Troll Echos

Over the years I have revised my own home made vegetarian chili into an inexpensive and very delicious adventure in meatless dining.  In the beginning, I used dried beans as a base but rapidly realized that they simply aren’t worth the trouble, even if they are a little cheaper.  I also used my own blend of spices and seasonings and realized that too was a waste of time and in fact tends to increase the cost of the chili.  Here is the current incarnation of the chili.  The best it’s ever been in my opinion.  Enjoy.

Recipe:

• 9 cans of beans.  (Any kinds you like.)
• 2 cans of potatoes.  (I like sliced, but any will do.)
• 2 cans of diced tomatoes.  (Unseasoned.)
• 2 packets of chili seasoning.  (One mild and one hot.)

Preparation:

1. Place a large pot on a large burner using an aluminum heat spreader disc in between the two.  The heat spreader disc is crucial for avoiding burning any chili to the bottom of the pot and the lack of burnt chili means nothing odd in the flavor when you are done.
2. Dump all 13 cans of beans, potatoes, and tomatoes and both packets of seasoning into the pot unceremoniously.  For best results, you should drain the potatoes but nothing else.  This gives the chili its moisture so no water needs to be added.  In my pot once everything is in, the pot is full to within around one quarter of an inch from the top.
3. Turn the heat up to roughly half way between low and medium on your dial, stir the contents very carefully, put the lid on the pot, and wander away.  This level of heat with the heat spreader disc in place will eventually make the chili bubble gently but never really boil.
4. Stir every now and then.  I tend to stir about once every 30 to 45 minutes when I make it.  During your stirring be sure to rub the spoon on the bottom of the pot to ensure nothing is burning to the bottom, if you find that it is, turn it down.  If you used a heat spreader, you should be ok.  Please stir very slowly, the pot is very full and you don’t want to lose any chili to the burner in haste.
5. After about three hours, remove the lid, and stir it again.  Do not put the lid back on the pot, it’s time to reduce the liquid.  Good chili takes time and we aren’t done yet, so go find something else to do.
6. Continue to stir occasionally as before.  You may find “chili skin” on the top each time you come back during this phase.  This is entirely normal.  Press it down into the pot and stir gently to break it up.
7. After roughly two more hours (bringing us to five hours total) your chili should be roughly two inches farther down the pot than when you started.  Stir it once more and remove it from the heat.  Put the lid back on and leave it alone for at least 30 minutes.  This will allow the chili to thicken.  If you intend to freeze or refrigerate it I recommend you leave it covered in this way overnight to cool and put it in the refrigerator in the morning.

Nutritional Information:

• Serving Size:  1 cup
• Approximate Servings:  17
• Weight Watchers:  4 points per serving
• Aproximate Cost:  $12.00 per pot.

Serving Suggestions:

• Eat it “as is.”  It’s delicious on its own!
• Add one link of turkey sausage per serving.  (4 extra WW Points.)
• Add browned ground beef or turkey to make it non-vegetarian.
• Add pasta or pour over a bed of rice for a bit of variety.
• Add a box worth of prepared Mac and Cheese to two or more servings.

Last autumn I went to my house and prepared it as well as I possibly could for the cold winter ahead since the house was going to be sitting empty for the season waiting to be put on the market the following spring.    The pipes were drained, the furnace lines too, anti-freeze was added to toilets, sinks, tubs, and anything else that had any known residual water in it or was otherwise in posession of a U-bend.  It took quite a while to get all the ducks in the row for the winter, and when I was done, I figured I would be in pretty good shape.

Over the course of the winter I returned to the house at random intervals to verify that it was still standing, do a quick check inside, sometimes to do some chores, and to grab the latest mailbox-full of junk mail.  Each time I went, everything honestly seemed fine.  No floods, no fires, no problems.    You know what they say about best laid plans though.

