What a crock of... part 1

Inspired by brother Epic's crockpot chili routine, I ordered my own pot as a belated birthday present.

The Greek Couscous I attempted last night was not expressly for a slow cooker.  Yet the garbanzo beans I had soaked overnight tasted raw and I had already started to disassemble ye olde stove to investigate the mysterious burning smell.  Returning to my project this morning, the perimeter couscous and beans had gotten crunchy/chewy with a creamy oatmeal-like center.  I salvaged what I could and added the cold garnish I'd laid away in the fridge (sundried tomatoes, olives, feta, and a fresh picked lemon and batch of oregano).  This is lunch.  The container can then be repurposed to pilfer spent coffee grounds from the office industrial sized carafe to feed our hungry worms.

Crockpot is now crocking a tub of water to loosen up the remainder of the caked on couscous adventure.  Perhaps next time I'll try a safer recipe like soup.

Eggs in (nearly) full production

We have fought our way up to a dozen eggs. Both Maran's are definitely laying and Blinky has been quite productive, we are still unsure if Pinky (the low bird in the pecking order) is laying as we have yet to see 2 green eggs on the same day.

The cool thing is that when Clyde (alpha chicken that survived a Kai attack at a young age) started laying she used the box. Blinky who had previously been dropping her eggs in the dirt at the very back of the coop promptly noticed and started laying there as well. This is great because the box has a hinge lid and we can collect the eggs from the outside of the coop, when previously I would wade through the entire coop trying to dodge turds to get the egg.

The downside is that they keep knocking out all the hay bedding we put in the box and drop the eggs right on the wood base. This tends to produce a higher rate of slightly cracked eggs that usually get consumed immediately. My pending fix is gluing down some of that rubber drawer padding that people use for their silverware drawers.

DIY Deodorant

So the jury is still out on whether products in commercial deodorants can lead to negative health outcomes.  (Wiki summary here)  In reading, "Making It," I realized I had most of the inputs for a DIY adventure and decided to give it a shot.

Empty deodorant stick (the roll up platform kind-- travel size is most manageable)
1 tablespoon beeswax
4 tablespoons olive oil
1/8 tsp tea tree oil
1/8 tsp lavender or other essential oil

Combine beeswax and olive oil in a double boiler (or functional equivalent).  This stuff is messy and I stray towards pretty small quantities, so I use a little gladware cup.  I tried nuking it in the microwave, but stirring the wax was too interruptive.  Mix until fully melted + blended.  Add tea tree oil for its antiseptic properties.  Add another essential oil like lavender to moderate its smell.  I tried frankincense & myrrh the second time around and liked the smell better-- but it still smells 90% like tea tree.    Pour into the rewound deodorant stick.  Let cool and you're good to go.

This stuff doesn't have antiperspirant properties, so if sweat through is a big concern, this project probably isn't for you.  The signature scent potential is appealing so I may experiment with a couple more batches of this.

golf balls and garden hoses

A note on the backyard contraption I mistook for a clothesline-- a low slung knob and tube relay to the garage whose wiring is  only partially ensconced in electrical tape.  "Code" these days is to bury a Romex line in a weather-proof conduit.  Threading 100' of burred conduit with 100' of pliable Romex is a non-trivial task.  After consulting the Oracle of Internets, we settled on this approach.

1.  Tie slightly more than 100' of kite string to slightly more than 100' of heavier duty nylon string.  On the other end of the kite string, tie a piece of paper towel.

2.  Use vacuum cleaner hose attachment to suck the lightweight kite string through and pull the heavier duty string with it (so long as some of it sticks out both ends of the conduit).

3.  Tie an end of the nylon string to the Romex line (taking care to make the knot as skinny and aerodynamic as possible).  

4.  At this juncture, we naively began pulling the Romex through and got about 10 feet before things got Tough...  fortunately, PaGyver stopped by with some helpful hints...

4a.  Lube the Romex with Vaseline (we had lots on hand from a failed fiberglass shower curtain prototype)

4b.  Position your conduit so that it is as straight as possible-- particularly the several feet in front of the nylon string + romex knot

4c.  Use leverage, where possible, i.e. when he has enough bite, the puller can loop the nylon over a treebranch, etc. to assume more comfortable/powerful pulling position