Asparagus Spear

Growing Asparagus

Everyone knows that asparagus is tasty and makes your pee smell funny but did you know that it really isn’t too hard to grow your own? If you’ve never grown asparagus in your vegetable garden, let me give you the highlights.

First off, pick a sunny spot in your garden where you’re going to want to grow the asparagus. Choose wisely because if your plants do well, they’re going to be there for the next 15 years or so. Asparagus is a perennial and if harvested properly will come back for many years.

Plant your crowns in an area that you’ve amended with compost or composted manure and space them at least a foot apart. These plants will grow into a really cool fern like bush so give them some room. You may want to soak the crowns in water for 20 minutes before you plant them.

Asparagus Fern

Now you’re going to need some patience. The first year, when these tiny little mini asparagus come up, you can’t pick them. Let them grow into a big fern looking plant. It’s developing a strong root system at this point and if you pick them, that’ll be the end of your future asparagus. You can occasionally top dress the plants with an inch or two of compost. The second year you really shouldn’t pick anything either. Maybe take a stalk or two just to try them out. But once the third year comes it’s time for harvest.

You’ll be able to pick asparagus for about 4 weeks in the spring. But after that, let them grow into those familiar ferns again. To harvest you just snap the stalks with your fingers or cut them right at ground level.

If you want white asparagus, mound up the soil to cover the aspargus shoots or cover them with a paper bag as they emerge. The lack of sunlight will keep them white.

When you get to the 4th year, you can extend your harvest to about 6-8 weeks.

Don’t pick them yet!

So I guess the most important things to remember about growing asparagus are compost and patience. But trust me, fresh asparagus from the garden is worth the wait. During those first couple of years, if you want funny smelling pee, then you’ll need to buy your asparagus at the farmer’s market.

Krups Heineken Beertender

Nothing beats a cold beer on a hot day. But now that I think about it, you can’t beat a cold beer on a cold day either. So having a cold beer on tap in your house is definitely good stuff. And for only about a hundred dollars you can make this happen.

The KRUPS BeerTender is a mini keg system for your home. I absolutely love my BeerTender. I feel like it was made specifically for someone like me. And let me tell you what I mean when I say, “someone like me”. Well, I like the taste of draft beer. Something about the taste of cold draft beer takes me back to old school keggers or those all you can drink draft beer happy hours. Those days are long behind me but I think the draft taste awakens some dormant part of my brain and just automatically makes me happy. And I also think that the BeerTender looks great in my home bar. I have it sitting on a mini fridge right next to the bar and it’s a great looking machine. So if you like the taste of draft beer and like cool looking home appliances, then you should keep reading.

Heineken DraughtKeg

What beers are available for Krups Heineken BeerTender
The BeerTender has three different varieties of beer available for it. Heineken, Heineken Light and Newcastle Brown Ale. It would be nicer if there were more types available but it doesn’t really look like it’s going to happen any time soon. I think that there are more varieties available in Europe but since I live in New Jersey, I can’t confirm that. The 5 liter mini DraughtKegs cost about $20 each plus you’ll need some beer tubes too but more about the tubes later.

How many beers in a DraughtKeg
There are 33.814 ounces in a liter and the DraughtKegs are 5 liters, so that gives us a total of 169.07 ounces. A regular bottle of beer is 12 ounces. So by doing a little math we can learn that a 5 liter DraughtKeg contains a little more than 14 beers. I can usually find the mini kegs on sale at a bargain liquor store for about $18. But you should find a place that sells them cold already because unlike a bottle that put in the fridge, you’ll need more than an hour to chill a DraughtKeg.

Cooling the DraughtKeg
This unit will very energy efficiently cool a beer keg down to 36 degrees. So efficiently that it will take a day or so to cool a keg from room temperature. So that’s one thing that you need to address. This is great for your energy bill because you’re not paying for an extra refrigerator in your house just to keep your beer cold 24/7. But it’s not so good for drinking a few kegs when people are over. During the summer when we have people over for pool parties I’ll buy a few cold kegs and put them on ice in one of those giant coolers that I bought from Costco. Winter time is even easier because you can leave the extra kegs outside but don’t let them freeze. If you have plenty of room in your fridge for mini kegs than you’ll be fine but if you’re like me, you’ll have to plan ahead to keep multiple kegs chilled for parties.

Krups Beertender Tubes

BeerTender Beer Tubes
When you use a BeerTender, the little plastic taps that come with the DraughtKeg will not fit inside the unit. So you’ll need to buy a beer tube with each DraughtKeg that you buy. The beer tubes are disposable and you need to use a new one for each keg. This eliminates the need to clean your beer tubes. People who have regular home beer tap systems or even the real systems in bars need their tubes cleaned out more often than you think. So once again there are pluses and minus with this. It’s best to buy several boxes of beer tubes at once (there’s 6 in a box) and the best price I’ve seen lately is at Amazon. As long as you are a member of Amazon prime and don’t have to pay for shipping. And if you aren’t a member of Prime, then why not? Either buy them from Amazon or go to a place like Bed, Bath & Beyond with one of those 20% Off coupons that probably flood your mailbox like they do mine. And remember to buy a few boxes so that you don’t run out in a middle of get together.

