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Pierogies – The Fuel That Makes the Superhero Go

WifeGirl and HomeOwnerMan work very well in the kitchen together. WifeGirl is usually the Master Chef, while HomeOwnerMan is comfortable in his role as Sous-Chef. There are a few notable exceptions to this rule, however.

Pierogies have been in my family for as far back as we can remember. My mother learned from my grandmother, and I learned from both of them. So, when it comes to pierogies, I am generally in the driver’s seat here. Which suits WifeGirl just fine; she has enough running things the rest of the time.

The great thing about pierogies is that they are something that does not follow the rule “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” In fact, there are so many jobs involved that it makes for a very social time to make a large batch. Over the years I have made them with many friends, and we started to have PierogiFest every year because of the social aspect of it. Throw in some prosecco and you’ve created a whole new tradition. In fact, we have learned that we prefer to hold some sort of event when we have people over rather than to just entertain for the sake of entertaining. It has been received well. We did a scotch tasting a couple of years ago, for example. This was popular with scotch lovers and novices alike because it gives everyone a sense of purpose and belonging.

Anyway, here are the pierogies as my family makes them, and including a few things I’ve learned over the years.

Pierogi Recipe

Notes from 2017 Pierogifest: We used the pasta roller on a setting of 3, but 4 probably would have been better, because a lot broke. Remember to not overfill them. 5 cups of flour = 25 oz if using a scale. I found you can start the recipe with 30 oz flour per batch of dough. If you add the liquid ingredients together and mix them well, you can put the full 30 oz of flour in at once and the dough hook will do a great job of getting it mixed and pliable, with only small amounts of added flour needed.

From “The Frugal Gourmet on our Immigrant Ancestors” and my Grandmother Anna Semanko Dzwonczyk

(This is really light and tasty dough which uses sour cream as the liquid element. I make mine in a mixer one batch at a time. Each batch makes about 7 dozen pierogi.)

2 cups sour cream

5 cups all—purpose flour

2 tablespoons melted butter

2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients and knead into soft, pliable dough, adding flour until it is no longer sticky. Cut in half, and let rest, covered, for about 10 minutes. Roll out each half into a thin circle. Using a drinking glass cut the dough into circles and fill them with the desired filling. Place less than a tablespoon of filling in the center of each circle and fold over. Wet the edges with a little water, and press into a half moon. Seal with a fork. Cook for 20 minutes in boiling salted water. Drain. They can be pan—fried in butter at this point, if you wish, for a really tasty finish.

***A couple of suggestions and hints from watching Anna Dzwonczyk do this:

She cut her dough into 3” squares and folded them over into smaller triangles. (I prefer the circle/half-moon technique myself).
Roll the dough out pretty thin, like 1/8 or 3/16”, in other words, as thin as possible without “filling herniation”, and liberally flour the dough as you roll it out.
Rather than pan-frying the pierogies, cover the boiled pierogies in melted butter and browned onions.
If you are freezing them for future use, don’t make one big hockey puck like Paul Sleph and I did one time. Here’s what you do: Sprinkle cookie sheets with a liberal amount of corn meal. Lay out the pierogies in rows across the pan (or columns down the pan if you think they’ll taste better.) Freeze them until they are set, and then bag them in labeled plastic bags.
I use a pasta roller and ravioli forms to make the pierogies. This makes the pierogies more uniform so that they all cook at the same rate. If you are doing it this way, start at the thickest setting, adding flour with every pass and getting down to a thin setting (3 on my machine). Place the dough over the ravioli form, fill them, wet the seams, and lay the 2nd piece of dough over it. Seal them by passing a rolling pin over them. Poke a single toothpick hole in each one to allow trapped air to escape when cooking. This keeps them from bursting.

Anna’s favorite Potato and cheese filling:

3/4 lb. sharp orange cheddar cheese, grated

3 potatoes, peeled, boiled, and mashed

While the potatoes are still hot, add the cheese and mix together well. Cool in the refrigerator until room temperature or below. Fill pierogies. This will fill about 7 dozen pierogies.

Anna’s prune filling:

(I know this sounds gross, but I guarantee you’ll like it.)

1 box pitted prunes

1 tablespoon sugar

Stew the prunes until soft in a saucepan in just enough water to cover them. Drain. Add about 1 tablespoon of sugar, and mash the prunes until they become a thick paste. Use as filling. This will fill about 3 dozen.

Barbara Gatta (of Brooklyn)’s apricot filling:

(my personal favorite, and Florence’s too)

1 pkg of dried apricots

~1/4 cup sugar

Stew the apricots, in just enough water to cover them, until soft. Add the sugar (more or less to taste) until the mixture is sweet. Mash. Use as filling. This will fill about 3 dozen.

Florence Dzwonczyk’ and Paul Sleph’s Sauerkraut Filling

1 14 oz. can of Sauerkraut

¾ bottle beer.

Empty the sauerkraut into a sauce pan and add the beer. Finish the beer. Heat the sauerkraut for 10 minutes on medium heat. Allow to cool, and then drain thoroughly through a colander. Use as filling. This will fill about 3 dozen.

Joann Strnad’s Suggestion – Pumpkin Filling

1 3lb. pumpkin, roasted, seeded, pureed, and drained (will amount to about 2 cups. You can also use canned pumpkin if you want – the color will be a lot bolder. Substitute squash, or even yams or sweet potatoes, if you like.)

1/2 cup chopped cooked bacon

2 whole heads of garlic, roasted until soft and dark golden

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 tsp. pepper

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Salt, to taste

I used a food processor, but you don’t have to. I prefer a uniform texture in my pierogies, and this is the easiest way. You can just mash everything together if you like – that’ll work perfectly well too.

