GNOIF: GNOIF Is Working For A Living

-A.J.

GNOIF #28 recap — GNOIF: GNOIF Is Working For A Living (Industry/ Worker Placement themes)

Games That Got Played: Biotix, Circus Flohcati, Terraforming Mars.

Games That Didn’t Get Played: We really only offered the three games. Everyone was looking forward to Terraforming Mars, so that’s what we played.

The small crowd had fun late late late into the night. I think I wound up making finger sandwiches for the group sometime around 11pm.

In Terraforming Mars you play as a corporation that is working to make the conditions on Mars habitable for humans. Players receive cards each turn that represent actions, events, or building projects. You can do almost anything from bombarding Mars with asteroids, to building domed or underground cities, to encouraging forests or microbes or predators or pets. It seems even on Mars, people like their pets.

I like it for a lot of reasons — It scales well to different numbers of players. There are interesting decisions to make but not so many that the game bogs down. The artwork is good. The cards carry through on the theme extremely well. It’s a very highly regarded game on BoardGameGeek, and it’s easy to see why.

Thanks to everyone who played!

Container Garden Update — September 4, 2017

-A.J.

Despite the dry summer, the tomatoes, as a group, are late:

A closeup, looking down on the Romas:

The Wednesday harvest. Mostly Oregon Spring. On the top right are Black Krim, bottom right are Cherokee Purple:

Many of the Carmens will likely get harvested this week:

For the Minnesota Midget melons it’s a race between ripening and the “funk” taking over:

The Trombonico didn’t do well this year. I get the feeling that bugs were attacking the fruits just for the moisture. It was that dry here. This week we chopped out all but the greenest growth with the hopes of getting fruit in the next few weeks:

And today we transplanted most of the winter veg (Arugula, Dill, Spinach, Mache, Chard, Winter Cress, Winter Density Romaine, Joi Choy, and Cilantro):

Some of the Romaine, Arugula, Joy Choi, and Bright Lights Chard went into the recently vacated Tomatillo EarthBox. The Tomatillos are now roasted, buzzed up, and frozen for Roasted Tomatillo Salsa.

Most of the rest went into the salad table:

Everything is still a little floppy after the transplant. I’m guessing it all perks up by the end of the day today.

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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.

Container Garden Update — August 20, 2017

-A.J.

Fall is approaching. There are lots of tomatoes but they’d better hurry up!

The Romas. To be fair, we harvested the 8 ripest fruits last night, so these are all leaning green:

This is going to be the biggest Black Krim we’ve ever seen:

This is our first year with the Old German variety. This one is close to ready, it’s supposed to get some amount of red to go with all that orange:

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — August 20, 2017” →

Container Garden Update — August 13, 2017

-A.J.

It finally rained last night after fifty-five days of no rain. Today was cool and drizzly, but it was a good day to get out and do some heavy pruning on the tomato plants. The harvest, including ripe Oregon Spring, Roma, and Black Krim tomatoes, tomatillos, and cucumbers. The green tomatoes for our pet store guy:

An overview before the pruning:

After pruning:

Tomato alley:

We harvested about 1/3 of the basil a couple of days ago. The plan is to harvest about half of what’s left tomorrow. In previous years we’ve waited too long and the basil got sort of bitter. We’re not going to make that mistake this year:

The Carmen Peppers are having a good year. We didn’t cage them and now they’re all threatening to flop over. We had to insert tomato stakes and run twine around everything to prevent disaster:

Tomatillos:

The seedlings got too much water and not enough sunlight. Some did ok, but we’re having to start over in many of the pots. Even without the shade cloth some of them are looking pretty leggy, so shortly after this picture was taken I moved them to a sunnier spot:

The Minnesota Midget melon plant has… melons! They’re bigger than baseballs, but smaller than softballs. Hopefully they’ll ripen before the frost gets to them:

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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.

Container Garden Update — July 30, 2017

-A.J.

It’s supposed to get hot this week. So far the harvests have been small and steady. The garden will likely go crazy starting in a few days.

The Tromboncino:

The tomatillos. It’s (past) time to run twine to support the lanky branches, they’re in danger of breaking off. Note the seedlings in the foreground:

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — July 30, 2017” →

Container Garden Update — July 16, 2017

-A.J.

It’s the middle of July, and we’re about to turn the corner from “growth” to “production”. The raspberries are in full swing:

There’s a lot more where that came from. Nice output from a pot on the patio:

The other fun find today were what I think are filet beans — the pods were all hiding under leaves:

We’re going to have a caprese salad tonight using some of this basil:

The Tromboncino zucchini are doing well. There are a few fruits, this one is about 1′ long:

The 8′ zucchini trellis:

Hiding on the north side of the zucchini plant are some spinach, basil, and romaine seedlings. A critter got into them last night, so now they have bird netting over the top:

The Minnesota Midget melons are coming along after the slow start:

The cucumbers. There’s one on the bottom right that should be ready in a few days:

We’re going to get a *lot* of tomatillos this year:

The Lilac peppers:

The Carmens:

The Oregon Spring. Doing their usual crazy early thing:

An overview from the “hill”. It rained a little bit this morning:

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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.