Krups and Heineken B100 BeerTender
The current model number for the BeerTender is the B100. You’ll find it on Amazon or at Bed, Bath & Beyond or wherever you buy your home keg systems. The pictures in this post are of my older model, the B90. The newer model does away with the tiny LED screen but I think it looks more manly. Looks like something that should be a garage or a chop shop. The drip tray and the top look like a chrome car part. Check out the pictures and you’ll probably agree.

How to pour a beer with the BeerTender
If you read the Amazon reviews, people seem to complain about the Beertender pour. They say that it’s all foam. Well you can get a perfect pour every time if you follow this advice:

• Use a wet glass
• Hold the glass at a 45 degree angle
• Open the tap all the way

Additional Beertender Features

• Chills to 36 degrees (B90) 37.4 degrees (B100)
• Each DraughKeg has a built in CO2 cartridge to keep beer fresh for 30 days
• Unit measures 21-Inch Length by 12-Inch Width by 18-Inch Height
• Ultra quiet and efficient Peltier cooling system provides constant and consistent cooling of the keg

Available Beers

• Heineken
• Heineken Premium Light
• Newcastle Brown Ale

DraughtKeg Luminary (it looks cooler at night)

But the best part of owning a Krups BeerTender is that whenever someone stops by my house, I can always say to them, “Can I get you cold beer?” They have a seat at my home bar and I take a frosty pint glass out of the freezer and pour them a cold one. That really makes someone feel welcome.

And since this is blog is also a little crafty, you can repurpose the empty kegs for other uses. Check out this DraughtKeg luminary that I made. It wasn’t a big deal to pop the mini keg open with my Dremel and then I drilled some holes in it. A little spray paint to make it look neater than a big empty beer can and I was done. These look great around the pool. And whenever I’m sitting around drinking beer, I can tell my wife that making luminaries.

I have a few more ideas about how to repurpose these mini kegs and I’ll cover them in future posts.

Bottom line, the BeerTender is awesome.

The Soma Cube

When I’m not working on a DIY project or I somehow get a few hours of free time, I like to build stuff. Working on an interesting project can often be a puzzle in itself. But this woodworking project is literally a puzzle. It’s called a Soma Cube. it’s a puzzle where the idea is to find a way to fit the 7 pieces together to make a cube. The pieces are made up of 27 smaller cubes that are fitted together in different shapes. This is another great puzzle that I read about in the book, Crafting Wood Logic Puzzles: 18 Three-dimensional Games for the Hands and Mind by Charlie Self and Tom Lensch.

I also did some additional digging around to find out more about Soma Cubes. The book mostly discusses the woodworking part of the project and that’s great but I wanted to know more. So I found out that they were named after the Soma Drug in the book Brave New World. In the book Soma is a hallucinogenic drug that’s was used to give people a mini holiday. So if you’re into puzzles, I guess you could say that trying to solve the Soma Cube is sort of like a mini holiday.

27 small cubes glued into 7 different shapes fit together to form the Soma Cube

The Soma Cube has over 270 different combinations that form the 3x3x3 cube and solve the puzzle. It’s a fun way to spend some time. My cube sits on my bar and guests like to tinker with it over a cocktail or two.

There’s is also a similar cube puzzle that consists of 6 pieces instead of 7. It’s called the 30 Minute Puzzle and it has only 1 solution. They say a person who’s really good at puzzles will take about 30 minutes to solve it and that’s how it got its name. Since it took me about 30 minutes to solve the Soma Cube, i’m not in a rush to build that other puzzle yet.

To build the cube, I took a 2×2 piece of maple and cut it into 27 identical cubes, sanded them and then glued them up into the shapes found in the book. It took several days to glue all the pieces together because I didn’t have enough clamps. I was thinking about tacking them together used a brad but opted against it. They seem to hold together really well with just the glue. Then I finished it off with some spray on poly.

So if you’re into puzzles or fun projects or need a mini vacation, the Soma Cube might be what you’re looking for.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for XBox

There is some wicked flu bug going around lately and I’m hoping that I don’t have it. What I do have is a sore throat and a head cold and not wanting it to get any worse, I took a sick day from work. A day of rest at home will hopefully make me feel a lot better. Plus, they are all kinds of official announcements from Human Resources lately that basically say, if you’re sick, stay home. Don’t come into the office and spread your germs. Well, I’m fine with that so I’m called in sick. But even when you’re sick, there’s still good stuff to do at home.

More often than not, the good stuff that I like to do at home involves gardening or yard work. Obviously, I’m not going outside to do any gardening in the snow. Other times I’ll set up my table saw in the driveway and do some woodworking or a DIY project. But today it’s about 30 degrees out and that means that woodworking is out of the question too.

So that leaves indoor things. And when you feel sick, there’s TV, movies and video games. Not really in a TV or movie mood so I think today is a video game day. Yes, I’m 44 years old and I’m still a gamer. Not a good gamer according to my 10 year old son but I still do play. More so lately because my son has XBox 360 and Wii. Plus we’re big fans of iOS games too. Video games are perfect for a day like this. Make some hot tea, get under a blanket and level up in Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Did you know that this weekend they’re awarding double XP in Team Deathmatch. I got myself up to Level 30 this weekend while playing with the boy.