Combine pumpkin, bacon, garlic, cheese, pepper, and nutmeg. Mix well, then taste. Adjust your seasonings if need be. This would be the time to add salt if you feel like it.

Before there was HomeOwnerMan, there was Pretzel King

A long, long time ago in a kingdom far, far away there was a family with six children. The youngest of these was a little boy who was so starved for attention that he would go to great lengths to be noticed by his family. He tried comedy acts which brought brief attention but required long hours of dreaming them up, planning them, finding the appropriate time to perform them, and making them look spontaneous. (I should mention that the little boy is older now but still devotes a fair amount of time to this.)

Observing his youngest sister on a few occasions, who was equally starved for attention and was further saddled with middle child syndrome, he noticed that she started making a coffee cake recipe which, although it took some time, brought with it praise an accolades from the other family members. They started heaping praise on her and spontaneously giving her attention by requesting that she make the coffee cake when they were hungry for something homemade.

So the little boy got an idea. He found a soft pretzel recipe and tried it on his family. The recipe took some time and a great deal of effort and the pretzels were somewhat dense, but the family loved them. They started giving him attention. He started making the pretzels more often. All was good.

But soon the boy realized it was a lot of work, and so he wouldn’t make the pretzels when the family asked. But they were clever. They started saying things like, “we’d make them, but they don’t come out as good as yours.” That worked for a while, and even stirred the boy into improving his own recipe. He looked up other recipes. He experimented with the recipe. He got advice from his grandmother, who was an expert at all sorts of breads and foods. The pretzels gradually became lighter and of better quality.

But again, he began to resist the effort of making them. Until one day when a sister, much older and more clever than he, came up with a new strategy. She began calling him “Pretzel King”, and began saying things like “Pretzel King makes the ~best~ pretzels” and spinning yarns about “the Pretzel Kingdom” and his “Pretzel subjects.” He so loved these stories that he went back to the kitchen to again make pretzels, passing the time and work with visions of his kingdom. The stories became more fanciful; the pretzels reached a pinnacle. The little boy had truly become “The Pretzel King.”

For many years the Pretzel King guarded his recipe, keeping it close and modifying it only slightly. In the advent of bread machines the most laborious part, kneading the dough, became much simpler. Later, he even added the use of commercial style mixers to the process. But now, for all to make, is the Pretzel King’s secret recipe.

Enjoy them. Make them for your family. Have your own fantasy kingdom.

Soft Pretzel Recipe

Dough Ingredients:

1 ¼ cup water (warm)

2 tablespoon Margarine

1 tablespoon Sugar

1 teaspoon Salt

4 cups flour (or 2 cups whole wheat and 2 cups white)

1 tablespoon yeast

Preparation ingredients:

¼ cup baking soda

1 egg

¼ cup Kosher Salt

In a bread machine add dough ingredients in order, or if kneading by hand, put the water, melted margarine, yeast and sugar in the bottom of a large glass bowl and mix until dissolved. Allow yeast to activate for 5 minutes. Add flour gradually, mixing well until it becomes too thick to mix. Then knead in the rest of the flour and add more until the dough is no longer sticky. Work the dough hard for 3 – 4 minutes until smooth, then set aside in a bowl in a warm area to rise for 30 min to an hour.

Pre-heat oven to 375° F. Divide the dough into 12 equal parts. Roll each dough ball into a 18” x ¾” rope, and twist into traditional shapes or braid into tiny loaves or wreaths.

Boil 4 cups of water and add ¼ cup baking soda. Blanch the pretzels in the solution until they float to the surface, and remove them with a slotted spoon. Place them on cookie racks to drip dry. Move them to cookie sheets. Prepare an egg wash by beating the egg with 2 tablespoons of water. Brush liberally on each pretzel. Sprinkle kosher salt on them to liking. Bake for 20-30 minutes until they are golden brown. Cool on cookie racks or eat while still warm.

Who is that masked caricaturist?

I wrote this Yelp* review of www.EmilyArts.com a couple of weeks ago after she created the “face of HomeOwnerMan.” (So you can all blame her.) I wanted to post it here too along with some other tidbits about Emily…

****

I should mention at the outset that I’ve known Emily for many years, and I mention this because I have had the opportunity to view scores of her caricatures on social media. I never get tired of looking at them, and I’ll tell you why. Emily does more than capture what the person looks like; she somehow manages to depict their entire personality right on the page. For many years I thought this was just a perception I had, but one day she posted a caricature of a woman I’ve known since high school. Let me tell you, the image so accurately depicted her personality that I had to do a double-take to make sure it wasn’t one of those animated “Harry Potter” photographs.

So, when my wife suggested that I start a blog to showcase some of my tall tales and attempts at painting, I immediately thought that the site would be enhanced by a caricature by Emily. I contacted her, and she made the process as easy as could be. She asked me to email few good photographs of myself (if there is such a thing). Then we discussed what it was I was looking for. Her pricing schedule is written clearly on her web site, so we chose the appropriate one, and she was off and running. She sent periodic drafts to ensure I was happy with the direction in which she was going. From the first pencil sketch it was clear that I would be better off giving her full artistic license, because she really knows the business. By the time she got to the finished product, I marveled (and was horrified at the same time lol) at how much it looked like me. Even more incredible was that it looked a little like my mother, who to my knowledge Emily never met and even more incredibly most people say I look like my father. And yet she accentuated parts of my face that are part of my mother’s ancestry.

