With Only Minor Injuries

Once again I have distinguished myself as the King of All Tools.

No snickering.

I screwed down the new boards on my workbench, and then I started thinking about my problems with the wobbly reloading press. I decided to grind a little bit off the front of the bench and set the press a little farther back, so I could put long lag shields through two two-by-sixes and use longer bolts. It seems like it doesn’t flex nearly as much. Now I have to crank out a box of ammunition and see what happens. It would sure be nice if I could worry less about flexing and the problems it causes.

It’s great having a Wecheer tool permanently mounted on the bench, with an assortment of Dremel bits in a box screwed to the wall. When I got the idea of setting the press back, I tried to use a drill and a rotary rasp, but it was crude, so I popped a sanding drum on the Wecheer and got it done jiffy-quick.

All the more reason to buy a sliding miter saw. Same basic rationale.

It turns out my little Panasonic impact driver will turn a 3″ #14 screw into a two-by-six without a pilot hole, no problem.

Of course, I only know this because it was after the screw went in that I realized I had forgotten to drill the hole.

Convenience Worth its Weight in Gold

People are giving me all sorts of saw suggestions. I don’t know that I’m going to upgrade right away. But I might, simply because inflation and increased shipping costs are making waiting a questionable idea.

As one reader suggests, I am not planning to make fine furniture, mainly because I am totally incapable of doing so. But my experience with the crappy, non-fine projects I’ve attempted so far tells me that sub-millimeter accuracy is the least you should accept for any wood tool.

Someone else says he has had inaccurate cuts with Dewalt saws. A lot of people on the web make the same complaint. It looks like the best choices for average Joes are Makita and Bosch.

I have to think about it. My table saw can do a lot of the things a sliding miter saw can do, with effort. The great thing about a miter saw is that you can leave it set up all the time and walk over when you need it. Pop the blade through the wood, clear away the sawdust, and you’re done. It’s a wonderful convenience. There is nothing like a versatile tool you don’t have to take out and set up.

The garage is looking good. I actually managed to get the car in there, with room to spare. This is nice. No more getting into a 150-degree oven every time I want McMuffins.

I have a question for the Christians who read this blog. Is there a book you would recommend for a person who claims to have intellectual reservations about Christianity? I know Josh McDowell wrote one; I haven’t read it. I suppose I should point out that I would be looking for something consistent with the Protestant Holy-Spirit-centered viewpoint.

I tend to suspect that this type of book doesn’t work too well. Most non-religious people who are aware of Christianity and resist it do so deliberately, in order to excuse their lifestyles or to punish God for His perceived misdeeds and failings. Or to inflate their own pride. It’s 2008, and people still think making fun of Noah’s Ark somehow makes them look intelligent and sophisticated. I believe people are more likely to be moved by the testimony of others whom they respect, and by people who set good examples, and by prayer. But I thought I’d ask anyway.

In other news, it’s Meat Day. My weekly Winn-Dixie ad is here. And Boston butts are 99¢ a pound. If you’re looking for a cheap way to feed your family, Boston butts should not be overlooked. Soak in baking soda brine for a day. Season however you want. Bake at 300 until it falls apart. Simple.

Boneless rib eyes, $6.99/lb. Not bad. More expensive than Costco, but the meat seems to be a little better.

Chicken leg quarters, 69¢/lb.! Oh, yes. Barbecue time.

Baby backs are $3.99/lb., but I prefer spare ribs.

OH, YES! T-bone, Porterhouse or bone-in Ribeye steaks $5.99/lb.! Where are the car keys? If I can get a rib roast, it’s time to age some meat.

Mr. Tool Continues his Organization Spree

I am beginning to re-enter that zen-like state I used to achieve when my garage was perfect. Reloading destroyed the equilibrium, but I’m getting it back.

I keep thinking about sliding miter saws. I was trying to figure out what a miter saw should be able to do, to bridge the gap between a circular saw and a table saw. And my guess was that if it could cut a two-by-ten, which is the biggest piece of lumber you are likely to encounter before going to sheets, it would fill the bill. Does that make sense?

