February 11, 2007
Remember last summer when I was putting all those quarts of tomato based stuff in the cabinet. Well, I've been eating it for lunch a lot.
I thought when I canned it, I could dump part of a quart in a container and be on my way. Not really. It's not quite that good like that.
Once these are gone, I'm not putting noodles in any more at canning time. Some veggies out of the garden probably, but no beans/noodles from now on. Use it just as a way to preserve the garden stuff and add anything else at game time. I put the 3 jars in here which equals more closer to 2 quarts of sauce. Get it hot, toss in a couple diced up onions and then start taste testing it. Add a touch of sugar if needed, maybe some cajun seasoning or crushed red pepper.
Start heating the pressure cooker...
Put some dry beans in a glass bake ware.
Put the lid on the glass dish, pressure cook at 15psi about 30 minutes. I'm experimenting with the time it takes to get perfect beans here. 35min was too long this time, I'll try 30 minutes next time. I don't want crunchy core's, but not mush either. This way you can take dry beans from the bag to in the soup in under an hour front to back. Add some beans to the tomato stuff and after it's all good and hot, scoop it into plastic containers and I have lunch for the week. It's not that special, not that complex and I'm not hard to please.
KeyBattery.com sucks. Jan 18, I ordered a laptop battery from them off the internet, 3-6 day delivery. After 2 weeks, no replies from online or phone support, I called AMEX up and disputed the charge on the card. Upon further review online, they basically bite as an online retailer. I told AMEX if anything happens to arrive in the mail, I'm refusing delivery. I told them if they do happen to actually get a hold of someone at KeyBattery to tell them not to ship anything because I wouldn't accept it. I said the same things on their online support and voice number. A week later, this shows up. We didn't do that whole tear in the package, that happened in route.
Crossed my name off, wrote what I think of them on the front and will drop it back in the postal system tomorrow.
On to the bunker project. 10 blocks @ 40 pounds + 4 eight foot 2x8's + 1 bag 80 pounds of mortar mix some misc tools and one guy named bubba was a pretty big load on the Prius. I'm sure Dale, Don, Jason and I are more weight on that car than this, but it sure looked flattened out.
I probably need about 100 blocks, so I'll get 10 more on my way home a few times. A few more bags of mortar too as I go. My original calculation was for these blocks to be 6" wide, so I had to move my line out for the 8" blocks which are really 7 5/8ths.
Here's my door frame. The right side is two 2x8's. The one against the concrete is glued with Liquid Nails and screwed into the concrete with Tapcon screws. The one layered over it is screwed down with more Liquid Nails and a pile of wood screws. I left a 38" opening in case the crew happens to be removing a decent door in the next couple months. Maybe I'll build one. It's standard width, and shorter, but I could cut off pretty much any door they got for me.
The bottom piece will come out, it's just to hold form as the wall goes up. Then, the left side was bowed out a little so I put that strip of wood on there to pull it back in while I build the wall.
That's the trawl you supposedly use to do blocks. The tray is a 'small mortar tray' which is hopefully how you mix a full bag of mortar with the hoe.
Just as an example of roughly how it might look.
These are 'tapcon' screws. If you ever need to attach anything to concrete, look these up in the screw aisle. They come with the right drill bit in the box.
Eventually, the wall is the same height as the lower header here and another header will go across the top of the blocks and across the top of the door here. That angled board is just to tie this thing up while I'm laying the blocks so it stays plumb (straight up and down).