Evil has a new name…

And it’s name is caffeine. I decided to give up caffeine starting today, and my head is paying for it now. Man, that’s a powerful little drug.

I’m doing this in a further attempt to remove processed foods (and drinks) from my diet. Even though I was drinking diet pop for my caffeine fix I think I’ll feel better (after the initial tough few days) when I don’t have a gnawing need to get my fix each morning. And besides, it will save me a ton of money. I don’t drink coffee so that isn’t something I have to worry about.

After I get past these first tough days I’ll be fine. And then I’ll just have to watch what I drink from now on. (And eat to a certain extent)

But it doesn’t feel like a very good choice right now.

You better watch out candy, you’re next.

FGLB

Do you use oil?

If so, you need to check out this story.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-oilsafari2-htmlstory,0,3163462.special

FGLB

Blogs I’ve come across to share

I came across this article on Cleverchip’s website. Thought I would share it here also. Cleverchimp writes about biking and living sustainably if you are interested in another place to read that kind of stuff. I just recently stumbled onto his site.

As an add-on to the article, when our family moved up to Iowa we lived with my in-laws for 7-9 months and it wasn’t nearly as bad as it has been portrayed in the media. We laid down some ground rules about the situation, the house was easily large enough for all 6 of us, (and all the crap my wife and I were moving) and it allowed me to move at my own pace when I was finding a job and a place for us to live. I think this is easily something that more families can do, but speaking from experience, each group of people need some personal space occassionally.

I’m not sure if I would feel differently if I knew that we would be living together forever. Hispanic families live this way in America, until they get too Americanized.

This blog is about energy dependence and Peak Oil, etc.
Moral Equivalent of War

FGLB

Interesting composter

Check out this link.

http://www.rolypigusa.com/index.html

It’s a home composter that’s shaped like a pig. I bet my neighbors would appreciate something like this rather than my unsightly pile. Might be an interesting way to get your children interested in composting and helping in the garden.

FGLB

Zucchinni problem

Remember when I said I was going to have a zucchinni problem? Well, based on these pictures I don’t think I’m going to have a problem anymore. It appears that I will have one plant left because something has gotten ahold of them and they are all dying. My green bean plants are also getting eaten alive and are dying. Anyone know what the heck is going on here? I’m reading something about a disease brought on by aphids but I’m not sure that is what it is.

Green beans

Zucchinni plants wilted

FGLB

How easy is it to steal a bike?

Check this out. (Link takes you to YouTube via Time)

Thanks to my buddy Tom for sending this my way.

FGLB

Food article

I saw this article on Oil is for Sissies. Check it out. It’s about all the oil that appears in our food that we don’t even see or recognize.

I’ve read this book and it is top notch. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in our country’s agriculture system.

(Thanks to Jim for the link)

FGLB

New ride

I got a new ride folks. It’s nothing special really, but should lead to some fun adventures.

I picked this up out of a gentlemen’s front yard for $50. It works pretty well, although the shifting is a little clunky and the seat is not the best. It’s been about 15 years since I rode a road bike so just getting use to the way it behaves compared to a mountain bike will take some work.

It appears to be a Schwinn World Traveler but I wouldn’t mind having some second opinions. The frame fits well and most importantly, it’s steel with some nice looking lugs. STEAL IS REAL!! It appears to be from the mid 80s, possibly 85-86. 10 speeds, 27 inch wheels, rides nice and cold air…oh wait…that’s a used car…

Side note:
I am aware that this is most likely a women’s bike, but I don’t really care. I like having the low step through for when I’m loaded down for the commute to work and all bulked up with winter gear for winter commuting. I’m tired of hefting my meaty tree trunk legs over the top tube. Why should I be stuck with society’s expectation of what kind of bike to ride? I say not me! I’ll ride what’s comfortable and what works for me. Besides, I’d just like to see one of those leg shaving carbon fiber punks make a comment to me. I weigh twice as much as they do!!

Anyway, it’s a project bike. The plan is to make it a fixed gear bike (won’t have to worry about shifting then!!!) and swap out the drops for some bullhorns. I’m starting slow and just getting it running as a fixie for now. Then I’ll swap out the pedals and handlebars. Then it should be all set. I like the idea of taking something that was old and basically forgotten and making it useful again.

It doesn’t have any braze-ons for water bottles (didn’t people drink water while on the bike back then???). I dropped it at the bike shop and they are going to redish the back wheel, put in a 16T cog (start low, I’m using the existing front crank, it’s a 40), remove the deraillers and extra cogs on the back, replace the chain and remove the shifting cables. Oh, and also true up the wheels. Even though a lot of true fixies think you can go without brakes because you can push back on the pedals to stop you (remember the skid marks you use to leave as a kid?? Oh yeah) I’m not that brave and we’re leaving both brakes on for now. After I can ride pretty well I’ll remove the back brake but I would never go totally without a brake. No way. I have too much to live for.

I’ll let you know how it turns out. I can’t wait to get it back. It’s going to take forever to get it back and I am itching to get on it and give it a try.

FGLB

Eating local is so nice we did it twice.

