First, you put your stick between his legs:

Then, keeping the stick in place, use your forearms to position the opposing player…

Next, remove the stick but continue to use your upper body to spin your opponent:

And finally, you’ve got your opponent right where you want him…ready for a back-breaking ride into the boards!

Our home is a bit of an energy hog and, for the most part, it’s something we’re willing to pay for. We have a pool, a koi pond, central air conditioning, and a rather large number of machines requiring lots of electricity. However, when our wintertime electricity bills started passing the $400 mark on a regular basis, we’d had enough.

Enter the Kill a Watt…

For just under twenty bucks, we launched our own energy audit and ended up reducing our electricity consumption far beyond what we’d hoped for.

Changes we made:

* The likeliest suspect for Energy Pig was the heated floor in our ensuite bathroom. The installer had programmed the thermostat when it was installed last winter and we’d just turned it off when the weather got warmer. When it was turned back on in the late fall, all the programming data was gone and it was ON 24/7.

A quick email to the manufacturer got us an electronic copy of the user’s guide and the floor was now heated only when we wanted it…first thing in the morning. At all other times, it was off.

* Outdoor fridge. Yep, the beer fridge… Like a lot of people, we had an inefficient old fridge with wonky gaskets sitting on the patio. Even though the Kill a Watt meter said it wasn’t drawing a lot of electricity, it was also winter. Come summertime temperatures and that fridge would be pumping out the cold air.

It had to go.

Our local utility company was offering rebates on old refrigerators…they come and pick it up, haul it away, AND give you $35. How can you go wrong with that?

* Indoor fridge. Our indoor fridge was typical for a suburban household: side by side, 25-ish cubic feet, with a through-the-door ice and water dispenser. What wasn’t typical (or maybe it is!) was the amount of electricity it used. This was the most surprising item in our energy audit; we definitely weren’t expecting this fridge to be such a hog.

A little online research suggested that refrigerators with a top/bottom orientation were more efficient than the side by side models and that you’d pay through the nose for through-the-door access to anything.

We found last year’s model of this Samsung refrigerator on sale at our local Best Buy for $1000. It seemed like an investment but, with the memory of those electricity bills fresh in our minds, we went for it. We also “invested” in two ice cube trays. We don’t use ice a lot and so decided to turn the automatic ice maker off when we installed the fridge. (Note: two months later and we’ve only used ice once so I’m thinking that decision was a wise one!)

We sold our old fridge to a young family for $200.

* Thermostat set point. Even though we have a gas furnace, the fan for the furnace is powered with electricity. At this point in time, this is our biggest energy user so, even though we tend to keep our house on the cool side, we dropped the thermostat a set point or two.

* Vampire appliances. We were expecting that a number of electronics/small appliances would be vampires…i.e., items that consume electricity even while turned off. Surprisingly, we had only two small appliances that fell into that category: our coffee maker (a Bunn with a hot water reservoir) and our vacuum-sealer. We decided the coffee maker was one of those things we were willing to pay for and just unplugged the vacuum-sealer.

At this point, we’d spent a net sum of $780 to try and reduce our electricity consumption. We’d made these changes mid-way through a billing cycle and so we weren’t expecting to see the full impact reflected in the billing yet. Even so, our $440 bill was reduced to around $260…already we’d saved money and our net outlay for energy savings was down to $600.

Our most recent bill reflected an entire billing cycle with our changes in place and came in at a whopping $112. Yep, we had reduced our consumption by 75%. We expect our next few bills to be even smaller, as it’s been warm enough to have the furnace off completely but not so warm that we need to use the air conditioner.

And, with one more billing cycle, we will have paid for that beautiful new fridge sitting in my kitchen.

Growing up on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island in the days before superferries and hourly sailings meant most trips over the summer holidays were taken “up Island”. One of the best destinations for us kids was Parksville and, in particular, Rathtrevor Beach. When the tide went out, the sun would bake the sand which in turn would warm the water as it came back in. For a kid used to swimming in the cold waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Rathtrevor Beach seemed almost tropical to me.

