Our Adventure's: March 2011

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Homemade Marshmallows!

I found this idea off of another lady's blog called "Fun on a dime". It actually made a smaller batch, so in the future I'd probably double the recipe. It was easier to make then it looked like.

We mixed for 15 minutes. Just when it started to smell like dog's breath, it was nearing completion. I'm interested in looking into getting flavorings to flavor our future marshmallows.

Just scraped the bowl and dumped them into the pans.

Gave them a bath covering of corn starch and powdered sugar.

We decided to make 2 colors!

At this time of completion they were the texture of marshmallow peeps. The recipe said to wait 4 hours for them to set. I already want to eat them, so we'll see how the 4 hour wait goes. :)

Making Lasagna!

I decided to make a lasagna that I could put into the freezer for another day that I may be more busy or not feel like cooking!

This meat we received from a local farmer. He filled his meat lockers to maximum capacity and had leftover meat. I was very impressed with how it cooked up. What you see is what you get. A portion of it didn't cook away into a pile of grease and disappear.

Getting ready to layer away!

Boiling the lasagna noodles. Always tricky to use this burner. When it is on, our smoke detectors always go off. So after this picture you can imagine me standing beneath the smoke detector waving a towel to get it to turn off.

Almost done! Still a little pink for me.

I added 1/2 of the meat to my sauce mixture and put the other half into a ziplock bag and into the freezer for some other delightful meal.

I had to cut my noodles since my pan was not big enough for them at full size.

I used every noodle in the box! Minus the few I munched down.

Filled her to the brim and beyond. Definitely had some weight to her.

Wrapped in aluminum foil and wrote the todays date on top in case I forget how long it is in the depths of our freezer. I lost my sharpie, so I had to resort to a Crayola marker. I now had 2 lasagnas and 1 pot pie. We cooked up the pot pie for dinner this evening, so it is no longer included in the count.

Carpet/Tile Stripping

This is the stripping to protect the carpet against the tile. Between our living room and kitchen we didn't get done because someone before us glued the carpet to the concrete. Haha! Anyway, they will wait until we move out to attempt to stretch the carpet when there isn't furniture resting upon it.

This is the remainder of my birthday bash icecream! Yum!

Dolbears Law: Determining Temperature using Crickets!

So I discovered this really cool website! It is actually more of a blog for outdoor survivalists.

I've mainly been interested in learning how to make my own solar water still. I'm not entirely sure how my brain is still thinking at this hour, when it seems to turn to mush normally. It gives me added assurance that I still have some good cognition up there when I spend so much of the day describing things because I can't recall the word for them in conversation.

It is called Dolbears Law. It is a formula used to help a person determine more of an estimation of the temperature outside. Of course it is not 100% accurate, and things such as bodies of water, dense forests can alter the temperature.

It is T=50 + (N-40) / 4

T= temperature in degrees Fahrenheit

N= number of chirps per minute.

Or more my lingo...

Count the number of chirps the cricket makes in 1 minute (60 seconds)
Subtract 40 from this number.
Divide the result by 4
Add 50.

Also in Celsius....

T=10+ (N-40) / 7

So this all works because crickets are cold blooded and we are warm-blooded. Other cold blooded animals don't typically make a noise that can be counted as well as crickets chirping.

Crickets that are colder chirp less frequent than crickets that are warmer.

I guess an oversight that I should mention is that the guy who discovered this his name was Amos Dolbear in the year 1898. He was using a kind of crickets called Snowy Tree Crickets. So there is slight variation in accuracy depending on species of crickets you are using.

I have no idea without further hunting what a snowy tree cricket looks like. So happy hunting on your next cricket expedition.

http://www.survivaltopics.com/survival/find-the-temperature-using-crickets/ This is the blog I've been reading!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Protection Strips to go along Carpet/Tile Edges

This past week we got a message from management that we needed stripping to go along the edges of our tile and carpet areas. We needed 1 foot of clearance for the workman to install them.

In our little abode, I was really mulling through my mind for ideas on how we were going to accomplish this. Somehow it all worked. I'm not sure why I worry so much about the details.

We stacked Elizabeth's Spring semester belongings behind our bedroom door, shifted our couch and T.V. stand closer to the wall. Then moved our bookshelf further down from the edge of the carpet. Garrett Zirker from our ward helped Antonio lift the long couch up and move the concrete blocks to support the couch. We moved a lot of food cans to make a clearing along the carpet/tile edge.

In the process we found a sneaky bag of rice krispies that had fallen behind the refrigerator.

I'll have to take pictures of what the change will be like. It is kind of fun having the couch in the center of the living room angled towards the front door and T.V.

Furniture maze view from the front door.

Couch being angled towards the T.V. & front door.

Canned goods!

We moved the wheelchair against the black couch and moved canned food (which we normally store under the couch!)

Some of Elizabeth's belongings for Spring semester.

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups!

Peanut butter filling and the green chocolates for the outsides of the cup.

Thanks to Porters Craft we were able to find the peanut butter cup molds for $2.45. Walmart has phased out its chocolate candy molds. The Wilton egg mold I got from the D.I. for $2.00 a few months ago. We decided to make jumbo peanut butter eggs instead of spending ALL night making the little candy cups.

Filling up each cup!

Thanks to Kristin & Kevins freezer we are borrowing, it made it really easy to quickly cool our chocolates.

Putting on a top coat for the eggs.

One final chilling for all of our scrumptious sweets.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Bug Flannel Fabric

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Seizure First Aid

It's one of the most frightening medical attacks and it strikes 1 in 10 people during their lifetime. Would you know what to do if a seizure affected...