I made great progress in the garage. I cleaned and rearranged and planned, and I finished little projects that were cluttering the place up. And then I drove my car inside. Exciting. Some bedwetting eunuch egged my car last night, so I figured it was time to start parking indoors again.

I doubt it was personal. I don’t have any enemies in Miami. There is just something about a car with style that draws eggs. This is the second time since I bought it.

If it is personal, you have to wonder what it feels like to be that much of a wimp. Pretty awful, I would imagine. Cringing in the dark with your little carton of eggs, because that’s all you’re man enough to do. I hope it was some kid looking for thrills. A grown man doing something like that would be beneath pity. If it’s an adult, it’s someone who is terrified I would push his face in if I caught him. It’s flattering to think someone fears me that much.

I suddenly have a cute idea for the reloading press mount. It’s not the most ergonomically correct machine on earth. You have to stand in front of it to pull the lever comfortably; if you sit to the side, it’s a reach. What if I bolted it to a thick piece of metal–maybe 3/4″ aluminum–and turned it sideways? The aluminum piece bolts to the bench, and it extends off the front. The press bolts to the aluminum. That way, I could sit to the left of the press with the bench on my left, pulling the handle straight toward me.

Geez, then the finished bullets would have nowhere to go. The bin hangs from the left side of the press.

I’ll work something out. If the lever moved parallel to the front of the bench, the press might be more rigid, because the boards making up the bench run from left to right. I have doubts, though, because the press lifts off of the wood when I raise the handle. That suggests to me that the flexing of the wood is not the problem. I think the problem is that it’s damn near impossible to tighten this press down with two bolts way back at the rear.

One weird thing Hornady did when they designed the press was to lower the front lip of that little bin. The problem there is that if a bullet bounces, it flies out of the bin. They put little slots at the end of the bin, so you can slide a piece of cardboard in, and that’s how I keep my bullets from hitting the floor. If they’re going to make the bin that way, they should include a little piece of plastic to put in the slots.

I had to go to Home Depot yesterday, and while I was there, I tried to find tubing in a size that would slip over the outside of the tubing on the primer feed. Right now, I contain the used primers by clamping the end of the tube. But the tube is just small enough to get clogged up when the primers stack up a certain way. If it were slightly wider, that would never happen. Sadly, Home Depot didn’t have a single piece of tubing in an appropriate size.

Today I realized I had a giant pile of live ammunition in the garage. Not “pile,” really. But hundreds of rounds, in boxes. I moved that indoors. Not too useful without a pistol, but I have been known to leave guns out there on rare occasions. I suppose that if you really hated burglars, you might plug a gun’s barrel with epoxy, load it, and leave it on your kitchen table when you go to bed.

Another Sweaty Day

I don’t know how anyone could ever say my life isn’t exciting. Today I cut a plank into shelves, and I also used my dry cut saw to make a padded jack head fit my floor jack. The stem on the jack head was longer than the original, so I cut it down. I painted the bare, unplated end with truck bed paint, but I guess I can expect rust anyway.

I felt like I was overspending when I bought a 10″ miter saw a year or two ago, but increasingly, it seems like I didn’t spend enough. I just cut a one-by-eight-inch board, and I had to turn it over to complete the job. I have looked at 12″ sliding miter saws, which cut bigger stock, but they’re heavy and take up lots of room. I believe a 10″ sliding miter saw would have been perfect. Ridgid doesn’t make one, but Makita does. For the low, low price of $500.

Oh well.

I’m not sure what people generally use for pieces of wood that are not right for a circular saw or a table saw. I would think a 10″ sliding miter saw would cover 95% of the bases.

It amazes me how often I don’t have the right tool for a job, after all the acquisitions I’ve made. I guess this is why people hire other people to do their work for them.

I still can’t figure out what to get my old man for Father’s Day. It’s driving me nuts.

How Much do You Pay a Major Domo?

Still working on household BS today. Sometimes I understand why people used to live in tents.