A Black Ops 2 highlight for me was on Sunday night, my son’s friends saw my “ant3eye” gamertag and my stats and asked, “Did you level up your dad’s account?” and I was really proud when he told his friends, “No, he did it himself.” That proudness ended when they all kicked my butt in the game but at least I had a moment.

I should probably do a post called playing Black Ops 2 with your child and trying not to embarrass him. But I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

Here’s my car from CSR Racing

Another game I like to play is CSR Racing on the iPad. It’s a drag racing game where you win money for each race and then you use that cash to buy parts to make your cars go faster. It’s one of those games that’s free but offers in app purchases. They’re banking on the average gamer being impatient and that’s a good bet. You can pay real money to buy CSR Racing money. This saves you a lot time because you don’t have to earn it slowly, race by race like I do. That means i have to play a lot to get a faster car. Sadly, the stats say that I’ve been playing for 17 hours 58 minutes and I’ve raced 313.48 miles. Hey, slow and steady wins the race, right?

You know what else is good to do when you’re sick but not too sick? Reading. Lately I’ve been reading a book called APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch and it’s a really good book. A few years ago I wrote The Everything Panini Press Cookbook through a traditional publisher, Adam’s Media. That was definitely a great experience but I’d like to write a few other books and I think self-publishing is the way to go. APE is all about the ins and outs of self-publishing or artisanal publishing as they like to call in the book.  I’m only half way done with it but I’m highly recommend it if you’ve ever though about writing a book.

Well that’s about it. I guess blogging should also be one of the things I like to do when I’m at home on a sick day. Lets add that to the list later because right now, I think I’m going to go take a nap.

Tasty looking turkey

I’m a big fan of deep fried turkey. Every Thanksgiving, I would usually deep fry two 12 pound turkeys (about 45 minutes each) and they’d come out great. I’d try different dry rubs and injector recipes and I really got into it. So of course I started a blog about deep fried turkey. Every year around Thanksgiving the site would get about 35,000 pageviews per day but normal traffic was sadly around 25 views a day. So I let the domain expire a while back. But today I’m going to share some of my favorite content from that site.

Deep Fried Turkey

Do you have an extra five gallons of peanut oil sitting around the house? Why not use it to deep fry a turkey?

Deep fried turkey is moist and delicious and not at all oily. The skin sears instantly and seals in the natural turkey juices for the most juicy turkey you’ll ever have. It also cooks quickly at 350 degrees for about 3 ½ minutes a pound. That’s a 12 pound turkey in under 45 minutes. You’ll even have time to cook two turkeys if you want. No more waking up at dawn to put the turkey in the oven. Deep frying a turkey will also free up oven space for side dishes. If your oven space is limited, think about how much room you’ll have without a turkey in there.

What do you need to deep fry a turkey:

Deep Fryer - You can buy the whole setup in a kit or you can buy everything separately. Make sure your pot is about 40-60 quarts. The burner should be large enough to hold this pot securely. Most burners will use a propane tank as a fuel source and are not included in the kits. Turkey Fryers at Amazon

Candy Thermometer - Having an accurate thermometer is important to ensure that the turkey cooks properly and to avoid a fire. Candy Thermometers are long and usually have a clip so you can attach them to the side of the pot. Most Deep Fryer Kits include a candy thermometer. CDN IRL500 InstaRead Deep Fry Turkey Thermometer

Meat Thermometer - After cooking your bird for 3 1/2 minutes a pound it will be done. If you have problems keeping the oil temperature constant then you may need a meat thermometer. The turkey is done when the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees. KitchenAid Cook’s Series Stainless Steel Meat Thermometer

Oven mitts & safety goggles - Splattering oil is very dangerous. Oven mitts and safety goggles are a must. Fire Extinguisher – This is just a precaution but it’s better safe than sorry. Make sure the fire extinguisher is made for grease fires. Oven Mitts & fire extinguishers

How to prepare for your first deep fry:

Choose a turkey no bigger than 12 pounds. If that isn’t enough to feed your guests then get two turkeys. Even if you have a pot large enough to cook a larger turkey remember that you will have to lift it over a pot of hot oil. A 12 pound turkey will cook in under 45 minutes so cooking two (24 pounds of turkey) can still be done in well under two hours and think of all the leftovers you’ll have.

Remove the neck and giblets from inside the turkey. Remove any pop up timers or plastic leg bindings. The legs should be tied together with butchers string so that they don’t touch the side of the pot while cooking. Do not stuff your turkey.

Defrost your turkey in the fridge for several days prior to cooking. Do not defrost a turkey outside of the fridge as this a great way to grow bacteria.

Stuffing and Gravy – When deep frying a turkey the stuffing must be made outside of the bird. Also plan for alternate ways to make gravy. You will not have access to turkey fat like you would when roasting a turkey. Frying up the giblets and neck in a pan is one solution or save some chicken fat from a previous meal a few days before Thanksgiving. And remember that a deep fried turkey needs less gravy because it doesn’t dry out like oven roasted turkey, although that fact won’t help your mashed potatoes.

