Paul's Journal

09/20/2008 22:44 #45744

Pear Sauce Batch One
Category: food

I started with 15 lbs of pears. Which is only one of four bushels and decided to make pear sauce. This represents about another 5+ hours of work. Not including the 4 hours I picked and shook down and collected the pears yesterday.

I decided to use the bushel that was all broken and smashed. The ones that hit rocks when they fell or that hornets had eaten holes in.

It stakes so long to peel and and gut them. Not as fun as gutting fish as there is not much fight.

Here I am hiding behing them trying to pose. Its really ahrd to do self pics with the iphone.

That is only half of them, I had to upgrade to a bigger pot.

Cooking them. About 15 pounds of pears with one cup of water. I added a little bit of lemon juice and some sugar. Seriously, it did not really even need that much sugar.

The cook down a bunch. The juice I strained out and made s delicious pear juice drink.

After burning my hand severly, get electrocuted and breaking the vacuum I managed to get he pear sauce in the jars. I cannot believe that no one even heard me as I screamed while being burned and electrocuted. Sometimes, I think that having a big house can be a bad idea.

Here I am looking cute with my favorite jar.

And then when boiling the jars one broke wasting 1 quart of pear sauce which consitutes like 20 pears and like 2 hours worth of work. I was so mad. unfrotunately, when (e:terry) put them in the boiling water he forgot that you have to boil the jars with the water and not just drop them in the boiling water.

buffalotshirts - 09/23/08 22:21
Dang, theres alot of pear talk around these parts. I love pears.

paul - 09/21/08 00:01
Or maybe I can eat it again. They really have free range veal now? I guess the crates were not working for the industry either. :::link:::

paul - 09/20/08 23:58
I am dying to have lamb with pear. Frankly, I am dying inside to eat veal with pear sauce but I stopped eating veal in 1995 and I don't think I will ever eat it again. I can't imagine how good it would be though.

jbeatty - 09/20/08 23:20
Pear sauce sounds delicious. Tiny, cooking well is always worth the risk.

tinypliny - 09/20/08 23:05
Are you alright? That seems like an ordeal! I hope all this pear sauce is worth all this effort and pain.

09/19/2008 15:52 #45730

Picking pears
Category: food

Basra and the bees are both fighting me for the pears. Plus I fell
out of the tree and smashed my mousing arm. I wish I could just go to
home depot and pick up some migrants. If only we lived in California,
LOL. The pears smell so yummy.

Look how crazy this pic is. It is like that jesus pic where he gets shined on by light from heaven that used to be in Nonna's bedroom. But instead with basra as the central figure.

It was hard to keep him away from the pears.

I ended up filling all three bushels and there are still a lot more on the tree and so many rotting ones on the ground. Unfrotunately, I cannot get to the ones that are high up and I shook down all the ones I could.

I was also battling these hugh bees that could eat right through the skin of a pear. I watched them eat one in about five minutes as a swarm. Then the little bees cam ein and finsihed it up. The big bees got made and i saw a big one pick up a little one and throw it, I swear.

gardenmama - 09/19/08 23:49
I had a pear tree in the yard at my old house. The pears were great - my husband & I canned some with cinnamon sticks in the jars once. We also made combination apple/pear sauce. The rotting pears on the ground and the bees were definitely a problem when it came time to mow. It was kind of funny though because you could smell them fermenting on the ground - I wonder if the bees got drunk.

The turtle is pretty cool.

matthew - 09/19/08 23:39
I think Basra has had a great pear filled summer.

tinypliny - 09/19/08 19:46
Yikers, do these bees sting?

09/18/2008 10:25 #45721

Terry changed his name?

tinypliny - 09/18/08 21:05
Oh man! And I didn't even get my passport back yet. Why did you go and blow it, Terry! Darn it.

james - 09/18/08 19:06
I actually got a dozen estrippers to legally change their last names to Visco. It was part of an elaborate but hilarious april fools day joke. But the cat is out of the bag now...

09/18/2008 09:19 #45719

Melamine, why I don't use it.
Category: plastic

Apparently, no one cares about schools in buffalo, lol - e.g. last post.

Anyhow, I was reading google news this morning and I saw that 6000+ chinese babies have become ill aftre consuming formula that has the same toxic compound that killed pets when consuming chinese pet food a while back

Melamine, a white crystalline powder used in making plastics and tanning leather that was found in the infant formula, was at the heart of China's troubles last year, too.

That compound is melamine. Here is the wikipedia article

I really don't understand how it ended up in the infant formula after it was known to kill pets but it did, and now the babies are dying.

The crazier part is I noticed these really pretty hard plastic bowls and kitchen wares are showing up everywhere and are actually just called melamine bowls.