So, let’s talk about the business transaction a little more. Have you ever worked with artists? They can be quirky and the business transaction can be awkward. This is not at all the case with Emily. She is upfront about costs, deadlines, and requirements. This makes her perfect for doing corporate events where there is a bean-counter watching from a business perspective. She is unobtrusive, which makes her perfect for your wedding or Bar Mitzvah. Her prices are very reasonable, which makes her perfect for your family gathering. And she is fun, which makes her perfect for your birthday party.

Thanks, Emily, for making the ordinary extraordinary!

*****

I went to high school with Emily. It was in the early days when they started closing down Catholic schools for low attendance, or as I learned recently from Emily, in order to sell off valuable land to the highest bidder. Anyway, Emily got displaced into my high school from an all-girls high school, which in theory meant that my chances of a date on a Friday night just improved. It was always just a theory. Anyway, it turned out that I was not the only senior in the parking lot driving a ’74 Plymouth Satellite, there was also a “Notre Dame” girl who drove one, too. Actually, hers might have been a ’73, I can’t remember and it is not important to the story, but if my brother is reading this and happens to remember what year hers was, he would correct me so I might as well disclaim it here.

Anyway, it was a foot in the door to talk to Emily which I did, shyly, but I never got to really know her until Senior Week 1982 in Wildwood, NJ. It was there I found out she had a boyfriend, and I was demoralized only slightly, because I had a girlfriend at the time too. But it turned out her boyfriend was working and couldn’t come to senior week, and my girlfriend was an underclassman so wouldn’t likely be there. So we made one of those “When Harry Met Sally” deals that if we both were alone on Wednesday night we’d hit the clubs together.

Wednesday came, and I was alone as was she all day. Things were looking up. So I gussied up the best I could and arrived at her door to go out. I was crestfallen as she answered the door and introduced me to her boyfriend. [queue violins].

Flash forward 30 years. Facebook came along. Emily and I got back in touch. She immortalized me in a caricature. HomeOwnerMan.com was born.

What Do You Do For a Living?

It is frequently the first question people ask you when they meet you, and sometimes it is more difficult to answer than one might think. It should be a softball question, one you can hit out of the park, and yet I find myself stumped by it frequently. I mean, not as my Super-hero self, mind you. I always have a good answer when I’m in uniform like “Oh, save the world from leaky faucets” or “keep America squeak and leaf free.” But when I’m protected by the super tool belt, few people ever ask me that. They ask me “can I have your autograph?” or “did you really build that yourself?” or “are you going to eat those Fritos?” (Actually, Wifegirl is the only one who ever asks me “are you going to eat those Fritos?”).

No, it is when I’m not in my supersuit that I have the most trouble with that question. And it gets harder and harder every year. When I was young I could easily answer with:

I’m in third grade.

I’m a student.

When I started getting jobs, they were defined by one task and so it was easy to answer:

I mow lawns.

I wash lunch trucks (and forage through the Tastykake pies that I’m supposed to load onto them).

I flip burgers.

As I got into late high school and early college, it got more complex, but still was pretty straightforward:

I serve dinner to senior citizens, and sometimes wheel them back to their apartments when they can’t make it on their own. Sometimes I make up their menus by crossing out the things they’re not allowed to eat like salt or fat.

I drive a Rosati Italian Water Ice truck. Not the kind that sells to the kids who are running down the street with a quarter in their hand and their little sister trailing behind; the kind that delivers to Woolworths and ice cream parlors and little league fields.

I repair A.V. equipment for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Well, I don’t actually repair it,I clean it and plug it in. If it works I wrap up the power cord and put a twist tie on it. If it sparks or makes a grinding noise, I put a repair tag on it and describe the noise or the color of the sparks.

For many years I was an organist at my church. One morning after Mass a man came up to me and said, “Hey, you’re pretty good. Do you do this in real life?” He saw the quizzical look on my face as I formulated an answer. [Hmmm…In real life…Hmmm…Is church not real life?] I was pleased with the answer that popped up in my glasses like they did in the “Terminator” movies. My answer was neither insulting nor used any swear words like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s answer, but was a simple:

Yes, but not by trade.

Soon I was out in the working world. It became tougher to answer “What do you do for a living” for several reasons. First, I didn’t do just one thing. Like in my first job for an AgChem company the answer was essentially:

I kill weeds.

But it was actually much more like:

I kill weeds while trying simultaneously to not kill the crop species, not cause harm to the environment or wildlife, and do so without breathing anything that will kill me or adversely affect my heretofore non-existent offspring.

And I found that girls in bars were not so impressed by:

I kill weeds.

So I learned to cloud the actual truth with corporate speak like:

In a challenging environment I subject the next generation of agricultural chemicals to a rigorous round of biological efficacy testing before they make it to the toxicological stage of testing.

That didn’t so much work with the girls in the bars, either. It only got harder when I moved from research on plants to research on animals. I found out quickly that I really had to shroud what I actually did for a living by what I in theory did for a living.

I’m looking for a way to protect the heart from the damage caused by an ischemic event.

That sounded better than what I really did which involved the hearts of many different species of animals. As the years went on, research increasing moved from the animal to the test tube. But there was a fundamental lack of understanding for the complexities of molecular biology and biochemistry, and if I used terms like “gene-splicing” or “cloning” people would either yell at me or get all weirded out. Invariably they would ask if I was making Dolly the Sheep. “No, I’m making IL-4” would be my answer, and they would get more weirded out thinking IL-4 was some humanized form of R2D2. So I began answering the “what do you do” question with:

I move minute amounts of liquid from one place to another with great precision.

By this point I was married, so I didn’t have to impress the girls in the bars. Most recently, however, I moved out of the labs and into the world of computers. I thought this might make it easier to answer the question, but it really didn’t. While in theory my answer should be:

I support the discovery research scientists with their data collection, reduction, and aggregation needs

it is really more like:

I tell people to “press the button.”