I have been informed that the reason my pump repair did not work is that I used a fitting not suited to seal a system under pressure. There isn’t a whole lot of pressure in a pool pump return, but I guess it’s enough to make leakage a problem. I managed to find someone who will fix it for nothing, so I guess that nightmare is over. I can’t believe a simple repair to a piece of PVC pipe can be so difficult. Putting a new PVC project together is very easy. But try fixing an existing project. Completely different story.

I have this dream that one day I’ll own enough tools to make the vast majority of home repairs possible without bringing in outside help. Maybe that’s insane. But I didn’t expect to be stopped by ten inches of pipe.

I wonder how single women live. Most are hopeless with tools. I guess they end up paying a lot more than households with men.

When life resumes, so will blogging.

When do You Give Up?

Let’s have your opinions on a religious issue.

Imagine you know someone whose behavior is truly vile. Let’s say this is someone who has had ample–even exceptional–opportunity to turn to God. And you keep this person in your prayers for years. And it doesn’t seem to help, probably because free will is a barrier even God will not breach.

The Apostle Paul referred to abandoning unrepentant people to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. It sounds like he meant he gave up praying for them, in order that they might suffer and be motivated to change. Does that make sense? Do you ever give up praying? Maybe it’s okay to stop, because prayer takes time, and you can overload yourself, and time from which one person will not profit can be given to another person who will change. It just seems a little odd, refraining from praying for someone, in order to help them. And helping was part of Paul’s motivation.

As a Christian, you want to see miserable, hate-filled people change. And Jesus encouraged people to be persistent in prayer. But eventually, you want to move on!

It seems to me that the danger of giving up on a hateful and unpleasant person is that you may be depriving that person of the help of the only human being who cares at all. People like that live in loneliness, darkness, complete cynicism, bitterness, spite, and envy. Other people can’t stand them and feel contempt for them. They remove them from their lives. Seems to me that a person like that is better off being the subject of prayers uttered purely out of obligation than no prayers at all.

More

I guess I should have read up before asking. It looks like Paul was referring to driving people out of churches. One example was a Christian who had a sexual relationship with his father’s wife. This person presumably had to be cut loose for the good of the church, where he had somehow managed to find approval and encouragement. And I think Paul was talking about an official act, performed by the assembled church.

Maybe an individual should never completely give up, although I can certainly understand expelling God-hating, continually offensive people from your life.

PVC is Beyond my Comprehension

I am still trying to conquer the garage and some household repairs. I bought myself a cheap toolbox for my reloading junk, which helped me clear off the crap from my .38 Super escapades. And I reinstalled my huge 5″ vise.

My latest problem? A leaking PVC pipe on the exit side of a pump. The 1 1/2″ pipe threads into the pump, and then it goes into an elbow. The leak was at the pump side. I cut the pipe with a hacksaw, unscrewed it from the pump, put it back in with a decent dose of Teflon, and then put a splice in the pipe to rejoin it. But the splice leaks. And it’s glued. Now what do I do?

I have no idea how people fix PVC pipe joints that are held together with cement. Aren’t they unbreakable?

I was going to make a new pipe, but apparently, you have to buy an insanely expensive tool in order to thread PVC. I figured it would be an $8 doodad from Home Depot.

Unrelated: I got crazy and ordered a drill press, but it turns out the web ad was wrong, so I can’t get the price I wanted. I have to pay 50 bucks for freight, plus 30 for a lift truck. Would you pay 30 bucks for a lift, for a product weighing 250 pounds? Seems to me you could lower one end to the ground, stand it up, and put it on a handtruck. If Steel City had a dealer around here, it would be worth it to pay cash and pick it up myself.

Whoops, they do have a dealer. Maybe I can work that out.

If you’ve had your eye on some heavy item that comes with free shipping, you better look again. Free shipping deals are drying up.

Finally a Use for All That Fertilizer

Today Marv ponders the question: would life be easier if he were not so handsome? This is a question I myself often wrestle with.

