Stone Mountain in around 30 mins.

I went to stone mountain after work and this is what happened:

• 
  

I spent about 5 mins or so up there - so really I completed stone mountain in about 30 minutes.

So really this is a hill - not really a mountain by any normal standard.

When I went to Snowdon in Wales it took us 8 hrs to complete the full Horse Shoe...

Shooting with Golf Carts

I went 'Skeet' shooting with Chris from the baptist Church I go to. Skeets or Clays is what Americans call Clay Pigeon shooting. 


I took my pump and Chris had a semi-auto. Mine had a choke that sprayed out the lead in a larger area. Chris worked with a choke that had a tighter lead spray. 

It was like golfing - but with shotguns. Each station (and there were 14 of them) had a par. At the end we could then add up our scores to see how well we did. We chose a 100 shot course. 

Here is one of the clay throwers. This particular one shot one that was like a Rabbit across the floor which would jump up randomly. I did not manage to shoot any rabbit styles - they were hard!

Redneck training in progress...

The Pump was OK, but I am sure a double barrel or a Semi-Auto would be better for double shots. 

My shoulder was starting to ache near the end. There was a red mark and it was a little sore when touched. This lasted a couple of days - nothing major. 

Here is some video:

The final score was: 
Chris got 79 clays out of 100
I got 45 clays out of 100.  


I could certainly improve. Chris said hunting was actually harder. 
I would like to shoot Turkeys. I don't have much compassion for them and it would make thanksgiving a little less expensive (maybe!?). 


This is Chris and his semi in action. He hit a lot of clays. Even true pairs (two at a time!). 

The Perils of Square Foot Gardening!

I cannot liken the Square foot garden to the garden of eden, but I did find something in there that was in the garden of eden - yes - a snake!


I moved a bit of wood to take up the netting to put in some potting soil to the side holes - when all of a sudden I saw a snake right in front of me!
I was trying to figure out if it was poisonous or not. I did not see any diamonds on the back. It stayed where it was and did not move - which was odd I thought. 


I did not know what to do with it. Stacy called Jason down and he was used to this sort of thing. He suggested getting a machete and cutting the head off. I was in favour of just crushing the head with the large two by four plank we had near by. We tried that - but it still wriggled. I took the machete and cut the head off while Jason held down the head with the wood. 


It was pretty gross. The head wriggled around for ages. The rest of the body would tense up when touched. Even after 5 mins or more the snake was still moving. It turns out that he was trapped in the net and could not escape. We had a hard time getting it out of the net - and had to cut the netting. 

Here is the snake head wriggling. Not for the squeamish!

You may think that Solomon was crying because he was scared. Not quite - he was crying because Stacy would not let him come over....

We let him eventually to pose for a photo that Stacy thought he may want to see when he is older...

We ended up putting the remains in a plastic bag and putting it in the trash. Even at this point the beheaded snake felt like it was trying to get out of my hands...




And you thought square foot gardening was free from dangers! Think again!

Mid April Garden Update

Well it was planting time. I went all out, as I don't believe that there will be a frost in the near future. And if there is I have plenty of coverings for the plants. 


Tomorrow it will go down to 7 deg C (45 deg F). On Saturday it may go down to 4 deg C (40 deg F) so hopefully that will be ok...


We have a sever weather warning for tonight - 'Strong Storms' and a tornado warning. Hopefully I will still have a garden left in the morning...


Anyway, these are the most recent pictures:

As you can see the cabage is getting some large leaves there. Peas are climbing up. Onions are getting big. 
Good so far...




Here are the plants I purchased from Still Lake Nursery on Scenic Highway. They have a good selection. Almost as good as Home Depot. The prices are good. 

So I have four types of tomato and two types of cucumber. I also have three types of peppers. I was so tempted to buy more types of pepper. They have Tabasco peppers and other types that I want to try. Maybe next year...
The Supersweet 100 tomatoes are small cherry types. Good for salads. The Roma tomatos are good for pastes - like Lasagna and Spaghetti Bolognese. Not sure about Better Boy and Big Beef. I think they are hybrids. I thought I would try them. Just general tomatoes really. Probably good for soup.  


I went for banana peppers because I like Papa John's Pizza with the 'free' chili. 
Coming from Chelmsford - I had to try the Giant Marconi. I guess the Italians named this after one of their most famous inventors. It says it has a 'smokey' taste. We will see...


Anyway - I took Mel B's advice and planted the tomato plants sideways. He says that any part of the tomato plant can become a root. So if you plant them sideways with the tip poking out the top - then the rest of the plant will become part of the root system to produce a strong plant. 


Here is what I mean:

I covered most of the plant. 

The middle plant is the cucumber. I just planted that normally...

