CAT | Projects
Grant and Norah like the movie Ratatouille and mentioned that they’d like to try it sometime. So, I spent several hours one evening making the recipe from the movie, Confit Byaldi, by Thomas Keller of The French Laundry.
It’s a very procedural recipe, requiring a decent investment of time to roast peppers, create endless thin slices of produce and collate said produce. The end product looked great and tasted pretty good. The kids tried a bite and decided that it was more fun to see it on the TV than to taste it in person.
Oh well, I had fun making the dish.
Peppers for the piperade.
First, the piperade went down. Then the endless slices of veggies.
The finished dish.
Before I left for my CISSP prep class earlier this month, I saw cheap heavy cream at the grocery store. Cheap, as in 50 cents a quart cheap. I had always wanted to make butter at home one day, so I figured that the cheap cream was a sign and we bought a few cartons.
We used the KitchenAid to make our butter. Here’s what we did:
Here is what we started with: 3 quarts of heavy cream and a mixer.
Using the whisk attachment on the mixer, we whipped the cream to a stiff peaks state and then kept an eye on the bowl as the mixture started to “break” into small butter globules and buttermilk.
After pouring off the buttermilk, this is what was left. At this point, the is still quite a bit of liquid in the butter. If left alone, that liquid will so sour and ruin the butter. The easiest way to remove the liquid in question is to fill the bowl with cold water and knead the butter until the water runs clear. I had to replace the water in the bowl several times before this happened.
At this point, my hands were getting tired from all the kneading.
Since we wanted to use this butter for eating/cooking, we added the appropriate amount of salt (1/4 teaspoon table salt for every 4 ounces of butter) and portioned it into 8 ounce “sticks”.
We wrapped our freshly made butter in wax paper and stashed it in the deep freeze.
We also froze the buttermilk (after straining any errant butter globules out) and have used it to make some killer pancakes in the weeks since.
For our $1.50 purchase of cream, we got 8 sticks (2 lbs) of butter and a quart of buttermilk. Score!
I highly recommend doing this at least once! The resulting butter is great and tastes marvelous on homemade bread or anything else you use butter for.
At long last, the playset/swingset I designed and have been working on building for the kids is complete.*
I am quite pleased with how it turned out. Everything went smoothly during the building phase and it looks just like my initial design on paper.
Here’s a quick tour of the playset: The “fort” portion of the playset includes 3 separate levels for play. The lowest level is 4 feet high with access provided via steps on the side of the playset. There is a smaller slide attached to the 4’ level. The next level is a larger platform at 5 feet high. This is the largest platform and currently has the larger “scoop” slide attached. Eventually, I’ll add a climbing wall to the side opposite the slide, but I’m taking a break for a few weeks at least! The highest level on the playset is 7 feet high and will eventually provide access to a fireman’s pole (again, a later project).
The swing portion of the playset is primarily made up of the dual swing beams (4x6x12). After some sage advice from by dad, I used my router to notch out each beam and post so that the load will be supported by the structural timbers instead of relying on the connectors. That was a great idea and while it took longer to prepare each piece of lumber, the results are worth it. The entire structure is very stable and should last for eons! Using 2 swing beams will allow for a greater variety of options for playing now and in the future. Right now, I’ve added a glider and 2 standard swings. There is room for a baby swing when Audrey gets a little bigger.
While I provided the labor and skills to build the playset, I couldn’t have done it without Kate doing yeoman’s work wrangling the kids and giving me the time to devote to this project. We both looked at this as investing in the kids and that made it easier.
The kids and I have had fun watching the pile of wood we started with transform into the playset they can climb and play on.
There are a few playset related projects for next year like a climbing net and crows nest above the swing beams. Those will wait until the kids (and I) are ready to tackle them 
If anyone is contemplating a project like this, let me know. I’ll be glad to answer any questions you might have. You can contact me at garypetro AT gmail.com
*There are still a few small things to be done (telescope, heavy duty swing hangers), but it is usable now.
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I’ve been working on getting the playset project finished. At the point these pictures were taken, the fort portion of the playset was about half finished. The kids came out to watch and “help”. For reference, the lowest platform is 4 feet high, the main platform is at 5 feet and the highest platform sits at 7 feet tall.
I’ll be posting more updates on this project as I’ve made additional progress since these pictures were taken.
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