Red Rooster

Red Rooster

This is for those Sunday mornings when you wake up a little fuzzy.  As they say “The hair of the dog that bit you!”

1/3 cup Bloody Mary Mix

1 Ice cold bottle of Lone Star beer

1 pickled Jalapeno pepper, with a few slits cut in the side

1 pair of dark sunglasses

Pour the bloody Mary mix in a chilled beer mug and slowly top it off with the beer.  Garnish with the jalapeno.  Put on the sunglasses and sip slowly.

Easy Taco Sauce

Ever wonder how that great taco sauce, form the authentic Mexican restaurants is made?  Great with any Mexican dish or chips, it's easy and you can make it!

Don't Shake Your Fist at God!

Don't Shake Your Fist at God!

Yesterday I mentioned that we might, in an effort to change the weather, do a BBQ raindance of sorts to make the planet warm up a bit… at least our part of it!
In that post I mentioned "The Gods of Weather."
I was baking as I do most Tuesdays and everything was going fine.  The dough was a little slow but that happens and usually will still give strong 'oven spring,' creating good loaves.
They came out half of thier usual size.  I asked my wife and partner Chef Kathy what she thought happened.  She said, "it's the weather!"

I have several personal rules that I try to live my life by.  Rule #6 is "Don't shake your fist at God, anyone's God" even for practice!  My first writing mentor, the late, great, Paul Elswick, told me that after I told him a religious joke!  It has served me well.
We are baking today to serve our coustomers.  This is a religious repair attempt, of sorts.  Hopefully the bread will rise again!

Who are you in 2012?

Who are you in 2012?

One of the great things about writing this blog is access to the statistical analysis, which the blog program tracks. It tells us; who is reading this blog, how long they stay on, where they are from, and which post they are reading.

Let’s take a look at the numbers. Below are two charts from my blog statistics page. The first is a chart showing the majority of page views over the two and a half year life of this blog. Our page has had, combined total number of 16,908 views. That’s an average of 528 views a month and 17 a day. But if we look at last month’s numbers, 1561 we have now grown to little over 50 hits a day.

If we look at the first chart, we have had 134 visits from Spain, 86 of which have happened in the last month. This begs that question what has happened to cause the rise in views from Spain. If you are following this blog and living in Spain please send a message and let us know what we are doing to attract your attention.

Another curious fact is, whenever I post poetry, I get several hits from Hungary. Someone there likes my poetry1

Our most read post is not about food or cooking, but about, Conex Box, also known as Shipping Container, building which as had 451 hits. Most of which are from Australia.

Once again we ask for you to tell us what attracts you to our site. And as always we’d love to answer any questions that you might have.

All Time Stats;

United States	12,032
United Kingdom	639
Canada	406
Germany	397
Russia	246
Australia	238
Malaysia	201
Slovenia	190
Spain	134
Latvia	112

Stats Dec. 2011

United States	1,070
Spain	86
United Kingdom	82
Germany	66
Russia	44
Australia	29
Canada	24
India	16
France	12
Netherlands	9

Cooking School update

In building the cooking school there are several issues that I need to deal with. I’m building a venue that will serve as a school, an event location, as in weddings, meetings, perhaps a gallery, also we are looking at television and photo shoots maybe even exercise, tai chi, or even lectures and workshops. I’m, by nature, a packrat I love to collect things that others have discarded and then reuse them in construction or sculpture. This is a challenge as, I’m having to toss out things that may have a future use, but the business comes first.

I have divided our property into three outdoor and four indoor areas. Our home and the packaging room for our spice company, the connex box which will be used as an art studio, a garage and a storage area and the classroom and kitchen are all indoor venues and out door we have the cooking set and bakery, the main yard and a 16 car parking lot. My plan is to finish the bakery and cooking set first so that we can start outdoor cooking classes this spring. We will use the money from these classes to finish the other venues.

I’m working on the connex box, which I want to make look more like a little adobe building and less like a shipping container.

I'm using a CIP or cast in place adobe system of my own design.

I was given the dirt for my adobes and after inspecting it I became worried about the ratio of sand to soil.

Most of the information floating around the web and in the various books on adobe construction in our library agrees that adobe needs to be a minimum mix of 30 % clay and 70% sand and no more than 50/50. After doing a standard water / soil test my dirt looks like it’s about 80% sand 20% clay.

So I made two test blocks as I have two different piles of dirt. You can see the rings from the cardboard drink case I used as a form,

My system has additional reinforcement in several different areas that standard adobe is missing.

First it’s attached to the connex box, second it has a chain link fence diaphragm, third it has a two-inch hi density foam exterior that is tied to both the box and the fence. After making my test blocks I believe that it will be more than strong enough.

However as an added binder I’m going to add a shovel of gypsum to each wheelbarrow, which will be about 5%. I’ll let you know how it works out.