Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Wednesday Whatever - March 21 edition
Hey all...not much going on, but wanted to get a post in today yet. Made/smoked my dried beef on Sunday and it came out pretty good. Also tried out one of my newest toys, an electric meat slicer, on Monday. Works great for the price. By reading a smoking forum, I found some new recipes that I'm going to try, altered to my preferences, of course (I don't eat vegetables, so that kinda limits some recipes that I can do). If they're any good, I'll brag on 'em a little.
Well, it's about time to get out of here for the day, so I'll wrap it up for now. Hope to be getting back into at least posting weekly.
Well, it's about time to get out of here for the day, so I'll wrap it up for now. Hope to be getting back into at least posting weekly.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Hello? Is this thing on?
Hi there, remember me? I'm the guy that had gotten fairly consistent with weekly posts, but now haven't made one in almost a month. Not a whole lot of exciting stuff has happened, but there were a few interesting things that went on while I haven't written.
March 1st we had a nice little 2+ day blizzard. Weather started getting crappy when we closed the store on Wednesday the 28th of February, and was pretty bad by Thursday morning. Still went to work as I normally would, but decided against going on my sales call. Around noon, we pretty much decided that we weren't that busy anyway, so we actually closed the store after loading some pop and beer into my pickup to be delivered to the Fire Station for the meeting that was supposed to be that night. Between the time we got loaded and the door got locked, we had 3 customers come in. We still decided to close, and I was going to drop the beverages off at the station on my way home. Well, I got to the station and found the doors blocked by a nice little 3 foot high snowdrift, and since I didn't have a shovel or boots to protect my poor little feet, I decided to go home and try again later. Couple of hours later, our department had a message page that the meeting was cancelled, and that made me very happy, as I didn't feel like leaving the house anyway.
Friday morning, Dad didn't call down by the usual time to wake me up to wrap my leg, but I got up anyway and headed upstairs. The streets were plowed, but it was still snowing, and at about 9:00, we decided to go try to open the store. Made the short drive uptown, and it looked like a ghost town - nothing else open and no other vehicles out. I returned home, but Dad was going to try to get a shovel out of the store. The sidewalk was clear, but he couldn't get the door unlocked due to ice, so he came home too. About 12:45 he tried again and got in, but called at about 1:00 and said I didn't have to come up as he was going to be coming back home shortly.
This is the first time in the 33 years we've had the store(s) that we closed due to weather. Saturday morning, the snow had stopped, but the wind was still blowing pretty hard. We opened at the normal time, and I took a short drive around town on the way in to survey the snow. I drove out to the newest part of town and had to drive thru a narrow pass thru a drift, then was turning the corner to go down the last part of the street, and had to turn around. In front of me stood about an 8 foot high drift. I could see around it and saw our local maintainer working on the other end of the street though. At this time, I was still thinking about heading to another town when I got off work at noon, to get some lunch, but after I got turned around and headed to the highway to make the rest of the trip to work, I decided against doing that. When I looked to the South, it didn't look too bad, but to the North where I had to go, there were still drifts causing the highway to be one-lane wide.
On sunday I managed to get out of town to go get some groceries, but the roads were still a bit treacherous in some places. It also started a lot of melting, as the temp hit about 40 with bright sunshine.
In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was going to make some dried beef. I only missed the smoking day by a week. The trip to Cabela's was cancelled when my buddy and I decided the roads wouldn't be up to snuff yet, and I wasn't sure how long my smokehouse would remain buried, so I didn't get the meats curing until last Saturday evening. They will be going into the smoker on Sunday. Our snow is all but gone...hard to believe that the blizzard was 2 weeks ago, and now you can't even tell it happened.
Sometime in there, I think it was the Saturday of the blizzard, I made my first successful purchase on Ebay. I bought a pair of thermocouples for a project that I'm doing, to enhance my smoker. It's called a PID, and basically what it does is control the temperature within a very tight range, and to a particular number I set it to (the rheostat on the smoker now doesn't have any numbers to see where you are, and the temp can vary in any position based on the air temp outside). I ordered the remaining parts Monday and was hoping to build it before smoking and drying the dried beef, but I'm betting these parts don't arrive until Monday.
That's about all I can think of right now, although I'm sure I'm forgetting to tell ya'll something.
Take care, and I hope to talk at ya again sometime soon.
March 1st we had a nice little 2+ day blizzard. Weather started getting crappy when we closed the store on Wednesday the 28th of February, and was pretty bad by Thursday morning. Still went to work as I normally would, but decided against going on my sales call. Around noon, we pretty much decided that we weren't that busy anyway, so we actually closed the store after loading some pop and beer into my pickup to be delivered to the Fire Station for the meeting that was supposed to be that night. Between the time we got loaded and the door got locked, we had 3 customers come in. We still decided to close, and I was going to drop the beverages off at the station on my way home. Well, I got to the station and found the doors blocked by a nice little 3 foot high snowdrift, and since I didn't have a shovel or boots to protect my poor little feet, I decided to go home and try again later. Couple of hours later, our department had a message page that the meeting was cancelled, and that made me very happy, as I didn't feel like leaving the house anyway.
Friday morning, Dad didn't call down by the usual time to wake me up to wrap my leg, but I got up anyway and headed upstairs. The streets were plowed, but it was still snowing, and at about 9:00, we decided to go try to open the store. Made the short drive uptown, and it looked like a ghost town - nothing else open and no other vehicles out. I returned home, but Dad was going to try to get a shovel out of the store. The sidewalk was clear, but he couldn't get the door unlocked due to ice, so he came home too. About 12:45 he tried again and got in, but called at about 1:00 and said I didn't have to come up as he was going to be coming back home shortly.
This is the first time in the 33 years we've had the store(s) that we closed due to weather. Saturday morning, the snow had stopped, but the wind was still blowing pretty hard. We opened at the normal time, and I took a short drive around town on the way in to survey the snow. I drove out to the newest part of town and had to drive thru a narrow pass thru a drift, then was turning the corner to go down the last part of the street, and had to turn around. In front of me stood about an 8 foot high drift. I could see around it and saw our local maintainer working on the other end of the street though. At this time, I was still thinking about heading to another town when I got off work at noon, to get some lunch, but after I got turned around and headed to the highway to make the rest of the trip to work, I decided against doing that. When I looked to the South, it didn't look too bad, but to the North where I had to go, there were still drifts causing the highway to be one-lane wide.
On sunday I managed to get out of town to go get some groceries, but the roads were still a bit treacherous in some places. It also started a lot of melting, as the temp hit about 40 with bright sunshine.
In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was going to make some dried beef. I only missed the smoking day by a week. The trip to Cabela's was cancelled when my buddy and I decided the roads wouldn't be up to snuff yet, and I wasn't sure how long my smokehouse would remain buried, so I didn't get the meats curing until last Saturday evening. They will be going into the smoker on Sunday. Our snow is all but gone...hard to believe that the blizzard was 2 weeks ago, and now you can't even tell it happened.
Sometime in there, I think it was the Saturday of the blizzard, I made my first successful purchase on Ebay. I bought a pair of thermocouples for a project that I'm doing, to enhance my smoker. It's called a PID, and basically what it does is control the temperature within a very tight range, and to a particular number I set it to (the rheostat on the smoker now doesn't have any numbers to see where you are, and the temp can vary in any position based on the air temp outside). I ordered the remaining parts Monday and was hoping to build it before smoking and drying the dried beef, but I'm betting these parts don't arrive until Monday.
That's about all I can think of right now, although I'm sure I'm forgetting to tell ya'll something.
Take care, and I hope to talk at ya again sometime soon.