Deep frying a turkey is dangerous and proper caution needs to be used:

The turkey fryer needs to be outside on a flat surface. Do not deep fry a turkey in a garage or a covered carport. Always keep a fire extinguisher (rated for grease fires) nearby. Large oven mitts or a fireplace gloves must be worn. Always wear eye protection and full face protection would be even better. A welding mask is probably overkill but it would be entertaining for your guests.

When lowering the turkey into the oil, turn off the flame. And do not allow those guests, especially children and pets near the turkey cooker.

Follow these safety tips and use common sense and your turkey frying experience will be safe and successful.

The one in the biggest pot is the Musa Basjoo. Basically a stick when I first got it.

Overwintering Musa Basjoo (Hardy Banana)

Even though I live in New Jersey, I still like to grow banana plants. Their big green leaves give my pool & patio and nice tropical feel. And who doesn’t want to feel like they are in tropics? Every so often, when my kids are trying to drown me, I look around and see the banana plants and right before I gasp for air, I get a nice tropical feeling.

Back in 2006, when I was really into garden blogging, I would tear through any plant catalog that I could get my hands on, looking for interesting things to grow so that I could blog about them. I just happened to stumble onto Musa Basjoo (Hardy Banana). The catalog said that it was a banana tree that could survive a winter in Zone 7 and it could grow up to 10 feet tall. A ten foot tall banana tree that would survive a New Jersey winter? Why wouldn’t I buy one of them. I’m surprised I didn’t buy two.

Even grown in a container, these things get pretty big.

Now these plants will not grow bananas that you can eat and in fact up here in the Northeast, they will rarely set fruit. But my goal was to have nice big green leafy plants and I was not disappointed.

When Plant Delights sent me the plant, I was actually pretty disappointed because it was this tiny little stick of a plant. Nothing against Plant Delights, they are great but when you have visions of hacking your way through an untamed jungle of banana trees and you receive something the size of a leek, you tend to be disappointed. Well, I adjusted my expectations and I potted up my new hardy banana stick. I used a big 22 inch pot and filled it with mostly compost and a little bit of a bagged manure from Home Depot. I probably should have added some light fluffy potting soil too because a big pot like that is hard to move when it’s filled with compost.

Musa Basjoo in mid summer

So now here we are in 2012 and my musa basjoos are still going strong. Not only did the tiny little stick turn into a 6 foot banana tree but every year since then, the musa basjoo created “pups”. It basically grows more plants from the root ball or the “corm”. All you have to do is cut those pups off of the corm and plant them up. With lots of fresh compost in the pots or in the ground where I eventually started planting them. At one point I had about 19 of them that were all over 5 feet tall. And I had tiny little non-edible bananas once too. That was pretty cool.Yes, Musa Basjoo are hardy to Zone 7 but I live in Zone 6. At first I thought about leaving them in the ground and mulching heavily or setting up a fig tree-like enclosure around them. But I scrapped that idea and just decided to dig them all up and store them in my garage. Better to play it safe. The garage isn’t heated but it rarely goes below 40 degrees.

Bringing in the potted plants in is pretty easy. I just drag those heavy pots into my garage. The banana plants that are in the ground aren’t too much work either. The roots are not very deep or strong so digging them up really isn’t a big chore. A shovel in the ground is usually enough to get them out. Even the 6-8 foot plants come right out.

The best part of overwintering Musa Basjoo is using my garden machete. It makes me feel like a jungle explorer, hacking my way through the local vegetation. Hmm, I think I’m sensing a theme. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten into computers and reached for that dream job of jungle explorer.

I wait until after the first frost and then chop all the leaves off with my garden machete. Then I dig out the stems and wrap them up in burlap or newspapers and store them in a large pot or a garbage can. I even wad up more newspaper and add them to the container for additional insulation. This seems to work fine. Since they produce new plants every year I don’t always bring them all in.

Before and After the machete trimming

When spring comes, I just dig new holes and add plenty of compost and we’re ready to go. And I just noticed that you can actually buy Musa Basjoo on Amazon now.

Angry Birds Star Wars – coming November 8th

The fine people of Rovio (who must all be filthy rich by now) have released a gameplay video for their upcoming game, Angry Birds Star Wars. And so if you were wondering how they were going to merge Angry Birds with Star Wars, the video will give you an idea of how they did it. And I must say that I’m impressed.

It looks like Angry Birds Star Wars will more like Angry Birds Space instead of regular Angry Birds. Also the different birds now have different Star Wars related powers. It looks like there’s a lightsaber wielding bird, a blaster shooting bird and force using bird. There’s also a few more in the gameplay video that have to do with R2D2 and C3PO but their abilities aren’t clear. And the wookie bird just looks like one of those giant heavy birds that causes a lot of damage.

I’m definitely going to download this game when it comes out (November 8th).

Ninja fishing in a steamboat

A while back, my favorite iPhone game was Ninja Fishing by Gamenauts. I was totally obsessed with it and played it all the time. At one point I was even ranked as one of the Top 100 players in the world in Game Center. So of course I wrote a Ninja Fishing Review on this blog.

