Hey Diddle Diddle

She says:

   During the epic snowstorm we had last week, I got to stay indoors (yay!) and do homework (boo!). The good news is that one of my homework assignments for this week was to write and illustrate a childrens' book.

   If you want to take a look at the most adorable cow ever (and more!), here it is:
Hey Diddle Diddle Book Project

   Stay tuned to see what we come up with during this week's snowstorm!

What did the grape say when the elephant stepped on it?

Nothing. It just let out a little wine.

 

He says:

 

I don’t brew beer much anymore. It’s not that I don’t like beer anymore, I still like to drink it, but I’ve found that my attitude has changed about the act of brewing. The process that I was using took about 3 hours of time and then probably another hour of setup at the beginning and cleanup at the end. A 4 hour chunk of time is a big commitment and slowly I found myself just not wanting to make it. Fermentation still hold a special place in my heart, but I moved on to non-beer fermentations recently, such as sauerkraut, kefir, and most recently ginger beer (which isn’t really a beer since there are no grains).

 

One of the main reasons that caused this shift is my perception of fermentation. As I read more and more about different fermentations from different cultures, I found that fermentation is supposed to be easy--so easy that it’s almost an accident to get delicious results. Beer is not like that. With beer, strict sanitation and cleanliness needs to be followed. If you forgot to sanitize one tiny bit of vinyl tubing or a spoon and it touches your beer then there’s a good chance that whole batch is ruined. You can kiss those 4 hours goodbye.

 

Sauerkraut is made by chopping up cabbage and squishing out the water with your hands, then punching it down. Ginger beer is made by making a starter from the ginger root, which comes from the earth. Good luck sanitizing that. All of these fermentations and more involve placing natural ingredients and the right conditions and allowing nature to take over. Modern beer brewing is an exercise in chemical sanitation, while traditional fermentations are an exercise in natural biology. I prefer the later.

 

I recently started two batches of wine. One wine batch is certainly much easier to throw together than beer, I think I took 25 minutes total for the two. Even though my schedule isn’t packed, I can certainly appreciate the time saved.

 

I have never been a big wine drinker, mostly being put off by the pretense that accompanies standard wine culture. I have, however, become very interested in country wines or wines made from fruits. The idea of preserving a crop of fruit by turning it into wine is intriguing. The two trial batches that I just made aren’t going to be award winners, and they will certainly have their flaws. But they will certainly be unique.

And Now For Something Weird...

She says:

   Several months ago we took a day trip to Weston and found some oddities in the little shops in the downtown, including:

Adorable welded crab sculpture

 

Tiny animal-shaped tealights

   We oohed and aahed over the tiny tealights for a moment before realizing that their cuteness would soon turn to horror upon lighting.  So, of course, we bought some to take home and try out:

 

 

"Is it getting warm in here?"

 

 

About ten minutes in. 

 

One hour later.

 

 

Well-done.

 

One Hundred Books Later

He says:

Two years ago I became increasingly more horrified by the amount of books that I owned, but never read. This spurred me on to make a New Year's Resolution to read 52 books, a monumental goal considering that in previous years I would read maybe 10 books a year. Since I was able to meet that goal without too much exertion (see 'Shoot For The Moon' blogpost), I decided to up the count to 100 books.

Completing this goal really gave me a sense of accomplishment plus I made some great headway on my "to-read" lists.

I figured I would share some of the books that stood out the most for the second half of the year:

Best Book: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
My first experience with a novel by Bradbury instead of his short stories did not disappoint. Set against the backdrop of a traveling carnival that has sinister effects on the townspeople, the story revolves around a young boy, his best friend, and his father. This book dealt with true evil, innocence, the love between a father and his son, and friendship but was never overbearing. Plus Bradbury's imagery was outstanding.

Best Feel Good Book: White Fang by Jack London
Who doesn't like a good dog book? The last third of this book is where it really shines. White Fang is saved from a dog fighting ring from a man. This man is the only one who has ever shown compassion to the wolf-dog and their interactions as White Fang learns how to accept and eventually love this man are heartwarming.

Most Surprising: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
I had been hearing about Hemingway's style for years before I actually picked up this book. It was extremely refreshing. Clever dialogue peppers the book which is on one of the best examples of actual conversation I've come across.

Presenting...

She says:
   One of the things I wanted to do during my winter break was catch up on craft time that I have greatly missed while being busy with school and work and more work and homework. While I still have a ridiculously long list of things I want to craft, Jason and I were able to meet my crafty needs by making our own Christmas cards and the presents we gave to our friends.
   Here are the things we made:

A "dilly" of a homemade card.

 

 

See the resemblance?  The dog on the card was made from the silhouette of an actual picture of Dilly.

 

 

A "local time" clock for a friend who loves traveling. 

 

 

A music clock for a friend who teaches band and orchestra.  The quarter note is for a quarter of an hour...

 

 

A tooth clock for a friend in dental school.

 

Etched tumblers, personalized for the drinker, including the rebel alliance symbol from Star Wars, MU logo, an airplane and a bass. 

 

 

P.S. This is "Dillzilla" destroying Geometry Town--the only "crafty" thing I made during the past semester.  Can you believe that was a final project for a graduate level class? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Two Year!

She says:
   A year ago we started our blog so that we could tell our friends and family how cool our life is.  Ha!  We're so happy that 12 months have passed and our blog is still going strong at all.  We hope to keep up with the sporadic posting or do even better in the blog's second year of existence, and we hope that you will read along and think we're interesting.  :)

Bokashi

He says:

The Seymour household has recently become a zero organic waste establishment. We were using a worm bin to compost most of our food wastes, but this system couldn't compost any meat/dairy/oils. It was nice because we could keep it indoors, but since it was made out of huge Rubbermaid tubs it took up a lot of space. Our new rental duplex is significantly smaller than our previous house so the worms had to be moved outside. This was fine during the spring/summer/fall but come winter we'd have a bunch of frozen earthworms.

I found a different system for composting using microbes instead of worms. It's called bokashi. The microbes are delivered to the food by inoculated wheat bran. You can buy this stuff premade, but it's simple enough to make at home by fermenting rice water (which Abby was unaware of) then using that to ferment milk (which Abby didn't like) then using that to ferment wheat bran (which Abby really didn't like). I kept the fermenting wheat bran sealed and under our bed. It didn't smell until Abby accidentally opened it one day. She thought it smelled like the worst thing ever. I thought it smelled like sour barbecue.

Using the wheat bran, we can essentially pickle any type of food waste (except uncooked meat - for health reasons) in an airtight bucket. There's virtually no smell associated with it at this point, far less than the fermenting wheat bran or even a bin full of worms, and the whole process is done in as little as two weeks. After that you just go out and bury the waste which decomposes in the ground in about 2 more weeks.

We both like that fact that we're not letting any food waste unnecessarily go to the landfill, and we don't have to feel bad about murdering worms.