Compost Bandit

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I take our kitchen bucket of scraps out to the compost bin every few days.  The bucket is made for kitchen scraps.  It seals tightly enough, and it has a carbon filter on it keep the odor down.  We don’t usually notice the bucket, except when it isn’t there, meaning I forget to bring it in after emptying it into our outside compost bin.  I do need to empty it, or fruit flies set it.  The scraps consist of lime rinds and the stale ends of toasted bagels and onion peels and pasta that fell on the deck during dinner and other rot.  It is pretty much stuff we don’t want to or really can’t eat.  Not everyone feels so timid about digging into the ort, however.

Every time I head outside to the compost bin to empty the bucket, there are bits scattered about the ground.  I scoop them up and add them to the top of the pile, but they come back again.  Some critter gets in there and roots around and eats stuff and makes a general mess.  It is stealing our future dirt.  It is a compost bandit.  Recently what finds its way out of the wire mesh of the bin is corn husks.  We have been trying to eat corn on the cob lately as often as we can.  Fresh corn season only lasts a few weeks, after all.  I did add a few cobs to the pile the first couple of times we ate local corn, but they take forever to break down, so I often get creative after dinner–read, toss them into the woods.  If the squirrels are going to nibble the cobs anyway, why invite them to dig through the scrap pile?

The thing is, although I have to clean up after them, the squirrels (they are most often the culprits, although turkeys have been knows to find the pile as well) do me a service, despite their slovenly ways.  Whenever they search for bits to eat, they dig, and digging means they move stuff around, and this means they add air to the pile.  They help aerate things so it all breaks down faster.  I do stir the pile whenever I add to it, but they make sure it happens more frequently than I might get to that task.

In the end, the animals can have their bits.  I will not feed them on purpose;  I will always do my best to hide things from them.  But if the critters find something upon which they enjoy dining, they can have it, as long as they have to stir things up and help me out in the meantime.  I don’t mind tidying up their spills.  I can accomodate some quality labor, even if it does make me forget to bring the bucket back inside on occasion.

Kakuro

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A while back I wrote about my new interest in Kenken.  I had tried sudoku and had some fun with that, but kenken was way more interesting for me.  I still am hooked.  My wife has recently borrowed my book of puzzles and has been plowing through them.  Good for her.  I am a little concerned that I will have none to do in that book when she ends her spree, but no matter.  At the moment I am into kakuro.

My parents, in their wisdom, gave me a half dozen puzzle books for father’s day.  One of them was a book of kakuro puzzles.  I had never done them before, never even seen them before.  The book describes them on the back cover:

Kakuro are half sudoku, half crossword, and use a combination of logic and arithmetic.  They will require you to focus, think carefully, and reason your way out of missteps.

It is a good thing these are math based puzzles, otherwise I might not forgive the split infinitive in the description, but why be picky?  I managed to flub the first puzzle in the book, making an error somewhere that I finally just left behind, but once I got the hang of it, I couldn’t stop.  They are a blast.  Here is a sample, from kakuro.com:

Sample Kakuro Puzzle

Sample Kakuro Puzzle

Both this site and kakuro.net have some good samples and online puzzles and links. The idea is to add each row across so it adds to the number written at left without repeating any digits 1-9.  Then do the same for the vertical rows with the number at the top.  So if you look at the top left, you need to add two numbers to get 4.  Only 3 and 1 work.  Then you need to figure out which order they need to be written.  It is good fun, simple to understand yet often challenging to solve.

I still am jazzed on crossword puzzles and kenken, and those books still litter the house, but at the moment, kakuro holds my interest the most.  In fact, I need to stop typing now.  I have a puzzle left unfinished from earlier.

