Future recycle

Made a great find the other day! Our city is building a new main city hall and sheriffs department HQ. Somebody must have messed up in a big way, because yesterday their dumpster was overflowing with this 4' Diameter PVC pipe, and some 6" PVC. These are going to be used in the future as some sort of hydroponic system. I love being able to find something that's being thrown out and reuse it for something that I have been putting off. These would have cost me quite a few bucks to get new.

Now I just have to stumble over an air and water pump and I'll be almost there.
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Thank you.

I thought I would take a minute tonight to say thank you to the fellow bloggers out there that link to me. I appreciate their support, and wanted to make sure that I follow suit in directing others to them.
http://a-homesteading-neophyte.blogspot.com/

http://www.down---to---earth.blogspot.com/

http://cardinalacre.blogspot.com/

http://www.anandadevika.blogspot.com/

http://notsobigliving.blogspot.com/

http://childreninthecorn.blogspot.com/

http://life-as-i-show-it.blogspot.com/

I don't know if I missed anyone, if I did please correct me. If you haven't dropped in to any of these sites please do.
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I am what I am.

Why am I the way that I am? Do you ask yourself this question? I seem to be asking it of myself more and more of late. I grew up in sunny southern CA, with a house lot I figure to be somewhere in the neighborhood of .19 acres (this is just a guess, Mom, if your reading you can correct me.). We never had a garden that I am aware of. My mom did always plant flowers and things in the yard to make it attractive, but I never got the impression that it was a passion to her. My dad, having been made to weed the garden when he was a kid was not so ambiguous about his determination to not garden, yet I look forward to gardening every day and sometimes yearn for a place in the country where I can have a small "pocket farm" (Liz I stole your phrase.) of my own and do my best to provide for my own needs. I look back and remember the things that I always was fascinated by, and realize that I can’t understand what it was that got me interested in them in the first place.
I have always liked to grow things for instance. I remember getting a houseplant from my mom when I was a kid, and training it to grow up my walls and across my ceiling. I loved to see it there. Still today, I can get endless satisfaction from just experimenting with plants and watching them grow and evolve. My office has begun to resemble a small greenhouse.
I was also incredibly interested in the old time ways. That is to say that if I could have gone to a Daniel Boone camp or something as a kid I would have been in heaven. I remember I used to get books on American Indian crafts and try to make them out of things I could gather in the canyons behind my house. I made string out of yucca fibers, throwing weapons from scrub oak and rocks, and tried my hand at game traps; I never caught anything. (I’m sure my mom’s thankful for that. I can just imagine her face if I had brought home some jackrabbit for dinner at 10 yrs old.) Today that translates to my interest in finding simpler ways of doing things. I remember being 9 yrs old in Sweden visiting my family; I went to a place called Skansen and found that the living history museum was one of my favorite things ever. Today I like to go to places like This is The Place state park to learn and see how things used to be. Last year, the family and I were in Ohio visiting my wifes side of the family and spent a day checking out the Amish. Oh man, did I love it there, I think the wife was afraid I was gonna move her back and give her a bonnet and a butter churn.
All this being said; how do we get to where we are? I work in the IT industry, and every day wonder how I ended up here? I don't have any peers of mine that have this same fascination. I am curious from you, those of you homesteading or even just those of you with interests that are maybe just a little outside of average, Nature of Nurture?
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Compost Day

You may remember a while back when I built myself a DIY homemade Compost Tumbler from an old pickle barrel and some salvaged wood. Today I pulled and screened the finished product of that endeavor. The rich brown humus that is the finished product couldn't make me happier. I was told that if you can't recognize what was put into the compost then it is done. Well, this pile has garden cuttings, grass clippings (some of those from the last addition are still recognizable but barely.), egg shells, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, sawdust, paper towels and shredded documents from work. I'm sure there's a lot of other things that I can't remember, but it is a very well rounded mixture I assure you. I was not really too happy with the physical performance of the composter itself however. The plastic barrel that I used as the main portion of it, was warped pretty seriously because of the double to triple digit heat that we've had this summer, plus the couple hundred degree internal temperature caused by good composting action. I have a method that I am going to try to solve the problem with it, but in the mean time, I was able to procure a new, metal food grade barrel for a measly 3.00 dollars. It was originally a bulk wheat barrel for the Church storehouse and I got it from their thrift store. I haven't modified it too extensively yet. I only punched a bunch of holes in the top and bottom. The lid is removable so I can take it off to add content, or water the mix. Rather than put this barrel in place of the other one, since it has no side opening yet. I decided to leave it on the ground, and roll it across the grass to tumble it. This method I am happy to say, took considerably less time to come up with, and works great. I thought I'd try something new, and post a short clip of it here.

Hope that works for you. It's my first time useing YouTube. So I'll mark two days ago, August 6th as the day I loaded the composter with the goods, and we'll see how long this batch takes to "cook". The last time I did it, it tooks something like 2 1/2 months, I kept adding as I went though. This time, I filled it with kitchen scraps, grass and sawdust and I'm leaving it at that to see how long it takes. Having two tumblers now, I can get one going good, while I start collecting in the other.
I'll keep you posted.
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Ratatouille & Eggplant Parmesan

