Grandpa's Peanut Butter Balls

A Christmas tradition
Makes about 120.


Ingredients:

• 2 sticks of butter
• 4 cups of crunchy peanut butter
• 1 1/2 lbs. confectionary sugar
• 4 cups of rice krispies (generous)
• 4-5 cups of chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup Crisco or 1/3 - 1/2 bar of cooking wax

Directions:

1. Melt the sticks of butter and the peanut butter and mix them together. 
2. Mix in the confectionary sugar.
3. Mix in the rice krispies (this will be your arm workout for the day)
4. Roll this mixture into walnut-sized balls.
5. Melt the chocolate and crisco in a double broiler (bowl over boiling water on the stove). 
6. Dip the peanut butter balls into the chocolate, and place them on wax paper in the freezer or refrigerator to harden. 
7. Keep refrigerated, and enjoy!

Lookout Ride 11/24

We finally made it! Hooray! No popped tires.

Clearly you are better at taking photos and understanding the effect of the sun...

Eggs Benedict

Ingredients:

4 egg yolks

3 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 pinch ground white pepper

1/8 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon water

1 cup butter, melted

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 eggs

1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar

8 strips Canadian-style bacon

4 English muffins, split

2 tablespoons butter, softened

Directions:

1. Hollandaise Sauce: Fill the bottom of a double boiler part-way with water and bring to a gentle simmer. In top boiler, whisk together egg yolks, lemon juice, white pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and 1 tablespoon water.
2. Add the melted butter to egg yolk mixture. If hollandaise begins to get too thick, add a teaspoon or two of hot water. Continue whisking until all butter is incorporated. Whisk in salt, then remove from heat. Place a lid on pan to keep sauce warm.
3. Poached Eggs: Fill a large saucepan with 3 inches of water. Bring water to a simmer/boil, then add vinegar. Carefully break eggs into water, and allow to cook for 2 1/2 to 3 minutes.
4. While eggs are poaching, brown the bacon and toast the English muffins.
5. Spread toasted muffins with softened butter, and top each one with a slice of bacon, followed by one poached egg. Place 2 muffins on each plate and drizzle with hollandaise sauce. Optional: sprinkle with chopped chives

Banana Chocolate Chip Cake

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup sourmilk (mix regular milk with a little bit of vinegar and let it sit for a few minutes to make it sour)
• 2 large bananas (or 3 smaller ones)
• 1 generous cup of chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Mix together all of the wet ingredients.
3. Mix in the dry ingredients.
4. Mix in the chocolate chips
5. Bake for 25 minutes, until light light golden brown - DO NOT OVERCOOK!

Caught red (orange) handed!

 

I don't think this really needs an explanation... this one was yours!

Sweet jumps!

Check out these nasty jumps I found while shredding the trails yesterday.  Soon you'll have a bike and be able to put some air under your wings with me on ones like these!! :-)  There were probably 10 in a row with some really funky ones near the end.

First CT snow 2012! Wahoo!

Bill and Groover checking it out.

A little snow won't keep Dunky from doing his business!

Pancakes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ cup sugar 
• dash of vanilla
• ¼ cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk

Directions:

1. Mix it all together with love
2. Make Mickey Mouse shapes and hearts.
3. Don't forget the chocolate chips, strawberries, maple syrup, whipped cream, bananas, etc.

Crazy truckers!

 

So this was accident #2 that I observed yesterday that involved a semi-truck.  It was as I was leaving the brewery, one of the trucks must have tried to pull a U-turn and didn't quite make it.  As you can see, the trailer crashed into the roof of the guard shack at the brewery and he kept going until it dented the entire side of the trailer and pushed the trailer over far enough so that it was only riding on the right tires!  I couldn't believe it, seems so dumb.. but really funny to see.

Fall-ing More for You

:-) Thanks for getting the pumpkins for us. I had a blast carving them and baking and eating the seeds.

Before Abby ate your dog! Good thing we got pictures!

Lovely view outside my office window yesterday:

Swedish Meatballs

Ingredients:

• 1 can whole berry cranberry sauce
• 1 (12 oz) jar chili sauce
• 2 Tbsp. brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 (2 or 3 lb.) bag ready-made swedish meatballs

Directions:

1. Mix the cranberry sauce, chili sauce, brown sugar, and lemon juice together in a bowl.
2. Pour the sauce over the meatballs in a crock pot. 
3. Heat about 6 hours on LOW, stirring occasionally.

Note: If you do not have a crock pot available, put in a covered container in the oven on 200 for a few hours. 

Big E Round 2

Even though it was raining, I thought this was a great day of eating with you :)
It was very nice of you to drive me from Starbucks to the library, too.

oOo the Bud horses!

Fried Twinkie Time!

At least the rain stopped for David Nail and Billy Currington! 

I had a blast with you. :)

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 stick butter  
• ¾ cup sugar 
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• 1 cup pumpkin
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1½ cups oatmeal
• 1½ cups flour
• 1½ cups choc chips (semisweet, or whatever you usually like for your cookies)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350
2. Mix the wet ingredients together in a bowl. 
3. Mix in the dry ingredients.
4. Spray pan, roll dough into small balls, and place on the pan. (The cookies will not spread out very much on the pan once in the oven, so you can put them fairly close together) 
5. Bake for about 10 minutes.

Province Lands Bike Trail

1/2 CCRT + NSP Loop

From Nickerson State Park to Wellfleet and back. Plus a loop inside the park and stops for the beach, lunch and ice cream! (Couldn't do exact route we followed around the pond, but the mileage is close enough! :-)

Feel free to add the pictures from your phone :-)

------------------------------------------------------Rachel's Section------------------------------------------------------

Ok here we go....