Painting All Day and a Full Moon

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The plan was to get started as soon as I could.  I needed to sand some more, so I figured I needed to wait until everyone was awake, at least.  But I didn’t wake up until late myself.  It was 8:00 before I was really moving about the house.  And I was the first one up.  Coffee, breakfast, water, making plans, all that happened before I got out there.  I sanded with the disc sander, then with the corner sander.  Then I taped.  Then I had to decide what to do with the windows.  Tape them or scrape them?  I decided to try a third method and scrape/wipe as I go.  And I realized I didn’t have a small paintbrush, as I had thought.

After a trip to the hardware store I began the actual painting–meaning dipping the brush into the primer and spreading the white stuff on the trim–at 11:30.  We have a small extension of the house in front of the deck.  It has an additional small piece of roof.  I decided to just do the trim on this section, not including the upper windows above this small roof or the windows off to the side on the same side of the house or the soffit along the roof proper, and I am glad I limited my ambitions.  After two hours of slapping on primer I was maybe a third finished.  I took a break for lunch and kept going.

I painted and painted.  I was not looking forward to the cross pieces on the windows.  They would require the most time and the most care.  The thing is, I don’t even like those things.  They are not necessary to the structure of the windows–one pane would do fine–and the house isn’t so old that that all those panes were the only option.  Plus, they block the view.  I have to bob and weave to see the sunset or to follow the harrier hovering over the field.  I wish they weren’t there and now I have to paint them with care.  I saved those for last.

These are tall windows I am painting at this point, the size of doors.  I decided to leave the two actual doors for later since I need to take them off to really paint them.  I’ll get to those when I paint the upper windows.  Still, that means four full length windows with ten panes each.  Painting those would be a bear I imagined.  I painted one, ten panes total, and it was late.  My family had already eaten dinner.  I wanted to keep plugging away.  I didn’t want to leave it for tomorrow since the oil-based paint needs a day to dry.  But since the remaining window panes had been covered by storm windows (which I removed before starting) they didn’t need primer.  I painted the bottoms where some water had leaked through over the past few years and I was done for now.

I was at it for eight hours.  That is a good day’s work.  The problem is that I still need to put the final coat on, the actual paint.  That will take me another day.  The other problem is that I still have most of the house to paint.  The other problem is that I am just working on the trim.  The siding will need to be painted as well, it just didn’t need it so badly this summer, or so I thought until I spent a bunch of time right next to it while painting the trim.  I have many many hours of work left to get this all done.  I understand why other people hire someone to paint their houses.  A team of people with the right tools who know what they are doing and have the time to just hammer it out?  That would get it done way faster and way better than me.  It just happens to cost thousands of dollars.  I’ll do it myself, at least this time.

I can’t quite figure out why one would use paint instead of stain these days.  Stain seems better for the wood and requires far less work to maintain.  Our last house was stained and (granted is was a little smaller) took me only a few days to refinish.  That was easy.  This is not.  Scrape it all off and stain it next time?  Sounds just as hairy.  Maybe next time I have to get this done, however, I will be better equipped.  I will know what I am doing and will have the tools and equipment.  I might be faster.  Or I could just pay someone to do it.  I hate to succumb to that but whew, this project is a beast.

Anyway, night has fallen and the air is cool and I have some peach ice cream under my belt, and I mean that last one literally.  I am not sure how much I will get done tomorrow.  We plan to head to the Addison County Field Days.  All this playing certainly gets in the way of painting.  One can’t do everything, however, and I, humble homeowner that I am, am simply doing what I can.  At the moment I plan to just enjoy watching the full moon peek out from behind the clouds.  That is enough for the time being.

From Groton to Gratin

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Swimming in Groton

Swimming in Groton

Yesterday we were on the tail end of a trip to Ricker Pond State Park to camp overnight with friends.  It is part of Groton State Forest which, I learned a couple days ago, is the second largest state landholding.  I am guessing the first is Camel’s Hump State Forest.  That is a big one, too.  We swam lots and ate s’mores and slept on the bumpy lumpy campsite floor and listened to loons.  We had a fine time, squeezing one more tent adventure into our summer.