After the cold passed, I returned to the house to start turning things back on after the winter and to do some final preparations for sale.  I turned on the water, opened the valve, and all seemed ok.  For about six seconds.  Then the ceiling of my basement in a section thankfully not immediately over my head sprung into an odd flow of water a bit like an ill conceived cross breed between a fire sprinkler and a waterfall.  I immediately cranked the valve closed again and the amount of water coming out of my house into my basement slowed quickly to a stop again.

A couple more ons and offs later, I had a reaonable idea of where the water could be coming from and all the evidence I needed that I had a split copper pipe somewhere up in the walls of my house.  I uttered, “this is not how this was supposed to go” sadly to my wife and got on the phone for a plumber and an insurance claim.

The next day the plumber arrived, confirmed my theory on where the leak was coming from, and repaired it.  A pipe had simply popped out of a 45 degree angle connector.  Once that was patched up, I turned the water back on, and the waterfall began anew.  More trouble shooting for what was obviously a second  broken pipe in the same vertical section of house, based on the fact that the first fix was no longer leaking but the water was coming from the same place in the basement, revealed the need to poke through more walls on the main floor of the house.  

Sure enough a second vastly more obnoxious problem was discovered, this time a split pipe in a nearly impossible spot to get to without swearing about it a lot.  To back up that theory, the plumber did a fair amount of complaining as the spot with the problem proved to be nightmarish.  Once that problem was fixed we turned the water back on and allowed ourselves a moment of hope as no waterfall resumed immediately.  False hope is the worst kind indeed.

A slow leak all over the kitchen floor inspired the water to be shut down quickly again and more research into the next problem.  The water this time appeared to be issuing from behind the refridgerator, which pointed at the ice maker water line initially.  That is until the water appeared to be leaking from somewhere within the refridgerator itself instead of the cheap copper line.  The specifics of this problem remain unknown but obviously something that carries water inside the fridge wasn’t meant to freeze.  A funny thought considering the primary purpose of the water in the fridge is to actually make ice.  With the tap for the fridge in the basement turned off, the water was once again returned to service.

And shut down again.  This time the water was coming out of the dishwasher.  The front panel was removed to show a pretty obvious leak out of the flow control solenoid.  So we shut that down as a lost cause too and turned the water back on again.  This time no obvious water problems, but it was time to move onto the hot water systems.  The valve on the furnace was turned on, and within very short order revealed that we weren’t done.  Now water was issuing from under the kitchen sink.

Don’t ask me why, because I honestly can’t come up with a good reason, but there was an extra hot water pipe under my kitchen sink.  I would be forced to guess that it was destined for the dishwasher, but an alternate tap off of the sink’s hot water tap had been created instead.  The result was about 15 inches of pipe under the sink ending in a welded on pipe cap.  On its own that wouldn’t result in any trouble, and in fact it didn’t for six years in the house, but today all bets are obviously off.  The cap itself split open.  The effect was a glorious sprinkler like one that only revealed itself when there was pressure in the hot water system.

Finally, things seemed to be patched up, almost $800 later and the plumber was on his way.  Drywall needs to be replaced to fill in the holes and repainted to make it look nice again.  This is far from done, and to avoid unknown problems the water was shut down again before I left.  Better to turn it on again and find a problem later than leave it on and come back to find your house is a lake.

After months of hard labor at my job I was hitting a breaking point.  I was tired, overworked, and simply needed a change of scenery.  My wife came to the rescue with a weekend away at the Ceasar’s Poconos resorts in the Poconos mountains in Pennsylvania.  We arrived Saturday morning and left Sunday at around noon but it did the trick for relieving stress and changing scenery.  We were surprised by how short of a drive it actually was.  Including a stop for coffee at a Dunkin Donuts on the way, we arrived a mere two hours and five minutes after we left home.

Once on the property of the Cove Haven branch of the resort, the first thing you’ll notice is that the resort itself is quite dated looking.  It makes you feel a bit like you stepped back in time to an era complete with disco balls and leisure suits.  If you ignore the cheese factor of your surroundings, or in fact if you enjoy them for nostalgic or comedic reasons, the place is quite nice.  We stayed in the Adam and Eve “Apple” Suites section of the Cove Haven resort.  The building itself is a one story tall space ship looking building without a single window, but inside we found a nice layout and plenty of lights to cancel any gloom that may be created by the lack of windows and the explanation of how a “two floor” room can possibly exist in a one story tall building.