For those of you who have never played Ninja Fishing, it’s a cross between a fishing game and a Fruit Ninja style swipe to chop stuff game. You lower your fishing line as deep as you can, tilting the iPhone/iPad to avoid snagging a fish on the way down. Once you reach the end of your fishing line, you reel in as many fish as you can. Now the next part is a little confusing because it doesn’t make much sense but it does make for good game play. You have to slice up all the fish that you just reeled in. I would think this would be done later after you’ve returned to shore or gone to the fish market but whatever, it’s still fun.

When I check my blog stats, it seems that lots of people coming to my site looking to find out what the boats do in Ninja Fishing. So I’m going to help those people and let you know that the answer is not much. Even though the Time Machine boat is used to travel to the dinosaur fish level, the boats are really just there for you to collect. And they also look cool.  Here’s a list of all the different boats:

• Dinky Fishing Boat
• Rubber Ducky
• Steamboat
• Viking Ship
• Flaming Pumpkin Ship
• Xmas Boat
• Time Machine

And here’s a video I made that shows you what all the boats in Ninja Fishing look like.

If you have these, then you don’t need baking powder

Baking Powder Recipe

I have a feeling that if this game is a hit, then we’ll be seeing titles like Angry Birds Avengers, Angry Birds Harry Potter and the like sometime in the future.

But anyway, to celebrate, Cartoon Network has created this awesome video with tons of my favorite cartoon characters. Its a nice mix of old and new characters and its a lot of fun to see Shaggy, Scooby, Finn & Jake, Daffy, Mordecai & Rigby all together on screen at once. The video gets a little trippy in the middle but the ending is kind of epic. Good fun.

Favorite part: Muscle Man from Regular Show rocking the Flintstones car

Kale and Chickpea Stew

Kale and Chickpea Stew

Tonight I felt like I was living in a 60ies TV Show because there was a hot meal waiting for me on the table when I got home from work. This doesn’t happen a lot in my house even though my wife is a great cook. No, it’s because we’re a typical 2010ies family with two kids and way too many school activities and sports and play dates taking up all of our time.

So when I saw that my wife made a kale and chickpea stew for dinner I was psyched. Not only because I didn’t have to cook but because it tasted awesome. I’ve mentioned before that I try to eat mostly vegan food because of my cholesterol and this recipe totally fit the bill. Healthy, delicious and vegan. Here’s the recipe:

Now if I could get a martini and a hot meal waiting for me when I got home from work, then it would really feel like a 60ies TV Show. Sadly, Don Draper, I am not.

Vegan Pumpkin Bread

Vegan Pumpkin Bread

As someone who is not a big fan of pumpkin pie, it’s surprising that I’m totally loving this recipe for pumpkin bread.

You see I spent a lot of time searching online for a great Vegan zucchini bread recipe because like most vegetable gardeners at this time of year, I have so many zucchini that I don’t know what to do with them. Its an annual questions that plagues most veggie growers. What to do with the extra zucchini? I’ve fried them, I’ve grilled them, sautéed them, made them with pasta, with rice, with quinoa. I’ve even made potato zucchini pancakes. And before I start sounding like Bubba from Forest Gump, I even gave them away to people at work. So why not try zucchini bread? But what does this have to do with Pumpkin Bread? I’ll get to that part in a minute.

So I found this great recipe. I eat a lot of vegan food because I have cholesterol issues but that’s a story for another time. I checked the ingredients while I was at work and did some shopping during my lunch break. I was all set when I got home to make some delicious zucchini bread. Except for one thing. After going to the garden, I realized that I didn’t have an zucchini. There were a few football sized one but I don’t like to cook with those because they get too seedy. All the perfectly sized zucchini that I was counting on had some bite marks in them or they were totally eaten. I must have had a visit from a woodchuck or a rabbit.

So without any zucchini, this zucchini bread mission that I was on would probably not work out so well. But wait, I had a can of pumpkin from Trader Joes in my pantry. So I said to myself, why not just substitute it? And that’s how this Vegan Pumpkin Bread recipe was born.

One other minor problem that I ran into was that I didn’t have any baking powder. I did have three containers of baking soda but the recipe called for baking powder. No way was I running out the store or giving up on my veggie loaf, so I quickly found out how to make baking powder from baking soda and cream of tartar.

Despite all the problems this Pumpkin came out awesome. Absolutely perfect for a nice treat at night or even a hearty breakfast. Here’s the recipe.
Yield: 2 loaves

Oppa Gangnam Style

Oppa Gangnam Style

The “Fun” category on this site is tragically underused. We could all use a little more fun in our lives, so I’m going to try to fill it up with some good stuff.

Have you seen the Oppa Gangnam Style video on YouTube. It’s a song by a Korean artist known as PSY. He’s pretty well known in the Korean Pop music scene (KPop) and I can see why. The song is catchy and the dance is simple, very silly but still awesome. I can totally see why it’s showing up everywhere. Even the parodies are excellent.

You can download the song from iTunes here. And check out the Official YouTube video below:

The dance has already become a popular internet meme. Check out the Baltimore Ravens punt returner doing a Oppa Gangnam Style touchdown celebration.

Here’s Nelly Furtado doing her version of Oppa Gangnam Style in a recent concert.

The Oregon Duck – Gangnam Style Parody

Here’s Psy at a baseball game on the jumbotron.