The summer is fading fast.  This evening, after dinner, feels a little like fall.  The light is swinging around and it is getting darker earlier.  The air has a bit of a chill.  But we are having none of it.  Tonight I crafted a summer gratin and I am, as I write, making the turns that will result in peach ice cream.  That is as summer as it gets.

This gratin is a dandy of a dinner.  Made with almost all local ingredients (hard to get local olive oil and parmesan round here) it is hot and crisp and juicy and just plain old delicious.  The basics:

1. Slowly saute a bunch of onions or leeks (I used both–bunching onions from our CSA and leeks from our garden) and add garlic at the end

2. Slice up tomatoes, potatoes par-boiled to get them nice and tender), zucchini and yellow squash and mix with oil and herbs

3. Arrange in layers with parmesan and cheddar in between, tossing in salt and pepper and fresh herbs (I used thyme and basil grown right here)

4. Sprinkle the top with grated parmesan and bake at 375 degrees for 70 minutes.

5.  Cool ten minutes and serve it up

6. You got yourself a gratin.

Gratin Just Prior to Consumption

Gratin Just Prior to Consumption

I’m telling you, it is tasty–fresh hot and delicious and the pizza box says.  Yesterday we were in Groton; today gratin was in us.

The sun fades on a perfect August day.  The clouds are tipped in pink and yellow.  Black eyed susans and day lilies bloom along the edge of the field.  Crickets chirp.  The smell of freshly cut hay drifts across the fields.  And peach ice cream on the way.  That’ll do.

Another Summer Adventure

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Now that we cleaned up and unpacked from our week away, we are repacked and ready to head off for the night.  We are planning to stay at Ricker Pond State Park for some swimming and canoeing and s’mores and the usual summer fun.  We should get in plenty.  It will be another fine day in the Green Mountain State.  We need to stop three times:

1. At the bank to cash a check and to get cash for firewood (can’t bring your own these days to avoid transporting pests)

2. At the post office to mail some rubber gloves to a friend

3. At the market to purchase eggs, crackers, chocolate (for the s’mores) and one lime (for the gin and tonics).

It ought to be fun.  We need to take advantage of these last days of summer.  Work and school will kick in for all of us way too soon.

Fresh Mint Ice Cream

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I had the idea recently to use some of the mint we have in our herb garden to make some ice cream.   I found a recipe by another blogger with a recipe she tried that involved using fresh mint.  I tried it myself, with a little variation.  I used cream, of course, but also skim milk.  And I used good chocolate.  I chopped up a couple of bars of Lake Champlain dark chocolate and added that.

Chocolate Chopping

Chocolate Chopping

It was very minty.  My wife described it as having a “Kapachow!’ right when you tasted it, but then a mellow finish.  It has a fresh real mint taste.  I might use less mint next time, but maybe not.  I wouldn’t want to lose too much of the flavor I was after to begin with.  Overall, I think it tasted about right.  Here is the finished product:

Chocolate Chip Mint Ice Cream Ready for Snacking

Chocolate Chip Mint Ice Cream Ready for Snacking

Here is recipe I used, (a variation on this one), which makes about 1 quart:

Ingredients:

1 cup skim milk

3/4 cup sugar

2 cups cream

pinch of salt

2 cups packed mint leaves

5 egg yolks

6 oz. chopped good quality dark chocolate

Directions:

1. Mix the milk, sugar, salt and 1 cup of the cream in a saucepan and warm it gently.  Submerge the mint leaves in the liquid and set aside to steep at room temperature for an hour.

2. Pass the mixture through a strainer into another saucepan, pressing on the leaves to remove as much liquid as possible.  Toss the leaves into your compost bucket and rewarm the liquid.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks until fluffy (a couple of minutes).  Slowly pour the warmed mint liquid into the egg yolks, whisking the whole time.  Then pour the egg cream mint mixture back into the saucepan.

4. Stir the mixture over medium heat with a silicone spatula that can take the heat, scraping the bottom, until the mixture thickens and sticks to the spatula.

