Cooper Jackson

After having some issues with the blog software Lateef thought hey maybe I will update the software and WOOT! Everything is working much better now. Can write blog post again!

Here we are, at 10 pm on a Sunday, trying to keep up with the Olson’s. Not the Jones’s, but the Olson’s. See, the past few months, we have gotten big-headed about our breadmaking skills. The bread isn’t mind-blowing amazing, its just good enough for you to appreciate it, because we gave it to you for free. If you had to pay for it, you might not be so gracious in your description of it. Anyway, because we have gotten big-headed about our bread, I think we have also become a little lazy. We’re not taking some of the extra steps we used to. Then, our friend Erik Olson decided to pull out his fancy bread machine, and with the flick of a wrist, he began churning out bread with very little effort & fanfare, unlike our usual procedure. Last night he graduated to baking his bread in the oven rather than in the bread machine, and we went over to see his finished product. He has achieved in a few weeks, a certain level in breadmaking which took us a few years to get to.

Not yet defeated, we decided to raise the ante a little today. It’s Christmas, so we thought we would send out a few batches to our Concord neighbors. First we made a single batch of Brother’s Bread, then decided to make another double batch of it. We then graduated to Italian baguettes, and finally topped it all of with a festive Cranberry Walnut bread. Look at this spread!

bread spread

Plus we re-invigorated some techniques that may have been lost over the past few months: egg whites on the crust before the loaves go in the oven, extra effort in cutting them, and even had the idea to toast the walnuts. Fancy Fancy!

OMG. We started the beet wine 2 weeks ago. Lateef thought he would be clever by adding alittle extra sugar to slightly increase the alcohol %. We took the specific gravity reading tonight before doing the first transfer/racking of the wine. Yep, we have 20% alcohol wine at this point, and its still fermenting. However after trying some we realize we will only be drinking this wine in small quantities anyways, because of the taste. Think boiled beets with honey on top, then with a splash of vodka and that pretty much describes the sensation in your mouth when you drink this. However, the color turned out pretty, so at least it looks good in the pictures:

According to the picture I just inserted, it looks like we just bottled some ketchup in a few carboys. And now, even as I look at them in person, it doesn’t really resemble wine. But that is what the next few months are for, to turn these sludgy-looking things into crystal-clear, horrible-tasting high-volume wine.

Yep, I rode 5 times 20 miles this week. In fact, I rode Wednesday 22 miles in 1 1/2 hours (that is 14.5 miles an hour), which doesn’t sound like much but with traffic it takes almost an hour to drive. Ironically, Friday Melissa met me in Charlotte so we could return to Concord Halloween early, this however did not work out so well. With traffic it took 2 hours to drive home, it would have been faster to bike!

Lucky we built the house with a double door in the back because my head would not have fit though a single door. I strutted for 12 hours before I was smacked down to a pin head. I bumped into Aaron Newton at the farmers market and he pointed out that there is a guy in Washington State who rides 30 MILES EACH WAY TO WORK!! In the rain! Glory is short lived.

What is next? What other goals could there possibly be? Well there are two I can think of. The first is to do the route in 1 hour which would mean biking 20 miles per hour, including stop lights and traffic. The second is to do 200 miles. Both of these will probably not happen in the cold winter months but I can see spring time being fit enough to bike 200 miles. Might even get a better bike by summer so I can pick up the speed a bit.

After doing a few kit wines where we order the grapes pre-juiced, we decided to turn back to our roots …our beet roots that is. We’re going back to making wine from fruits & veggies. As you know, our first, and so far best, wine is the blueberry wine. The taste, the color, the clean crispness is amazing. Unfortunately, we only made 5 bottles of it. This time we made beet wine and the recipe says kind of the same thing – tastes nothing like beets but has a beautiful color.
I am very happy about the economy of this wine, as compared to the blueberry wine or any of the other wines. Blueberry wine probably averaged at $10/bottle, due to the high cost of blueberries. Beets were $.89 per lb., so we are out like $5 for the beets and other $5 for the other ingredients. So we are looking at $1/bottle. And, as I dicovered tonight, it gets even cheaper! Because the way to make beet wine is to boil the beets and use the now-red water as the wine base. And now we have plenty of boiled beets to eat.
Tonight we got our second run from those beets, via Lateef’s idea: Russian Borscht. This is a soup that involves beets as the main ingredient, followed by carrots, cabbage and onions. We have been meaning to thin out our carrots in the garden, and still have plenty of cabbage sitting out there waiting to be harvested. So, before I delve into the intricacies of beet wine making, please see a picture of our carrot harvest (I know, the are funny looking because we didn’t till the soil too good this year) and of the Borscht soup.

Now, on to the beet wine. We got the beets from the farmers market, the honey from the same place, and the other ingredients from the grocery store (oranges, orange juice, sugar, etc).
Basically the beets get cut up and boiled, then everything else gets added and boiled. All containers were sterilized. So the only thing unboiled and/or unsterilized was the ‘zest of the orange’. Because of this, we decided to leave out the Campden tablet, which kills any “wild yeast”. This is pretty risky as by not killing any potential wild yeast, we can end up with a spoiled batch. However, it also lowers the preservatives in the wine. As Lateef’s dad advised us before we got married, “take risks”. We’re laying all on the line right here baby! We are still going to wait 24 hours before adding the yeast so that all the flavors can combine. Also we are waiting because to start the yeast would take at least 1 hour, and it was 11:30pm on a Sunday night, and we were falling apart.

When we took the specific gravity, which is the starting measurement for determining how much alcohol it might have, it was high at 1.15. If this stuff ferments to completion, then the alcohol content will be 20%. Yikes. Probably the yeast will get drunk with power and die early.
24 hours later, we heard the beginnings of the yeast orgy. The familiar bubbling, frothing sound coming from the bucket was a good sign. Here’s a pic. It looks like a disgusting bubbling brew.