The brochure would have you believe that your room is “two floors” and that will undoubtedly inspire ideas of, well, there being two floors worth of space in your room.  That really is a bit misleading however, as you likely figured out when you saw that it was a one story building.  In reality your door puts you on the “first floor”, shortly after walking in you should immediately turn on the lights lest you fall down the three steps that separates this floor from the “second floor.”  In a stretch of logic you could in fact pretend that those three steps have placed you on an all new floor, and through that you could even likely get away with calling the pool room a “third floor” thanks to the two additional steps you must go down to get to it.  Overall, the room in all its parts, and floors, is quite spacious.

The first floor includes what I would call your second TV, a heart shaped hot tub, a sofa complete with end tables, lamps, and a coffee table.  The second floor has the fireplace, your big TV, your bed, a walk-in closet, and access to the bathroom and pool room.  The third floor separated thankfully by a glass door and windows contains your personal pool and sauna.  During our stay many interesting adventures occurred and some are worth metioning to help keep other people from screwing things up like I did. 

Each room comes with a fireplace and a requirement that you can only burn Duraflame type logs in it.  Buy your Duraflame log at a grocery store or Walmart or something before you go.  We brought our own log, but only because we were warned by friends to do so.  They will happily sell you a log if you failed to bring your own for around three times the cost you would expect to pay anywhere else.  The important things to note about burning your Duraflame logs is that the fireplace has no flue to open or close, so don’t bother spending much time trying to find it to make sure it’s open.  There is a metal log holder thing in there to put your log on, but before you do so, center it in the fireplace and push it all the way to the back wall.  When you put your log on it, put that all the way against the back wall as well.  I didn’t figure this out until our room started smelling smokey thanks to the smoke preferring to waft around instead of simply rising into the chimney.  I was forced to use the ash tray that held the free matches to push the log toward the back long after it was burning at a normal pace.  An exciting and warm experience to say the least, and the only thing I could find that wouldn’t burn that I could use to push the log with.

The heart shaped tub was a cute concept but it rapidly turned into a scene out of some weird horror movie thanks to the bubbles we had put into it while it was filling.  A pattern taken from drawing a bubble bath at home in a normal tub.  We picked up our bottle of bubbles from the porn store section at the back of the gift shop, and I highly recommend bringing your own bubble bath stuff thanks to the price mark up.  What I failed to fully realize was that a hot tub, complete with interesting water jets, takes tiny amounts of bubble bath soap and turns in into mountains of bubbles.  The only advice I can offer is that you fill the tub first, turn on the jets, and only then, add bubble bath stuff slowly, a few drips at a time and see how it goes before adding more.  I didn’t use that much stuff and we were forced to drain the tub and start again without adding more bubbles.  In the end, we gave up on being able to watch TV, sip wine, and enjoy the hot tub thanks to this mess.

The pool room is small, but kinda nice.  The sauna was really a closet sized cedar walled room with the sauna heater in it.  Both rooms were well suited to two people.  I know this is probably pretty obvious considering its a couples resort, but I would recommend against booking a room for more than two people.  The pool was warm and the right depth and was my personal favorite feature of the room even if it was a bit small.  For some reason, late at night, they seemed to turn down the temperature of the pool and the pool room.  This made it less enjoyable for my wife and I but not to the point where we didn’t want to use it.

When dinner time came around, we returned to the place where we had eaten our included breakfast.  Unlike breakfast where getting a table to sit at alone was quite easy to do, there was a very long wait for a table to eat dinner at alone.  We skipped the long wait and accepted that we would be sitting with a bunch of strangers for dinner.  By the end of the night we were pretty good friends with our dinner companions and conversation flowed easily.  My advice is to seek out a table to sit alone for breakfast since your brain isn’t likely to be working on all cylinders early in the morning before lots of coffee, but to happily accept the company in the evening for dinner.

