The “sitting wall” for the patio was the first part to go in. Here are the first few layers.
Author: doug
Catching up
Whistler, Tuesday
Tuesday was our day off, primarily due to weather. Here are a few sights from Whistler village.
We saw this unusual (to Easterners) bird. My initial thought was cowbird, but in consultation with Lis and the Internet I think it’s a brewer’s blackbird.
Whistler, Monday
On Monday, I skied with the big camera. With smaller crowds and a clear day, it seemed the logical choice.
I awoke before dawn and noticed the holiday lights on our condo playing on the icicles outside our windows.
Here’s the view out our condo windows once the sun started to come up. We were near the lower end of the village walk, by the Whistler Olympic Plaza skating rink. I belive this is where they held some of the medal ceremonies at the 2010 Winter Olympics. You can see that we have a little fog / undercast on an otherwise clear day.
Here’s that undercast from the other side. The building is the top of the Glacier Express lift on Blackcomb mountain, as seen from near the Horstman hut and the Blackcomb summit.
We had lunch at the Horstman hut, and here’s the view in the other direction, from our table on the deck. You can see some ski slopes on Whistler in the foreground, with the aptly named Black Tusk mountain behind.
After lunch Kat, Michael, and I skied Blackcomb Glacier, a 6-mile run that starts with an enormous bowl. That’s Michael to me left in this fisheye shot, and the two specks near the right side of the frame are Kat and an unidentified skier. The boulders jutting in a line into the center of the shot are car-sized.
We all stopped for a photo op at the bottom of the bowl section. Only another 5 miles to the lift!
Skiing the glacier was fun. But it wore us out (only the second day, after all — gotta save some for later), and we decided to take the Peak to Peak Gondola over to Whistler for beer.
Whistler, Sunday
Whistler, day 0
Foyer
January 5, 2012
During our kitchen remodel, we discovered that there is a hollow beside our chimney. I’m turning this space into a small closet with shelves in our foyer, with a built-in bench below it.
In two Saturdays of work so far, I have cut and re-framed the rough opening, patched a hole in the side of the chimney, cut off an old abandoned gas-light pipe, moved some wires out of the way, cased the opening, and built & installed a door. I also put up new coat hooks since I had to take down the old ones.
Many more steps to come, which I’ll update here as I make progress.
Sous vide
January 1, 2013
Sous vide is a method of cooking that maintains a water bath at a constant temperature, just above the target temperature of the food, which is sealed into a watertight plastic pouch. It results in precise control of the final temperature (and thus doneness) of the food, as well as the ability to hold a food at a specific temperature for a long time, allowing precise control of certain processes, such as the breakdown of collagen into gelatin.
The equipment to do sous vide at home has been in the several hundred dollar range, but just recently some more affordable options have come to market. I paid around $100 for a controller that cycles an appliance (in my case, an old multi-cooker) on and off to maintain temperature. And since we already have a FoodSaver vacuum sealer, this small controller is the only extra equipment I needed.
I’m sure to continue experimenting with sous vide, and so you’ll see more photos from this Project as time goes by.
Ferrous
Breakfast Stout
December 1, 2012
Here’s the first of the real Project entries. Today I made a breakfast stout from a kit I bought some time ago.
This kit is old enough that the yeast pouch had gone bad and I had to get a new one, delaying things for a week. As you can see, though, the new yeast pack is fine. A “breakfast stout” (at least how I made it) is an oatmeal cream stout with added coffee.
It was rainy out so I brewed inside — perfectly doable with an extract brew. The sparge was entertaining with all that oatmeal in the mash — it made a very viscous wort.
In fact, the wort was so viscous it blew the airlock right off the primary carboy and I had to switch to a blow-off hose.
I don’t have a picture for it, but I steeped 1/3 lb of cracked coffee beans in some rye whiskey and added it to the seconday. This made for a pretty tasty beer.