antoniod – Antonio's Notes

Stuff to Make Kombucha

August 8, 2016 / By antoniod / In Kitchen

Here’s a list of items you will need to start brewing Kombucha. Try to source these locally if you can, but if you can’t, Amazon.com has all you need and more. If you order from the links below, I will get some type of cut.

Ingredients for brewing the tea:
Black or Green Tea
Two Stainless Steel Mesh Tea Balls
Filtered Water
1/2 Measuring Cup
Pure Cane Sugar

First Ferment:
SCOBY and 1 Cup Starter Liquid (from a previouse first ferment batch)
1 Gallon Glass Jar (2 will help with a perpetual brew)
Coffee Filter and Rubber Band
Stainless Steel Fine Mesh Strainer

Second Ferment:
1 TBL Measuring Spoon
Canning Funnel
Concentrated Fruit Juice
Pint Canning Jars with Twist-on Lids
Jar Opener

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Chicken Coop

July 14, 2016 / By antoniod / In Gardening

Here’s the coop I built for my four chickens. I was trying to keep them inside for eight weeks, but they were getting big and creating a poop mess in their 2′ x 2′ box, so I got on the coop and this is what I came up with.

I didn’t have any detailed plans, I just looked around on-line at other coops and came up with what I thought would work well and fit in the back yard.

The materials cost around $450 and it took me two weeks working an hour or two here and there. However some days I did put in more than an hour or two in; a lot more.

First I did a basic sketch, keeping in consideration the room needed per chicken the the coop (2-4 square feet ) and run (6 – 8 square feet). If you let your chickens free range these can be on the lower side, but it’s nice to give them as much room as possible.

I also considered the dimensions of my building supplies. Sheets of plywood are 4′ x 8′ and 2 x 4’s are cheep in 8 ft. lengths.

And I used what I had laying around. If I did it again, I probably would not have tried to salvage some of the extr wood I had because it took me extra time to put out nails and some of it was already warped.

I would also reduced the thickness on many of the pieces…The posts I would still keep at 2″ x 4″, but everything else probably could have been reduced. The 1″ x 2″s could have been 1″ x 1″ and the 1″ x 1″ could have been 1″ x 1/2″. Once everything is tied together it gets very rigid and the reduction of wood could have saved money and weight.

Much of the work can be done with hand tools, but it is nice to have a table saw to make a variety of angle cuts and for ripping long pieces to your required needs. I also recommend having a few drills: one for making pilot holes (don’t want to split the wood), one for driving the screws in and one for whatever. You will save a lot of time not changing bits.

Tools:

*Table saw

*Saws-all

*Miter saw

*Hand drills (3)

*C clamps

*Bar clamps

*Belt sander

*Tin snips

*Power stapler

This blog is still a work in progress, but here at photos that show the steps involved. I’ll add comments soon.

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Kombucha Tea

May 17, 2016 / By antoniod / In Kitchen

So you want to make your own Kombucha! Good on you. After a few batches it’s an easy process and saves you from paying $4 per 16 ounce bottle at the store.

Read up on it – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha

Here’s a list of items that you will need.

Ingredients for brewing the tea:
Black or Green Tea
Two Stainless Steel Mesh Tea Balls
Filtered Water
1/2 Measuring Cup
Pure Cane Sugar

First Ferment:
SCOBY and 1 Cup Starter Liquid (from a previouse first ferment batch)
1 Gallon Glass Jar
Coffee Filter and Rubber Band
Stainless Steel Fine Mesh Strainer

Second Ferment:
1 TBL Measuring Spoon
Canning Funnel
Concentrated Fruit Juice
Pint Canning Jars with Twist-on Lids
Jar Opener

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Make sure everything very clean as you do not want to introduce mold into your batches.

Start with the SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) and about 1 cup of starter liquid from a previous Kombucha first ferment batch. Hopefully have a friend that will give you one or maybe there’s a store near by. If not, you can mail order both.