Because most of the time people call me with their computer problems, and most of the time they have a pretty good idea that their problem could mean the loss of a lot of work. So my job is to, in a very calm voice, tell them to do what they already know they have to do. It goes something like this:

Them: It says “Unspecified java error. Ignore or Abort.“ I already tried “Ignore.”

Me: Try clicking “Abort.”

Them: Are you sure?

Me: Oh, absolutely. (I’ve never seen this problem before in my life, and it’s not my data afterall.)

Them: OK. Here I go. Hey! It worked! Thanks, you’re a genius! (I love that part.)

And as I’ve progressed in my IT career, I have learned the wisdom of turning the machine off and turning it back on. So after 18 years of school and 28 years in the working world, my answer to the question “What do you do for a living” is:

I tell the people to turn it off and turn it back on.

I’m a genius.

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Have-you-tried-turning-off-your-conscious-mind-and-then-turning-it-back-o-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i10809056_.htm

HomeOwnerMan takes on E-Commerce

I will say at the outset that I love e-commerce. I never set foot in a store unless I absolutely have to do so. But the internet has not necessarily simplified commerce, as seen by the example below:

The old way:

You choose the item from the shelf, walk to the front of the store and hand the guy $21.49 in cash for the item. He puts it in a bag and hands it to you.

The new, simplified way:

Pictures3

You choose the item from the web site, ignoring the pop-up from “Fore See” asking you to take part in a survey when your shopping experience is finished. The item goes into your shopping cart. When you click on your shopping cart to purchase the item you have to ignore the ads for “people who bought this item also bought…” You click check out and it asks you if you are a new customer or if you’d like to create an account. You can’t remember ever shopping with them, so you choose “create new account.” You fill out the forty specific fields on the form, and it is rejected because you used your 9-digit zip-code and it only wanted 5 digits. You fill all forty fields in again, and it rejects your form because it can’t find the street on which you’ve lived for 16 years. You accept their suggestion (it has an extra space between the words), and fill in the 40 fields again. It rejects it because you got the warped visual “Captcha” letters wrong. You fill out the forty fields again, and it rejects your form because your password was too weak, and should include “at least one number, one capital letter, and one special character, but not #, %, @, or &.” You come up with a password you will never remember, and it rejects your form because “an account already exists for this email address.”

So, you try to log in with your existing account. It tells you either your username or password are incorrect. You are given the choice “forgot username” and “forgot password.” You choose “forgot password”, and it asks you to verify your account by security questions. The first one is easy -“What is your favorite color?” You’re sure it is blue, but wait, did your wife set up this account in which case it would be red? You guess correctly, and it asks “what is your maternal grandmother’s maiden name?” Racking your brains, you come up with a name you are pretty sure about, but it turns out it was your paternal grandmother’s maiden name. It gives you another chance, and you get it right. It sends an email to your email address on file, so you open another browser window and log in to your email. There is a message from the company from whom you are trying to make the purchase, with a link that says “reset password”. You follow the link (it opens another browser window), and it asks you to type a password and repeat the password. Having been through this, you know to include at least one number, one capital letter, and a special character but not #, %, @, or &. The little “Strong” icon pops up next to your password, so you click “submit.” You get the message “You may not use any password you have used in the past 90 days.” So you come up with a new one. It accepts the new password.

You’re in, except that your shopping cart has expired, and you have to find the item again. You locate the item, put it in your shopping cart, and click “checkout.” It asks how you want to pay and you choose “PayPal.” A Paypal log in pops up. You rack your brain to remember which email address you used when you opened your Paypal account. You guess correctly, but immediately opt for the “forgot password” choice. Paypal sends you an email with a link to reset your password. You reset it, using the above procedure, and are confronted with a new set of warped letters to decode. You get it wrong twice and click the “listen” button. Someone with a strong German accent and a lot of background noise says “depletion”. You type it in, and the screen refreshes with a page that looks like an invoice, except that it says, “The item you has ordered is no longer in stock. We suggest these other items as a replacement.” None of the items have absolutely anything to do with what you wanted.

You go away and play “Bejeweled Blitz” in frustration.

HomeOwnerMan: Saving Daylight Time

HomeOwnerMan is socially conscious. He’s been known to save a tree, or save the whales, and occasionally, when the fancy-schmancy envelopes come in the mail, he’s been known to save the date. But recently the talk in the superhero circles had turned to saving daylight. Mankind had spent all winter winnowing away daylight. Everyone drove their daylight-guzzling SUVs and forgot to turn off the sun when they came inside. When they were through charging up their battery-operated daylight they didn’t take the time to reach down and unplug their daylight chargers. This let daylight leak out of the trickle-charger and make a puddle of daylight on the floor.

In short, everyone was talking about saving daylight, but no one was doing anything about it. And HomeOwnerMan had a hunch why: no mortal man could save daylight on his own. It would take a superhero like HomeOwnerMan and an idea that had been around for thousands of years and was first implemented in Germany about 100 years ago. The original German idea went like this: “What if we deprive everyone of an hour of sleep on the second weekend in March? That will get them to stop complaining about wasting daylight.” It was a diabolical plan, but it actually yielded some good things, like plunging early morning commuters back into the pitch darkness from which they were finally beginning to emerge. And since the rest of the free world, except for a few exceptionally backward counties in Indiana, Michigan, and the Navajo Nation observed it anyway, HomeOwnerMan thought this would be an easy gig. But he was wrong, and he was about to be enlightened.

