This is my blogchalk:
United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

Subscribe to this blog in Radio:

Monday, September 09, 2002

The original steam juicer was made in Finland by Opa Oy. No surprise to anyone whose used Linux, watched the passionate tango reduced to a precision drill, wondered about the Finnish-Japanese affinity, or has seen a Nokia dial a vending machine where the Coke gets charged to your phone bill. I added water to the Mehu-Liisa and cranked 'er up to 8. Caution to the winds, it's fun to lift the baskets just to see what's going on at each level. There's about 3/4 inch of rose-tinted apple juice in the juice kettle at 1 hout 15 minutes. Water level still good. Juice clear, just a little pithy when stuck with a fork - looks like it will be pretty much taken as far as it will go in another 15-30 minutes, not much juice left. Think I'll take it all the way to "HI" for the finale (my range doesn't have a "GOODBYE" setting, that's strange...).   8:38:52 PM    comment []

Later - the timer is down 30 minutes and I lifted the basket by the lower handles just to see what might be involved with adding more water. Easy. Might need a towel to place the steamer basket and juice kettle on (see here for pics) while adding water, but they lift together easily with the big handles and a pair of oven mitts. I kicked the heat up to 7. 7:51:12 PM    comment []

I thought those kiwi fruit would be the perfect test fruit for the steam juicer, but they were kinda scrawny looking - not such a good deal at 4 for a dollar. Plums and nectarines were close to 2 dollars a pound, too precious. I decided on a bag of nondescript apples with gigantic printing:  EAT 5 A DAY for better health. There's been quite a bit of inflation in health care. Used to be "An apple a day keeps the doctor away", but these days all you have to do is lose your insurance card to do that. 5 a day seems about right now, when you figure in the premiums, co-payments, and tiered specialists needed to justify a presciption. By the time you're met all the prerequisites, you'll have seen 5 doctors. Besides, these apples are kind of small too. They are red and weighed a total of 5 pounds. I quartered them and put maybe a cup and a half of sugar in with them, layered as recommended. Not much steam escapes from this thing. That's good, because the major caveat from the manual is to not let it run dry. The mechanics of refilling are not covered, but it doesn't seem like it a trivial matter to lift everything off while it's hot and add more water. The manual says 1 1/2 to 2 hours for apples, so I bumped the heat down to 6 after the steam started. Maybe refilling can be avoided. Then again, the quantity of steam is less at lower heat. Checking the manual...ah, here it is on page 10, above the times..."AT HIGH SIMMER". Six is good.   7:35:20 PM    comment []

It's here! I didn't expect it for another day or two. I'm as excited as Navin R. Johnson: "The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!" Mine ain't the phone book, it's the steam juicer. Solid as a rock, It is heavy guage stainless steel and lower pan has a steel plate to disperse the heat evenly. It will join a couple of good stock pots, an aluminum canner, and my pressure canner in my closet of really big cooking things. But it will require a test run tonight. Glad that Food Lion is across the street. 5:02:13 PM    comment []

I see there was a tornado in Utah yesterday, looks like one of them skinny ones, with a stinger like a wasp, not one of the rumbling quarter-mile wide bumpy like a bag of potatoes ones, which are better for surfing. No one talks much about tornado-surfing, probably want to discourage it, but it's become a cult pastime in Kansas and Nebraska, where there's not much else to do. First. you scope out the tornado, and it's smart not to be in it's path when you do this 'cause if it's an F5 you'll never be able to get enough ballast. F3s are about as high as you want to go. Watch what kind of stuff it's picking up like, well, pickups. SUVs, milk trucks, and maybe even smaller cars like Honda Civics. You want to find something that goes up slowly and, more importantly, comes down slowly. I mentioned Civics because I was out in Falls City last summer and there was this horrendous thunderstorm, some hail, and then I saw the tornado and got so scared I drove my Civic right into the ditch. But, having heard that a ditch was a relatively safe place during a tornado, I just got out and was ready to run away from my car and get down when all of a sudden there were 5 other people there with me, 4 guys and a girl. "This one is good," says one of the guys, and next thing you know they were throwing this heaving netting over my Honda and poppin' snap hooks onto the door handles. They must have thought I was with them, and snapped me on too. Next thing you know, the tornado was there and we were being gently pulled into the air, almost like a hot air balloon liftoff. Just a few seconds and we were set down again, easy as a baby in a crib. They quickly unhooked their gear and were off to try and get in front of it again. My car had a few scratches and dents, but no worse than from a slippery encounter with some black ice here in Carolina. Some of the damage probably came from going into the ditch in the first place. I saw some other cars speeding by with their gear strapped onto a rack on top. They didn't even wave, they knew they had a good one and didn't want to waste any time with amenities. That's unusual for Nebraska, where folk usually go out of their way just to wave at you, even if you're a stranger. 5:29:26 AM    comment []