Boil about 2 quarts of water and take off of heat. Add 2 TBS of black or green tea and 1 cup of sugar, stir and let stand for 10 mins. After 10 minutes you can cool your mixture with ice.

Once the mixture has cooled to room temperature, pour into your 1 gallon glass jar. Add the SCOBY, 1 cup starter mixture and fill with filtered water to the curve of the jar. 20160721_140844

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Cap with a coffee filter and rubber band and let ferment away from the sun for 7-14 days depending on your climate. You will see bubbles rising up and you will notice another SCOBY forming on top of the original one. When the mixture starts to taste vinegary and has a PH around 3, you can start your second ferment.

The SCOBY can be pure white or have some brown color in it. This is the yeast in the batch. If it has black or green spots you may have mold. Check on-line to see what mold looks like on a SCOBY and if in doubt, toss out.

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Set aside the SCOBY and 1 CUP of liquid for your next batch, which you should have already been brewing tea for.

You are now ready for the second ferment. Give the liquid a little stir to get everything mixed up. Using a canning funnel and mesh strainer pour the mixture into the pint jars leaving about 1-1/2″ space from the top.

Add 1 to 2 TBS of fruit juice concentrate. If you just use regular fruit juice you will need to add more and probably add some sugar to get the second ferment going. I’ve tried both and for me 2 TBS of fruit juice concentrate works the best and is easiest.

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Screw on the lids tightly and place somewhere out of the way. The photo to the left shows two batches. The two jars on top have been in second ferment for about 5 days and the bottom layer is brand new. Notice the difference in clarity.

You can start drinking right away, but it will be really sweet and non-carbonated. I start enjoying it after three or four days as it starts to clear up and carbonates. You’ll notice yeast and another little SCOBY growing in the pint jars after a few days. Pour over ice and enjoy. Always use a strainer to catch the yeast and SCOBY.

Smoked Tuna

September 22, 2015 / By antoniod / In Smoking

With the warm waters this summer (2015) we have been seeing many tuna venture north much earlier than normal. There have even been reports of fishermen catching Blue and Yellow Fin tuna withing one mile of the Oceanside, CA coastline. Fortunately I have a few friends that have small refrigerators and need to offload some of their catch.

If not overcooked smoked tuna can be moist and one of the better fish to smoke.

Ingredients

10 lbs of Tuna cut into 1.5 to 2 inch sections (remove bloodline)
1-2 C water
2 C apple juice
1 C Brown Sugar
1/8 C Molasses (brown sugar)- did not use
1/4 C Honey
1/4 C Soy Sauce
1/4 C Salt
2 TBS garlic powders
2-3 TBS Sriacha (4-6 hotter)
6 Bay Leaves
- Optional Orange Juice
- Optional Black Pepper

Process

Combine all ingredients (except the tuna) to create the brine and heat at a low temperature to dissolve ingredients, cool with ice cubes.
Add the cubed tuna and brine in fridge for 1.5-2 hours. Make sure the tuna is fully submerged.
Air dry for 1.5-2 hours with fan to create the pellicle. What is a pellicle? Click Here
Smoke with 2-3 batches of apple wood smoke for about two hours. Make sure you don’t overcook the tuna as it can dry out.

Time (some of these tasks can be overlapped and some don’t require constant attention)

1/2-1 hour to prepare fish and brine
2-3 hours brine
1/2 hour to lay on racks and clean up brining gear
1-2 hours to open air dry
1/2 hour to get smoker ready
1.5 – 2 hours to smoke
1 hour to clean up
1/2 – 1 hour to vacuum seal (depending on amount of fish)

Remove the blood line. This is optional, but recommended. Cube into 1.5-2″ pieces.

Heat to dissolve all the ingredients and mix the flavors. Cool with ice.

Letting sit for 1-2 hours at room temperature with a fan moving air over the fish will help create the pellicle which is critical to the smoking process.