Pretty easy meal this week. We had some friends over to swim in our pool and this is what I made for dinner. (yes, I do all the cooking in our little household)

Marinated broiled Round Steak (from the 1/4 cow we bought)
Roasted red potatoes (farmer’s market)
Zuchinni and Summer Squash (farmer’s market)
Blackberries (farmer’s market)

Round Steak marinade
1/2 veggie oil
1/2 apple cider vinegar (should have been red wine vinegar but didn’t have any)
2 tbls steak sauce
1 clove garlic (market)
1/2 medium red onion (market)
1/2 tsp salt and pepper
I marinated it for 5 hours but longer would have been better. It had a ton of flavor but wasn’t really that tender.

I wasn’t all that pleased with the way it turned out broiled on my grill pan. I’ll probably just use the grill pan on top of the stove from now on.

The red potatoes, zuchinni and squash were rolled in a flavor mix which I stole and modified from here. (This is the same spot I got the salsa recipe from. Put this in your favorites. She comes up with great recipes). Anyway, the potatoes were roasted almost completely and then rolled in the mix and put back in to finish up (probably about 20 minutes) and the zuchinni and squash mix was rolled and put in the oven at the same time. I’ve made this recipe before and it is great. The zuchinni and squash have tons of flavor.

Modified flavor mix
Some olive oil (I didn’t measure it but you know how much you need)
Finely minced garlic-I used about 2 cloves (market)
Finely chopped fresh basil–I used about 10-12 leaves (garden)
Sea salt and pepper to taste

I thought I had made more than enough to enjoy leftovers this week but sadly it wasn’t meant to be. Our friend was heading to do his National Guard drills the following day and I think he was happy to have one final good meal before eating on Uncle Sam’s dime for two weeks.

Our second local meal this week (in reality our meals are mostly local. Only little parts here and there aren’t. It’s usually chicken that isn’t local because I haven’t gone to the final step of buying some yet, or our fruit portion) was a meal of the other piece of round steak I had defrosted, egg noodles and a corn/green bean saute.

I put the round steak (cow from farmer) in the crock pot with some red onion (market) and a can of cream of mushroom soup (does this count as a spice????). About halfway through cooking (and it turns out, too early) I put the leftover Amish egg noodles (23 miles) from last week’s meal and some water. When I got home from work I cut some corn off the cob (market) and sauteed it in a little butter (not local, but from Iowa based company), garlic (market) and red onion (market) and threw in some green beans (market) to cook through (we like them crunchy so not too long). Turned out pretty good with really not a lot of work.

Some of you may already know this based on the ingrediants, but this turned out a lot like Beef Stroganoff. Heck, maybe it IS Beef Stroganoff for all know. All I know is it was pretty good and it was a good use of a fairly tough, inexpensive cut of beef, although the picture doesn’t do it any favors. We’ll do this one again. I didn’t have any local fruit so we went without for this meal.

There you go. Entertaining while eating local is easy. Cooking easy no fuss meals for the work week while eating local is possible too.

FGLB

A bicycling tragedy

A bicycling tragedy has occured, but first, did you hear that Ullrich has been booted off the T-Mobile team? Wow. I wonder who they will pick as their main man in the future. If you ask me they were just looking for a reason to get rid of him anyway.

Back to the tragedy.

I’m not going to be able to ride RAGBRAI. I know. It’s a shocker. But I think it’s a good reason. My wife (she who makes and maintains the social calendar) made a boo boo and scheduled a wedding for this weekend (which is good because that fit into our schedule really well) but unfortunately we found out today that the wedding is next weekend. Her boo boo was messing up the deat, not scheduling the wedding. The same weekend I was going to ride RAGBRAI. Not good. Not good at all.

So we were running around crazy this morning trying to figure out what to do. Can we even find a sitter for next weekend? What do we do about RAGBRAI? What about my sister who was coming to visit? What about RAGBRAI? OOOOO NNNNOOOOOO I will now flush my head down the toilet.

At first I tried to convince my wife that she should have her friend move her wedding up to this weekend because it works better for us and dammit, that’s all that matters. But then I remembered one of my solemn rules in life, don’t screw with a woman and her wedding. At all. Even though this is my wife’s friend I’m sure my wife would be more than willing to end my life on behalf of all woman for even suggesting that I change anything with her friend’s wedding. It’s HER WEDDING YOU IDIOT. Men do not have any say in wedding preparations, other than to say yes. So after realizing that changing the date was out our choices came down to this small list.

Ride RAGBRAI, wife skips wedding, watches kids.
Skip RAGBRAI, watch kids, wife goes to wedding.
Both go to wedding, find someone to watch kids.
Nobody does anything so we are all miserable.
Ride RAGBRAI, wife goes to wedding, kids are otherwise disposed.

In the pantheon of important things a wedding easily trumps a bike ride (even one like RAGBRAI) so sending at least my wife to the wedding was a fairly easy decision. But we weren’t sure if we would both be going or just her. (Hey, if we both go it’s like a mini-vacation for us. When you have kids you take what you can get. A few hours in the car with no kids talking is glorious. Plus, I lived there for 6 years and was kind of excited to see some friends.)

So we both decided to go rather than her go and me do RAGBRAI. (the thought of being kidless and wifeless is too much for me. I would spontaneously combust I think)

My in-laws stepped up and agreed to watch the boys for us so we can both go. They are also hosting 16 RAGBRAI people at their house when it passes through town on the 28th so we need to send them some major cycling love.

As they say, the best laid plans of mice and men…

FGLB