You can get them just about anywhere that has kitchen supplies and goes from fancy

to more common ones at target

So my question is who uses these and why. Clearly over time, either through heat or scrapping, litle peices of melamine end up in your food.

libertad - 12/11/08 13:47
I'm looking for glass storage containers and all I found were these. :::link:::

Everything else has plastic lids. What do you use? I really like those that I found but they are expensive and they don't come in any other sizes for some reason.

tinypliny - 09/19/08 19:58
I hope not. :/

All my kitchenware is either Corelle (Vitrelle - a type of 3-layered glass) or stainless steel and some aluminium.

paul - 09/19/08 17:28
It doesn't break down easily unless you get it hot by putting it in the microwave. Don't tell me people don't forget and do that.

tinypliny - 09/18/08 21:07
To answer your question melamine doesn't break easily and is cheap. That's why people would use it. :(

ajay - 09/18/08 14:56
Melamine tests the same as protein when added to food.
So, when a bulk food supplier claims that his <whatever> contains at least 22% protein, the buyer can test it and verify. If the seller is unscrupulous, he can add melamine to the food and the test results will show a higher concentration of protein. Since melamine is so much cheaper than actual protein itself, it makes financial sense to cheat like this.
It's a different matter, of course, that melamine is DANGEROUS to your health. But anyone interested in making a quick buck at all costs will not let such a silly little thing like that stop him.

BTW: melamine was also at the root of the pet food recall a couple of years ago. It's bad that they added it to pet food; but to baby food? Even hell is too good a place for such assholes.

zobar - 09/18/08 10:05
I like these in particular :::link:::

But they're probably not as toxic as these keen uranium-glazed bowls they made in the '40s:
:::link:::

- Z

09/17/2008 19:57 #45712

Buffalo Public Schools 818th/829?
Category: school

(e:matthew) came home form work all riled up about the Buffalo public school system, which I assume is due to the ladies he works for talking about it as we have no kids.

Anyhow, I didn't believe him how bad it was because the people I know who went to Buffalo public school seem okay. I figured it was just private schooling parents freakin out about how bad the schools are.

Then I tried looking up some info about the schools in buffalo and happend upon schooldigger.com's

entry for Buffalo. Apparently, Buffalo is 818th out of 829 cities reviewed. Yes, that puts it at 0/5 stars.

Omg, look at Buffalo Elementary School of Technology over at 313 South Division Street -

It is 2273rd/2278 public elementary schools in state ranking. Can it be worse? Yes, but only 5 places worse ;(.

Clearly it is a economics issue as that school has 97% of students on discounted/free lunch.

It seems like all the white people are leaving. Looks at the stats. Its interesting that this site offers so much information about each school. Sadly, there is not much info for the private and charter schools.

Same with Bennett

which was 750th out of 776 public high schools.

Same with Buffalo Traditional School

which is now close

Where did all the whities go, this is during the 90s and early 2000s that it all changed? Did they used to have forced integration that ended. Just look at the numbers that dropped since 2000.

Hutch Tech

got great reviews. Is there any hope for buffalo with such a crappy education system in place? Is there even a solution?

metalpeter - 09/18/08 20:09
When I was in School I went to a Good High School and I liked it. I can't say how things are at other schools or how things are now. I think there is a big game between schools like Da Vinci, Honors, Hutch and the Special Programs at Mac Kinley (yeah my spelling sucks because of my early years and I was never good at it) and the Nieghborhood schools. I think any school that you have to apply for has an advantage. First of all they don't let dumb kids in, secondly since you have to try and get in, that means you want to be there, you want to get an education, it isn't that you are there because you have to be. Once a school is good then the good teachers want to go there. Yes there are teachers who want to help the "Troubled Kids" but no one wants to spend more time or watching or making sure kids are good then teaching. I'm not saying places like Grover are bad. But the preception that they are is what causes them to get worse. Lets say I have a kid and I want a good education then I send him to a Private school. So now this good kid isn't in a public school but if he was he could make it better and maybe he becomes friends with a troubled kid or someone who wants to learn but Mom is never home so he isn't taught that education is important. But yet this "good" kid is a "good" influnce on him so he does better in school then if the good kid was at some private school. Since the good kids aren't sent to the city schools it makes the school worse so then no other good kids go there. I'm not saying the white kids are good and the black are bad. But often that is the perception of parents. So if a good student doesn't get into Tech or Honors it is off to some private school or they even move. Yes people in the burbs do this also they will sell there house and move to change disticts so they can be in the good district. The school system is so complex that no comment could really cover it all. You also have to look at sprawl and that is a factor also.

jason - 09/18/08 13:56
It's a disgrace, certainly. Our state leads the nation in school spending, but ranks 48th in 4 year graduation rates. A full THIRD of our students don't graduate on time. Ouch!

:::link:::

Unfortunately, it isn't about outcomes or results. Our situation isn't good. Teacher's unions are sacred cows, our school board is corrupt, and nobody is looking out for the kids!

Sam Hoyt calls the answer "school choice" - This means supporting charter schools which actually are accountable for their results. I wonder how many hate mails he gets from the flaming hypocrites at the BTF every day.

gardenmama - 09/18/08 13:07
As an employee of the BPS I have much to say on this (most not so good), but a response will require some time on my part. Perhaps I will have something together this weekend. I think it's an important issue to the future vitality of our city, and nationally as well. Thanks for this post - it's good to know people care and are paying attention.