5. Pour the 2nd cup of cream into a bowl and place a strainer over it.  Pour the warm liquid through the strainer into the cream.  Mix until blended.

6. Cool your ice cream mixture thoroughly, several hours in a refrigerator or chill in an ice bath and then cool an hour in a refrigerator.

7. Freeze in an ice cream maker, adding the chocolate bits at the end and mixing them in well.

If you try it, please let me know how it comes out for you.  Next up on the ice cream circuit:  peach.  We are off to go camping overnight so it will have to wait until at least later in the week.  We do have to get through this batch first, although I can’t imagine that will take very long.

On the Lake for a Week

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Leaving the Island, Heading Home, Looking Back

Leaving the Island, Heading Home, Looking Back

When I was in high school I read an essay called Return to the Lake.  I remember that it was a good read, although I couldn’t tell you who wrote it, and I remember that I, along with some other folks, visited Lake Winnepesaukee soon after reading it.  The essay was essentially about visiting, as an adult, a lake that had had meaning when the writer was younger.  I returned to my own lake this past week.

We all went, this nuclear family of mine.  We swam and swam and ate and swam some more.  My children love the place, that place being Three Mile Island Camp.  It is an Appalachian Mountain Club camp where I worked twenty years ago.  I loved it then.  It had a huge impact on my life.  It still is pretty good.

We stayed in a couple of tiny adjacent rustic cabins right on the lake.  I got up every morning, looked out at the still water for ten minutes or so, laid my glasses on the dock, and slipped into the water.  I felt cool and calm.  Some mornings I swam with loons.  One morning I swam in the rain.  Then I climbed back to the small porch and waited for my wife and my children to waken.

We had little to do all day.  Meals are prepared by the staff and they do the clean-up.  The cabins have no electricity, although the main house where family style meals are served does.  We played and swam and rested and spent time with friends.  We ate at the appropriate times.  When it rained we hung out on the porch and drank tea and chatted while the children played games inside.  Life is pretty good like that.

Home today we cranked out laundry and mowed the lawn and picked the abundant vegetables from out garden.  Check this out:

A Few Veggies Ripe After a Week

A Few Veggies Ripe After a Week

We ate salad and corn on the cob (local but not ours) and blueberries (we even had some of those ripe!) and veggy burgers for dinner.  We looked out over the field and decided it is as good as looking out over a lake.  It was hot.  If we were still on the lake we would have just jumped in the drink to cool off.

The air has cooled now.  The children are off to bed early.  I am happy to be home.  I could have stayed longer but, like Christmas, experiencing it only once every year increases its appeal and its value.  If we lived there year round we couldn’t have this amazing garden.  We will return next year to swim and to play and to rest.  We have some of that to do around here in the remaining days of summer.  And a little work to do as well.

Once we get enough work done, we can return to the lake once again.  And we will love being there all over again.

Up Too Early?

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I couldn’t sleep.  The clock said 5:30.  Then my son stirred and I went in to see him.  He went back to sleep.  I didn’t.  I considered sitting outside for a while.  It’s too wet.  It rained and rained last night.  More rain.

I finished reading Steinbeck’s Winter of Our Discontent recently.  It takes place in 1960.  A different time.  I can’t stop thinking about it.  The story line is not particularly complex but the characters are so deeply drawn that the story is a deep one.  Our hero leads a happy life, one of simplicity and ease but his family and others, and himself, point out how his family was once a great one in the town and how he once had a fortune.  This leads him to make some choices to “get rich.”  I figured, half way through, that the story would have one of two endings.  Either he succeeds at getting rich and shows everyone that being a good guy can pay off, or he crashes and burns and we learn how only the ruthless can succeed.