"Good morning, I don't want to get out of bed, so I'll take pictures of you instead!"

Yum yum, what a hearty breakfast! Bacon, eggs, and toast.

You prepare for the big ride. Action shot of teeth brushing!

"I'm going to squinch up my nose to make a focused face and show you where we are on the map, even though you clearly aren't paying attention because you keep taking pictures of me."

Dang, you look so cool when you get on that bike.

The beach! The calm before the hunger storm. 

Looking radical in my sunglasses with a very wide stance. 

What a wonderful ride! :-)

Agua de Montaña

at ~300 feet:

Holes

One for the house, one for the well.

My dad went up and drove the backhoe a little bit, with Brandon on the phone telling him how to. He was pretty excited about it, ha. 

I guess they are at 220 feet for the well. They hit water, but then they hit clay, which apparently trapped the water above it in, so they actually need to keep going. Hopefully they'll get what they want at around 250!

Flora & Fauna 2.0

 

I'll start off by saying two things.  First of all, I had a really good time with you on this ride :-).  I think you did a great job keeping up and that we had a perfect day for it!  I really like this route too because you get to see a lot of nice scenery. And it was great that we planned a lunch stop, I remembered that was one of your complaints after the first time so I made sure not to repeat. :)  So kudos to you!

 

AND, it was also nice having done it once before so that we were aware of the few minor details in the directions that were misleading.  There was one specific item that was incorrect, but the rest of our issues from our first attempt were a direct result of my misreading... so I apologize to the book for my previous post on this ride, because in fact I was the one that was wrong.  I will still argue, though, that the part right after the Pinchot Sycamore is a bit deceiving.  Anyhow, here are my updated updates... you will notice there aren't nearly as many as after the first time..

 

@17.2 - remove "bearing RIGHT"

@26.3 - this is a RIGHT turn to the dirt road, not a LEFT

@26.4 - straight is assuming you went into the park and the straight is from the park 'road' across 185 and onto Nod road... it does make more sense after realizing what they meant, but I still think it could be easily misunderstood (me last year on this ride, case and point!)

@29.7 - this turn is closer to ~29.2 but thats not a big deal... most of the other distances are plus or minus 2/10 of a mile, but this one was a little more

 

Other than that though, the directions are spot on..  according to Google Maps, so I retract my comments about these from my first post on this ride!

 

And here's a bonus for you:

 

 

Here's a picture of my pretty little riding companion having a pb&j and yogurt snack @ McLean Game Refuge

 

Game Refuge or Nature Reserve: A nature reserve is a protected area of importance for wildlife, flora, fauna or features of geological or other special interest, which is reserved and managed for conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research. Nature reserves may be designated by government institutions in some countries, or by private landowners, such as charities and research institutions, regardless of nationality. Nature reserves fall into different IUCN categories depending on the level of protection afforded by local laws.

 

And here's me in my riding getup!  My phone camera couldn't really handle the color of my windbreaker :-).  I left the pics small though because my phone camera isnt the greatest.

 

All in all, I'd say this is a perfect ride for a day like this past Saturday (9/29/12).  I would definitely give it a thumbs up and would be open to doing it again if we're looking for something to do on a nice weekend day.  Not too difficult, but long enough to put your butt on the seat for at least 2hrs and get some fresh air and good scenery (I know I repeated myself from above..)!

 

Thursday night ride (human powered)

 

 

I chose this route because I figured it would take me an hour or less... despite going down the big hill to Riverton and then having to come back up it.  It was a nice ride, and I went in a clockwise direction..  I think next time I would try counterclockwise though because going up the hill on the left side of the path (which goes up past the dam we've ridden to and across a few times, past where we put in the kayaks that day we went down the river) I think is bigger than the hill on route 20.  And I decided to cut back onto route 20 early instead of making it a full loop because it was getting dark earlier than I was expecting... and I figured getting back on route 20 would be easier because the hills were more gradual and maybe a little less so it'd be faster.  :-)

Motorycle ride: West Hartland, CT - North Adams, MA

Unfortunately didn't take any pictures when we stopped :-/... next time I will so that you have more to look at,  this is the exact route that I did though! :-)

Runnin' berries

These are a bunch of pictures I took with my phone to show the process as best as I can. Some are from Wednesday and Friday when we tested, some of Saturday when they started production. I'll go through in order of process. So here we go:

 

1st truck shows up and starts backing into the truck dump ramp

 

A couple pics of trucks being unloaded... as you can see they just pick them up, really high! 

 

 

This is some berries flowing out of a truck into the first set of storage hoppers.  From here they are let out onto a small vibrating conveyor and then fall through a space where a fan blows across them to separate light debris from the berries (we installed 2 sets of the vibratory conveyors and the air cleaners)

 

 Berries being conveyed uphill immediately after the air cleaners.. about to be dropped in the main storage hoppers.  We installed both of the conveyors shown here, and one more to the left of the frame (and 6 more further down the line that you will see)

Berries being conveyed across the top of the storage hoppers to be dropped in

Lots of berries being stored in the center row of the storage hoppers

 

2 of the 6 incline conveyor carrying berries from other end of the hoppers into the building

 

 

 

 Berries being run through shaker table (1 of 6) after dropping out of 1 of 6 of the inclines shown in the previous picture

 

1 of 6 rock traps... I can explain to you how these work, theyre pretty cool and very simple.  This is downstream of the shaker table shown in the last picture and is the last thing in the process that we changed.  I'll add a couple pictures at the end to show the rest of the process and the building, etc.