Worms

So since I left school in January we have had a small problem with compost. For a while we tried to collect out food scraps and give them to my parents who have green bin collection but after a couple of weeks we started to realize that just wasn't going to work. The scraps would sit around too long and start to smell. Sadly the only thing we could do was just through scraps in the garbage.

The environmentalist in me hated doing this but there was no other option. Then I remembered some blogs I had read a while go about using worms to compost your kitchen scraps. So I started to look into it more. The best resource that I found was http://www.redwormcomposting.com/ which went through a really easy way to go about making a bit for the kitchen. There were probably 5 or 6 other sources that I read and all of them said that it was easy to do without having any smell.

But Talia wasn't too thrilled about having worms in the apartment. Something about being kind of freaked out by them which is odd because she has no problems putting worms on hooks to go fishing.

But after a couple more weeks of talking about it she finally decided it was ok for me to try it out. Now came the hard part, finding the worm bin. A lot of the web pages suggested using a rubber maid bin but they are expensive and I couldn't find one that would fit under the sink. Eventually I found one (as per my blog entry the other day) but I couldn't fine the vents I needed to let things stay well aerated.

So today I had to go to York to do my last testing session for an experiment I started back in December, and on my way home I stopped by a home depot to try and pick up the vents. I couldn't find the louver vents that were mentioned but I did find some sink drains that I thought would work. I also picked up a drill bit (1.25 in although I probably should have gotten a 1 in.), epoxy  to glue the drains in, and a black berry bush (with pot) for Talia.

So when I got home (after putting the laundry up) I started work on building it.

My worm box

Side view with the vents in

There was a funny story about the next picture. While I was drilling the holes, Talia was out getting laundry change from her bank and going to the dollar store. After starting to drill I realized I was missing the nylon that I needed to prevent the worms from coming out. It was at this point that I had to call Talia and say "Can you pick me up some pantihose?" lol, I had to ask someone to pick me up some up.

my vents with fabric elastics on

Later this evening I was able to stray paint the bottom of the bin. Unfortunately it needs another coat of paint to get it nice and dark but It was getting dark and raining a little so I called it quits for the night.

~(' ')~

Sweet chilli chicken without the chicken

So last night I decided to make pizza when I arrived home.

Lots of goodness. The new thing I fried was to deep fry some tofu and then cover it in sweet chilli sause. It came out very well. I'm going to try again but this time to marinate the tofu first.

After dinner I wanted to make a dessert so I decided to make pinacoladas with real pineapple.  We didn't have rum so I make it with vodka instead. Itwas OK but not amazing