The activities provided were quite extensive and frankly quite fun, but I don’t think I would be able to find much to do without lots of repeating things if we had stayed more than a couple of days.  It was a nice change of pace to ice skate, rollerskate and shoot arrows in the archery range.  The standard sporty fare of mini-golf, boccie ball, tennis, ping pong and things like that were all free, but expect to be shelling out quarters or tokens for arcade games and air hockey tables.  

If the local activities have worn thin and you find yourself looking for things to do, there are a collection of somewhat famous outlet stores less than an hour away, or less if you are staying at a resort that is not the Cove Haven resort.  Be prepared to follow your wife around while she shops happily though.  If you are the nature type, also less than an hour away, but inconveniently not in the same direction as the outlet stores, is Bushkill Falls, a lovely woodsy hike with the “Niagra of Pennsylvania” waterfall to stare at and take pictures of for later memories.  Thanks to being tired and my lack of desire to take countless pictures of a landscape still brown with winter we didn’t end up paying the admission price to walk back to the falls for this trip, but I would very much like to return.

All things considered, I would definitely return for another romantic weekend in the Poconos, but I also definitely wouldn’t want to stay for more than a couple of nights.  It’s extremely convenient thanks to being close to home, and it was plenty of fun while we were there.

A recent upgrade of my personal computer left some impressive hardware available to become an all new Trollserver.  Improvements include CPU, RAM, Hard Drives, Operating System, and several software upgrades.  

The CPU improvements include a jump from a single “old skool” P4 generation CPU to a Core2 Duo CPU with tons more horsepower.  This CPU upgrade comes bundled with a 2nd CPU core to do more work as well as a jump forward into 64-bit computing.

The RAM jumped from DDR/133 to DDR2/800 and from 1GB to 8GB.  This means way more space for running scripts and server programs and the database.  So less waiting for that image to resize or having it fail due to not having enough RAM to pull it off right now.  It also means that when RAM is accessed it’s done way, way faster.

Hard drive space previously wasn’t considered limiting, but has now jumped to an almost silly four times the previous capacity.  Also with the benefits of newer generation hard drives with bigger caches and better transfer rates, not just capacity.

The Operating System moved the small click from FreeBSD 7.0 (32-bit) to FreeBSD 7.1 (64-bit) so I would have access to all 8GB of RAM and the 64-bit features on the new CPU.  Most people aren’t likely to notice much change from this specifically, but it helps all the other changes to work better.

I’m not sure if insects can fly hundreds of miles across open ocean, or for that matter, if they even want to, but as far as I can tell they can’t.  St. Lucia was delightfully lacking in the typical insects of the Northeast.  I don’t recall seeing a single mosquito dispite the almost constant presence of puddles and standing moisture they so love.  We as honeymooners were not alone on the island however.

Everywhere you look there were frogs the size of a quarter, large snales, and lizards that would impress Geiko.  Whether they were actually geckos or not I have no idea. The frogs hung out on frondy plants that hung near the short sidewalk lights that were all over the grounds of the resort.  My wife and I came to call them “Frog condos” thanks to the multi-layered housing effect and the fact that we often so more than one of them near a single light.  The idea of housing or warmth was quickly replaced with the reality that they were hanging out for a midnight snack made up of any tiny light attracted bugs that were silly enough to pass within tongue range of the tiny amphibious hunters.

During the day lizards basked in the sun on anything they could find.  Sometimes it was the same lights the frogs made into hunting zones, other times it was random guard rails or plants, but most often it was literally in the middle of the sidewalk.  My initial thoughts at this pattern were along the lines of “well, I guess you are next on evolutions list to elimitate for playing in traffic.”  How truly wrong I was.  Never in my life have I seen an animal so like a ninja before.  3 inches of lizard could go from apparently asleep in the sidewalk to simply gone before you even knew it was moving.  They moved very quickly, and were nervous enough about people that you couldn’t even get closer than about 4 or 5 feet from them before they did their vanishing act again.  This turned my wife and I into very frustrated photographers indeed.