Shut up.

He also tells us about his secret hobby: gardening.

Alert the Media

I have some beautiful new habanero gold pods, so I picked a big red shiny one and sliced about half of it, very thin, to try with my new hummus recipe. I picked the smallest pod I could find, but it was still big for a habanero. I also sliced three fresh cayennes up. Then I got out the pita and went to town.

I thought I would like the cayennes better. They’re tamer and sweeter, and you can pile more of them on a glob of hummus. But I sort of lean toward the habanero golds. Hummus does an amazing job of modulating the heat, so I was able to put two slices of pepper on each bit of torn-up pita. I ended up eating all three cayennes and half of the habanero. If there are any parasites in my body, for them, this is judgment day.

What a wonderful pepper this is. They’re typically the size of jumbo eggs. Very sweet, and deceptively hot.

Starts Tonight

Here is more proof that I need to find a church. Tonight will be Shavuot, AKA Pentecost, and I didn’t even know it. I forgot all about it. Fortunately, Aaron reminded me.

Catholics believe Pentecost was on May 11. But the correct dates for Jewish holidays are determined by the Jewish calendar, and the Jews say Shavuot starts tonight. It’s the Festival of the First Fruits. In Israel, Jews bring out newly born sheep and calves and also items of produce. Christians believe “first fruits” refers to the mass baptism of the Holy Spirit, which descended on the assembled disciples on this day. If memory serves, the disciples themselves were considered the first fruits of Jesus’s harvest. Which makes sense, since He referred to Himself as a seed that went into the ground in order to produce much grain (John 12:24).

This is arguably a more important day than Easter. Easter brought salvation to the Gentiles, but if I understand scripture correctly, Gentiles ignorant of God’s existence were in no danger of condemnation. Pentecost, however, made it possible for every human being to receive the power of the Holy Spirit, on demand. Something that used to be reserved for people like Jeremiah and Daniel became available to all of us. On this day, God made the existence of a race of prophets possible.

And of course, we’ve forgotten all about it, focusing instead on salvation. Jesus clearly wanted every person to experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He told Nicodemus we had to be reborn of water and the spirit, if we wanted to enter the Kingdom of God. In other words, if we wanted to live in, and exert, God’s power here on earth. This is the most hateful thing you can mention to people still ruled by the prince of this world, and it’s the thing misguided church leaders have worked the hardest to conceal. It’s probably the thing which is most likely to get you martyred.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, but you’re interested, find yourself a pentecostal or charismatic church and ask about the baptism. I believe the usual procedure is for people who already have it to lay hands on you.

More

Aaron points out that the biggest significance of Shavuot in the Jewish calendar is that it was the date on which the Torah was given to the Jews.

And of course, Christians believe that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is what the Old Testament refers to when it says God will write the Torah on men’s hearts.

Not that I would suggest that there is a connection or anything.

Popular Stuff

I’m getting a lot of input RE hummus.

Once I added the tahini Jonathan recommended, the hummus improved. But I didn’t realize until today how much it had improved. It’s really very good. Better than store hummus. I didn’t expect that.

He says fresh hummus is best. I should email him about that. I’m wondering if he’s talking about the style they serve in kibbutz dining halls. Call me a traitor, but the best food in Israel (unless things have changed) is Arab food. It was worth getting dysentery for; I can tell you from experience. The falafel they sold in Afula was beyond description. I used to look forward to getting off the kibbutz just so I could have food made by Arabs. The hummus they had in our dining hall wasn’t spicy. I can see how a mild hummus like that would be better on the first day, but it seems like my hummus is getting better. And it’s loaded with garlic and cumin and hot sauce. Highly seasoned foods tend to improve in the fridge.

Last year, I located a lady in Trinidad for the purpose of obtaining obscure peppers. I hooked her up with a pepper forum, and she ended up supplying a lot of people in the US with Trinidad Scorpion and 7 Pot pepper seeds. Last week, out of the blue, she sent me seeds for yellow 7 Pot peppers, which I had never heard of. They’re usually red. That was nice of her. I better get them growing.