Tonight I cooked. I stopped by a local small farm on the way home from work earlier this week and had to use the veggies that I picked up there. I had some zucchini and eggplant, tomatoes from the yard, picked up some onion and bell peppers as mine are lagging in the garden this year and decided to make ratatouille and some eggplant Parmesan. This was not inspired by the movie mind you. I learned to love it a long time before that.
The bottle of Newcastle Brown ale next to the plate (Not a very local purchase, but I need to spoil myself once and a while.) and the not very well plated ratatouille have something in common to me, and always bring back good memories. When I was 19 I was invited to England for a semester to study at the University of London. During my time there I fell in love with Newkie Brown (Newcastle Brown Ale). I needed to work to save money before I went there though and took a job for the summer at a small mom and pop cafe. "The French Gourmet", was a great place to work. The owner and her son and daughter were like family to me, and taught me a lot about cooking. Ratatouille was one of my main duties every week. So to me these two are a great combo. One helped get me to the other.
If you've never made it, you really ought to try it out. You can eat it alone in a bowl like a vegetable stew, or have it for breakfast over a fresh omelet with Swiss cheese, or like tonight serve it with something else like Eggplant Parmesan and soak it up with some french bread and olive oil.
When I cook, unless I am following a strict recipe, I just wing it. I don't generally measure anything and season to taste so my recipe is a little vague; do with it what you will. You can substitute for what is available if you like, what I used were the traditional Provence ingredients.

Ratatouille:
Onion cubed (1 inch or so); I used two good sized ones.
Bell pepper cubed ; 1 large or two smaller ones.
Zucchini cubed; I had about 3-4 cups I guess.
Eggplant cubed; about 2-3 cups.
Tomatoes cubed, If you have a lot of fresh tomatoes use only those, cube about 5-6 cups worth. If you are short on tomatoes you can supplement what you have with a can of diced tomatoes, and a small can of tomato sauce. (That's what I had to do.)
1 Whole Head Garlic peeled and chopped rough.
Herbs; basil, thyme, parsley (I also added a little rosemary because I like it.)
Butter
Olive oil
1. In a medium to large stock pot, add some butter and olive oil. Yes both, olive oil has a higher smoking point and will keep the butter from getting that burnt flavour that is will get if heated to high. I do this because I like to sweat the onions and then get the heat up high to caramelize the sugars in in them and "burn" the edges a little.
2. When the pot is heated, add the onions and salt and pepper them. Sweat them, till they are nearly translucent. Add the garlic and and then turn up the heat for a little while. Watch it here because if you burn the garlic it will be nasty. You want to see the onions starting to brown on the edges and stick to the pan just a little. These are the yummies, you want them.
3. When you see that they are browning, deglaze the pan with some white wine, or cognac if you have it. If your don't use alcohol at all use some vegetable broth or water, just be careful of the salt content in broth. I happened to have some cognac, I don't even remember why, but I added about 1.5 - 2 shots of cognac to a shot of water in a glass and added that, stirring and scraping off all the yummies that were stuck to the pan.
4. Add the bell peppers and herbs and reduce the heat to a med simmer.

(pause to smell the good smell coming from the pot... mmmmmm.) OK, back on track.

5. After about 3-5 minutes add the zucc's and eggplant and tomatoes, salt and pepper again. to taste. Cover and simmer for 45 min - 1 hour. Check and stir periodically so it doesn't stick.
6. Before the eggplant are quite done (not quite soft but not hard at all), remove the cover and cook it down a bit to condense the flavors. This is a good time for the taste test to see where you are seasoning-wise and adjust as necessary.

That's it. I hope you give it a try if you haven't had it before, it is a great summer treat to make with all the fresh veggies we have access to.

For the Eggplant Parmesan I just sliced the eggplants into 1/2 inch thick slices, mixed some bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese 50/50 and added some salt and pepper to the crumbs. Dipped the eggplant in some beaten egg and covered with Parmesan.
I fried them on a med heat in the same oil/butter mix until they were browned and just softened. If they look a bit too dark it's probably OK. the cheese will darken a little more, but tastes great regardless.

Now I think I'm hungry again, maybe a little midnight snack; ratatouille is great cold too you know?
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Thought for Today

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.

~Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755 - 1826), (The Physiology of Taste, 1825 )

What I'm reading

I am not a fast reader, let's get that out in the open. It's not that I am not a good reader, on the contrary, I think I am actually a very good reader. It's just that I am hyper analytical I think. I read something, then a few sentences later I get an epiphany, and go back to re-read it. Either that, or I get distracted by something else, and completely just lose where I was at for ten minutes.
Lately I have been working on this book. I initially began reading it as a part of Crunchy Chickens book club but alas, I am a book club drop out; just too damned slow I guess. Actually I was in the middle of reading it when we headed out on our marathon vacation earlier this summer, and haven't been able to read it again until lately as I had to wait for it to be available at the library again.
At any rate, I know a lot of you are familiar with the book. Have many of you read it? It is absolutely one of the best non-fictions books that I have read. This book has caused me to, whether I like it or not, rethink a lot of the way that I eat, and how I want to eat and feed my family in the future. I, like so many, had really been starting to buy into the organic foods propaganda that is the marketing du jour for foods, and until reading about the ways that a lot of the "organic" foods are processed, really did assume that it was happy cows in California if you know what I mean?
I have been reading the chapter on Joel Salatin's Polyface farm. I was so impressed with the lengths and measures they take to mimic in essence what is a completely natural cycle. The cows fertilize the grass, while leaving it short enough for the chickens to clean up and "de-parasite" it while aerating and further fertilizing it. The woods protect the watershed, and allow the grasses to flourish. Every facet of the farm is tied to multiple other facets to create a complex and diverse polyculture and produce a very high quality product in a very efficient way. I have been looking into more local foods, and have been actively buying what I can from some of our local farmers, but am sad to say I haven't found a lot of them, or that they are not easy to get to. The search continues however, and my garden which has been sorely lacking this year seems to be getting into shape now.
If you have not heard of this book, I highly recommend it. If you are very happy with your current diet, and prefer to be ignorant of where your food comes from, I don't. Don't take that as a challenge, or a put down, just understand if you read this book, you can't help but to start rethinking what you eat.
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