Chat Roulette (sorry can’t embed it)

The YouTube video currently has 130 millions views and growing fast. Congrats to PSY!

Warning: I’ve played his song and done the dance so much that I’ve annoyed the hell out of all my family members. Use caution.  :)

This is all you need to build a Two Ring Puzzle

Two Ring Puzzle

Not all of the projects that I work on have important messages like the refurbish, reuse theme in yesterday’s post about fixing up an old garden bench. No, sometimes I just like to cut wood for fun. And building a two ring puzzle was one of those times.

As far as woodworking goes, there really wasn’t a lot of wood cutting in this project but it was enjoyable anyway. The background of this story is that I bought a book called, Crafting Wood Logic Puzzles: 18 Three-dimensional Games for the Hands and Mind by Charlie Self. The book description reads:

“For centuries, logic puzzles have entertained, inspired and educated kids of all ages. Studies show these engaging “brain teasers” provide unsurpassed benefits to the body and mind, increasing manual dexterity, mathematical abilities and overall intellectual agility.

Start with one washer on each loop

Crafting Wood Logic Puzzles provides plans and instructions for crafting 18 of the most popular manual puzzles. Projects range from traditional “put together/take apart” games like pentominoes and soma cubes to more sophisticated “unlocking” head-scratchers, such as the Burr and Heart Box puzzles. Readers will also learn specialized cutting, drilling, sanding, gluing and finishing techniques that make crafting wooden puzzles possible.”

So after reading that fantastic bit of marketing, I decided on the spot that I had to have this book. It sounded right up my alley. Who doesn’t want to learn “specialized cutting, drilling, sanding glue and finishing techniques”? And after I used the most deadly part of Amazon, the 1-Click order feature, the book was mine.

The first wood logic puzzle that I tried was the two ring puzzle. It was at the beginning of the book and it looked like something I do with my kids so I figured it would be a good place to start. The book is filled with a lot of great puzzle plans but my favorite is the probably the instructions for building a great table saw sled for the those tough cuts. That was worth the price of book by itself.

Solve the Two Ring Puzzle by moving both washers to one loop.

To make a Two Ring Puzzle, you’ll need is a block of wood, some string and a couple of washers. As for tools if you buy a nice piece of hobby wood with a 1″x2″ dimension all you really need a saw to cut it to length, a sander and a drill with a spade bit. Make sure spade bit is smaller than your washers. To attach the string to the wooden block you could use glue or a screw. I actually drilled a hole 1/4″ deep on each side, stuffed the end of the strings in the hole then used a glue gun to secure it. I considered using my brad nailer just in case people really wanted to pull the heck out of the rope while trying to solve the puzzle but opted not to. And it seems to be holding up just fine with the glue.

The two ring puzzle works like this. You have this block of wood with a hole in it and a strings with the washers on them. The washers sit on the two loops of string that are knotted and separated by the hole in the center of the wood block. The puzzle is to get the washers on the same side but it’s tricky because the washers are bigger than the hole.

The book also shows you how to solve all the puzzles too. I’ll offer up a hint on how to solve this and say that the washers don’t fit through the hole but the knot does.

It probably would have looked nicer if I stained it but I was too excited to try it out. Maybe someday I will stain it. But I plan on making more of the wooden puzzles in this book so I will probably be busy doing that instead. I think there’s a soma cube in my future.

This is a sad looking bench

Wooden Garden Bench

I’m the first to admit that sometimes my DIY projects come out like crap. Actually I’m the second to admit it. My wife has been known to tell me that my work looks like a monkey got a hold of a hammer. Fortunately, the garden bench restore was not one of those times.

If you look at the before picture, you can see that this garden bench was in some pretty sad shape. For about 10 years it sat under a huge pine tree overlooking my kids swing set. My wife and I used to sit there when the kids were really young and needed to be watched. Well 10 years of being outside and underneath a tree that constantly oozed sticky sap onto it, really took it’s toll.

This is the after picture.

Now if you have an old nasty bench in your yard and you’re thinking about following my lead, you’ll need a few tools for the job. The most important tool is a table saw. I have a Dewalt table saw and I’m very happy with it. To rip a 8 foot board you’re really going to want to use a table saw. But other than that, it’s really a basic job. Just a sander and drill and you should be fine.

There’s only two cuts in the whole project that required some thought. The top and bottom bench slats are cut on an angle so that your back and your legs don’t rest on a hard angle. Fortunately my table saw allows for a 45 degree cut so it wasn’t a big deal. Once you’re finished with your cut list, it’s just a matter of sanding everything smooth and drilling new holes to mount the slats onto the metal frame.

So for about $15 worth of wood and an afternoon of my time, the bench looks like new. At some point I’ll probably use a solid stain on it so that it matches the other outdoor furniture that’s nearby but this is good enough for now. Definitely a non-monkey project.

Some of the finest Reposado Tequilas on the market.

What is Tequila Reposado?

If you put the word Reposado into a translator, you’ll get the result restful. So why would people want restful tequila? Looking back on some parties where I drank a lot of tequila, they were anything but restful. No, with tequila reposado, the restful part comes from letting the tequila rest or age and has nothing to do with the person or drinks it.