For one thing, Daylight Savings Time usually fell around HomeOwnerMan’s birthday, casting a damp, moldy blanket over the birthday festivities. Honestly, HomeOwnerMan would probably be in bed anyway, but it gave him a good excuse to be there on his birthday weekend. Secondly, it always fell on Saturday night / Sunday morning. Why? Why not Tuesday so you could go to work groggy on Wednesday? And thirdly, why was it scheduled for the middle of the night? Why not go from 3:59 PM to 5:00 PM, jumping from late-afternoon snack right to quitting time? No one would complain about that. But that is not the way it works, is it?

As luck would have it, HomeOwnerMan and WifeGirl were scheduled to sleep at a friend’s house for daylight savings time this year. This presented a difficult first challenge- the dreaded guest room clock from the 70’s. The 70’s were great for many things such as glitter-wearing horn bands and jarts. But in the arena of time pieces it was dominated by red LED clocks with “time”, “slow” and “fast” buttons. HomeOwnerMan had long ago mastered the “press and hold the ‘time’ button while simultaneously pressing either the ‘slow’ or ‘fast’ button” routine of this genre. The clock said 11:17 and since the clock only needed to go an hour ahead, HomeOwnerMan started by using ‘slow’ button. But it progressed at a snails pace, so HomeOwnerMan foolishly touched the ‘fast’ button. The clock suddenly rocketed forward stopping at 12:21, three minutes past the appointed time. That necessitated the maneuver known as “going around the horn.” This time he stopped at 12:16, but now he had to decide if another minute had lapsed while making the rounds. Should he go to 12:18 or 12:19? And wait, was the clock 12 hours off? 12:19 was in the AM realm so that would mean that the PM dot, a standard indicator on 70’s clocks, should be off rather than on. So this guest clock must have been off by 12 hours at least since the previous power failure. He advanced it to the next 12:19 (with no PM dot), and then debated with himself like Lincoln and Douglas whether it was now 12:20.

The next morning was uneventful at first. Returning home from their soirée with plenty of time before the 11:30 Mass, a Mass they rarely attend, HomeOwnerMan had time to make the sweep of the house – the microwave, the range, the wall clocks, and the DVD player. On the way to church he fixed the car clock, complete with uninterpretable German universal symbols on the controls. In church they saw plenty of sub-humans who were normally from earlier Masses who had forgotten to spring forward. HomeOwnerMan knew he was better than them, and was over-confident that he had all of his bases covered. He went to bed Sunday night having all but forgotten about daylight savings time.

The alarm went off Monday morning at 5:00 AM. HomeOwnerMan woke up feeling that all was right with the world. It was dark outside, which it should be just after “spring forward.” He unfurled his yoga mat, and began twisting himself into a pretzel. But he suddenly realized that his “pigeon prep” felt more like “frozen pigeon.” The bedroom was colder than a brass casket. HomeOwnerMan was once again foiled by the “spring-forward-fall-backward-set-back-thermostat.” It was the thing he forgot every daylight Sunday and was always rudely and briskly reminded on daylight Monday.

Making his way in the dark to the thermostat wearing an undershirt and yoga pants, he looked through blurry eyes at the array of buttons labeled “mode”, “fan”. “prog”, “^”, “v” and “hold”, and a clock that said “Mon 4:05 AM”. There was also a set of instructions that were printed in 0.2 point minimicromidget font. He punched a few buttons and the display lit up. The word “Hold” illuminated; he looked at the temperature which read “62°”. “Hold” would be bad at this temperature, so he forged on like a S.W.A.T. member diffusing a bomb. Finally “Mon” started to flash, which meant he had stumbled into “time set mode.” A few button-clicks later, the heat whirred into action and the time was finally set correctly. There would be no frozen pigeon today.

HomeOwnerMan: making the ordinary extra ordinary.

Craigslist Ad: Beauty is Just a Light Switch Away

[I placed this ad on Craigslist a couple of years ago to sell my old lawn tractor. I got full price in about 2 days…]

They say that “Beauty is just a light switch away.” I can say that this is truly the case with this baby. Is she arm candy? No, not in 2013. But she turned some heads in her day when I bought her from Pennington Sales and Service, the former authorized dealer of John Deere products to Central New Jersey. The neighbors up to that point all had crappy Sears tractors until “that damned upstart kid moved into the neighborhood.” They all saw my John Deere LT 155 and immediately fell in love with it. The two nearest neighbors got themselves one within a year or two they were so impressed.

What made her so great? Well, to begin with, she sported that iconic green and yellow paint that people have come to associate with John Deere. But also the even cut that she produced, adeptly mulching the clippings into the grass so that they virtually disappeared into the lawn. They liked the relative quiet (at that time one of the quietest tractors available). And I won’t lie, they liked the Shea Stadium pattern the lawn took on when I was finished mowing. (They all used to do the less appealing spiral cut; they have all followed suit with the string-theory cut like I do, changing direction by 45-degrees every week).

Flash forward 15 years. The lawn still looks like an MLB infield, in no small way because of the Freedom 42″ mulching deck. The old girl can still get around, making short work of my 0.94 acre lot in an hour and 5 minutes. But the old girl, she is showing her age looks-wise. The Kohler 15 HP engine still cold starts in less than two seconds, powered by the brand new Auto Zone battery she received this spring. But, she now has a Frankenstein scar. This was the Achilles heel of these babies — the chassis was made out of plastic which eventually develops stress cracks. Virtually any of these that are for sale have the same problem to a greater or lesser degree. But, fueled by my love for “Zip-ties”, I took care of the problem. She may have a big scar and a broken bumper, but it is good for telling stories like “the day I was mowing the lawn and a grizzly appeared on my lawn”.