Boule On The 4th Of July

-A.J.

I’m getting more comfortable with the bannetons. I think they’re getting more “seasoned” too.

A boule “born” on the 4th of July:

The Recipe – 600 grams bread flour, 390 grams refrigerator water (baker’s percentage 65%), 13 grams salt (2.25%), 6 grams diastatic malt powder, 3/8 tsp instant yeast.

Combine ingredients and mix on low speed 8 minutes.
Cover and let rest 18 hours at room temperature. (65F – 70F)
Lightly spray oil the work surface. Remove the dough from the workbowl and stretch and fold the dough four times, once from each from top, bottom, left, and right. Gather the dough into a ball and place in a well-floured banneton, seam side up.
Cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap and let rest one hour. Place a baking stone in the middle of an oven, put a sheet tray on the bottom shelf. Preheat oven to 460F.
When the dough is ready, toss 7-8 ice cubes into the sheet tray. Turn the dough out onto the baking stone and slash the dough as you see fit.
Bake ~35 minutes or until the internal temperature is 200F.

This bread was a little bit of departure for me in a few ways:

It’s 600 grams rather than 400 grams. 400 grams has been my comfort zone.
This dough had a higher hydration (65%) than I’ve been able to “smoothly pull off” in the past when using a banneton. There has almost always been some sticking during release from the banneton. Not this time. I made a point to “aggressively and confidently” turn the dough out onto the baking stone. No sticking! That’s good thing!
The larger dough mass combined with the diastatic malt (and not using a dutch oven) created a relatively dark, thick, attractive crust.

The slashing was less than perfect: I need to swap out the razor blades for something newer and sharper a little more often.

Container Garden Update — June 25, 2017

-A.J.

We’ve had our first couple of really warm days, and the fans are now out of the garage. The warm-weather veggies are digging it. I love gardening this time of year because everything is young and vibrant, and the garden is growing and doing it’s own thing with a minimum of work input.

We’re going to get lots of raspberries this year. Speaking of work- I need to do a better job with the bird netting:

The beans. The edamame have been much more energetic than the filet beans, and much more bug-resistant too:

The cucumbers are just starting to climb the trellis:

One of the four melon plants made it. We filled the space in the box with a Siletz tomato. In theory they should coexist well:

The Oregon Spring are drinking by far the most water of anything in the garden. I’m not sure if that’s a function of the box, their location, or just how much respiring is happening with all that plant mass. It may about time to thin the interior of the jungle:

The rest of the tomatoes (L-R) Roma, Old German, Black Krim. There’s a Purple Cherokee hiding behind the Old German:

The tomatillos are up to the top of the 6′ trellis:

The Tromboncino:

A closeup of the bottom of the Tromboncino. We’ll be eating zucchini soon:

An overview:

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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.

Container Garden Update — June 11, 2017

-A.J.

A few pictures of the June garden-

Overview #1, from up the “hill”:

Overview #2:

The left column has three boxes of tomatoes, with the Tromboncino zucchini in the big trellis at the back. Continuing to the right in the front row- the next box over has the Oregon Spring tomatoes. The rest of the front row (L-R) is three pepper boxes and then a box of basil. The rear trellis contains the tomatillos, the center trellis has cucumbers, and the rightmost trellis has the surviving melon plant and a new Siletz tomato plant.

The tomatillos are chest-high:

The Oregon Spring are doing their usual early thing. There are lots of blooms and a few fruit:

The Tromboncino will need to be trained to the trellis soon:

Moving to the front yard — we got another good batch of (very big and fat) peas:

There are still more on the vines, though the vines are beginning to look a little “cooked”:

The lettuces in the top of the salad table are doing well:

The front yard now has four little volunteer pansies:

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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.

Container Garden Update — May 29, 2017

-A.J.

It’s almost June and the garden is rolling again. The Super Sugar Snap peas we planted indoors in February are now producing:

Attaching the trellis netting to the salad table seems to have worked very well:

The view from the other side:

The Miner’s Lettuce is looking a little cooked, but the Arugula and Dill are happy in the back of the middle level:

Shortly after those photos were taken I draped some shade cloth over the salad table to try to discourage bolting. The lettuces on the top level are especially vulnerable on sunny days. (As an added bonus, the pea vines shade everything as well.)

One nice use for the Dill — Goat Cheese Coated With Minced Dill, Fire Roasted Tomato Flakes, and Sea Salt:

Moving to the backyard — we’re going to get a lot of rasperberries this year:

The beans we started in indoors in March(?) are coming along too. The Midori Giant Edamame seem to be more bug-resistant than the Maxibel Filet beans. The Edamame have the rounder leaves:

An overview of the non-pepper plants. The Minnesota Midget Melons (foreground, right) are limping along. We’ll get at least one survivor, but they all shocked due to either transplanting or the few nights we had in the low 40’s:

All of the squash/cucumbers/melons shocked to some degree this year, the melons just got the worst of it.

On the brighter side, the Oregon Springs are already bearing fruit:

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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.