Reading update

So the other night I was trying to figure out the aerodynamics of rotor machines (helicopters) and I came across a reference to a book called "principles of helicopter aerodynamics" by Gordon Leishman. So like any good internet savvy person I immediately tried to find a PDF of it. And found I did... sort of.
What I found was a 22 page PDF that was the start of the first chapter of the book. So I spent a good hour or so reading through the early history of helicopter development. From early Chinese toys made of osterage feathers over 2000year ago al the way up to attempts made in the early 1900s. It was at this point that I found out that my PDF was in fact qonly the first section of the book... to make a long story short I couldn't find a PDF copy of the book anywhere. But I did find out that the library from talias school had a copy. So the wonderful gf that she borrowed it for me :) :*
So I have been reading it on and off for the last week, mostly off, and haberdashery through most of chapter 1. Soon I get the start chapter 2 where the book deals with basic principles of aerodynamics and not just history.
So that has been most of my late evening tonight.  The earlier part of my day was spent going over to my parets place with Talia to visit. My mom wanted some help setting up her etsy page and since Talia had done her own she was willing to help. I also wanted to get some lanterns made with my dad so it was win win.
Our morning started late as it normally does with us only getting up at 10. We then had breakfast and I decided to give one of my avacado trees to my mom when we went to visit. My mom has been trying to grow one ever since she found out it was possible to from the seeds, but the long germination time seemed to be discouraging her. Anyway, I had 2 and so I decided to give one to her. Kind of a random St Patrick's day present... hey its green and my mom doesn't drink beer. So in order to do that I had to transplant it into a new pop. And let me tell you, that was not an easy task. The soil was really loose and would not com's out without ripping the roots. But I managed to do it without damaging the plant too badly.
I also transplanted my 2nd avacado AZ well as Talia's 3 newest cactuses.
So off to my parents we went with promises of a BBQ for lunch and some woodworking in mind. The bus ride was the usual length. About 1.5 hrs so we got there around 1:30. Chatted for a bit and the the laddies got down to the business of setting up stay for my mom.
At this point I decided to go off to home depot to get wood for the lanterns and possibly a container for starting my own worm completed (vermicomposter).
I havd been toying with that idea for a while now. Especially since I quit school and no longer had a place to take our green bin waste. The benefits of vermicompost are 2 fold for me. 1) is gives us a productive place to put all out kitchen scraps and 2) I get amazing fertilizer for my plants.
So on the way to home depot I started to tell my dad what I was looking (a large rubbermaid type container that would fit under our sink) for and he suggested we check out the dollar stores.
So off we went to the closest dollar store. No luck on the container there but they did have a really good gardening section with window boxes and bamboo stakes. I remembered that I wanted those for the belcany garden and so I picked up 5 boxes and a package of 6 stakes.
Then my dad suggested this other dollar store across the street beside the no frills. That place has a sad selection but as we drove up I remembered that Talia wanted tahina for hummus and that was the no frills that I found it at the first time. So after the disapointinv dollar store we went there. Picked up the tahina as well as some corn flour (to try and make tortillas). Around this time we were getting hungry and so were Talia and my mom as Talia called me and asked when we should be home. I told her where we were and that we would be home in 30 minutes or so, once we got to the home depot. Talia reminded me that we were out of onions so I split a 10lb bag of onions with my dad (parents also needed onions and 10lb is too much for us to eat before they start to rot).
Off to the home depot we go to find the bin. Thoughts of lanterns completely lost on both of us. We wandered the home depot for a bit looking for bins until I got fed up and asked someone. They directed us to the right isle and I coin the perfect bin. Just the right side.
Sadly I forgot the name of this one type of air vent I need to help air flow in the worm bin so we left without everything. I now know it's called a louver vent. I need 4.
Came home and finished making lunch/dinner which Talia and my mom started to make. We had delicious veggie burgers that taste kind of like chicken burgers, amazing coleslaw,  and my moms pattented potato salad. Perfect for a 5pm dinner.  Note for the next time we make the burgers: fry instead of bake. They taste better.
So with all of that done my dad and I wandered into the other room to chat about upgrades to the cottage. Specifically adding solar panels. Last November we all went to the great outdoor and DIY show and found a really good place to get the panels from. But we couldn't remember the name. This led to the better part of 3 hours looking for the companies name. This included searching through the house, stalking in the net,  and even trying to figure out where on the event map the place had Berenice. Sadly no luck but my parents are gonna keep an eye out and hopefully the company will be at the next cottage show at the end of march.
So with that done and the laddies still working on etsy (they had been taking pictures of products all afternoon and were now working to put them up) I asked my dad if he wanted to try and get those entails for the worm box. It was now 8 pm or so and my dad said home depot would be open until 10... sadly this is not the case. Then out they close at 8.
But with nothing else to do my dad and I figured we would go in the basement and fiddle with some woodworking.  A while ago I had bought some wood to test out making barrels with. The barrels, when made, will be for out belcony garden with strawberries in one and potatoes in another. So that's what I decided to work on. It was quick work but before we even finished our first test Talia came down to tell us that after < 2 hours of posting items on etsy my mom already had 1 sale and a request for a custom order... and people had doubts that my mom could sell thing... silly people.
Amazing news for my mom :)
So we finished out first test barrel and it looked pretty good. The was really long and narrow though so Talia suggested cutting each side in half and making planter pots. So back down stairs we my dad and I went to see what we could do. Worked out some stuff but never finished the pots.
At 10 Talia called down the stairs to tell me she wanted to do home because it was 10 pm. 10 PM!!!!!! I had completely lost track of time. So home we went, after an exictig fun filled afternoon of memories. I'm hoping to go to karate tomorrow afternoon and then maybe find the missing vents for the worm bin.
Well its now pretty late an I've typed this entire entry on my phone so I'm going to try and get some sleep. I hope tomorrow is as fun as today was. We get to cook pizza balls for the coming week.
~(' ')~

Tomatoes

So I decided tonight to go and plant some plant seed that I got a couple weekends ago. Specifically I decided to plant some catnip for chase and add a new cherry tomato. The first cherry tomato i planted about a year ago is still alive and doing well. It is actually starting to flower again so I am hoping I can keep him alive for several years to get lots of tomatoes. That being said talia was suggesting that I start saving seeds and growing plants from them so that is what I am going to do. But now I am off topic.

I planted catnip and while I was there I also started a new cherry tomato :)
The fun thing was that I read an article last weekend in a magazine that my Mom lent me that talked about starting seeds in doors and stuff like that. The best part was they had instructions on how to plant several common plants like tomatoes and peppers.

Now I have always been baffled by how thick nursery tomato plants are and whenever i plant them they always end up more like vines. So apparently according to this article, you are actually supposed to plant tomatoes in pots that are only half full. Then as the plans grow you fill in the soil more and more until you reach to top. This way the plant has a really deep set of roots.

So I decided to plant a new tomato in a tiny little pot, only about 2 inches tall. In a couple of weeks when it has sprouted its first couple of true leaves (the leave initial set of leaves are generally not considered true) I will transplant it into a larger container and slowly fill in soil as it grows tall. I am hoping that this will get me a nice thick stem with lots and lots of tomatoes. :)

jelly free jello

So i dont eat jello. one of the side effects of being kind of vegan but today Talia and I went wandering around the city. I went to an RC hobby store and picked up 4 motors for an arduino project I am starting to work on which I will hopefully chat about later.

But while we were down town we dropped by the big carrot and they actually and agar powder :)
Agar is a type of algae that can be used by vegans to make jello. so a long story short, I took some srawberry fruit juice we had, added some agar. boiled it. added some fresh sliced strawberries and put it in the fridge.

the result:

looks very tasty. now we get to have dessert :)