The regular no name tequila that you got on Cinco de mayo or the stuff they put in shot glasses during spring break in Cancun was most likely un-aged tequila. The manufacturers distill it and then bottle it immediately. In fact it probably wasn’t made from 100% Pure Agave. Some tequilas with the word “Gold” in their name are made of equal parts agave and cane sugar. Its the cane sugar that’s a major contributor to the headache you get when you have a hangover.

Next time your buy tequila, make sure it’s made with 100% agave 1800 Silver is a good mix of quality and price. But when you’re ready for the next step, it’s time to move up to a Reposado tequila.

Reposado tequila is aged at least 2 months. Usually in a wooden barrel. Although some tequila makers will also use storage tanks which sounds a lot less appealing. Since the wooden barrels are usually made of oak, a reposado tequila will pick up a hint of oak flavor. And that blends nicely with the agave to create a nice flavor. Some premium brands will actually age their tequila in used whiskey barrels to pick up some additional flavors from the barrel. This definitely creates a more complex tequila.

Cocktail Muddler

Cocktail Muddler

I recently had a birthday and I was very happy to unwrap my gift from my family and find that they got me a cocktail muddler. Hey, times are tough and not everyone gets a new iPad or a vacation for their birthday and besides I’m very happy with it. Since I’m really enjoying making cocktails lately and always like trying new things, the muddler was definitely something on my wishlist.

What is a muddler you ask? Well, it’s basically a stick or maybe it’s more like a mortel and pestle (just the pestle part) for cocktails. You place some ingredients in a cocktail shaker, usually it’s fruit or something that isn’t liquid and then you squish it up with the  muddler. If you’ve ever read a drink recipe that says something like, muddle a piece of ginger and a lime in a cocktail shaker, now you know what it means. They say that muddling releases the natural flavors of the ingredients and yes is probably true but really what’s going on here is that you’re squishing the stuff up.

If you’ve ever had a fresh mojito, the bartender probably used a muddler. With a mojito, there’s mint leaves and limes and maybe sugar that get muddled before the ice and rum are added. I hear that adding bitters to mojitos now is the trendy thing to do. I’ll have to try this out and report back here. I’ve planted tons of mint in the garden this spring. There should be lots of mojitos in my future.

Since I just got the muddler, I haven’t had much time to add a bunch of muddled cocktail recipes to this site. But I plan on updating this page with links to muddled cocktail recipes after I do some very important “research” so please check back every once in a while.

One day I got the bright idea that I wanted to be a pro blogger and that I would work towards making a full time living on the Internet. The idea was that eventually, I wouldn’t need my day job in IT to pay the bills anymore and I’d be a work at home Dad. That sounded like the life for me. Who wants to build boring business applications and websites for corporations when I could working at home, making my own hours, spending more time with my kids? Me, that’s who! It was a great goal and I was going to work hard to get there.

Since I was only earning a few bucks a day I figured that more sites would earn more money. So I started another 5 blogs, then another 10 and at one point I had over 30 blogs going.

Did I ever get to full time income? Nope, I never made my goal of becoming a full time blogger and in pursuit of that goal I totally burnt myself out. Since then, I really haven’t blogged in years other than a few false restarts. I’d get all excited about it again for a while but after setting totally unrealistic goals and not coming close to them, my interest would fade again.

One great thing did happen though. Along the way, I started a site about panini recipes, wrote about 40 posts (probably in like two weeks) and set them to randomly autopost twice a week. I did this with several other blogs and somehow they still rank pretty well in Google and receive more than a trickle of traffic. But in a very Julie & Julia way, the panini recipe site got me a book deal. I guess publishers are just snapping up bloggers left and right for cookbooks and other home life topics now a days. That decent Google ranking got my writing in front of the eyeballs of an editor at Adams Media. She got in touch with me and 3 months later I was a published cookbook author. The Everything Panini Press Cookbook Well, it actually took longer to get it published but I was done writing it in three months (plus two weeks because I missed my deadline, hey 300 recipes is a lot of panini. My family wanted to eat other things).  So I’m very proud of that unexpected benefit of writing all of those blogs.

But looking back, trying to keep 30 sites updated and interesting is very hard to do, especially when you still have a day job. Besides panini recipes, I was writing about things like preparing for retirement, psychic phenomenon and anything else that I thought would make me some money. I didn’t know anything about some of these topics but that didn’t stop me. When I was garden blogging, I was really just taking pictures of all the good stuff I did in my garden and my yard and then I wrote about it. I wasn’t worrying about high paying keyword phrases or Search Engine Optimization. It was all about sharing a genuine interest in gardening. And that’s what I want to get back to doing. I have a lot of home life hobbies like gardening, cooking, building things and I’m always trying to keep my kids entertained and this is the kind of stuff that would make for a lot of good posts. Well I hope so anyway.

So the whole point of this post is that I’m going to start blogging again regularly. I’m going to keep the camera nearby at all times and take pictures of all the good stuff (and the stuff that doesn’t turn out so good too) that I do on my weekends and nights after my day job and we’ll see what happens. I’m not going to set crazy goals this time, I’m just going to enjoy blogging. Hope you come back and check out some of my content.

