/enclosure. The back of the shelf has the portion of the cleat that mates to the cleat on the wall. The lower portion of the front of the shelf/enclosure has foam weather stripping to minimize the gap between to the washer/dryer and reduce wear as the washer/dryer vibrates during operation.

The installed shelf/enclosure is shown to the right.

KIMG0205

There are several features to this solution:

  • There is virtually no gap between the shelf/enclosure and washer/dryer
  • No fasteners are used for attachment, so the shelf/enclosure can be removed and replaced in a matter of seconds
  • The French (Freedom) Cleat can hold a significant amount of weight
  • A nice feature of the Cleat is that adding weight to the shelf has a tendency to suck it towards the wall rather then bending it away from the wall like a typical shelf might.

I hope you find this helpful. Let me know if you have any questions or use a French Cleat for anything interesting.

 

Tuna of the Yard: A Chicken Update

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ 2 Comments

It has been quite a while since I’ve posted as I’ve had some career changes and gotten married. Things are getting caught up, so I wanted to post some anxiously awaited updates. I will start with chickens.

I read that once a chicken habit started, it was hard to keep control of the addiction. My initial plan was to “try” only one chicken, but that immediately segued into three:

  • 1 Chicken would be lonely
  • 2 Chickens minimum would be required (one to keep the 1st chicken company)
  • 3 Chickens would be ideal  (an extra chicken as a backup)

My thought process was that 3 chickens would yield about 2 eggs per day, and a “flock” of 3 chickens shouldn’t be too hard to maintain. What I didn’t include in my thought process was:

  • The stupidity of chickens
  • Chickens should be isolated before being introduced to a flock
  • A new isolated chicken by itself would be lonely (hence a need to buy two at a time)

One of my first 3 chickens had to be dispatched due to stupidity (I think she ate several feet of twine), so I needed a new backup chicken. Since I needed to buy new chickens in pairs and keep them isolated.KIMG0004 it lead me to build a new coop (on which I will post more details later).

Now I had a secondary coop. I bought 2 new chickens, got them acclimated with the old chickens, and things were going well with 4 hens… for a while. I eventually realized that I had extra capacity that was not being utilized, mentioned it to a friend, and we agreed that I would take 2 of his chickens. He brought 4.

Things get kind of squirrelly after that. One of the hens turned out to be a rooster and was given away, a friend gave us a couple “prettier” hens, another hen died of stupidity, a hen was potentially hawked, one decided to provide her services elsewhere, we acquired some chickens wandered to our flock from a neighbor…

Chicken Summary to date:

  • The flock peaked at 9 chickens
  • It currently consists of 6 hens and 1 rooster
  • We’ve acquired a total of 14 chickens
  • 7 chickens have left the flock

Summary of lost chickens:

  • Stupidity – potentially ate a bunch of twine, pendulous crop
  • Stupidity – went through cat door, couldn’t find way back out of shop
  • Maleness – turned out to be a rooster and was given away
  • Possum – potentially attacked by a possum
  • Hawk – was found injured in the middle of the day, there was a hawk lurking about
  • Sickness – the hen was never quite right and was attacked by the other hens
  • Stupidity– naively set out to make it on her own somewhere else

I KIMG0207have included an example of chicken stupidity just to prove my point. It was one of the coldest days of the year, so I heated their coops and provided in-coop food and water. This bird brain decided she’d rather spend the afternoon standing in cold water. It should also be noted that 3 of the chickens opt to stay in a tree during subfreezing temperatures rather than their heated coop.

Lessons Learnt:

  • It is impossible to have just one chicken
  • Like gasses, chicken populations grow to match their contained volume
  • Chickens are stupid
  • Eggs taste great