Light weight pots

We decided to add some containers to our garden this year, so we could continue growing peppers and tomatoes but add some herbs and fruit.

Saw online someone recommended filling containers partway with packing peanuts, then topping off with soil.  This way the containers are lighter, drain better, and you can actually move them around.

So far I'm rather fond of the idea, but we'll see what the first bad storm does regarding knocking things over.  Until anything like that happens, they look stable.

We purchased 2 bags of packing peanuts from Staples, at around $7 per bag, and filled all 3 containers a little over halfway with the peanuts.

We followed this up with potting soil, packing it down lightly.  A word of warning so you don't do what I did:  If you water down the soil, it will pack itself down.  If you plant immediately when the soil is at the top of the pot, once you water it down your plants are going to have a nice little 4 " rim protecting them.  If you want your plant to be higher up, water down the soil and add more a couple of times.

 

Garden Update

Our garden has been in the ground for a week now, so I thought it was time for a status update.

In general, things are looking pretty good.  1 watermelon plant is dead, our squash have come up, and 2 of my pepper plants are looking sickly..but its early, so I can always replant if needed.

The other addition I've made is a fence.  Some of our friends with dogs live in apartments (my wife is in school), so we make it a point to invite friends and their dogs over to take advantage of our big backyard.  Unfortunately, not all of those dogs respect the garden like our dog does, so if I want to avoid my plants being chewed on, peed and pooped on, or dug up...I have to have a fence.

Alright, enough chatter, its picture time.

Garden with the fence around it:

My squash poking their little heads out:

My 4 watermelon plants (3 looking good, one with no leaves left):

My pepper plants, showing the contrast between a healthy and sickly plant.

Next update will be about our potted herbs and strawberries and how we set up our pots this year.
 

Glock 19

Time for another gun post, and as promised in yesterdays teaser, its about a Glock!

This is a recent acquisition and has become my favorite gun to carry.  That's right, I drank the kool-aid....I picked up a Gen4 Glock 19.  Coming from the 1911 camp, that's a pretty sacrilegious thing to do. 

But to make up for the sacriledge slightly, I did allow my 1911 to come hang out with the 19 for a picture.

So far I think I  have around ~600 rounds through this gun.  Not a single failure of any kind, and I didn't even clean it till past the 300 round mark.  People like to call Glocks the AKs of the handgun world, and since I like and own AKs, I've been treating the 19 like an AK and have thus far been very impressed.

What I like about it:  This thing is lighter fully loaded than my 1911 is empty, carried 15+1 instead of 8+1, and has been completely error free. 

What I don't like about it: Nothing so far.  Seriously.

To be fair regarding reliability,  my 5" 1911 has never given me any trouble at all, though my 3.5" 1911 did choke up on a bad magazine a few times until I confirmed which magazine was the offender and threw it away. 

Lets talk about ease of carry: The Glock is thicker than my old 1911, and thickness matters far more than length in a carry gun. (For example, I never found my 3.5" 1911 any easier to carry than my 5" 1911.)   That being said, I only have 1 holster so far for the Glock, a Tagua leather OWB holster.  Its been so comfortable and carried so well I haven't had any interest in finding something else.  The 19 has concealed easily under just my usual wear of shorts and a tshirt (though that may also be partly due to the 30 lbs I've lost from Jan 2011 to now)

Picture to compare thickness: It honestly doesn't feel all that much thicker when carrying to me.

Either way, I really like this gun, and it has become my primary daily carry piece.  I'm now planning on eventually picking up a gen4 Glock 21, and maybe a 26 to round things out.  Yes, I enjoy the 19 that much. I drank the Kool aid.  May John Moses Browning (Inventor of the 1911 for the uninitiated) have mercy on my heathen, plastic soul.

One last picture in its OWB holster and I'm done spamming pics of it.  (For now at least).  Can ya tell I like this gun? 

Lazy Mans Kabobs

I enjoy kabob style grilling.  BUT, I loathe trying to cook veggies in combination with shrimp or chicken or steak on the same skewer.  Why?  Because its like trying to time getting ready to go out on a date at the same time as your wife.  If this example, women are veggies and men are meat (read into that what you will, Freudians).  No matter how much you WANT the meat to be ready at the same time as the veggies, it will NEVER happen.  EVER.

So, because I don't like overcooked veggies or undercooked meat, I call this my Lazy Mans method of grilling on skewers.   Simply put, meat goes on one skewer, veggies on another.  I throw the veggie skewers on earlier, if I'm really good, can time throwing the meat on just right for it all to be ready at the same time.  Then, I normally just strip all the food off skewers (man, you type that word more than once and it really starts looking weird) and dump everything into a bowl.  That way, people can grab what they like and move on with life.

This week I did asian inspired chicken kabobs.

Ingredients:
Chicken, cut into kabob friendly sized cubes
Zucchini
Bell pepper
Pearl Onions
Soy Sauce
Rice Wine Vinegar
Red Pepper Flakes
Garlic (I used the last of my fresh garlic in the recipe, so had to throw my garlic powder in to the picture...but I prefer using fresh)
Sriracha Sauce
Olive oil (not pictured because I forgot about it)

The pearl onions are the only thing that require much prep.  Boil them, then transfer to a bowl of ice water.  That will allow you to easily peel the outer layer of the onions off.  Once they're stripped the onions are ready to marinade with the other ingredients (I prefer to marinade at least 3 hours).

Cut up the chicken, zucchini, and bell pepper.  Boil/peel the onions, and throw all the veggies into one bag, and the chicken into another (this allows you to baste with the veggie marinade later.  Chicken marinade goes into the trash).  Mix the sauce however you like.  Since I'm not a huge vinegar fan, I went light on the vinegar and pretty heavy on the soy, but there is honestly no wrong answer here.  If you like it spicy, go heavy on the red pepper flakes and sriracha, lighter if you're a spice wimp.

