Smoking the bird & infusing the pig

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO EVERYONE......

We're spending the day at home and doing all the cooking because we'll be having Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow at my sister, Karen's house. I'm smoking a turkey today and just got it on this morning about 8am. 

The old fireplace isn't part of the smoker. A friend of mine gave me this old fireplace and I envisioned it being a great piece as an outdoor fireplace on our patio that we still have to build.

Turkey is wrapped to steam for a few hours. I'll take the foil off later and let the turkey get a little crispiness on the skin. I used the recipe from this site to brine the bird,  

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/out-of-this-world-turkey-brine/detail.aspx

Ingredients

• 2 gallons water
• 1 1/2 cups canning salt
• 3 tablespoons minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 
  
• Directions

1. In a large bucket or container large enough to hold your turkey, mix together the water, salt, garlic, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar. Store in a refrigerator, and soak turkey for 2 days before smoking or roasting.

I'll put on the spiral cut ham later today just to infuse a little extra flavor into it. I'll probably make a couple of Buttermilk Chess pies later today also. So, we're just having a laid back Thanksgiving day watching the tube and cooking a few things for tomorrow.


Patsi & I have a lot to be thankful for. We have been so blessed. I met Patsi 31 years ago and we've been together ever since. We dated 3 years before we got married. We are best friends, love to do things together, but we also have our own likes and dislikes. 


I like to go to the races and get into all the action, noise, and dirt. Patsi is more content working on crafts of puttering in her garden or the yard. Patsi likes crafts and art as do I, but our crafts and art are completely different. We have similar tastes. I'm so thankful to have been blessed with a beautiful wife that I get along with and she is the most understanding person. 


A couple of years ago we built a shop in our backyard which has been dubbed as my man cave. We have a house across the alley that we bought for Patsi's parents. Since they have both passed, Patsi uses that house as her woman cave. She is Stampin' Up representative and holds custom card classes over there. She can go over there and work on cards for hours on end, just as I can get lost in projects in the shop.


We've both been blessed with being able to retire. Patsi retired from Chevron 3 1/2 years ago and I retired in March of this year. Patsi thought she'd probably be off about 6 months or so and then go back to work. But, according to her, she hasn't even thought about going to work again. She keeps busy, being on the board of Faith In Action, a local non profit organization that helps people with prescription drugs they can't afford, card making, member of Master Gardener, and busy landscaping in our yard.

This is the rock planter Patsi built this past summer

  

Here it is with flowers and morning glories climbing up the side

Here is the flowers by the mail box that Patsi planted

This is the other bed that she planted and takes care of

Here is the hill I built earlier this spring. Just a few flowers on it at this time.

Here's a couple of shots above with it in full bloom

This is how it looks today with a new cover of wood chip mulch. I've planted in the neighborhood of 300 or so tulips and daffodils on the hill and in the new bed in front of the tree.

This bed just north of the hill is one I've just nearly finished working on. I plan on planting about 500 bulbs of tulips, daffodils, crocus, and iris's. So, if they all come up this spring, we should have quite a show of color on the east side of our house.

I guess to sum it all up, we love working around our house, working on our projects, love to travel, love spending time with our friends and family, and at times we love to do nothing. We are very grateful for all of our blessings and our wish is for everyone to be as blessed as we are. Have a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Until next time.........

Overthehump

Rocket Heater for the Shop?????

11/20/2011

The truck pictured at the top of this blog is inspiration for the 41 Chevy COE I went to pick up last month. For the moment I've parked the 41 Chevy in my old shop and will tackle that project in due time. In the mean time we have plenty to do.

I've been mulling over and over in my head about what kind of heat to have in the shop. It is beginning to get cold and I'm going to need some heat in there. I want to move the New Mexi-Can into the shop to work on it this winter, and will need some warmth.

Last week after seeing them on the internet and researching, watching videos on youtube, I decided to build a rocket stove heater for the shop. The concept is that the air draws in at the top of the J-tube, pull the air and flame into the bottom of the J and up the chimney. It sort of gives it a blow torch effect which in turn, heats up the top of the outside barrel and radiates the heat to all the surrounding areas.

The cool thing about the rocket stove is that the exhaust gas out of the bottom of the heat chamber and out the exhaust tube is fairly cool, which makes the fire hazard from hot gases and sparks negligible.

The above is the J-tube I built. I added the barrel (which was an old piece of casing a friend had given me. Below is the j-tube with the outer barrel (casing) installed.