Most smokes do not smoke/cook evenly so rotate your selves from top to bottom and 180 degrees.

Smoke until a nice golden light brown color. Of course test throughout the process to make sure you do not over dry the fish.

Vacuum seal the product to keep in the flavor and freshness. Refrigerate.

Smoking Salmon

September 22, 2015 / By antoniod / In Smoking

Here’s another one of my favorite smoking recipes. It can be done with any type of salmon, however I prefer wild caught Sockeye and tend to do it when it’s on sale for around $10 per pound. (click on any of the photos to zoom in on the images)

Ingredients
*3-4 lbs. salmon
*1 cup of brown sugar
*1/3 cup of salt
*1 TBS of black pepper
*6 bay leaves
*1 bottle dry white wine
*Greek Mediterranean seasoning (World Market)

Process

*Mix all the ingredients except the salmon and the Mediterranean Greek seasoning to create the brine. I usually heat up the solution to make sure everything dissolves and all the flavors mix. Adding a little ice to cool it down doesn’t hurt.
*Brine for 2-4 hours (a longer brine tends to soak up more salt)
*Add Mediterranean seasoning
*Let air dry for 1-2 hours to form the pellicle (important step)

A pellicle is a skin or coating of proteins on the surface of meat, fish or poultry, which allow smoke to better adhere the surface of the meat during the smoking process. Useful in all smoking applications and with any kind of animal protein, it is best used with fish where the flesh of, say, salmon, forms a pellicle, the surface that will attract more smoke to adhere to it than would be the case if you had not used it. Without a pellicle the fish would be inedibly dry from enough smoking to produce a tasty finished product.

*Smoke with alder for 2 hours
*Finish in oven if needed

Time (some of these tasks can be overlapped and some don’t require constant attention)

1/2-1 hour to prepare fish and brine
2-4 hours brine
1/2 hour to lay on racks and clean up brining gear1-2 hours to open air dry
1/2 hour to get smoker ready
2-3 hours to smoke
1 hour to clean up
1/2 – 1 hour to vacuum seal (depending on amount of fish)

One of my favorite places to shop, Frazier Farms, always a great selection of quality products.

Make sure there are no rib bones in the meat, if there are use tweezers or needle nose pliers to pull them out. (If you click on the close up photo you can see the row of rib bones)

Cut the fish in strips depending on the thickness of the filet. Thicker the filet, the thinner the strip. Heat the brine mixture at a low temperature to mix all of the flavors and dissolve the salt and sugar. (I think I put a few too many bay leaves in this batch. Either way it was fine.)

Cool the brine by adding ice. Pour the brine over the fish and make sure all of the fish is submerged. I use a plate or utensils to hold the fish down.

Spread the fish on the drying racks, add the Greek Mediterranean seasoning and let air dry for 1-2 hours to create the pellicle. I put a fan near by to keep the air moving.

Smoke until there is a nice smoke ring around the meat. Make sure you rotate your racks from top to bottom and 180 degrees to get even smoke over the product.

I like to vacuum seal the meat to keep the flavors in and the product fresh. It’s really not to preserve the meat because it doesn’t last long. Refrigerate.

Beef Jerky

December 11, 2014 / By antoniod / In Smoking

Update – 2015 San Diego Fair 1st Place (also won 2014)

I’ve been experimenting with smoking meats (mostly fish and beef) for some time now. Through much trial and error I have come up with a pretty good beef jerky recipe. Some say the best they ever had, so I thought I’d let an officially sanctioned organization give it a try and entered my concoction in the 2014 San Diego Fair. Guess what I took first place! Here’s some proof, the process and the recipe (well most of it). I can’t give up all my trade secrets, plus most of the fun is in the experimentation. 😉

How to make this award winning beef jerky.

