Smokin’

Home sweet home. Back to work work and deferred projects. 

 I am getting ready to build an outdoor clay earth oven to bake pizza and bread. Tim collected clay, I collected river rocks and we both contributed  empty wine bottles – that was hard work. 

   
 I am building a base and will use the wine bottles as part of an insulating layer. The ideas and plans are from a book, Earth Ovens by Kiko Denzer. 

Today I evened out the holes I dug, cut the fence posts, leveled them, and ripped, cut, and attached joists. Gotta love a table saw. 

  Opps don’t look too closely. I temporarily removed a safety dohiggy to cut the posts. I think I have enough rocks but may need a few more wine bottles. Better get to work. 

   
 
It’s a little wonky but level in all directions. 

Yesterday I made a simple card weaving loom with the table saw. I intend to try it out at a workshop in Vermont this weekend.  

And earlier this month, I smoked a beef brisket on my Weber grill as described on the Cooks Illustrated website. I soaked it in brine, rubbed it with salt and pepper and slow cooked it on the grill for 5 hours. It was amazing. I’ve tried a couple of pizzas on the grill mostly to practice sliding it off the wooden peel for the new oven. 

This week my farm share included a roast beef, pork roast and spare ribs. Fire up the grill!

Oh shoot

Days are short. The sun set at 4:16 today. Somehow my mind turns to gardening. Not in a big way, mind you. 

The author of Year Round Indoor Gardening discussed his book on NPR a few weeks ago. What a concept!  Fresh greens all year. Shoots  grown in soil indoors.

After sprinkling a tablespoon of seeds on soil, The first 4 days you basically do nothing while the seedlings develop roots. 
Then you move them to a window that merely sees daylight and you end up with a salad a week from when you started. 

  
Here’s my sunflower, buckwheat, peas, and radish salad. And that’s just the half of it.