Kerry’s Garden

Popcorn is notoriously hard to grind. Many grinders specifically forbid the use of popcorn in their units. Not having a grain mill yet I had never really tried grinding popcorn for fresh cornbread but was looking forward to it when I do finally break down and pick up the grinder I’ve had my eye on.

This past week I had stopped by the local Goodwill looking for goodies when I ran across a coffee grinder for a few dollars. I think I paid about 8 or 10 for it after the discount for that day. It is a Capresso Infinity Burr Grinder. It is the stainless model which sells for about $120 or so. It had never been taken out of the package that I could tell. Not bad for less than $10. It grinds from course to very fine (for Turkish coffee) and, since it had never been used it didn’t come with a coffee bean smell that I had half expected. I thought, why not try it on popcorn. What is the worst that can happen? I lose a few dollars.

First I ran some white wheat through as a test. I thought if it couldn’t handle the wheat, there was no way it could handle the popcorn. The wheat was ground into a consistency slightly finer than cream of wheat but coarser than flour. I ended up running the popcorn through twice. It did get hung up a couple of times but it was easy to take apart and clean. I looked for a recipe online and found a good sweet cornbread recipe on the All Recipes site. I used the flour and cornmeal I had just ground. It ended up taking a little more milk than the recipe called for. I let the corn soak up the milk for about 10 minutes before mixing in everything else. I baked it in a cast iron skillet in the oven. VERY good flavor but a little crumbly. I will probably add another egg next time. All in all I am very pleased with my grinder. I can see fresh cream of wheat and cornbread in my future.

I am notorious for planning more than I can possibly finish in a given amount of time. Since starting Grad School my spare time is almost non-existent and work on the oven has come to a halt. This long weekend would get me back on track I was sure.

The plan was to spend Sunday and Monday working on the oven. I had a wedding to go to on Saturday so that day was busy with other things. I ended up with company on Sunday which was not planned but was good. I hadn’t seen H. in a long time and it was nice to visit. I figured I could still get done what I had planned to today. I had already purchased the two angle irons and mortar that I needed and was up this morning bright and early when I realized it was raining. No problem. The radar showed that the storm should quickly pass. A couple of hours later than I had anticipated, I was out and ready to go. I got the half bag of mortar mixed and about half a dozen bricks in place when the rain resumed. I waited around about 20 minutes before I decided to call it a day. Oh well, perhaps next weekend.

Update: 5:00 pm

The rain passed and the sun came out. I decided to go back out and give it another try. I was able to get the other half of the mortar mixed and another row of brick set. The angle irons went in on this row along with the bricks to span the existing u shaped foundation.

A couple of days ago I was watering the potted items on the back patio. I noticed a young mantid on the thyme trying to escape the shower. I decided to move her to a safer place with some critters for her lunch. I walked around the garden and honestly could not find anything with any kind of great numbers of pests. After I set her down on a nearby plant, I realized at that moment how lucky I was.

This is what 8 lbs of raspberries looks like right after picking. To be fair, I hadn’t picked one bed in over a week and the other hadn’t been picked since last Wed. Had I looked I could have picked more but I was hard pressed to get these in the freezer. And to think I started with 6 plants in each bed…

The oven is proceeding though much slower than I had hoped. This brick laying thing is work! The chemical burns have healed and the rubber gloves are working nicely. Last weekend T. helped me wash brick. They did need a cleaning as some of the used freebie brick I picked up had been a patio and had a nice layer of mud all over them. A quick rinse with a scrub brush and they were good to go.

Never having touched mortar I am pleased with my progress so far. I will never build a house of brick or win any awards but what I have so far is fairly straight and level. I have learned a lot as I have progressed. I found that laying out the brick dry in the order I want them then moving them off the wall in the same order helps to insure that I get the staggering joints I am aiming for, have the bricks I need and get things done quickly. I did mess up in a couple of places early on and had a running joint for 2 or 3 bricks in one area. By the time I noticed it I was not tearing out the two layers to get to the offending brick. For what I need I am pretty sure it will hold up fine. I also found that it is better to mix up half a bag of mortar at a time. That way, it by the time I get to the end of the mixed mortar it isn’t too dry. If I was able to work quicker it wouldn’t be as much of a problem but not really knowing what I am doing tends to drag things out a bit measureing, checking and leveling. I also like the little break I can take between batches.

When I finish the layer that I am on it will be time to put the angle iron in place (once I come up with some) and enclose the square foundation with a layer of brick. The dual brick outer walls on either side will end up holding the angle iron for the brick wall above that point and the wooden floor. Yes wood. I’ve done some reading and it seems that as long as I use enough insulation between the bottom of the oven and the wood floor I should be fine. The plan is to lay 4 4×4 pieces across the two inner walls and top with cut 2×4 boards. A 6 inch layer of insulation will go on top of this, followed by the dense oven floor made out of the same clay/sand mix that my oven bricks have been made of.

Tomorrow I am going to hunt up some angle iron if the weather is as nice as they say it should be. I would also like to get a batch of tomatoes canned in the morning.

First thing this morning I was at Home Depot purchasing 4 bags of mortar. I know I will need more but the plan was not to keep any around to get wet and ruin. That was the plan, use the four bags this weekend. Yeah…

Fast forward a couple of hours. The first bag of mortar is mixed, a pile of bricks have been cleaned of the mud and traces of old mortar and I am ready to start. Thinks go pretty smoothly the first hour or so. I didn’t have as many bricks washed as I had needed so I did have to stop and get some more cleaned off. I had read where some people soak their bricks some to help the mortar cure more slowly so that is what I was doing. I was working on the second layer when I noticed that my fingers were starting to sting a little. I know better than to get my hands in the mortar as it is caustic. I thought I had been doing a good job of staying out of it but perhaps I was wrong. I took a short break, rinsed my hands and got back to business. I was very proud of the couple of bricks that I broke in half. It was much easier than I had thought it would be. Things were moving right along.

About this time I notice the clouds forming. No problem I thought. I had checked the weather and there was no call for rain all weekend. Starting to get the hang of things I was rolling now. The next thing I knew the sky opened and I half expected to see Noah and company any moment. I covered the brickwork with a sheet of plastic I had and then remembered the three bags of mortar still in the back of the truck. I raced to get them off the truck and covered and in the process fell off the back of the truck and rolled down the small incline by the driveway. I laughed all the way down such a sight I must have been. Only my pride was hurt and I was finally able to get the bags of mortar off the truck and covered, the lamp and shades in the truck that were to go to T’s office later and the windows rolled up just as the rain started to let up.

By the time I got back to work my fingers were really starting to hurt. I looked at them and they were looking pretty raw. Damn. I finished the rest of the first bag of mortar which got two full courses of brick down, cleaned everything up and came inside to clean up. Hopefully the pain and oozing will go away enough by tomorrow to allow me to start again, this time with some rubber gloves.

The thought crossed my mind today if I have taken on more than I can handle…Nahhh but I do have a much bigger appreciation for masons at this point in time.

Last night saw the creation of the cement pad for the mud oven. I got quite a workout mixing 800 lbs of cement in the wheel barrow. After taking this photo I covered it with plastic to slow down the drying a bit. I will give it a week or so before I start laying the brick.

I also made another trip to get more clay. There are another 58 bricks drying in the sun. The others have dried very nicely and so far not one has cracked. I hope that is also the case once the oven is built and fired up.