Meat

5lbs of Top Round/Beef Round London Broil steak
Trim all fat off
Wrap in plastic wrap and put in freezer for a 1-2 hours to make firm while cutting.
Cut across grain in 1/4″ wide or a bit less strips

Marinade

60oz teriyaki sauce
2tsp garlic powder
2tsp onion powder
2tsp black pepper
4tsp brown sugar
4tsp Tabasco hot sauce (regular flavor)
4tsp fresh finely grated ginger

Mix all ingredients thoroughly. I use an immersion blender. It also picks up some of the ginger fibers which is great b/c they look like hair in the finished product. You could also strain the marinade.

Put the meat into the marinade making sure all the meat is covered. You can add a little water if needed. I use container that I can shake up and rotate. I soak the meat for minimum of three days all the way up to a week. If you need to do less, you probably can get by, just make sure you shake up more often.

After marinading, I pour the meat in a large strainer to get most of the liquid off of it. DO NOT rinse with water.

Lay the meat on your smoking/drying rack without overlapping. Let sit at room temperature for 1-2 hours with a fan blowing over it. This will form a pellicle (film that traps in flavor).

Slow smoke for 1.5-2hours with your favorite wood chips (I used apple, alder, cherry, hickory – I don’t use mesquite as I think it’s too strong). Keep the meat in the smoker under low heat to continue to dry it out. I make sure I’m at 165 degrees or hotter but not much more. I smoke for two hours and then keep it on heat for another 4 hours depending on the outdoor temperature. I know it’s done when it just starts to snap instead of bending. With my smoker I rotate the racks from bottom to top and turn 180 degrees to get even smoke and drying.

After that I let sit at room temperature for 12 hours with a screen over to continue to dry out.

Enjoy!

Rock Tumbling

December 11, 2014 / By antoniod / In Artwork

I saw a rock tumbler on sale at Harbor Freight and thought I’d give it a try. Besides polishing rocks, it can also be used to make sea glass. Spending my summers in Rhode Island we would always forage for sea glass at the local beach, but today almost everything is made out of plastic these days so it’s much harder to come by. Unless you have a tumbler.

Polished Rock Game – I tool a photo of the rocks before tumbling, laminated it and the objective was to match the after to the before.

These rocks are from the Rio Grand in Rio Rancho, NM – Before tumbling.

After tumbling. Click on the photo to expand it and see the detail.

Finished Sea Glass

SED – Beginning

November 11, 2014 / By antoniod / In Computers

SED is a stream editor for filtering and transforming text. I use SED often to manipulate text files on the fly. Most of the same manipulation can be done with Perl, Awk and ??? Everyone has their own preference. SED is what I know the best, so it’s what I use.

When using SED you have options, the two I use most are to show the potential outcome of the edit and the other is to actually edit the file.

# sed [just show the changes, but don’t make them permanent]
# sed -i [edit in place]

Note: The following examples may or may not show the -i attribute. Remember, sometimes we maybe want to look at the changes but not make them permanent.

These are just a few examples. There is more to come.

Add

Add something to the front of each line
# sed ‘s/^/something/’ file1

Add something to the end of each line
# sed ‘s/$/something /’ file1

Find the line containing text icmp-host-prohibited in file iptables and put a # in front
# sed -i ‘/icmp-host-prohibited/ s/^/#/’ /etc/sysconfig/iptables ;

Find the line containing text COMMANDS and append “,/sbin/chkconfig” to it.
# sed -i ‘/Cmnd_Alias COMMANDS/ s/$/,\/sbin\/chkconfig/’ /etc/sudoers

Find text in a file and add a new line after it
# sed -i ‘/HISTSIZE=1000/ a\TMOUT=10000’ /etc/profile

Replace

Replace all strings “can” by “should”
# sed ‘s/can/should/g’ file1

Replace first instance of “can” with “should” (works in script)
# sed -i -e ‘1s/should/can/;t’ -e ‘1,/should/s//can/’ csfile ;

Replace > with \> in an html file
# sed ‘s/>/\>/g’ file.html

Remove

Remove all blank lines
# sed ‘/^$/d’ file1

Remove to the beginning of a line to the first “,”
# sed -i ‘s/^.*,//g’ file1

Remove: Find string test in file1 and remove line with first instance
# sed ‘/test/d’ file1

Prepend

More to come

Append

More to come

Old Flash Project

November 11, 2014 / By antoniod / In Graphics

I made this movie around 2002 when I took a Flash course at the local Mira Costa Community College. At $33 per class per quarter you couldn’t beat the value. The project requirements were to include all the things we learned to date. What exactly were they? I can’t really remember, but watch the movie as I used them all.