So why am I selling her, you ask? Well, you see, I set the bar too high. I have a beautiful wife, so the neighbors expect me to have a beautiful tractor, too. I see the pointing. I hear the snickers. They say, “Sure, he can be married to her, but can he have a beautiful tractor?” I’ll admit it right here. I caved to the peer pressure. I got a new tractor. BUT YOU ARE STRONGER THAN ME! You don’t need the best looking tractor, just the best looking lawn.

She comes as-is and includes the original owner’s manual, complete with my greasy fingerprints. (You may be called into court if I ever commit a crime, but I’m a pretty honest guy so the likelihood is slim.) I also have an extra set of John Deere Freedom 42″ blades I’ll throw in (you should put a fresh set of sharpened blades on her every couple of months for best results.) I also have the broken front bumper, if you care to have it.

So, what do you say? Are you game? I’ll even do like Tom Sawyer and let you mow a little bit of my lawn to try it out. I know it takes a lot of skill, but I’m willing to let you mow some lawn, sight unseen, so that you can test out the old girl. Email me and make the appointment that will change your life, or at least your lawn.

Leisure Time: What I’ve learned about hot tubs

I got a call this weekend from BigHeadMan, a superhero friend of mine since first grade. We took cape flying class together, and he always excelled at more of the intellectual parts of being a superhero, as well as being a hellava good guy. Anyway, he is re-doing his deck and asked for my opinion on hot tubs, being that WifeGirl and I have had one for 10 year now.

Here’s what I’ve learned in the past 10 years:

1. Buy a high quality, fully insulated tub. This translates into spending more money up front, but it will pay for itself very quickly. We had neighbors who bought a no name, discount club hot tub. They told us it cost them up to $500 per month in electricity to run. In contrast, we estimate that ours costs less than $5 per month. (At the same time we were moving from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs, so our electricity actually went down, but we think the estimate is pretty good.) There are two companies that I know of that make fully insulated tubs, Sundance and Watkins Manufacturing (who make Hot Spring, Solana, Limelight, and Tiger River brands). If you are saving even $50 per month in electricity over a lower quality spa, this will quickly pay for the extra money you may have spent up front. Ours is so well insulated that when it snows, if we don’t clear off the snow from the cover, it remains on the cover just as long as the snow on the surrounding deck. We bought a Hot Spring Sovereign with a pearl shell.

2. Make sure you wet-test it first. All of the dealers will let you sit in the tub without water and see what it feels like. While this can give you a general idea, you really need to sit in it with water and with the jets operating. You may find that the seats are not comfortable when water is present, or that you float out of some of the seats, or that the jets are too strong or too weak or not positioned well. All reputable dealers are happy to let you try them out. Ideally, they will invite you back when the store is closed so that you can relax and compare a few. (This was our son’s favorite part of the process.)

3. Realistically judge how many people will use the tub. Many companies will try to sell you the largest, and most expensive spa they have. But realistically, 90% of the time there will be only one or two people in it. Decide based on your needs but underestimate your needs a bit. We chose a 6-person spa, but it is actually a little cozy with 6 people in it. This is not a problem, because in the 10 years we’ve had it this only happened one time. Typically it is just HomeOwnerMan and WifeGirl in it, and occasionally SonBoy.

4. Make sure it has a good foundation to sit on. We were rebuilding our deck when we got the spa, so I designed the deck around the specs of the hot tub. We made a portion of the deck so that the tub sat on a poured concrete slab and the rim of it sat flush with the deck. That way, you don’t have to climb into the tub, but rather descend into the tub. The biggest benefit of this, though, was the concrete slab. Spas hold between one and two tons of water, so there is a lot of weight to consider. If it goes on a deck, you typically have to reinforce the structure to carry the load. And even with the reinforcement, the deck can shift or sag over time. This puts stress on the spa shell, which is molded plastic or fiberglass, and can cause it to crack over time. With the slab (which we poured with structural rebar in it), the spa has had a stable, level surface on which to sit. Our shell is in as good shape as when it was new.

5. Get an ozonator. An ozonator is a device which creates ozone (yes the same stuff we nearly depleted in the 1970s with hairspray and deodorant). Ozone is effective at killing bacteria and viruses in water, and can greatly reduce the amount of chemicals you need in your spa. When we bought our tubs, ozonators were basically long UV lights that had a life expectancy of only 200 hours or so. Then they were ineffective. So we opted to not buy one, and figured we’d pay a little extra for chemicals but each time we had to replace the UV bulb we would spend a lot of money. Soon corona-discharge ozonators came out and were a clear advance in ozonators. We bought and installed one ourselves for about $179, and we have never had problems with it since. It produces a constant supply of ozone bubbles which keeps the water clean, crisp, and fresh.

6. When it comes to chemicals, use the “K.I.S.S.” method. We were told that there were a lot of harsh chemicals out there and that we wanted something easy on the skin. We researched it a lot, and decided on Baqua-Spa, a system of several chemicals that centered around biguanide. The Baqua-spa system was not cheap and required a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering along with a Meteorology degree and some Theology thrown in to get it just right. The water was never clear. Foam was frequently a problem. pH was hard to regulate. We spoke to others who used it, and they told us we were using too much, so we cut way back. This helped, but still the water was never crystal clear from the moment we added the first bit of Baqua-spa.

Another friend, who incidentally told us about the ozonator, recommended chlorine. He told us that he used about 3 teaspoons of chlorine when he started his tub with new water, and then one teaspoon each time they were finished using the tub. That’s it. We started doing this, and the water is crystal clear for months. We used to change the water every 2-3 months; now we change it twice a year, and even then it is clear. Chlorine is cheap and easy. Keep it simple, stupid.