On the exact opposite end of the speed spectrum was the humble snail in its not so humble shell.  They were large, they were slow, and frankly they were short lived.  I personally squashed at least one during our stay by stepping on it in the dark without knowing it was there.  Walking up the roads at night revealed that they didn’t have much better luck with vehicle traffic either.  There were creepy slippery smears of snail guts and shell bits all over the roads every night just waiting for the next day’s torential rain to wash them away into oblivion.

It should stand to reason that countless pirate songs can’t all be wrong when describing the islands.  They drink a lot of rum.  I had no idea how much in fact.  They have types and flavors of rum you have never heard of, half of which would make any self-respecting pirate blush a little.  If the idea of chocolate rum, orange rum, and even ginger rum aren’t out there enough for you, they also make drinks using these crazy rums by adding everything from fruit juice to actual fruit to cream and an unlimited number of other things.  If you don’t like rum, you should consider visiting some other part of the world that hasn’t yet made its way into pirate songs.

Not to complain, but inclusive seems to have many definitions.  My wife would chime in at this point to remind me that all “All Inclusive” places follow a similar model, and I’m certain she’s correct.  My problem is at least partially based on the fact that I’ve never been to an all inclusive resort before, and before I give Sandals a bad name I would like to point out that it was certainly “mostly inclusive.”  

Resorts are big business.  There is really no other intelligent way to describe it.  To that end, they do everything in their power to get as much money out of you as possible before and during your stay.  Before we arrived they successfully sold us safari adventures and romantic dinners for two with exclusive butler service and candle light.  During our stay the choices were almost endless.

Tipping was strictly forbidden on Sandals property, that I am infinitely thankful for based on our experience at the airport.  Generally speaking, everything you want was included.  Assuming you only wanted food and drinks.  Wine lists were provided at almost every single meal, and they cost extra.  While wondering the resort, the uncommonly pushy camera men working for the little photo shop were around almost every corner like paparazzi.  Instead of taking pictures of you, they were there to ask if you wanted them to.  Trust me when I say that is almost as annoying.  Needless to say, pictures taken cost nothing, unless you actually want them.  That meant paying for them.  The gift shop was about as overpriced as any other you find in the tropics, but was obviously not included in the price of admission.  There was also an almost constant presence of staffers trying to sell you time in their spa or convincing you to book a return visit.

It wasn’t all bad of course, just a little overwhelming sometimes for a guy on the first real vacation of his entire professional career.  Thanks to the free meals being readily available, for some time after arriving back home I actually worried that I would go out to eat somewhere and simply get up and leave when I was done as I had done so many times on my honeymoon.  The experience of being able to order a 3 to 5 course meal with an alcoholic drink at every meal without concern for price was an awesome one indeed.  So, if you go to an all inclusive, be ready to to say “No.”  almost constantly to the attempts to upsell pictures, wine, and anything else they can think of.  It will still be a blast and a great excuse to put on some extra inches to the old waistline.

No trip to the tropics during hurricane season is complete without almost having to deal with a hurricane.  Ours included.  Hurricane Omar moved through the area around 200 miles from St. Lucia while we were there.  Since it was rainy season while we were there and there was rain everyday anyway, few people even noticed.  The effect if had on our tiny little island was nothing more than large waves thankfully.  

At the edge of our resort and just past the massive pool is a large stone wall with convenient stairs going down to the beach at random intervals.  When the seas were normal and happy, water never made it anywhere near that wall.  In fact in most places there were 20 to 70 feet of beach.  During the time when Omar was exerting its climatological influences the waves were actually around eight feet tall and were hitting the stone wall with enough force to throw salty mist at people in the pool.  

After a few hours of pounding waves the worst was over and the seas began to slip away back to their original position several yards from the wall.  The damage was done however.  The beach was effectively gone.  In its place was an impressive collection of rocks of all shapes and sizes and almost no sand at all.  The last step down to the beach from one of the sets of stairs was now slightly over three feet tall instead of the previous size of about a normal step.  Thankfully the ocean happily works itself out, and in so doing works things back to the way they are supposed to be.  Several days after the waves subsided, normal waves slowly dragged sand that had been churned up back to the beach and deposited it gently back over the rocks occasionally grabbing a rock and dragging it back out to sea as it left.  

