I decided to go a bit out there this season, and instead of giving away wine, spirits, or confections, I figured I would give out some homemade, signature BBQ sauces.

I realized that I needed a safe and practical method of distributing the sauces, something perhaps a little bit more hygienic, classy and long-lasting than some tupperware. Something in glass perhaps. I needed to learn about the art/science of “canning”. I really knew nothing about canning, but after reading some stuff on the Internet I was at least familiar with the theory.

Come to find out that due to the acid content of the tomato-based sauce I probably could get away with a method called “boiling water bath”, but it would be safer and quicker to use “pressure canning” where water is super-heated to 240 degrees, killing dangerous bacteria. Sounds good, headed to the store and found out that because it isn’t “canning season”, they didn’t have many supplies. The good news is that they had a fancy Presto 23 Quart Pressure Cooker/Canner on clearance, and then it was also 40% off. So I ended up getting a nice/new pressure canner for basically nothing. Score.

I normally make a pretty good Apple-Habanero BBQ sauce, but decided that I would branch out and try to come up with a couple of new flavors. After making a base sauce, I tried a few different concoctions until I settled on Guinness-Chipotle and Mandarin-Honey flavors. I proceeded to make several quarts of each, and a double-batch of Apple-Habanero.

I decided on half-quart jars, figuring it would be a good gift size, easy to fill and generally would be the ideal way to go. Frankly though, it just isn’t enough sauce and cleaning, pre-heating, filling, wiping, pressure canning and cooling 24 or 36 little jars sucks. Going to go with bigger jars next time–if you’re going to go through the hassle of canning the stuff, you as well make gallons of it and do it proper.

I then designed up some labels, printed them out, and applied them to the jars.

Only after giving out a dozen of them did I realize that I may have made a small mistake. While I tested the sauces repeatedly during the cooking process, I didn’t actually test the flavor of them AFTER the were pressure steamed at 240 degrees for 15 minutes. I hope that the canning process didn’t mess with the flavor.

Overall the canning was about as hard as I thought it would be–its not easy, but it is totally achievable even by a total rookie. (more…)

I recently purchased a HD TiVo Series 3, and have been experimenting a bit with the home media option stuff, and third party applications on the appliance. I’ll be writing about several of these apps/plugins over the coming weeks, hopefully culminating with a complete write-up of the must-have applications for the TiVo.

One of the things that I wanted to be able to do with my TiVo that I couldn’t do with my HD DirecTivo is stream music and photos from my computer to my home theater. The TiVo comes with this capability out-of-the box, once you install TiVo Desktop for Mac or Windows. The problem is that it kinda sucks. It is designed around the same interface that TiVo uses for TV shows–a UI model that either doesn’t apply to music or just doesn’t really scale to 15,000 songs and hundreds of artists and albums. It works as advertised, but isn’t nearly as easy as using iTunes or an iPod.

So there is another option: a third party application called Audio Faucet. The application was the Grand Prize Winner of TiVo’s Developer Challenge, and for good reason. The application is simple, effective and attractive. Audio Faucet works much like TiVo Desktop: an application runs on your desktop machine, which publishes an application to your TiVo’s “Music, Photos & More” section.

Audio Faucet features some additional improvements over TiVo’s own application:

• Rate music directly on your TiVo
• Access an MP3 directory or an iTunes Library
• Better “Now Playing” and screensaver interfaces
• Audio can play on your home theater or on your computer’s speakers

All of this comes at a price: Audio Faucet is a Java application that ends up being a CPU and memory hog. On my G4 (my machine that has iTunes library on it), it dominated the machine, making it pretty much unusable for any other application. CPU utilization was averaging between 50 and 80%–pretty much unacceptable. It actually takes less CPU to play an MP3 in iTunes then it does for Audio Faucet to stream the MP3 to the TiVo to play. Bizarre.

Audio Faucet Streaming an MP3

PID   COMMAND    %CPU  TIME     #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
13233 JavaApplic 75.7% 0:44.14  19  578   314    51M+  7120K 62M+  576M

Streaming from TiVo Desktop

PID   COMMAND    %CPU  TIME     #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
92    TiVoDeskto 5.8%  82:02.42 19  407  294     50M-  368K  53M-  357M

iTunes Playing the same MP3

PID   COMMAND    %CPU  TIME     #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
13260 iTunes     26.5% 0:21.03  9   278   756    42M-  7832K 53M-  212M-

It is a trial “pre-release”, so take with a grain of salt. It seems though that development of the project has stalled, as the last version was released March 26, 2006. Its a shame because it could be a really great app.

So Todd and I were hanging out the other night when the kitchen sink clogged. The water would drain out, but only slowly. The chemical solution wasn’t working quick enough, so we decided to step it up a notch.

After some head scratching, we realized that when we turned out the garbage disposal on that the that the water level on left hand sink would drop, but the right-hand sink would rise. Ureka! The garbage disposal is, in addition to its primary function of masticating food particles, a centrifigal pump.

The problem is that it wasn’t able to build up any pressure, because there was a hole in the charge pipe (the right hand sink drain). Fix that problem and you’ve a pipe-cleaning-pump in your very own kitchen!

Instructions on turning your Garbage Disposal into a pipe cleaner

2. Fill garbage disposal side of sink with a few inches of water.
3. Plug the opposite sink drain with a stopper/plug. Most sinks come with a plug.
4. While holding the plug (to provide a tight seal) on the non-disposal side of the sink, turn on the garbage disposal.

The (now pressurized) water will have no choice but to escape via the intended route: the drain pipe.

Problem solved. Put down the Draino.