I’m thinking about peppers because of that and because of the hummus. My habanero gold bush has already produced a second crop of huge peppers, and I need to do something with them. I’m thinking that the next time I make hummus, I should toss a minced habanero in there. Hot peppers are supposed to have health benefits, such as decimating digestive-tract cancers. And this week I learned that hummus can neutralize a tremendous amount of pepper heat. So by eating hummus regularly, it should be possible to get a decent dose of hot peppers without burning holes in my gullet.

Cayennes would surely be better, though. It still irks me to know that peppers from Home Depot taste better than most of my exotics.

People are telling me to add butter beans to make the hummus creamier. As I recall, the better recipes I had in Israel were very creamy, but here in the US, it all seems a little grainy. I’m not sure. I don’t really care, though.

Today is the sabbath, and every week, the sabbath teaches me something new. This week I am coming to appreciate the pleasure of having the sabbath rescue me from something I don’t want to do.

Yesterday I slaved in the garage, trying to organize things and repair my workbench. It was a long, sweaty ordeal. Were today not Sunday, I’d have to go back in there and get back to it. Hey, I’m not lazy. I’m just pious. No, really.

Heh heh. That worked out pretty good.

As good as a kibbutz-style breakfast is with pita, it would be way better with hot naan or poori. But those breads are so greasy it would be like eating a stack of pancakes.

Bench Fixed

I can’t believe it. I fixed my workbench.

A while back, not having a drill press, I decided to try to drill downward through a horizontal two-by-six with a vertical two-by-six under it, and you can imagine how well that worked out. I messed up one of the two-by-sixes supporting the front of my bench. So today I replaced it.

Making the story sadder, I took apart some .38 Super bullets before I started, because I was trying to clear reloading junk off the bench. And it turned out bullets that are a week old are harder to pull than fresh bullets, because I had to beat the daylights out of my bench to get these out. And I noticed I was splintering the top surface. So I had to replace ANOTHER two-by-six. Memo to self: from now, put something on the bench top when using the bullet puller.

It gets worse. When I removed the first two-by-six from the top of the bench, I had to deal with glued dovetails. And the two-by-six behind it split while I was working on it. So I ended up having to replace three two-by-sixes, two of which required a lot of routing.

It took me at least an hour and a half to create two tongues and one groove. I still don’t have my nice new Christmas router set up, so I used my crappy Sears job. But it worked.

I still have to drill a couple of holes, saw off a long two-by-six, and reinstall my vise and reloading press. But that stuff is quick and easy.

I gave up and bought a standing drill press. I couldn’t take it any more. About twice a week I get hit in the face with a job that a drill press would do in about two minutes, yet which is nearly impossible with any other tool and my limited skills.

The garage is still a nightmare. I had to quit before I dropped in a pool of sweat and sawdust.

I love having stationary power tools and a bench and a handy-dandy Workmate. I had to cut two-by-sixes to length, and with my ever-ready miter saw, it was a cinch. The little square Og recommended also helps. And what a joy the impact driver is. I had to remove 3″ number 14 screws from wood that was wet when I put them in. And they backed right out without stripping. The screws I put in to take their places went right in. Drills are crap; impact drivers rule.

Too bad tomorrow is Sunday. Otherwise I’d fire up the table saw and make a platform for the HAMMR.

The Usual

Someone asked me for my hummus recipe. I’ll tell you what I’ve got so far.

Yesterday I glanced at some online recipes. You can probably guess how much I trust them. I did my own thing. I wrote about the results, and I inquired about tahini, which I had not yet added to the recipe. Johnathan said tahini was essential, so this morning I added some, and it did the trick. It adds a peculiar bitterness you can’t get from lemon juice or vinegar. He was absolutely right.

The results are good enough to post, but you may be able to do a lot better. I think I’m going to add more garlic next time. The reason this is worth posting isn’t that the recipe is so great. It’s that prepared hummus is obscenely expensive, and this stuff is nearly free.