Here is a picture of the pepper plants. They start off small...

Here is Solomon with his 'Let's Start Digging' T-Shirt on. Beside him is the Apricot tree. Not sure if I will see any fruit this year - but it seems healthy enough. Unlike the Almond tree, which I think has died. 

Ezekiel Bread Making

I was given a recipe and the grain mix to make some 'Ezekiel' bread. 

The recipe is taken from the Bible. The reference given is Ezekiel 4:9, which says:

"Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof."

They missed one ingredient though - which is mentioned later in Ezekiel 4:12,

"And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight."

He complains about that and God lets him use cow dung instead. 

Anyway - some other additional items are: Oil and Honey, yeast and salt. 

The official recipe is:

2 1/2 cups hard red wheat

1 1/2 cups spelt or rye prefered

1/2 cup barley (hulled barley)

1/4 cup millet

1/4 cup lentils (green is preferred)

2 Tbs great northern beans

2 Tbs red kidney beans

2 Tbs pinto beans

Stir in the above very well and grind in flour mill. 

Thankfully the above bit was done for me. It probably would have taken a while to collect all those grains and mill them...

The rest is:

4 cups hot water

1 cup honey

1/2 cup oil

2 tsp salt

2 Tbs powdered yeast

In a large bowl, combine water, honey, oil and salt. Add all of the flour and yeast. Stir or knead until well kneaded for 10 minutes. This is a batter type bread and will not form a smooth ball. 

Pour dough into greased pans. You may use 2 large loaf pans (10"x5"x3" or 3 medium loaf pans or 2"-9"x 13" brownie pans. Let rise in warm place for one hour or until the dough is about 1/4" from the top of the pan. DO NOT OVER RISE. If it rises too much it will over flow the pan while baking. Bake at 350 deg F  for 45 to 50 mins for loaf pans. 35 to 40 mins for brownie pans. 

For variation fruits and nuts can be added. 

OK - so this is what happened:

I gathered all the ingredients. I was kindly given the grain - so the only expense was the honey and the oil and the yeast (close to $15 worth). I had to lay out a fair amount of 'dough' for this bread. 

I wonder if bread could be the next status symbol?  Forget bling - I want to see your bread...

Anyway... the other expense was the bread tins. Probably worth having anyway. These cost about $12 for the two - which was pretty cheap actually. They are a little larger than was recommended. They work out to be 5" by 9" by 2.5" deep. 

So the start up cost was about $27 - which is a lot of 'bread'. 

I have enough oil and honey and yeast to make several batches though.

So - the first thing I did was shove all the ingredients in a large bowl. I only used half the ingredients as I only had two tins (this mixture should be enough for four 8"x4" tins so I am told). My tins are close enough...

I don't have a mixer - so it was manual mixing for 10 minutes. I had to alternate arms in the end - it was hard work. If I did buy a mixer - the start up cost could have been in the hundreds of dollars. If I also had to mill the grains - then we are talking serious money...

Anyway - hand mixing seemed to work ok for me. 

Looks like oat meal. It was thick and hard to mix. 

I then slapped it into some tins. this seemed tricky as it was so thick. The instructions said 'pour' the mixture in. Erm - it was like hard to get it off the spoon. I literally slapped the mixture off the spoon into the tin. The lumps that I managed to throw into the tin did seem to gel together with some encouragement from my spoon. 

I started pre-heating the oven as soon as the mixture was in the tin. The instructions say an hour to rise, but I was told that it may take 10 mins if I used really hot water. I put the tins on top of the hob to soak in some of the heat from the oven. The bread did not rise as much as I was hoping. I must have waited 20 to 30 mins, but it seemed to reach a point and stop. 

As you can see - the pans look hardly full at all. 

Rising helped a bit...

So after nearly 3o mins of waiting (on the now hot hob) I figured that the bread had reached the peak. It was just over a thumb away from the top - so I put them in the oven. 

Here is an oven shot - for what it is worth...

After about 45 minutes I was getting a little uneasy as it looked like it was getting burnt. 

I then took them out. 

It looks like a disaster as it does not appear to have risen at all. Well maybe, but it tasted OK and did not seem to be doughy or anything. 

The bread was quite sweet actually. It was almost like a cake. I liked it toasted. 

I skipped the dung that Ezekiel used and went for the jam instead. I have since tried marmalade on the toasted bread and it is pretty good I must say. Overall this was a good experience. 

Plenty of protein in this bread  and quite filling. Two slices seems plenty of food for a snack.

Not sure what I would do differently next time. I may try and leave it to rise for longer to see if it actually rises any more than this batch. I certainly want to add some dried fruit and maybe some walnuts?

I may have to order a load of the grains and get some milling equipment.