When I first saw the traditional Estonian stitch used in the body of this stole, I was reminded so strongly of the wave ripples left in the hard sand by the outgoing tide at Rathtrevor Beach. Neither stitch used in this pattern is particularly difficult and both are easily remembered however they do both require attention.

Finished Size

Length: approx. 80 inches
Width: approx. 24 inches

Materials

• KnitPicks Shadow [100% Merino Wool; 440yd per 50g skein]; color: Juniper; 3 skeins
• 1 40-inch US #3/3.25mm circular needle
• 1 set US#3/3.25mm straight needles
• Stitch markers, waste yarn, yarn needle

Gauge

20 sts/24 rows = 4 inches in center panel lace

$5.00

I was prepared for the reduction in dishes needing washing and the number of times the washing machine ran each week but one of the unexpected changes that came with becoming an “empty-nester” affected my cooking. It didn’t even occur to me prior to January that I’d have to change how I cooked simply because the household population dropped by one.

It soon became apparent that cooking for three produced way too much food when there are only two mouths to feed. Most of my usual dishes have been easy enough to scale down but one favourite — chile verde — required a prepared ingredient that was only available in a large quantity. When the Spawn told me that the ingredient wasn’t even available to her, I was determined to come up with something that would work for both of us…somehow I’d make chile verde in a small quantity using ingredients that were available to both of us.

So I started with these ingredients:

Instead of using green enchilada sauce as my base ingredient, I used roasted chiles I’d frozen last summer and bought and roasted some tomatillos. The pork component was switched from a pork shoulder roast to boneless country-style ribs.

So here’s the official story…

Chile Verde

1/2 medium onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
3/4 lb. tomatillos
2 hot chiles
1 lb. boneless country-style ribs, cubed
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp powdered dried chiles *
salt to taste

* This is not “chili powder”. I blend powdered New Mexico chiles and powdered California chiles together. If you can’t find powdered chiles, go ahead and use the “chili powder” from the spice aisle. It probably won’t be as good though.

Remove the papery husk from the tomatillos. Roast the tomatillos and chiles.

If you’re not familiar with how to roast chiles or don’t have an open flame available (I’m looking at you, Kathleen!), there are directions at these websites on how to go about roasting them:

http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Articles/Cooking-Tips–Techniques-642/how-to-roast-fresh-chile-peppers.aspx
http://www.zianet.com/focus/chile/chile2.htm

When the vegetables are cool enough to handle, peel and dice the chiles. Roughly chop the tomatillos.

Heat the oil in saucepan over medium heat. Add the onions and cook until they’re translucent but not browned. Stir in the minced garlic and cook for a few moments longer, then add the pork. Cook until the pork has changed colour but don’t worry too much about browning it.

Add the tomatillos, chiles, and chicken broth; stir in the spices. Stir well and bring just to the point of boiling. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for about an hour or until the pork is very tender. Salt to taste and serve!

This is what it looks like served with rice. And a tortilla.

This one isn’t my recipe but it’s definitely a favourite around here:

Chicken Vesuvio from Bon Appetit

And I hear Kathleen is planning on adding red pepper flakes to her pantry…just in time!

By request…

Recipe: Chicken Scallopine with Vanilla and Garlic Veloute

After flouting my dinner picture around the interwebz this past weekend, I’ve had a couple of requests for the recipe for this:

Greens and cheese grits!

The grits I have were purchased in Georgia’s Low Country on one of my cross-country road trips and, unfortunately, I’ve never seen any like them out on this side of the continent. Thank god for mail order…

I’m pretty sure Anson Mills ships their grits.

To cook the grits, I used a teeny-tiny crock pot. It holds about 2 cups (if you filled it to the brim), has no heat or time control, and came with my big-ass slow cooker. I think it’s for keeping dip warm but I’ve been using it for making my porridge overnight (in conjunction with an outlet timer); this is the first time I’ve used it for grits. I will definitely make this the primary prep method in the future…they were just incredible.