INGREDIENTS

2 (around 14 oz. each, I guess) cans garbanzo beans, drained
juice of 2 lemons–buy 3 just in case
1 tsp. cumin
4 cloves garlic
3 tbsp. olive oil
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. tahini (not prepared sauce)
1/2 tsp. paprika

I also added a ton of Crystal hot sauce, which I can still barely taste. I’ll bet I added a quarter of a cup.

Toss this stuff into a food processor and blend until it looks like hummus. Save the water from the canned beans until the end, and add it judiciously if you have to. The mixture may be dry. I’ll bet cooking your own beans would make it better.

If I had it to do over again, I think I’d omit the Crystal and toss in part of a habanero, or maybe–better–three or four fresh cayennes. I don’t know if the paprika serves any purpose. It’s just ground-up red peppers. It’s a nice thing to dust on the top of a mound of hummus, with a little olive oil and a couple of black olives, before you serve it.

Johnathan says hummus should be fresh. He knows more about it than I do. My plan is to make it once a week and eat it for five days. If it’s not as good as fresh, I’ll survive. It sure beats oatmeal. I think he also said the cumin was not standard, but I like it.

Here is what I had for breakfast today. I cut a quarter of a big sweet red pepper in strips. Did the same with an entire carrot and a quarter of a big cucumber. Meant to add a tomato, but I forgot. I put three globs on my plate: sour cream, cottage cheese, and hummus. Added two boiled eggs. I tossed a big whole-wheat pita on it and made myself an iced tea. This is pretty much what I used to eat for breakfast and dinner on the kibbutz, except that they served white toast. I think it’s better than oatmeal, which is carb soup. And it’s better than the five eggs I used to eat, because it’s lower in cholesterol, for which my gall bladder will hopefully thank me. You don’t really need a fork. That’s what the pita is for.

I find that if I eat too much pita with the meal, I feel bad afterward. Damn carbs.

I’m thinking I should slice up carrots, cucumbers, and peppers every Sunday night and cram them in spoilage-resistant containers for the rest of the week. That will give me a good head start and make breakfast easier. They have new chemical-impregnated containers you can buy, which are supposed to keep vegetables fresher.

I don’t use low-fat dairy stuff. It’s disgusting.

It may sound crazy, me eating vegetables. A lot of people don’t know how much Southerners love vegetables, whether cooked or fresh. My mother used to make forty-mile round trips to Homestead, Florida, just to get tomatoes and onions and corn. I remember watching a prosecuting attorney up in Kentucky, telling my grandfather about his home-canned collard greens. You would have thought he was talking about canned diamonds. Southerners get as excited about good vegetables as Yankees do about great desserts. Very strange.

You know what I miss? Falafel. The falafel they make in Afula, Israel is worth handing the country over to the Arabs for. Nearly. But it’s a huge pain to make. I think I made it too hard by using way too much oil. I’ll bet I could come up with a recipe that would stomp restaurant falafel, but I’d still be unable to duplicate the giant assortment of condiments falafel joints in Israel use. Oh, man. Falafel with ground-up habaneros in it? Are you kidding me? That would rock.

In other news, I got my Caldwell HAMMR machine rest put together. Sort of. This is like a Ransom rest, only cheaper. It must be fairly good; some magazine writers admit they use it. It turns out you have to attach a piece of wood to the bottom of it, and then you clamp the wood to your shooting bench. Oh, no. Oh, woe is me. Work. The thing I dread. Oh, well. I get a chance to fire up the table saw. I have an old piece of plywood (sign from my realtor days) that I plan to use. What’s the best way to seal up the edges of a piece of 3/4″ plywood so splinters don’t shed?

I don’t know yet whether Trail Glades will let me use this thing. I plan to set it up and start shooting, and they can raise hell if they want.

