gadget

Gadget Post – Small Bowl Food Processor

/ jeffreyw

20170213_134314-1600x1200I broke down and bought a small-ish food processor, this one is a Cuisinart.  It had good reviews from America’s Test Kitchen.  It’s handy, light, easy to store and use.  The 2 buttons are marked chop and grind, one makes the blade rotate clockwise, and the other the opposite.  The cover is a bit stiff both locking and unlocking so you have to hold tight with the other hand.  It may loosen up with use.

Tidbits

/ jeffreyw / 2 Comments

20160807_150949(1600x1200)I’ve always called these things pink ladies but I assume there are other names for them depending on where you live.  They usually come as a surprise, seemingly showing up overnight.20160809_173126(1600x1200)This sloppy joe sammich got a bit of crunch added with the corn chips, it’s akin to Frito pie in that regard.  I like the way the slaw turned out so much I ordered a salad spinner for the method  the recipe spells out.  It calls for a salt and sugar “cure” that has to be rinsed off before the dressing is added and the excess water needs to be removed.  I’ve been letting it drain onto tea towels.20160811_120157(1600x1200)More BELT sammiches.  I’m frugal so I toasted the heel ends to make this one.  The tomato bushes continue to yield the big slicers that are perfect for them.20160813_104840(1600x1200)Speaking of tomatoes, we juiced a couple of five gallon buckets full of tomatoes and spent the day boiling them down to eventually can 7 quarts of tomato soup.  That vegetable juicer we bought is still paying dividends.DSC_5514(1600x1200)Gabe has found a new toy that is so much better than the other toys in that box.  Mrs J is so much fun!  She plays with him all over the house!gated gabe(1600x1200)Usually these play sessions result in nap time, whether Gabe is sleepy or not.DSC03681 (1600x1200)I’ll wrap this up with another kitteh.

Patio Panorama – Gadget Post

/ jeffreyw

20150604_101837[1] (1600x1060)I upgraded my phone and discovered a panoramic photo feature built in.  I downloaded the photo to my desktop and resized it.  Phone is a Samsung S6, this is the first result after a few tries to learn how to do it despite the lack of a good explanation in the help section.  The gallery app provides a slow pan when viewing the image on the phone.

I’m happy with the new phone so far but it’s not that great a leap from the last phone, a Samsung S4.  The new phone doesn’t have a removable battery or a slot for an SD card but it does have a ton more internal memory (128GB) than the miserly 16 GB I had on the S4.  There are some nifty work-arounds for limited memory in many Android devices:DSC_5355 (1600x1060)This is an OTG (on-the-go) mini Micro SD card reader – a mouthful that means you can plug it into the phone and use the material you put on the card.  The device comes with an adapter so you can plug it into a regular USB port on your computer to load with songs, movies, photos, or whatever.DSC_5356 (1600x1060)I have this one loaded with a bunch of music, it will work with SD cards up to 128 GB capacities – enough for four or five HD movies.  Cheap OTG adapter cables are available to use with regular USB card readers but I like these because they are easier to use.

Quesadillas

/ jeffreyw / 4 Comments

DSC_5886 [1600x1200]We had some leftover beef from those lunch time burritos and a couple tortillas left in the package so quesadillas seemed doable.  I was hoping to make a meal of roast pork but it just wasn’t going to be ready in time.  I rigged a smoke box from a heavy foil loaf pan and filled it with wood chips to turn the new grill into a smoker – you cover the pan with more foil and poke a few holes into it, then place it next to or atop one of the burners.  It worked pretty well.

DSC_3706 [1600x1200]The pork shoulder spent all day in there at around 250-275, I changed the wood chips out three times.  I decided to finish it in the regular oven and it’s in there now, covered with foil, looking for 190 degrees.  Pretty happy with the rig as a smoker, knowing I can get more heat just by turning a knob.  It has enough burners to get easily past 500, I haven’t gone past that yet but a pizza project I have in mind will test the limits.  My pizza stone will fit right in there.

Gadget Post: Tenderizer

/ TaMara / 1 Comment

My new toy. I’ve been wanting one for a while, but just hadn’t gotten around to getting one. It’s fun, though it could be used as a weapon, I’m sure. I can see the headline now, “Woman Tenderizes Man’s….” ok, let’s not go there.

Anyway, it was highly rated, very sturdy, sharp and easy to clean. I used it on chicken breast the other day,  it really seems to help the seasonings permeate the meat. Today I purchased a top round steak, which isn’t a very tender cut. I wanted to see how it would do on a tougher job. I’ll let you know.

Meanwhile, there’s a chicken about to get roasted….

Spring Rolls

/ jeffreyw / 3 Comments

I was in town today for an appointment and took the opportunity to walk through the giant supermarket, looking for some odds and ends on the grocery list.  I’ve been meaning to use the tofu I bought the other day and was thinking hot and sour soup ingredients when I spied the spring roll wrappers and grabbed a package.  It’s been a little while since I did some.  The hot and sour soup will just have to wait a bit.

These have chopped shrimp and chicken breast in them, along with bean sprouts, cabbage, bok choy, green onions, and a bit of grated carrot.  Some oyster sauce and soy sauce flavored the fillings.  These are the first batch I’ve made in the counter top deep fryer and I can report that it worked well.

Gadget Post

/ jeffreyw / 1 Comment

Bought a juice machine last year and did all the juicing we could stand.  Apples, strawberries, kiwis, pineapples, oranges and more.  Decided the machine just wasn’t very good for what we wanted.  Much of the output was foamy and the foam never settled.  The juice under all the foam was fine, but there just wasn’t that much.  Don’t ask about the carrot juice.  The machine set on a shelf till today.

Another bucket of tomatoes from the garden got me to thinking about it again.  Gave it a shot.  Didn’t bother to skin the tomatoes, just sliced them into chunks that the machine could digest and ran them through.  Plenty of foam again but we were willing to see if it would go away when the juice was cooked down for canning.  Yay!  The foam disappeared.  It looks like the machine has found its niche.