ants Ants ANTS!

Emily will often complain about little tiny ants in our house. I never notice them, so I don't tend to do much about them. The other day she insisted that there were lots of them under our oven, and it's no wonder! When I pulled out the oven, the ground was covered with Cheerios, raisins, M&Ms, and just about anything that you can imaging a kid dropping on the floor.

We decided that instead of just plugging their hole we would try to take care of them with homemade ant bait made from borax. Apparently borates are very poisonous to insects, but completely harmless to us. The bait would have been better with roach powder (which is just boric acid), because the texture would be a lot finer than the laundry booster I used. We tried making a mixture of corn syrup and borax, but they showed no interest. What really got them was borax and peanut butter. We haven't noticed any more ants lately, so maybe it just worked!

Beef, It's What's For Dinner

Ok, so this isn't really about the beef, it is about the pan. I contemplated buying a new set of cookware for Christmas, but decided I couldn't justify the cost--especially since I already have several decent pans. The one item I was really missing was a good saute pan.

I have been eyeing a clad saute pan for some time. This means that the entire pan has a layer of aluminum sandwiched between layers of stainless steel, so that it conducts heat evenly, without taking a long time to heat up like the pans with the thick bottoms do.

After Christmas I spotted a JCPenney brand cooks Tri-ply Covered Sauté Pan tri-ply saute pan for about $50 after shipping. The cheapest I have found anywhere else was $100, so I decided to give it a try. I have used it for cooking a few things, but nothing that let me really judge how evenly it cooked, until I browned this roast in it today. I was very impressed by how evenly it browned. An added bonus is that the handles have thin spots to prevent heat from transferring into the handles. Even with this pan sizzling hot, I can use the small helper handle without a hot pad.

My only regret is that I waited seven years to buy this!

Round Rock Dirt

I decided that you might not all care about everything I want to say about my garden, so I have created a new blog called Round Rock Dirt. If you are interested in the details of what is going on in the yard, give it a visit! I will probably still talk about the garden occasionally here, but the detail of it will all go on the new blog now.

Staying Thin

I think that mentally one of the hardest things to do in the garden is thinning. It can be hard to go out in the garden and chucking what are otherwise perfectly good plants into the compost bin, just because they are a bit to close together. In the end I know that thinning helps the plants to grow better, but it can be tough to put into practice.

Thinning is not all hard though...if your timing is right, the plant can be great eating--even if they aren't quite fully grown yet. Earlier this week I picked over three pounds of beets and beet greens, just by thinning out those that were too close together.

This morning I pulled one of my miserable tiny carrot plants, only to find an almost full-length carrot underneath! This inspired me to go thin my carrots this afternoon...I hadn't done it yet because my carrots patch looked so sad that I had given up on them.

The pictures reflect purely thinning my beets and carrots this week. I am getting excited for the real harvesting!

Great gardening, and remember to stay thin!

Sometimes A $25 Tomato Seems Like A Bargain!

I hear people joke that with their home garden each tomato cost $25! I don't think that is far from the truth for me, and it got even closer when I tried to start up my rototiller last week. Extra stress on the tried. It turns out that I needed to replace my fuel pump and fuel lines. Today I did just that, and it still wouldn't run right.

After dismantling the carburetor I was surprised by what I found inside. The photo doesn't really do it justice, because you can't see just how thick all the garbage in the carburetor bowl was. It was huge chunks of hardened filth...the accumulation of years of neglect from the previous owner. After spending most of the day and about $70, I finally have a running rototiller again.

It's things like this that make me question my gardening efforts. I just have to look at it as my hobby. My friends spend their money to buy TVs, video games, computers, and whatever else they want. I can't do that, because I have a garden...and a rototiller...and kids.

Bored? Bust a Hole in the Wall!

So the day after Christmas we decided that we would bust a hole through our living room wall to build ourselves a new pantry. This is in the corner of our living room just off of our kitchen, and consists of what used to be the far depths of the girls' closet. It took about two weeks to finish, and cost more money to build than we expected, but it is finally (almost) done. All that is left is to paint the door and trim, and to try to do a better job with the scrap of carpet I have inside.

We decided to take a leap and buy Elfa shelving from The Container Store so that we would have something adjustable that could change with our needs--especially since we weren't exactly sure how we wanted to use the space. It hurts a little bit paying for it--The Container Store is not normally the most affordable place to shop--but with their current sale it was about the same as buying similar Rubbermaid shelving from Lowe's. This was my first time using the Elfa shelving and I was very impressed that from start to finish it only took 23 minutes to install--including reading the directions and running out to the garage for tools several times. You would think that when all I need is a drill, level, and screwdriver that I would be able to do it all with one trip.

