Cooking Apples

It's been a couple of days of work, but we've turned about 20 pounds of Haralson apples we got from Nancy Mount into Apple Jelly and Apple Butter. A few oops along the way, we added too much water to the jelly and then had to cook it a bit longer to reduce the water, and I slightly charred the apple butter (also I don't think I reduced it enough). Next time we'll do better. a few firsts, first time with liquid pectin, first time using a jelly bag, first time making both products.

Right now making good 'ol chicken and dumplin's using a 1997 recipe from Cooks Illustrated. We are having the kids come over for dinner so we are getting some of it ahead.

Gardening stuff in zone 4

I been colder than usual for us. Last week in the 50's, but finally today some heat. In some ways it's sad, we've had a great crop of lettuce and spinach on the deck - but maybe the other stuff will get going. I try and keep a journal of gardening ideas and progress, but I'm thinking about doing this on line along with the engineering work. We are working on a few of the 200 hours above 78 degrees that we get in our climate.

MN 2030

I was done to the Twin Cities today for a meeting discussing how Minnesota might impliment the 2030 challenge. At this point I think we are looking at a energy model based benchmark so that more building type can be benchmarked. More on this later.

Joining the HighTunnelers

I got tired of the cool growing weather. It happens and you and grin and bear it, quit or use technology to help. There are those that call the whole system plasticulture, plactic greenhouse, plastic mulches, and plastic irrigation systems, but as long as they work who cares? I put up the hoops last fall and filmed it in April.









First plants late in late April, most in May, 30 days eariler than usual. So far no heat needed. I think if I had put the film on eariler, I could have started even eariler. The plants look good and in 40 degree weather I have had 75 degrees under the plastic. I am using red plastic under the tomatoes, green under the cucumbers, and brown under the peppers. All are supposed to be matched to the preferences of the plants. Since this photo Aliceon and I have installed more weed control fabric and shredded pine bark mulch to control weeds between the raised beds.

With plastic over the beds, irrrigation becomes important. I 've installed a 500 gallon rain barrel up by the house to collect the roof water. The elevation is enough to operate a drip tape irrigation system, which I run 2 hours per day. I'm going through about 250 gallons a week this way, so I'll have to use some well water too.













Here is photo of last weeks tomatoes, when my outside plants may have well stayed in their 3 inch cell pot - (virtually no growth as of yet for my outside plants).

Windowless Building Don't Make Sense except to Bomb

This is an award winner in southern Minnesota that I drove by, yikkes! It won an ASHRAE award due to it's low energy consumption. That kind of thinking, where a building is valued without considering it's occupants, makes me crazy. I suppose we'll be seeing this in low budget Sci-fi movies. In the same area of the state, just south of Rochester, there is a large, 67 turbine wind farm. Really cool to see so many and you can see them from this school (or could if there were windows).

I've been remiss in posting. I intend to correct this. Relaunch during Greenbuild. Today I'm attending the monthly meeting of the MN chapter of ASHRAE. The subject is radiant cooling and the speaker is from Uponor. I am most interested in the case studies but I did hear of another low mass radient cooling system called capillary radient cooling. Interesting.

Lots of professional graphics. Good presentation for newbies.

Thursday will be speaking at the MN AIA convention on our work with building benchmarking.

Food thought or at least for lunch

April's Gourmet magazine brought a recipe I wanted to try. (BTW - I only get this because I got it free with some purchase at Amazon) It was actually in an advertisement for a new food show and it was for a 6 minuite pizza dough. I was intrigued and hungry at lunch time so I thought I would try it. First since it was for only me I halved the ingredients - 7/8 cup of flour some salt sugar olive oil and a teaspoon of rapid rise yeast mixed with water to make a wet dough in the food processor, the wetness mixes everything up well. Then add in a bit of flour to make it workable.Roll out really thin, brush with more olive oil and put on a preheated gas grill for a couple of minuites. Flip and put some toppings on and you have a super thin crisp crust pizza, sort of Neopolitian style. Good and fast.




















I have been sick the last two weeks with the flu - I had hoped to keep it off as I was sick in January, but no such luck. This also seems to be the busiest time in my business life in a few months, it weems I'm on the run for the next month. Off to Omaha with Steve McNeill this week. Then prep for a couple speaking engagments next week. I'm really excited about trying to use some new style no bullet point presentation techiques but it's going to take me awhile to get the style integrated into the existing presentations.