7. Buy good filters. We spent the extra money on low maintenance ceramic filters. These last many years (we replaced ours for the first time after 8 years). But the real value in them is that they can be put into your dishwasher and cleaned on a no heat cycle using no detergent. We stop the cycle once or twice to re-position the four filters which ensures thorough cleaning, but they require no other maintenance. We have spoken to spa owners who must hose off their filters weekly or monthly and replace them yearly. We clean them once every 2 months or so effortlessly in the dishwasher.

8. Get your water tested. This sort of goes along with #6, but each time you start up your spa after cleaning. put your initial chemicals in, let it circulate and heat over night, and then take a sample of the water to a reputable local pool/spa dealer. They may charge you a nominal fee for testing, but they can immediately tell you if your pH is off or if any of the other readings is out of whack. We used to buy test kits, but they are not very accurate, go bad quickly, and are expensive. And if you own a kit you tend to mess with the water too much. Remember – K.I.S.S.

9. Buy a small sump pump for emptying. This was good advice that our dealer gave us. For about $75 at your home center you can buy a pump that will empty your spa in less than a half hour. This greatly cuts down cleaning time. Want to empty it even faster, run the sump pump and set up a second hose as a syphon, provided your tub is a little above ground level or you live on a hill. It really works and will amaze the kids.

10. No abrasives, and hardly any soap when cleaning. All you really need is a teflon-safe scrub pad and some warm water. For stubborn stains at the water line, a little dot of Softscrub might help.

11. A few other things.

Buy a good lid, and yes, buy good lifters. Our lid is in need of replacement, and the lifters are starting to show wear. But they are 10 years old.

No glass in the tub. If you are drinking beer, drink from a can or cup. If you are a wine drinker, a plastic cup will have to do. If you are a scotch drinker, have your scotch after you get out of the tub.

Drink lots of water while in the tub. Yes, you sweat while you are in it.

Avoid body lotions and perfume. They gum up the works and are frankly unpleasant to be around. Make that friend of yours shower before she gets in, or you will have a slick of that garbage she wears on every surface of the tub and you’ll have to empty it prematurely.

Don’t buy the gimmicks. They put everything from sound systems to fountains in them, mostly aimed at driving up the price. You don’t need ’em.

Enjoy some time to yourself. Go sit in the hot tub when the sun is coming up and everyone else is still asleep. It is a great way to start the day.

Enjoy the time with your family. We’ve found that we have our most deep conversations while relaxing in the spa. That is worth its weight in gold.

Acceleration Due to Gravity-1, HomeOwnerMan-0

It was a quite Saturday around Gothhome City, the kind where there was no need for millionaire Steve Dzwonczyk to go into his closet full of lycra spandex suits emblazoned with the giant “H” above the crossed hammer and screwdriver crest. He was doing what other millionaires do on a Saturday, trying to stick it to the man. You see, Florence, who some have alleged is the mortal alter-ego of Wife Girl, was remarking that she wished she had better reception on their 27” cathode-ray-tube-style TV, which was the “big TV” in the house incidentally. They had said goodbye a year earlier to the 400 channels of infomercials offered by DirecTV; they had long ago said goodbye to the 300 channels of poor reception and commercials provided by RCN. They were antenna people now, and were $69 dollars a month richer and had access to some of the finest non-English and faith-based programming offered digitally over the airwaves. And while they were ideally located halfway between the Philadelphia and New York TV broadcast markets, their reception wasn’t as good as they had hoped. But this was all about to change.

Having recently conversed with Neighbor Guy, Steve was convinced that the problem with the reception was due to a wiring problem. While the signal coming into the house was very good, it dropped precipitously by the time it reached the TVs. After extensive testing, it became apparent that the many splices in the coaxial cable were reducing the signal. It seemed such a trivial thing to replace that Steve didn’t even call in the services of HomeOwnerMan, but instead decided to tackle the project himself.

Armed with 100 feet of fresh coax and a brand new crimping tool, Steve made his way up the treacherous ladder to the attic. It had snowed in the attic two summers earlier, leaving 18 inches of fresh white fluffy insulation, which made negotiating the attic, which had no floor, a bit tricky to negotiate. But Steve had beaten a path through the fluff to the far end of the attic where the antenna is located. But like a bolt of lightning, gravity decided to apply its grip to Steve. If he had donned his HomeOwnerMan uniform, it would have been trivial and have gone unnoticed. But Steve lost his balance and began falling at 32 feet per-second-per-second, breaking through the ceiling of Son Boy’s room. Fortunately, Steve was stopped by a heroic ceiling joist which he straddled at high speed. The blunt force of the fall was enough to cause the middle region of him to turn entirely black and blue, rendering him incapable of sitting or wearing normal-sized pants for some time. A third keester, whose presence was here-to-fore unknown, appeared making it impossible to sit down. Private parts turned colors they ought not turn. Ice packs became a close friend for several days, followed by hot compresses and soaks in the hot tub. Tying shoes became a new dimension in fun.

In pain and unable to sit, Steve flashed the hammer-shaped beacon skyward, summoning HomeOwnerMan. Like a flash HomeOwnerMan swooped in and assessed the situation. Seeing the gaping hole in Son Boy’s room, HomeOwnerMan went into the materials cave to look for a sufficient piece of drywall. But the available pieces were too small. So HomeOwnerMan and Wife Girl hopped into the HomeOwner Mobile and sped off to Lowes to buy drywall, schmutz (that’s what super-heros call spackle), and drywall screws. But the weather gods were frowning on HomeOwnerMan and Wife Girl, and the heavens began to rain and winds began to blow as they placed the, notice the word “dry”, drywall into the bed of the Homeowner mobile. The angry-faced woman at Lowes supplied HomeOwnerMan and Wife Girl with plastic and nylon twine, but nothing else. Together they feebly attempted to fashion weather-proofing for the drywall, and Wife Girl went back in to buy a roll of masking tape. The masking tape, however, came off in small masking shreds which were unsuitable for anything but rolling into pea-sized spitballs. Frustrated, they made their way back to Gothhome with the drywa…sheetrock.