So, start with 1/4 cup of stone-ground grits, 1 cup of water in the teeny-tiny crock pot, and a wee bit of salt. (Okay, if you don’t have a t-t crock pot, you can use the stove top method.) The crock pot was plugged in for two hours.

Once the grits were started, I prepped the greens. This batch was made with a bundle of chard (white and red together) from the farmer’s market, just washed and then chopped. (Collards, turnip greens, beet greens, or kale would be just as good though.) They went into the pot with about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of chicken broth. You want enough broth to have some “pot likker” but not so much that you have soup. Once it’s come to a easy boil, turn down the heat to low and add some ham steak, chopped into cubes. Ideally, I would have used Tasso or some other spicy ham but it was nowhere to be found so it was Niman Ranch ham steak instead! If you’re using plain ham like I had to, add some Louisiana Hot Sauce and/or some cayenne pepper to spice things up a bit. Then turn the heat down to low, cover your pot, and let it simmer.

Grate about 1/4-1/2 cup of Dubliner cheese, depending on how cheesy you want your grits to be. When the grits’ two hours is up, add the grated cheese along with 1/2 T of butter. Stir until the cheese and butter are both melted.

Serve the greens on top of the grits with some of the pot likker added. I wouldn’t say no to a little pepper vinegar sprinkled on top of mine either…

One of my favourite winter soups is a pared down version of a Jacques Pepin recipe. His soup is called Sausage, Potato, and Cabbage soup and someone has very generously typed it out and put it on the interwebz; you can see it here: click.

My version is much simpler and also VERY fast to make. It’s also one of Kathleen’s favourites…

Sausage and Cabbage Soup

Ingredients:

some sausage meat — when we lived in New West, I’d just buy a half pound or so of sausage meat. Not Italian or other flavour, just sausage meat. Here in Sacto, I’ve been using the low-fat Jimmy Dean sausage meat.

some chicken broth — Swanson’s is my favourite commercial brand; way back in New West, they sold it with the Asian foods. It might be in with the other brands now. If they don’t have it, don’t buy Campbell’s; that stuff is gross. Look for something else.

some cabbage — you can use green cabbage, Savoy, or even sui choi (Napa cabbage as they like to call it here in the US of A). Whatever looks the best.

How to Cook It:

Start by browning the sausage meat in a soup pot. You might need some additional oil if you use a low-fat sausage but it’s probably not likely; sausage meat can be very fatty. Don’t worry if the bottom of the pan gets some sausage-y crispy bits on it; that’s what you want.

Add the chicken broth, just a bit at first. You want to add enough that it will boil right away but not too little that it boils away really quickly. While it’s boiling, scrape up the crispy bits on the bottom of the pan (technical term for this is “deglazing”). When you’ve got all the bits in the broth, add the remainder. How much broth? Well, how much soup do you want? Ha ha…

Chop up your cabbage and add it to the pot. If you think you need more liquid in order for it to cook, you can add water: all the sausage-y crispy bits are going to add tons of flavour. Turn the heat down to medium-low, cover the pot, and let it simmer until the cabbage is cooked.

And that’s it!

Yeah, it’s been a while. Lots going on here with school and what not. The biggest news though has been that my daughter has moved to Victoria. Very strange situation all around…

At any rate, with Kathleen so far away, I thought that my blog would be a perfect opportunity for me to share some home cooking recipes/instructions/whatever with her. You’re all just along for the ride…

I had a revelation the other day, one that probably isn’t quite a revelation to a lot of people but then my keen sense of the obvious does escape me now and again.

I always knew that “white” wool could be dyed at home but it just never occurred to me to try dying “brown” wool. Inspired by the great colour chart and even better directions on this website, I had a go at it today.

The wool in my plan was a skein of sport-weight handspun I’d bought at the Highland Games held in Woodland earlier this year:

Just add water (and some vinegar and four packets of Berry Blue Kool-Aid):

After a trip through the microwave, I ended up with a skein of beautiful blue-green wool!

This is a colour I’ll enjoy a lot more; I can’t wait to knit with it!