QZ qz thoughts
a blog from Eli the Bearded
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Mixed lentils


After a day out on Alameda Island, I stopped at a store to buy some drinks. I happened across an interesting looking corner market and went in. Although not clearly stated as such, it appeared to a Turkish shop and I could have spent a good while perusing the shelves. Instead I grabbed some cold drinks and picked up a bag of Sadaf mixed lentils. The lentils caught my eye with such a pretty mix of faded pastel colors.

pale pastel goodness

Trouble is, I had no recipe and found none while searching. So I needed to improvise. The following is a recipe that evolved from my spicy dal recipe. The general plan is cook lentils in water for a long while, then in a separate pan cook some seasoning. Mix the two and enjoy. Like that dal, this can be eaten hot or cold.

  • 3 cups water
  • 1 cup mixed lentils (Sadaf's mixture seems to be about equal parts green peas, yellow peas, green lentils, and red lentils)

Rinse the lentils and put in a suitably sized sauce pan on full heat. When it reaches a boil, lower heat and skim off the foam. Add then cover (with slight vent) and simmer:

  • 1" to 2" ginger, peeled and cut in thirds
  • 1/2 teaspoon tumeric powder
  • 2 or 3 bay leaves

Let that go for a while. Figure 30 to 60 minutes depending on how low your low heat is. Give it a stir every once in a while and add more water if it seems prematurely dry. What you are looking for is some of the lentils to have broken down to create a thick broth and some to still be whole.

When it seems about ready, time start the temper. Get a small to medium fry pan heating with:

  • 1 tablesoon of oil, or substitute ghee for all or part of the oil

When hot add one at a time:

  • 1 teaspoon of whole cumin
  • a pinch of asafoetida powder (aka "hing")
  • 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper

When the cumin has been toasted for 30 seconds or so, add

  • 1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
  • 5 or 6 cloves garlic, minced

On medium-high heat, cook mixing frequently until the onions start to brown. Then it's time to look back to the lentil pan. Turn off heat and fish out and discard the ginger and bay leaves. With those out of the way, add all of the contents of the frying pan to the sauce pan. Mix the temper into the lentils along with:

  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

I've eaten it as a side with rice and curried vegetables, and as a cold spread on warm pita, like I would have hummus. As a main dish, I'd find it wanting some more texture and some more greens. And unfortunately, the colors cook out to leave basically just a light green.

Sticker Roller Box


Shelf full of sticker rolls

Each of these rolls has a label for a different product.

My wife sells sewing patterns. Patterns directly sold to customers through the website have the package just taped shut (with color coded tape). Patterns sold in stores need information on the back about sizes and how what materials are needed. Originally she just used to print stickers in a laser printer, but as sales grew that became expensive and awkward. So she had stickers printed by a service. For price-per-sticker reasons, she gets a thousand at a time for each pattern. These come in heavy rolls. Sometimes it will be a single large roll of 1000, sometimes two medium rolls of 500 each.

Rolls want to be rolled. But if you just put them up on a closet hanger pole, they don't roll well. The bar isn't near the center, there's friction, and it ends up being a mess.

So instead support these giant rolls with two smaller bars. And make a "roller bearing" to help them spin. I made a set of boxes to do just that.

One view of an empty roller box

The box doesn't have a bottom, that's just the wooden shelf it is setting on. I orginally planned it around using the rollers in the upper position only. For a full large sticker roll that is necessary. The medium sticker roll is more forgiving of variations. Both will fall through the wide one eventually, and need the narrow.

Another view of an empty roller box

The box partially visible on the left has the narrow roller on top configuration for a small (500 sticker) roll. The empty box has the configuration for a large (1000 sticker) roll.

Each box is made from four identically sized pieces of wood, with sides each having four holes corresponding to two high rollers and two low rollers. One pair of rollers is wide, for big rolls, one pair is narrow for smaller. The box can be flipped to make wide or narrow the higher pair.

The rollers are 3/8" (9.4mm) steel bars with 1/2" (12.7mm) inner diameter PVC water pipe for a roller bearing. There are only two rollers at a time in a box, the steel bars are just friction fit and can be swapped.

This works great. If I were doing it all again, I'd not use the all four identically sized pieces of wood design.

Simplied sketch of construction

The holes have to be offset differently on left and right sides with this layout which ended up making the drilling of the holes and the assembly a lot more complicated than it needed to be. Setting up the table saw for cutting longer and shorter pieces of wood would have been much easier overall.

Abacus


I saw this antique wearable abacus recently and thought "How small an abacus can I make?" Answer is "Not quite that small, but pretty tiny."

Abacus ring

Chinese abacus ring, about 12mm x 7mm (0.5" x 0.36"), that inspired me.

Wood frame on blue tape as glue dries

I cut some thin slivers of wood, drilled tiny (#66 drill bit, .033", .838mm) holes, and then glued into a frame shape. To hold it while the glue dried, I stuck it to blue painters tape. My smallest seed beads are 1.5mm, so I drilled holes 2mm apart. Final size will be about twice as wide as the ring.

Starting to bead

I stained the wood and glued a brass angle iron on for reinforcement. I'm using colored jewelry wire.

Custom bead tweezers

I'm using a bead tweezers I cut from a coffee stirrer (see first picture, next to blue tape). It flexes to grasp beads pushed in, then the wire catches them to remove. Grid on ruler is in tenths of an inch.

Finished, next to a Lego plate

Smaller than a 4x2 Lego plate. Functional abacus with ten rods of seven beads each, brass reinforced wood frame.

Special Breakfast


Once a month my dogs need to get dosed up. There's a pill for flea and tick prevention and a "treat" for heartworm. Willie hates them. The treat is inedible to him and the pill a terror. He is not tricked by embedding medicine in tasty things like cheese or hot dogs. So how to get him to take it?

Special Breakfast.

This is a literal dog's breakfast of a meal. Crush the pill, finely chop the "treat".

Dog food bowl with medicine.

Add to that some of this and some of that, basically any dog-tasty leftovers in the fridge. Maybe like pesto linguini, grilled chicken, and french fries, then top with some crushed cheese crackers. Looking good, right?

food."

Now add a few pieces of kibble and dress with mayo and water. I use hot water to make it a warm meal. Delicious.

Dog food bowl with medicine, human food, kibble, and dressing.

And that's how Willie manages to tolerate medicine. Hazel, on the other hand loves to eat and will easily accept pills in cheese or the like. She gets Special Breakfast to be fair, not because it's necessary.