There, they cut a 32” x 62” rectangle of board, which nearly matched the size to the hole in the ceiling once it had been enlarged to a more regular polyhedron. Enlarging the hole made for great fun as the white insulation, as well as pink fiberglass insulation from an earlier era, came raining down on them into Son Boy’s room.

The super-family teamed up to fit the board in place in the ceiling. Using “the gizmo” (an 8 foot 2 x 4 with a small flat piece of plywood at the top) to hold the sheetrock in place, HomeOwnerMan screwed it in place. Using perforated tape and schmutz, HomeOwnerMan painstakingly matched the surfaces until the ceiling and the patch became one. Primer and paint are next.

HomeOwnerMan – making the ordinary extra ordinary.

Washing Machine Repair

Looking for some fun and excitement this weekend? Look no further than your own laundry room. Most Americans are unaware of the untapped entertainment value of their own washing machine. You see, washing machines combine the four elements of home-owner fun: electricity, water, grease, and sharp edges to accommodate all of your hand-shredding needs.

My introduction into this world of joy began about two months ago, when my wife noticed a strange whine coming from behind our 1979 Whirlpool 4 cycle, 3 temperature, LHA 7680 washing machine. I spent two weeks assuring her that there was no problem with the appliance, and so long as we could verify the whereabouts of the two cats, no one was being hurt by the whine.

Unfortunately, these types of problems rarely fix themselves, and soon the washer began refusing to empty until someone came along and manually twisted the agitator (quite adequately named, I might add) a couple of times. This progressed into the machine’s outright refusal to start the spin cycle unless someone (me) reached around the back and advanced the ever-fraying belt a couple of turns. Clearly, something needed to be done.

“Florence, take these clothes down to the river and clean them on some rocks.”

“Yes, Dear.”

After a week or so of watching (from the Lazi-Boy with a beer in my hand) my wife lug baskets of clothing down to the estuary of the mighty Delaware river, I was moved with pity, and decided it was time to repair the washing machine once and for all.

My first course of action was to diagnose the problem; that was a pretty easy task. The drive belt coordinates everything that goes on in a washing machine, and the belt on ours was clearly worn. Therefore, it had to be the belt.

I called the “Sears Parts By Phone” hotline, who operate under the motto, “We’re not just parts, we’re part of the problem.” I was greeted by the familiar, “We’re sorry. Both of our customer service representatives are currently busy. Please wait on the line, and you will be disconnected in the order that your call was taken.” They were as good as their word. I was disconnected twice before finally speaking to Melinda. She asked, “May I have the model number of your appliance?”

Having proudly anticipated this question, I read the number “LHA 7680” right off the front cover of my owners manual. Melinda then asked, “What are the last two letters?”

“Huh? What flagging last two letters?” I thought to myself. “That’s all, just LHA 7680,” I replied.

“Well, I’m sorry, but without the last two letters, we cannot place your order. You can find the full model number on a plate on the back of your washer. Click. Bzzzzz.”

It took me roughly 24 hours to cool down and move the washer away from the wall so I could read the numbers on the plate. And sure as manure stinks, the model number was listed as “LHA 7680 WO” on the plate. I was finally able to place my order. I subsequently waited eagerly by the mailbox every day for 2 weeks. Still, no belt. I phoned Sears again, and asked them the status of my order. Mike, the customer service representative, said, “Well, since you didn’t specify method of delivery, we sent it by the least expensive means.”

“Which is?” I inquired.

“Cattle boat from China,” Mike was more than happy to inform me.

At last the day arrived! A large padded envelope arrived from Sears in Spokane, WA which enclosed both the belt and instructions for replacing it. Instructions indeed! As a seasoned home owner and backyard auto mechanic, I scoffed at the notion that anyone would need directions to replace a belt. Fortunately, my wife wrestled the directions out of my hands before I could cast them into the fiery furnace. She insisted that she could read the directions to me while I installed the belt.

For 3 grueling hours, she read things like “remove mounting bolts (A), (B), (D), and (J) from stabilizing brackets (C), (E), (F), and (K), being careful not to lose spacer (G).” The old spacer (G) went falling into the clutch mechanism (H), causing husband (M) to begin swearing. Along the way, I discovered what my father must have felt like when I was a kid of 6 or 7 years old, and wanted to “help” my father fix something. He’d ask me for a socket wrench, and I’d hand him a pair of pliers; he’d ask me to shine the flash light on a particular part, but my mind would wander, and soon he’d say to me, “shine it on the washer, not on me.” Wives, I discovered, are much like 6 or 7 year old boys in this respect.

We finally pieced the washer back together, and were ready to try it out. We reconnected the hoses and power supply, and selected “normal cycle.” To our amazement, the washer began to fill, and even stopped filling at the appointed time. But then without warning, in what should have been the agitation cycle, the agitator (had I mentioned how apropos this name is?) refused to agitate, and instead, the tank spun. “No problem,” I said. “The controller must simply be in the wrong position. We just need to fix that.” So we again disassembled the washing machine, put the control rod in the “correct” position, and reassembled everything. This time, the agitator (this ~really~ has been aptly named) worked correctly, but the tank wouldn’t spin during the spin cycle. Again we disassembled and reassembled it, and this time, both the agitator (well-named) and the tank spun ALL of the time. The appliance had become, for all practical purposes, an amusement park ride for clothing.

I have no idea why the Maytag Repairman is so lonely. He’ll soon be making a service call to our house.