Some time in February we decided to start cycling for our food. We have surpassed the 6 month mark without even noticing it. Some strange things have happened over this time. First let me clarify we are not getting paid to cycle with potatoes or anything. We just decided if we needed food from the grocery store we would ride our bikes this year to get it. So far it has worked pretty well. Side effects include we are buying less food. The constant reminder to buy healthy food is also hard to avoid since you think about the performance of your various muscles and body parts for the 15 minutes it takes to get there. It takes maybe a couple extra minutes at this point to get to the store and back. There have been a few times that we have thought about taking the car and I think one time we bought some food on the way back from a long trip. At this point it is habit to bike. We are also in better shape for it, I would suspect.

Some friends and neighbors somehow feel we have an opinion or judgment on them because they use the car to get groceries. The truth is we don’t care… we have done this for ourselves and it is great that grocery shopping is actually a pleasant experience now, not just a chore. We generally think guilt is not a motivator.

Our original goal was to go to the grocery store via bike for one year straight. Its been 8 months now, but Melissa is getting a little wary about the final 4 months. This week represented the first dip in temperatures – mid 30′s at night, house temperature hasn’t been above 62 degrees for the last week (house temperature is a different goal, we’ll talk about that some other time). However fun (or not) the last few months may be, I think this activity has permanently changed the way we will be getting groceries from now on. The first, automatic choice mode of transportation has changed from car to bike. Oh yes, and we calculated fuel/car costs savings for the year: $468. That’s a lot of groceries!

Today I rode over 40 miles. And broke a spoke! Am I to heavy? Ok yes that is partly why I need to ride my bike. Are the roads that bad? Yep I hit a massive pot hole which I couldn’t avoid in all the traffic. So Melissa and I have been talking about a new bike maybe better suited for the kind of riding I am doing. However first on the list was to get Melissa a bike so she could ride with me to Charlotte also and start training up. Also my butt still hurts I haven’t figured out that at all. Today it pretty tough I think maybe extra milage and had some rough riding on bad roads in Charlotte. Well passing out now so tired..

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Last Friday I drove in because the weather was so rainy. I decided to track the milage since I had the truck. 20 miles each way! So yep a 40 mile commute. Right now I am going for 2 times a week because I am a bum, wimpy, lazy and generally need a day for my body to recover. With the Charlotte gas crisis (or lack there of gas) you would think less traffic. Well I haven’t noticed it yet and I think it is because the price of gas has not increased very much. Today I broke a spoke so I hope to get that fixed tomorrow maybe a new rim the old one this has been the third spoke that has broken.

This morning I felt like the ride was easier. Not sure if it was anecdotal or because of the big pasta meal I had the night before but I think that it was easier. On the way back I didn’t feel like crying on the last hill to my house like last time but I was defiantly useless once I came home. “Feed me Melissa please!” And now at the ripe time of 8:30pm I am thinking about going to bed soon (old old man). Let hope I can get my bike fixed and get over 100 miles in this week on my bike.

We put another 50 miles of progress on the Mountains to Sea trail (MST). We are now 100 miles into it… about 10%. Lateef thinks maybe 30% due to the fact this is the most strenuous part, however after hiking for 2 weekends you start to get focused a little much on things like that. The 100 mile mark was a great celebration and maybe a little too much wine. And we ended at the Pisgah Inn. Not only is the food good at the inn but the views are amazing. It was a nice break from the woods, woods and more woods. We did hike a bit on the parkway just to see some views one day but mostly we spent it in the woods. We are excited for the next section because it ends in Asheville. After that my guess is we will be excited for the bicycling to start but that is a good couple hundred miles from Asheville.

Crazy thought Lateef has had is sailing from New Bern and throughout all the outer banks section. This of course means we need to learn to sail and rent a sailboat.. Probably more likely is taking a canoe, and even more likely we will just bike to the end and save ourselves a lot of time. For now though we will be looking to learn how to sail to see if that is possible. So where do we learn to sail? Is it easy to rent a boat we can take up the coast? Guess we don’t have to worry about that for a couple years.

Today I rode around 36 miles. This was not my first attempt, actually my 3rd. First time I had technical problems with my bike. Second time it got dark on the way back and I didn’t have any lights I called for a ride. It seemed a lot shorter this time. The first two times that last couple miles were really hard. The real question is why?!

The inspiration to commute to work via bike came from mainly uncles, my uncle Dan and my wife’s uncle Richard who are also bike commuters (their wives are also cyclists) I think fittingly we asked both these uncles and their wives to speak at our wedding. Richard’s emergency doctor job had him riding his bike to work. I laugh in his direction his pithy mileage. I will be emailing Richard for his professional advice about my bum. And if any one could share comments on this blog about how to ease my burden that would also be great.

As if the prestige and bragging rights are not enough why I have some more factual data. With 1 1/2 hours of bike ride plus 30 minutes of bus ride each way I have a lots of time to ponder the why objectively. My guess is that I am going to ride twice a week and use the bus for most of the way the other times. Which means about 72 miles a week. In a year I am guessing 42 weeks of bikable time. Which is around 3,000 miles. That is $1,500 big ones if you are talking 50 cents a mile. So that is a minimum from my perspective because I was estimating that I will be spending $150 a month on gas so the financial impact is pretty good. Not to mention that I don’t need to be a member of a health club (another $30 per month). Which leads me to the second aspect which is how good I feel when I get to work and when I arrive home. It really does feel good to get 3 hours of exercise a day. For my high cholesterol this exercise is priceless.

Friday will hopefully be my next full ride!