In addition to gluttony, I am trying to get a grip on laziness these days. I feel like it’s sneaking up on me. I should be somewhat more active than I am. There are things I’ve been putting off. I used to have this idea that refraining from sinning all that much was all I had to do to be a good Christian, but now I realize you have to be conscious of all of your weaknesses, and you have to try to overcome them

I read from the book of Luke last night, in The Complete Jewish Bible. The editor says the Acts of the Apostles follows from Luke as though it were a second volume. I didn’t know that.

One of the interesting ideas in the commentary is that we are too hard on the Pharisees. The editor, David Stern, believes that scriptural criticisms leveled at the Pharisees are aimed at specific groups and individuals, not the Pharisees as a whole. And that makes sense, because the Bible says some of them supported Jesus. One of them gave Jesus his own tomb. And supposedly, they were reformers, and Jesus may have been associated with them. I think things like this concern Stern, because Jewish behavior in the New Testament has been used as an excuse for anti-Semitism and the ridiculous “replacement theology.”

I don’t really worry about it, because I don’t think I was put here to punish people who offend God.

Hope I remember how to use that saw.

No Pork Involved

Anyone got a good recipe for hummus?

I have been trying to eat healthier stuff in the middle of the day. My dream is to return to the kibbutz plan. Breakfast and dinner light but similar. Midday meal bigger, with meat.

Here is a horrible admission. I don’t really endorse total gluttony. When you want really good food, you should use good, unhealthy ingredients. But you can’t eat that crap all the time or in unlimited amounts. Sadly. And gluttony is a sin. Or close to it. And just about every health problem I have is fat-related.

So I would like to reform the one daily meal which gives me real problems. Breakfast and dinner I can control. Lunch gets crazy, because I forget to eat, and then my blood sugar drops, and then I find myself chugging from the honey jar and following up with a bowl of Sour Patch Kids.

When I was a kibbutz volunteer, we started the day with a big dish of nothing, at 5 a.m. Then at 8, we had breakfast. In fact, that was the end of my workday. Pick a cubic yard of grapefruit per day, and you’re free, regardless of the hour. At breakfast time on the kibbutz, they had big carts loaded with fresh vegetables and dairy stuff, as well as hummus, eggs, and porridge. Which is thick Cream of Wheat. I think.

It was a good deal. I would eat a couple of steamed eggs (seriously), with cottage cheese, sour cream, toast, and vegetables. At night, we got the same thing, so we didn’t go to bed stuffed. And fiber was not a problem. Especially since I ate a grapefruit every day on the job.

Those steamed eggs were the weak link in the chain. I have no idea where they got the idea of steaming eggs, but the machine that did it turned out some very strange items. Sometimes you’d peel an egg and find a burned place inside it. And the yolks were green. Perhaps out of respect for the prophet Samuel I Am.

Lunch was usually a bit lame, but healthy.

The other day I bought hummus and pita and vegetables. And as you probably can guess, a tiny container of hummus cost around forty thousand dollars. Okay, maybe a little less. But it was a lot. Today I made my own, and I got a pint for maybe a buck.

I was worried that the online recipes I had found were no good, so I used my own judgment. Two cans of garbanzo beans, juice of two lemons, four cloves garlic, teaspoon cumin, quarter-teaspoon salt, two tablespoons olive oil, and roughly a quarter of a cup of Crystal hot sauce. Which was not nearly enough. I didn’t put tahini in it, because I wasn’t sure tahini was standard.

Figured out a couple of things. First of all, lemon juice is stupid. I seem to recall this from making my own tahini in the past. It’s just not acidic enough. Next time, vinegar. Second, don’t add any liquid until you have all the ingredients in there, because it’s real easy to make it too wet.

It was okay, but I think tahini is needed. I can’t believe how much hot sauce it soaked up. Next time, I think I’ll blend a couple of fresh cayennes into it. I think that with a little effort, I should be able to blow away the store stuff for maybe an eighth of the cost.

Too Much Tofu?

Before you run off and enjoy your weekend, let me inform you: Val Prieto has gout. So say a prayer for him.

It’s a total mystery, how this could happen to a guy who cooks entire pigs.

I say it’s time to sue Anheuser-Busch.