Our old pantry has 12" deep shelves, so I was amazed at how much stuff we were able to fit on these 20" shelves--and as you can see we could fit a lot more in there with some skillful arranging or possibly additional shelves. We were able to move so much stuff out of our old pantry, that we are actually thinking that we might be able to turn it into a laundry room! At least a laundry room with storage shelves, instead of the pantry with a washer and dryer that it has been so far.

What came first, the couch or the potato?

A while back I decided to replace my four remotes in the living room with a universal remote I picked up from Target. What a piece of junk! I could control everything from one remote, but watching a DVD required something like this:

TV button, Power, wait, channel down, channel down, DVD Button, Play

Switching back to the TV then required:

Power, TV button, channel up, channel up, Sat button (for my DTV converter box), Power

It was so bad that I dreaded trying to explain to a babysitter how to show the girls a movie!

Logitech's Harmony remotes solve this problem by letting you connect the remote to the computer to fully customize. They are the perfect combination of nerd and couch potato, but are usually around $100--which seems a bit much for a remote. After a friend's testimonial and a $30 deal for a new one on eBay, mine showed up yesterday.

It took me a couple hours to get it all working right, because I have some weird equipment attached to my TV, but those long sequences from before have been replaced by two button presses each. I can fully customize different activities, programming the correct button sequences for each device, making everything much easier to use.

I still have room to control eight more devices with this remote, so I guess I am going to have to start looking for some more toys. I am confident that no matter what I add to my pile, it will be so easy even the babysitter could do it.

Harvesting All Year

I laugh every time I see gardening recommended as a way to save money on food. Sometimes I feel that I might as well compost money and use that as the fertilizer for my garden, because it certainly consumes more than it produces. Rather than trying to justify the cost through the value of the food, I just call it a tradition and a hobby that is worth the expense.

That being said, I continue to garden, and each season my garden grows larger. Being in Texas, we can grow pretty much all year, but it is much different than gardening in Washington, so I still don't really know what I am doing. Last spring's garden failed miserably, but we were able to can 27 pints of green beans from our fall garden, along with giving away piles of Okra that we planted out of frustration in July when the heat killed everything else.

Yesterday was my first winter harvest ever. I have peas, beets, and carrots growing in the garden right now, and I finally decided to pull some of the beets up for dinner last night. I remember hating beets as a child, but the microwaved beets and buttered beet greens we ate last night were fabulous.

Hopefully this year will be better for my garden. I just ordered seed potatoes online, since they will be the first thing to be planted in February. By the time the gardens are being planted in Washington, we should know how the first harvest is going here.

Good Gardening!

The Links I Like

I just added a section to the right side of this page called Links I Like. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you what they are and why they gain a spot on the front of my page.

GB-PVR is free media center software for Windows, similar to MythTV for Linux (although GB-PVR is not open source). I placed a link because I feel it is a good product for anyone else looking to record TV on their Windows computer.

You Need a Budget is budgeting software along with a system for budgeting your money. We have been using this for close to two years and it has been a big help in helping us control our spending and greatly improve our financial security. It does cost money, but upgrades are free and the authors of the software are very responsive to suggestions. I know the web page looks like an infomercial, but it a legitimate product that I use and fully endorse. I would recommend that any of you looking for a change in your finances enroll in their free budgeting course to see what it is all about.

Gifts That Last

With Christmas this year came many gifts in our home. I would consider our gifts to be relatively few and modest, but already they have reminded me of the words of Matthew:

"But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal" - Matthew 6:20

Perhaps the words of this would be different if plastic has been around when it was written, since moths and rust have no power over it. Already since Christmas my daughters have been struck with the sorrow of broken toys. There is nothing worse than raising the hopes of a child, only to see them crash back down when the wonderful toys they had hoped for are really worthless hunks of plastic to be thrown away.

The greatest gift I received and gave this year, was that I was able to spend over two full weeks home with my family. We did not go on any fancy vacations, in fact we barely left the house, but we were able to spend time together, which is worth more than all of the other gifts I received combined. I must go now, as my daughter is telling me that I need to finish on the computer because she has a surprise for me.

These are the gifts that truly last...

Nuggets of...Jason?

Why the name? Well, I intend this blog to be a place for me to place a random sampler of things I feel like telling people...which could be rants, praise, projects, ideas or whatever else I please! These are not always going to be nuggets of wisdom, just nuggets of...Jason.

So anyways, I have never attempted to blog before, and I will not be surprised if this becomes a dusty relic of me lingering for the world to see once I lose interest, but lets give it a shot!