Flash Movie

Growing Wheatgrass

November 11, 2014 / By antoniod / In Gardening

I’ve been juicing for a while and saw a post about Wheatgrass. I knew it was a healthy juice and many people take a shot of it to get their day going. I also heard it was a little expensive to purchase, so why not try to grow my own.

As with almost anything these days a little Googling goes a long way. Here’s my adventure.

I pick up some Hard Winterwheat Berries (seeds) from Frazier Farms on Oceanside Blvd., these aren’t organic, but they will do to get me started. Next batch I will get organic.

From my research, two cups of seeds should be adequate for a 16″ x 16″. (I actually found this to be a bit much and now only do one and a half cups per trays. Rinse the seeds with cold water (filtered preferred-I’ve done it both ways and gotten the same results) and then soak for eight hosts. Rinse and soak two more times for a total of three cycles.

By this time you should see little sprouts (1/16th inch) emerging from the seeds. We are now ready to plant.

Use a well draining tray and fill with about two inches of potting soil. I presonally made my own mix with garden compost, peat moss, perlight, and some potting soil that I have left over. Thoroughly soak the mix before putting in the tray. If the tray’s holes are too big, you can line the bottom with non-bleached paper towels (I got mine from Trader Jo’s). Lightly compact the soil and water until it drains from the bottom. It can be a little messy, so find an appropriate work area until you got a system down.

Carpet the seeds on top of the compacted soil. They can be touching, but you don’t want many layers. I’m still experimenting with this. Here are two photos of my experiments. The less dense seemed to work better.

Water a little more. Cover with wet paper towels, being careful not to touch the seeds as they will stick to the paper. I have an upside down tray I use.

Water in the morning and make sure the paper towel is wet at night. If you have well draining trays, I don’t think you can over water in the beginning. Once you have grass forming, you can back off a little bit.

Here’s a close up photo of the seeds with larger spouts. You can see the sprout and the root (white hairy protrusion) forming.

Here’s some photos of the progress at about 4 days.

This is at about 8 days.

At this time, I took the try in the house and let it grow for a couple of more days and then harvested the whole batch.

Sometime during the growing part, you may want to start soaking some more berries so you can repeat the whole process and keep your supply of Wheatgrass in the green.

Harvest

I usually harvest the whole tray of Wheatgrass at one time and put it in a bag in the refrigerator for easy use the next time I want to juice. A knife or scissor works fine. As you can see in the photo I’ve left about 1-2 inches of the stem of the grass because I have a little problem with mold and want to keep it well away from the harvest. My research says this mold is not harmful otherwise I would be tossing the whole batch. Push as much air out of the bag to reduce the oxidation of the Wheatgrass. I’ve kept Wheatgrass in the refrigerator for over a week will little visual signs of oxidation. I’m sure it has lost some of it’s nutritional value, but its the best I can do to manage my supply.

Troubleshooting

I’ve been having a mold problem at the base of my Wheatgrass. See the white cotton looking stuff with black specks at the the base of the grass. My research says it’s not harmful, so I’ll keep the harvest, but cut far away from the mold. I’m not sure if it’s airborne or in the soil. I’ll do some research and see if there is a way to get rid of it or at least drastically reduce it.

I know mold thrives in certain humidity levels, so I’ll experiment with adjusting that and moving my tray into the sun during the day. I’ve also read that misting with white vinegar can help.