At the end of the day it was very cool to see larger waves than are available anywhere in the northeast and I’m glad they weren’t any more dangerous than mere photo opportunities.

It was bound to happen.  It seems everytime I travel anywhere I end up sick in some way or other.  I’m not sure why it happens, or how I got so lucky to have this pattern, but it does.  Some may say, “Well you sat on a plane with 200 other people for over 6 hours.”, but that’s not it because I’ve gotten sick driving to Vermont in my own car too.  Best of all, there is never any obvious cause of the illness.  I’m just sick, that’s all, thanks for playing, and with any random collection of symptoms.

In the tropics, my body’s choice was a day of mild fever (100.5F) followed by almost non-stop trips to the bathroom.  The rest of this story is not for the squimish and you may want to go on to another post prior to getting to my brief but descriptive story of Liquishits™.

For lack of a more graceful way to describe what happened to me, I will say that I would sit down and make a noise something like someone pouring a bucket of water into a toilet.  Gut wrenching pain and about 3 seconds of high-speed Liquishits™ and it was time to clean up after what seemed like a war.  If that wasn’t bad enough, there was a day where I would leave the now partially destroyed wreck of a bathroom only to return to the same freak show mere minutes later.  I said many times during our stay “My kingdom for a solid poop.”, but it was not meant to be.  The gut wrenching pain tapered off, the frequency of Liquishits™ lessened to about once after each meal, and the consistancy got a little less liquidy, but the solidity was not restored until I got home.

It wasn’t pretty, sorry you had to read that.  There’s nothing to see here, move along.

Living in America has all soda drinkers very used to things like sodium benzoate (to preserve freshness) and high fructose corn syrup in their day to day bubbly sugar water consumption.  Down in the Caribbean however, corn is missing, sugar cane is grown everywhere, and preservatives are not something you are likely to find in anything you eat or drink.  This produces an interesting opportunity indeed.  One where a soda drinker can enjoy outstandingly delicious soda.

My soda of choice here in America is Coka-Cola.  Good old fashioned high test sugar laiden brown bubble water.  Sadly the ingredients on the American version of Coke include things like “Sugar and/or High Fructose Corn Syrup”, which to me indicates that they mix all their sweeteners together and at the end have honestly no clue how much of each ends up in each bottle.  Presumably they mix them and the desired ratio ends up in each bottle or the flavor of a bottle of Coke would vary widely, and it clearly doesn’t vary much at all.  Down in the tropics however, something wonderful was waiting for me behind that red label I know so well.

At first I never even thought to look at the ingredients.  I opened a bottle of Coke from our well stocked mini-fridge and took a sip.  Something was very wrong.  It was like Coke, but not exactly.  It was delicious.  Outstandingly delicious.  I sat there with the bottle in my hand and felt a bit like a polar bear that just enjoyed another Christmas Coca-Cola.  A grin, a feeling of peace.  Heck, it was soda nirvana.  I slowly twisted the bottle around to find the nutritional information panel and the ingredient list so I could see why this Coke tasted so much better than any I’d ever had.  The nutritional information panel was entirely missing.  No calories, no carbs, no fat, no nothing.  The ingredients however was a shorter list than I’d ever seen on a bottle of Coke and revealed exactly why this bottle I held in my hand brought a smile to my face like no other bottle of soda ever has before.

Ingredients:  Carbonated Water, Sugar, Caramel Colour, Phosphoric Acid, Natural Flavors, Caffeine.

That was it.  Real sugar.  100%.  And no preservatives at all.  To my friends at Coke:  Please offer this recipe here in America.  It’s so much better than the version you sell here I could hardly imagine drinking standard American Coke ever again, and would happily pay a premium if required to get “the good stuff.”