Like life, the ending isn’t so simple.  He does manage to overcome some challenges and find a way to increase his financial resources.  He “gets rich.”  The story, however, tangles with two big questions for me.  What is really important in life?  And what is the nature of morality?  Before he began to make any changes to make his new fortune, our hero is a grocery clerk, the only one in the local store (remember this is 1960 and the interstate highway system that feeds today’s supermarkets is in its infancy), and he is happy, mostly.  His relationships with his friends and neighbors are genuine and positive.  Those become complicated and darker.  He keeps secrets from his wife.  His son, who already has the idea that one can make it in the world by cheating, sees that maybe hard work isn’t necessary after all.

The hero, Ethan Allen Hawley, has two teenaged children and a devoted and loving wife.  I couldn’t help imagining my own life when my two children grow just slightly older.  What will my relationship with those three most important people in my life be like?  How will the choices I make affect them?  What will I teach my children with the choices I make about work, money, love, friendship?  Ethan makes some decisions that today would seem acceptable to most people, almost 50 years later, but he struggles with them so much he considers suicide.  Can one get rich and maintain a true moral compass?  Can one do business with someone and still remain friends?  Why do we need to get rich anyway?

I guess part of the reason Ethan stands out for me is that he is a thinker.  He really thinks about all the pieces of his life.  He carefully considers how every decision, every act, will affect otehrs.  When his world is the simple one of a grocery clerk, the answers are simple ones.  Once he starts making big changes, his thinking becomes tangled.  He still thinks a lot but it means lots of mental wrestling, rather than mental play.  Things aren’t so simple.  I guess I can relate to that.  I tend to think a lot as well.  If I were the one opening the grocery store, I can imagine myself, like Ethan, sermonizing to the canned goods.  Talking aloud helps me think better, as it does for our hero.

I keep thinking now, about the book, about my own choices, about where I might be headed.  I think about morality.  What is good?  How does one live the decent life?  And what is that anyway?  I am going away for a week with my family.  I will have some time to ponder these questions.  My children are awake now.  Water still drips from the eaves.  Time to make coffee.  This day, at least, will be one filled with thought, but hopefully, no great choices to make.  Drip drip, the rain falls.  Then everything dries.  And then, at a time no one can say, it will rain again.

Bouquet

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My daughter really wanted a bouquet for dinner.  She and her brother had pulled the small table from the porch onto the lawn and had spread out a blanket.  She wanted, in fact, a picnic bouquet.  “We’ll set out everything on the little table here and then just take what we want,” she explained.  And she and her brother worked to make it all happen, albeit with a few spills on the way.  Dinner was a fine and fulfilling buffet.

Sick of It Then Ready to Crank

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If you have ever done any painting then you know how much prep needs to go into getting it done right.  I have spent a lot of time prepping to paint the trim on our house this summer and a little time painting.  I plucked away all day at it and did do some final painting.  I did everything to prep another side of the house and it is finally ready for some real paint.  By that time, however, I was sick of it.  I had had enough for the day.  I called it quits.

I was hoping to be further along by now and I was hoping to paint all the trim by the end of summer.  By the time I dropped the roll of masking tape next to the paint cans I was feeling like that is just too daunting.  I want to get it done but I want to do other stuff as well.  Luckily I have been doing other stuff.  I have had a good summer so far.  Nonetheless, my mood was a little blue as I headed to the kitchen to make dinner.

That cheered me up.  I grilled up squash and onions and make paninis of sorts on the grill.  They turned out dang tasty.  The herbs and the zucchini were from our garden, so it was a double deal.  I love to whip up a good meal, so that, plus a beer, made me feel good all over again.  Then I headed out to the garage to start peeling tape off so at least one section would be done with the painting.  That perked me up as well.

The final product looks good.  Whoa, I thought, maybe there is some reward here after all.  If I can make our whole house look like that, then sign me up.  I was newly motivated to get up and get started tomorrow.  The forecast for sunny skies helps as well.  I need to get a good rest tonight so I can work faster and better than ever, and get farther along than I have yet.  For the first time, I am excited to get painting.  As long as I still feel that way in the morning, I should get mucho done manana.