Pur Refrigerator Water Filter

If you have a Whirlpool, Kenmore, Kitchen Aid, Maytag, Amana or Jenn-Air refrigerator with a water dispenser then this is the filter you’ve been looking for. The PUR Refrigerator Water Filter is much cheaper than the replacement filters that I’ve been buying at Sears and it even works better.

Not only does this water filter remove or reduce the lead, cysts, benzene and other usual contaminants that are found in tap water but it also removes up to 99% of the pharmaceutical compounds that are floating around in there too. If you didn’t know that you had to be worried about pharmaceutical compounds in your drinking water it’s probably because it’s a relatively new thing to worry about. In March 2008, the Associated Press published a report that found pharmaceutical compounds in the water supplies of over 24 major metro areas across the United States. It seems that the water treatment plants were never designed to remove pharmaceuticals from our water.

Before buying one of these Refrigerator Water Filters make sure that it’s the right one for your fridge. If you’re like me and you have one of those quarter turn filters mounted in the grill of your fridge you should be fine with this model from Pur. But check with your manufacturer if you’re not sure.

I’ll take my water without a side of drugs please and that means that I’m going to continue buying these Pur Refrigerator Water Filters.

Gluten Free Vegan Cupcakes

Gluten Free Vegan Cupcakes

I like trying new things and that definitely includes food. When my wife was asked to bring dessert to a baby shower recently, I jumped at the chance to help out. Hey, I’m a guy who likes to do woodworking projects and I also bake cupcakes, deal with it. But these aren’t just any cupcakes, they’re gluten free vegan cupcakes.

The mom to be is a vegetarian who was recently diagnosed with celiac disease. She’s also lactose intolerant. So basically, we needed a gluten free vegan dessert to satisfy a pregnant woman. Yikes, you’d think that would be a huge challenge but it actually wasn’t too bad.

It wasn’t too bad because I had remembered seeing vegan cupcakes win it all on the Food Network show, Cupcake Wars. Chef Chloe Coscarelli won with a few different cupcake recipes but the one that I wanted to try was the chocolate strawberry shortcake cupcakes. They really looked delicious, even through the TV. You can find her recipe and lots more vegan recipes at her site, Chef Chloe. Definitely worth a visit. Go ahead and check out her site now, I’ll wait.

I’ve actually made the chocolate cake part of this recipe before, but I just threw all of the batter into a bundt pan and scoffed the whole thing down without any icing. Probably wouldn’t win Cupcake Wars like that but there’s no time to worry about presentation when you’re starving. When I made them this time I wouldn’t be starving and they would also have to be gluten free. Luckily she addresses this in her recipe. To make these cupcakes gluten free you can substitute the all-purpose flour with gluten free flour and 3/4 teaspoon of xantham gum.

Being someone who likes to try new things, I altered the recipe a little this time and messed with the liquids. The recipe calls for 1 cup of coffee, water or coconut milk. I went with 1 shot of Patron XO Cafe (coffee flavored tequila) and topped off the rest of the 1 cup measurement with coffee. I’m happy with the change that I made. I think it added a slightly more intense flavor to the recipe and it wasn’t at all boozy.

My wife said the cupcakes were a big hit at the shower so that worked out well. But I’m more excited about the extra batch that we ate at home. Delicious!

Who wants to make the same old recipes over and over again. There’s so many cool foods out there to try and great recipes can be found with a just a few clicks. I’m glad I tried gluten free vegan cupcakes.

And Chef Chloe is also coming out with a cookbook, Chloe’s Kitchen: 125 Easy, Delicious Recipes for Making the Food You Love the Vegan Way. I’m looking forward to trying some of her other vegan recipes. If they’re as good as these cupcakes were then I’m sold. I already pre-ordered the book, so a review will be in the works.

Garden Machete

Garden Machete

One of the best presents that I got this past Christmas was a garden machete. I was expecting something like socks or other boring necessities. One year my daughter found one of my old hockey pucks in the garage and wrapped that up for me. But opening up a garden machete on Christmas morning was definitely one of the most unexpected treats of the whole year.

So what do I need a machete for anyway? Beside killing zombies, I also plan to get a lot of use out of the machete in the garden. Every spring I usually split a dozen or so hostas. In the past I’ve used an old kitchen knife or a shovel but now I can yell, “Hassan Chop!” and look much cooler doing it. Every year the hostas keep getting bigger and I keep splitting them. And now I have the proper tool for the job.

Another great use for my garden machete will be chopping down my musa basjoo every fall. I like to grow hardy banana trees that need to over winter in my garage. For banana trees they’re pretty hardy but New Jersey winters would be too much for them. So in the fall, I chop off the leaves and if necessary I chop the pseudostem (the trunk) to fit them in my warmer garage.

Gerber Machete and Sheath

The machete I got is made by Gerber. They make pretty good multitools so I would think that this machete should hold up well. It even comes with a sheath. I checked some of the reviews on Amazon for this particular machete (Gerber 31-000758 Gator Machete with Sheath) and there were a few people who gave it one star. That worried for until I read between the lines and saw that these people were trying to cut down trees and chop firewood and crazy stuff that you’ll see Bear Grills or Survivorman do. For use in the garden I don’t think that I’ll have any problems with it snapping in two. I don’t have any rock hard hostas so I should be okay.