Ground Beef

One of my favorite things about my KitchenAid mixer is the power takeoff on the front.  You can grind meat, make sausage, roll pasta, shred or slice veggies and a bunch of other things with the right attachment.  I have been grinding much of our hamburger for years now.  It is great knowing exactly what is in my ground meat.  It also tastes great, is cheaper, contains as much fat as you like, and makes me more confident about cooking a burger to medium rare .  

The parts to the grinder include the big chute, corkscrew thing, a blade that kind of looks like a nija's throwing star, two grinding plates for fine or coarse grind and the cap to keep it all together.    

 Here is what it all looks like on the machine.  Very easy to assemble and clean.  I like to keep everything very clean and cold if possible.  I will often keep the 2 bowls in the freezer until needed.  

A chuck roast is great to use but really most cuts with a little fat in them can work.  Each time I am at the grocery store I keep an eye out for any meat that has a good marbling of fat like the roasts above.  It also has to be $2 or less a pound.   

To start I partially freeze the meat or in this case partially thaw it.  This makes it very easy to cut  into even strips that grind well.  It also helps keep uncle Sal Monella from coming to dinner.  

The whole process goes very fast.  I use the big hole grinder plate for the first pass of the meat and the smaller hole one for a second pass of the meat.  This is where two bowls come in handy.  Remember to keep things very clean and cold if possible.  If you wanted to make sausage at this point you would run the ground meat (likely pork) with the some spices mixed in and without the grinding plate or blade on.  Instead you would have a pointy funnel like thing in its place to help drive the meat into a casing.   

I usually pack the meat into one pound balls and freeze.  You could also make up patties for easy grilling.  

 Putting what it is and a date on the packages comes in handy when you find it at the back of the freezer in a month.

I like to do a lot of make at home kind of things.  Most are just fun to try or so much work I only do them once in a while.  Making my own ground meats however is so fast, so easy and so much better than what you get at most stores I do it whenever I find meats at my $2 a pound price point.  

A months worth of posts all in one

At Disney Land I some how turned off my instant upload of pic's to Google.  I suddenly could not upload from my phone from a regular computer without minor inconvenience.  That and being kind of busy has equaled poor posting habits.   I am back at it like it or not. 

  At Halloween I kept seeing cool pumpkin carvings.  We were throwing out this one that was about the sized of a baseball so I gave it a go.  Harder than I thought but also more fun.  Would be a great way to learn how to carve stuff.

 The girls didn't have school yesterday so we went to the Mall of America to ride some rides.

 We ate lunch at Tiger Sushi.  Being located in the hallway of a mall it is unexpectedly one of my favorite sushi places.  Midori's floating world cafe being my favorite.  The girls tried a lot of wacky stuff.

 They like to take pics in front of stuff.

 The fog a few day's ago was pretty but I am rather mad at not having a winter last year or yet this year.

 On December 1 Heath and I rode with 50+ other fat bikes in the Global Fat Bike Day ride along the Minnesota River.  With another large group starting at a different spot on the same trail it is estimated 80 people were on Fat bikes on that trail on December 1.   It was started by a simple suggestion by a guy in England in the MTBR forum   People from Australia to Finland participated with Minneapolis being the largest group of fat bikes to ever ride together.

 First pic is under 494 on the south/east side of Minnesota River.  The tree pic is from a part of the trail Heath and I had never been on between 35W and Cedar Ave.  This trail is close to the river and avoids the nature area further inland.

 Panoramic just before crossing Cedar.  I really liked the Fat bike folk we met and rode with.

 Crappy pic of my first try at a spiral tree light.  Ella and Maya keep shaming me about not having better lights and a bunch of lit up figures in the yard "like every one else has."  

 I made my own energy bars and am really happy with how easy and cheap they are to make.  I guessed it was basically just a rice crispy bar with other stuff in it.  I toasted 4 cups oatmeal and some sesame seeds.  I then mixed that with 2 cups of rice crispies,  some flax meal, chia seeds, dried blueberrys  a little cocoa and some walnuts.  Instead of just marshmallows and butter for the sticky part I substituted in some coconut oil to keep them chewy and to use less butter and some honey in place of some marshmallows to keep it soft.  Melted the sticky stuff stired in the dry stuff and spread it in a 9 by 13 pan to cool.  Vacuum sealed them to preserve them.   They are high in good carbs and very high in fiber.  I may add more nuts or almond butter next time.

 15 people and 5 dogs at the house for thanksgiving.  Great time and only 2 pee's and one poop out of all the dogs.  Barkley is Krisy's dog and is very hard to photograph

 Shelly and Mike have the loveable Miles

 John and Vic brought cute little Sammy a Havanese. 

 Mazy was a very good host.  All the dogs got along great.

