First Farm Feast

Last night My old machine shop friend Seth came to visit with his wife Christine. It was the first time the farm got used for a meal. Christine took some sour dough bread and dressed it up with some olive oil and a combination of thyme, basil, oregano, marjoram, and some other kind of basil. It turned out really good.





Here is Christine with her creation.



Seth was kind enough to bring some homemade apple wine (shown here) along with a variety of home brewed beers.




My friend Billy informed me of this Buffalo Chicken Dip. I decided this would be a good time to try it out. It turned out really tasty. I highly recommend it.





Here is a link that tells how to make the Buffalo Chicken Dip.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2226159_crack-dip-buffalo-chicken-dip.html

First successful soup pour with a homemade double boiler

After a little Internet research and a trip to the thrift store I made my own double boiler with a $5 crock pot, a tin can, some old nuts and some wire. Here it is in action melting some soap down for a pour




Here is the soap after it started to melt. It appears to me that soap is not very heat conductive. It takes a long time for fat soap chunks to melt. It seems to really help to have the soap shredded up before melting.



After the soap was melted I poured it into my mold. It is pretty viscous. This is very different from the paraffin wax I used before. That stuff was basically as runny as water when it was melted. This soap is more of a paste. After it cooled I noticed it had significantly less shrinkage than the wax as well. I did a little bit of experimentation with adding a sprue to my last mold, but it does not look necessary with the soap.



Here is a slightly cleaned up image of my first cast soap.

The Days of Rectangular Soap are Numbered

Recently I decided that I needed to carve some soap. I discovered however that the current shapes of soap were not satisfactory so I decided I better come up with some new ones. I pulled out the hacksaw and the MIG and I put this mold together this afternoon. This picture shows a second pour of wax. My initial tests with soap did not work too well. According to the Internet I need to get something called a double boiler to melt the soap. I will look into that later.




This is a picture of my first wax pour and the resulting ingot.

State of the farm

The farm is starting to outgrow its table. I think I am going to have to expand to another table so I can start some more sprouts for the spring. These are two of my favorites.




This is my avocado tree. It is really taking off. My other avocado tree went dormant after I replanted it, but now it is starting to show some new buds.




This is oregano. It smells really good. I think it could be put on a pizza or in a salad with spinach, or maybe on tacos.

Peanut Butter Hockey Puck

Recently my roommate moved out and took all the pans and spatulas with him so I was in serious need of some kitchen tools. After realizing that a cup makes a poor substitute for a spoon I decided to do something about it. I now have more pans than I ever knew I needed. When I got home from work I decided I better start making use of my investment so I invented this new desert. I call it the peanut butter hockey puck. Here is how you make it.


Ingredients:
ritz crackers
chocolate chips
peanut butter
sunflower seeds




Step 1:
Take those crackers and make some peanut butter sandwiches.




Step 2:
Mix some peanut butter with the chocolate chips in a bowel.



Step 3:
Put that bowel in the microwave and melt those chocolate chips. Stir in the peanut butter as it gets soft.

Step 4:
Throw a peanut butter sandwich in the chocolate and cover it up. Then put it on some kind of sheet covered with wax paper.





Step 4:
Now put some sunflower seeds on top of the chocolate covered sandwich. (This will make you feel like you are at a baseball game.)





Step 5:
After covering up all the sandwiches put them in the refrigerator to cool them down.

Topological Invariants

My new hobby is making things out of paper. This set of "sculptures" all possess the same topology.



I think if I could make this out of wood it would make a cool chair. I am considering building a steam bending setup for it.





Butterfly



Heart



Embrace

Transplantations and Vertical Pumpkin Patches.

Happy New Year!




I realized that it is now time for the farm to expand out. My pumpkins were starting to get too big for the pots they were in so I moved them to a milk jug. A friend of mine told me that pumpkins know how to climb trees so I made this trellis so the pumpkins can climb up it. Later I might try to add some kind of vine based fruit as well.




Here are the pumpkins in their new home.




Here I started moving some of the bigger plants into some bigger containers.



This avocado is starting to really take off.




Here are the basil. They smell pretty good, but the oregano is my favorite. I can't wait to make a pizza out of it.




On an unrelated note I downloaded the openKinect Drivers and started to get them to work. It took some figuring out for me but I got the OpenCV wrappers to work as well. I am planning to write some code that uses the Kinect for something. I just have not figured out what yet. I need to sit and think about it.