Grill on medium high (12-14 minutes for the veggies, 6-8 for the chicken).  We served on a bed of rice to stretch the recipe out into leftovers, but you don't have to make anything with it. 

Marinading picture, with a teaser of what my next blog post will be about:

After the marinade, ready to go on the grill....(onions in a foil packet, because as I said this is Lazy Man kabobs, and have you ever tried skewering pearl onions?!)

All done and ready to be thrown on rice and devoured!

I hope you enjoyed my ranting on kabobs in general, and really hope you try out the recipe.  I'll certainly be making these again.

Till next time!

We're in the ground!

Its central Texas, so April first is long enough to wait before planting.  Last year we planted in mid March with no difficulties, but weather and other obligations pushed us back this year.

We have 3 cherry tomato plants, 3 large tomato plants, 4 watermelon seedlings, 2 jalapenos, 1 serrano, 1 anaheim, 1 bell pepper and 1 poblano pepper plants along with 1 sweet basil, 2 strawberries, and seeds in the ground for squash, rosemary, and cilantro. 

Here's to another great year of gardening, grilling and guns!

 

Chess and Starcraft

Today is going to be a bit different from my usual 3 Gs.....but its another G that I enjoy a lot, Gaming!

Now, some people hearing "gaming" and sneer at such a "waste of time".  That's fine.  Simple solution...don't play.  However, for many people gaming is a fun activity to share with friends.  For example, I play a lot of Starcraft 2 with high school friends that live in different areas of the country.  Using VOIP, we talk while we play.  Its a great way to share an activity and stay involved with friends I don't get to see very often.

In addition, studies have shown that games involving problem solving increase cognitive function and perceptual skills.  Another study of laparoscopic surgeons found that doctors who played video games were faster and less likely to make errors than their peers who did not play. 

Now that the "video games are bad.....mmmkkkaayyy" counter arguments are out of the way, I want to compare a modern Real Time Strategy(RTS) game to an old classic game no one would argue is bad for you: Chess, the game of Kings. 

A Chess board:

As everyone knows Chess a 2 person game, turn based game played on a board, where the players start with an equal army that can only move certain ways, and tries to force the other player into a checkmate.




A Starcraft 2 map:

Starcraft 2(SC2) is an RTS (in other words, both players make moves at the same time, instead of taking turns), where each player starts with 1 base and 6 worker units.  See the blue crescents on the map?  Those are resource patches.  In SC2 you use workers to collect money, which is then used to make new bases, buildings, and fighting units.  There are 3 different "races" you can play, and each race has ~15 unique units.  They walk on the ground, or fly in the air and some air units cannot attack ground units or vis a versa.


Using these units, players attempt to keep their opponent from collecting money to build armies, destroy army units and buildings of their opponents, all while building their own units/buildings, collecting money, and scouting what their opponent is doing.

In summary, in chess you take turns and focus on army positioning to destroy each other.  In Starcraft, you have to build an economy, make your army at the same time your opponent is....oh and unlike chess, unless your enemies units are within a certain range of yours, you can't see them.

That's right.  Try playing chess while your opponent is making moves simultaneously, and you can only see the 2 squares adjacent to your own pieces. The difficulty, strategies involved, and additional requirements make SC2 a worthy successor to chess in the arena of strategy games.  It expands upon the army positioning that is so critical in chess, adding economic concerns, intelligence gathering and excellent hand coordination. 

Chess may indeed have been the game of kings, but Starcraft is a modern strategy game that I would argue is more involved, requires more thinking, and is more fun.

If any of that has grabbed your attention, check out this youtube video of a game between 2 pro players: Starcraft 2 gameplay


For anyone who enjoys strategy, competition, and out thinking opponents, I highly recommend checking out Starcraft 2.  Email me and we can even play some together.

Reclaiming the garden

After the tomatoes died off last year and I cut down the pepper plants, I just left our garden beds alone all winter, so they needed a little TLC this year.

 One thing we noticed last year was the tendency of grass to creep up over the beds, and for both purely aesthetic reasons and the practical "i hate grass in my garden" reasons, we decided to put in a plastic liner, spray to kill the grass, cover with a lawn tarp, and add mulch.  It didn't even take a full day of work, but made things look MUCH nicer in my opinion.

Here's how things were looking after a good 6 months of outright neglect (Yes, I threw our dead tree onto the beds so I could mow).

First thing we did was mow on the shortest grass setting around the beds to get a feel for how it would look with the mulch. 

Since we thought that was a pretty good border, I went ahead and sprayed the low cut grass with a grass/weed killer to keep it from coming back up through our tarp/mulch.  After that, it was time to put in our 4" plastic border.  Honestly, I don't know if the border will do a lick of good other than keeping the mulch kind of where its supposed to be, but it looks okay and clearly defines the edge, so thats good enough.  Installing it required digging a nice little trench all the way down the 3 sides of the garden.

While I dug, my wife pulled the stray grasses out of the garden beds.  After I got the border installed, we staked down our weed mat tarp in the feeble hope this spray/tarp/mulch combo will keep grass out of  our gardening area.  Time will tell if it does or not.

10 bags of mulch around the beds and 2 bags of compost on the beds later, I'd say our garden is looking much improved! 

The plan is to go ahead and plant seedlings this weekend.  We will probably go with one full bed of tomatoes again, varying types from cherry and grape to full sized, and one bed of squash/peppers. 

We are also going to be putting some pots between the beds and the fence and attempting to grow some herbs this year as well.  Basil for certain, maybe rosemary as well. 

Amazing what an afternoon of work can do to transform how a garden looks!