 Lynn and ArNetta brought Tiny the ity bitty poodle.

 My Moonlander got some new Bud and Lou tires.  The biggest most bad ass tires ever made for a bike that is.  So far they roll great off road.

 Heath and I went riding down along the Missisippi.  The fat tires rolled great over all the surfaces from sand to big slate rocks.  Found some rocks with fossils.

 I went to a class at the Midwest Mountaineering expo taught by Ed Bouffard of Skipulk.com.  I learned how to make my pulk in what I was told was Ed's last class he will ever do.  A pulk is basically just a sled you pull stuff in but Ed has developed a system that is very well thought out simple and effective.  His sleds have been to the poles on actic expeditions.  I hope to use mine with snow shoes to pull Maya to make a track that I can then later back country ski on and fat bike on.  

 With my La Cruz Cyclo Cross bike taking up all the road and gravel duties and my Moonlander being used for all offroad and snow my El Mariachi was left without a purpose.

 So I decided to make it a grocery getter of bikes.

 The thought of figuring out bags, lights, special ridding clothes etc before using a bike to do in town errands has been a major deterrent.  "I'll just drive." 

 Not anymore.  Day or night this bike is ready for errands without the need to find a bunch of stuff or change clothes to ride.

 Lastly have I mentioned how much I love all my girls.  

Co2 emissions human vs car

I have been wondering if it actually is better for the environment to ride a bike than drive.  What I question is how much CO2 am I putting out breathing hard while riding the bike as compared to a car.   The TLDR version of this is yes your bike is way better.  

Here is why.
Figuring out the numbers below is very complicated and you can complicate it very quickly by adding anything from a riders fitness, the course and factors like the CO2 involved in heating the water for a post ride shower or growing the food for the post ride meal.
Take the numbers as the best estimates I could find and should not be quoted as fact.
My 2009 Honda fit puts out about 287grams of CO2 per mile
Running a 10 minute mile is about 126 grams of CO2 per mile
Cycling at about 12 miles/hour is about 60 grams of CO2 per mile

The bike wins the low score but as the smart person I quote below points out it doesn't really matter how much I CO2 I produce while on my bike.  

"It doesn't matter how much carbon dioxide you exhale when you ride

your bike, because none of it contributes to the buildup of carbondioxide in the atmosphere.  This buildup is caused by burning fossilfuels, which releases carbon that has been bound up in the slow carboncycle for millions of years.  All the carbon you exhale came fromplants that you ate.  Or from animals or fungi you ate, but theanimals and fungi got it from plants.  The plants got it from theatmosphere.  So the carbon you exhale was in the atmosphere no morethan a year or two previously, and even if you hadn't eaten it andexhaled it, it would soon end up back in the atmosphere.  Bacteriawill eat it if nothing else (it will 'rot'). The movement of carbonthrough the fast carbon cycle does not change the composition of theatmosphere. So by riding your bike you are not contributing to thegreenhouse effect at all."

 I think it is great that I am not part of the slow carbon cycle.  I didn't think I rode fast enough.

Gravel Ride to do some day

Link to the fun gravel ride.  I have spent some time over the last few years looking for a way to map gravel/dirt road rides and have pretty much failed.  I got this one off of Ibikempls.  It is called the gravel Wine ride I think.  I think just getting out and riding may be the best way to find and learn of good gravel/dirt roads.  This route will be a good start to my own course. 

Below are some pics from our Disney trip.   It is not what we will likely see on this gravel ride.

Sure was a long neck on that Giraffe. 

I want big Knards

Minnehaha Creek ride.

I rode Minnehaha Creek today east from about Lyndale and 50th street south.  Most of it was pretty fast and dry like the second pic.  The rest never got deeper than my ankle and was not muddy at all.  A couple of ducks followed me as I rode along.  Oddly as I left the creek the ducks told me they would continuing on down the creek to the river for dinner.  I encouraged them to be safe and was on my way.   

Ella and Maya at 4 years old

 

These are pics in the woods just east of powers and south of 212.  Ella and I discovered this old boat up in the woods when she was 4.  Ella is not smiling because it was very hot, humid and buggy the day we took our pics.   I just realized that I took the same pics with Maya at the same age and thought it would be fun to compare them. 

 

 

Fort Snelling

Look I'm blogging like Q

 

I am sure I have tried to listen to Husker Du multiple times in the past and for some reason it never clicked.  Then this fine morning I listened to the stuff they made before 1985 and love it.  It was like I turned on a New York station and  I couldn't believe what I heard at all.

In the past when less impressed I must have listened to Husker Du's later more pop stuff because this stuff is fast, raw, loud and harsh.   I got this album, Metal Circus and Zen Arcade.  Things seem to get kind of light after that.  

Some weekend memories