The only problem was it didn't work well enough to heat up our huge shop. So back to the drawing board.

After studying more, I decided I didn't make the chimney large enough. I probably should have used 8" pipe. But I don't really want to tear this one apart or make a larger one, so I'm trying to figure out how to make this one work. When I figure out a way to make it work for our needs I'll post it here.

Last week I also had to finish planting all our tulip bulbs. I had planted 200+/- tulips on the hill I built this past spring and had another 100 or so to plant. I thought I'd have some left for another bed I'm preparing but I used all of them on the hill. I think I've got 50 daffodils planted on the hill also. So, this coming spring it should be covered in blooms.

Patsi was in Hobbs last Wednesday when I was planting them. Realizing I would need some more for the other bed I'm preparing, I called her and asked her to stop by Lowe's to see if they still had some tulip bulbs on sale. They still had some and they were still on sale, only now they were on sale @ 85% off. So, she picked up another 200 tulip bulbs and another 100 daffodil bulbs.

Hopefully, we'll have a splash of color on the east side of our house come this spring.

It's Sunday and we just returned from a day trip to Albuquerque to visit with Patsi's brother, Stanley and his family. We had a great time visiting with Stan & Suki and even got to visit with Kiichi in Socorro on the way home. Kiichi is enrolled in New Mexico Tech studying materials engineering. This is his second semester and it has to be a killer one. He is taking 18 hours. I don't think he has any spare time at the moment.

Today I went to Hobbs to look for a burner so I could test the rocket stove out and see if it would work with a different type of fuel. I ended up buying a plain old weed burner. Got it home and had to go buy some propane so I could test it. When I got it all hooked up and lit the burner, it roared to life. The burner put out tons of heat. I had it blowing fire into the bottom of the j-tube and after 30 minutes the thermometer I had on top of the stove was at 550 degrees and climbing. The bottom of the j-tube was cherry red, so I believe this will heat the shop fairly well. I'll work on getting my waste oil burner built and try it also. At any rate, I should be able to have some heat in the shop when it really gets cold. Yea!!!!

We plan on spending Thanksgiving with family and more than likely eat toooooo muuuucccchhh!!!!

We wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving and all those that have to travel we pray you have a safe journey.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Until next time.....

Overthehump

Stone carving in a trailer???

This past weekend I attended a stone carving workshop in Hobbs sponsored by Southwest Stone Carving Association at Sadler and Son Monument Works. Stone carving doesn't have a thing to do with rebuilding a trailer but I have never done any carving of any sort and have always wanted to learn. So, when the opportunity arose, I signed up and had a blast.

Class started Friday at 8:00am. We had 6 students to start but by the end of the day we 9 or ten with a couple more planning on showing up on Saturday. Edward Fleming from Galesteo, NM, John Griffin from Albuquerque, NM, and Kat Watson from Questa, NM were our instructors. All were accomplished sculptors and were a great help for all of our questions and blank looks on our faces as we began our workshop. Well, at least I had a blank look on my face.

For my project I was going to try to carve a Chachapoya Indian stone face like this one

I got my piece of stone and started carving, chipping and filing. It ended up looking like this

Well, it's sort of close. I think mine has been on an American diet. He turned out a little obese. LOL  I even carve a surprise on the bottom of the stone. The only problem is that I finished this one the first day and we still had two more days to go. So, I had to find another project to take up the next two days. 

After searching on the net for different ideas, I found an owl that Patsi really liked, so I thought I'd try that is a piece of alabaster. The owl that was my pattern looked like this

The piece of alabaster that I picked wasn't quite thick enough to get the barrel shape of my model, so I ended up doing a double sided owl that turned out like this

He turned into a horned owl and I left him with a couple of rough edges, so he is smooth on both sides and one edge with the left side raw stone and some of the raw stone showing on the top as well.  I still need to sand him quite a bit and polish him but I think both turned out ok for my 1st try. The stone will look really cool once it is polished, plus I had a great time and met some great people. David and his wife, Cindy, were great hosts. The instructors, Ed, Kat, and John were great and were always ready to help with any problem you had. A fantastic weekend and I learned that stone carving isn't quite as complicated or hard as I thought it might be. That's not to say that it is easy, it just seems to be a little easier once you learn some of the techniques. Before the workshop I assumed it was all hammer and chisel, but that is far from the case.

Tomorrow it's back to work on my projects, here around the house, getting ready for winter and getting back on the trailer.

Until next time.......

Overthehump