BPA-free reusable canning lids??

Does anybody out there have experience with these?

Tattler Reusable Canning Lids

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Super-efficient "chest fridge" (with pictures)

Okay, since this keeps coming up, I thought I'd explain how we converted an old chest freezer into an amazingly efficient refrigerator. Now just to be clear, this was not my idea originally. I can take zero credit for any part of this concept. I'm just following in the footsteps of smarter people than me. The original concept came from here, and honestly, I've lost track of where I heard the suggestion for using the homebrewing thermostat instead of doing the wiring yourself.

Before I get to the pictures, let me tell you how "amazingly efficient" it actually is. Our "efficient" bottom-freezer upright refrigerator is rated at 594 kWh per year. This converted chest freezer should come in at about 55 kWh per year. To put this in perspective, that's about the same as two 15-watt compact fluorescent bulbs turned on for five hours a day. (Disclaimer: It's a good bit smaller than our conventional fridge, and has no freezer. But still...)

Okay, on with the pictures...

Here is the (former) freezer. It's a 5.5 cubic-foot GE, rated (as a freezer) for 242 kWh per year.
As you can probably tell, it's in our basement. The basement air will always be cooler, giving this little guy less work to do. It's also in close proximity to the area that we hope will become a root cellar, which, if we can enclose it and give it an outside air vent, will give the chest fridge almost no work to do. At least in the cooler months. (And if you look closely, you'll see our worm bin off to the side.)

Here is the external thermostat (purchased here for about $60). For the record, the thermostat is mechanical, not electrical. It consumes no power.

(this photo borrowed from HopTech)

Here's a close-up of the thermostat itself. Couldn't be simpler...

Here's a photo showing how the fridge plugs into the thermostat's cord (which then plugs into the wall).


Here's the temperature probe, held precariously in place by duct tape. It's best to keep the probe out of contact with the inside walls. After all, you want to control the air temperature, not the surface temperature of the wall.

You may not be able to tell from the photo, but some condensation does form on the inside. We alleviated this by opening the little drain plug in the bottom of the freezer (used for defrosting). No water drips out, but it seems to reduce the amount of condensation inside.

That's it. Five minutes to hook it up. No tools or expertise required.

It was using about 0.18 kWh per day in the summertime, and it's down to about 0.12 kWh this winter.

(And a big thanks to my camera for working. The little pocket one wouldn't have been able to cope with our basement at all.)

Questions?

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Pressing Matters

Well, the funky old/new cider press hit a few snags. Or rather, I hit a few snags. See those long, thin bolts on either side? Well, let's just say that cast iron can be surprisingly brittle. While removing it from its somewhat flimsy shipping box, I broke one of those bolts. Or perhaps it broke in transit, I'm not sure. It sheared off right where it screws into the top piece. I used my best powers of persuasion and limited handyman skills to try to extract the broken piece, then to drill it out. It wasn't working. In the process, I broke off the head of a little thumb screw too.

After a few phone calls, I tracked down a guy in the next town over who could help me out. A retired shop teacher, he had a whole arsenal of metalworking tools and equipment in his garage. A day later, and he'd cleaned out the remnants of the bolt and the thumb screw, re-threaded the holes, welded a new threaded end onto the old bolt, and even delivered the repaired pieces to my door. He complimented me on knowing when to stop trying and call somebody.

So the other night, with a non-broken press and a bag of Braeburn apples, e5 and I decided to give it a whirl. Or a crank.

We (er, I) cut four small apples into chunks and dropped them into the press. After some hard cranking and just a few drops of clear liquid (probably rinse water), we realized that we must be doing something wrong. A quick trip to Google told me that we needed to pulverize the apples a bit. A meat tenderizing mallet seemed fun, but it was a bit messy, so we got out the food processor and chopped up the chunks. Then back into the press.

Success! Amber liquid began flowing from the press. Turning the crank as far as I could and then waiting a couple minutes seemed to allow further pressing.

Ultimately, we got about a cup of cider from the four small apples.

We happened to have some store bought cider in the fridge, because it's one of the few fruit juices that I can drink in quantity without it bothering my stomach.

In a side-by-side comparison, the fresh stuff tasted very similar to the store bought. It was a little crisper, fresher, and a little more complex. Not surprising I guess.

What about all that leftover apple pomace?
I found some happy consumers out in the pasture.
(Oddly, the donkey had no interest.)

So if we ever buy too many apples, or if our apple trees ever give us a surplus, or if we ever have imperfect fruit that we don't know what to do with... well, now we know what we can do with it.

Tomato dehydrating update

Well, that crazy contraption actually worked. When I was putting it together, I felt like I should have been making a video of it, which would then be sped up and dubbed with some kooky music.

It worked quite well actually, considering the fact that it rained the first night I put it out, it rained all day the next day, and we've had a severe thunderstorm, a tornado warning, and two good frosts since then. I just left the tomatoes out there through it all. Part of me was expecting a big mess.

What I found was this:

Lovely sun-dried tomatoes. They taste like concentrated fresh tomato. The ones that were cut lengthwise didn't fare as well, or at least they need some more time. That makes sense though, since they've got more water to lose. I think I'll slice them the usual way next time though.

Best I can figure, here's what's going on: The corrugated metal acts as a radiant heat barrier to enhance the greenhouse effect under the glass. As the air between the ridges heats up, it flows upwards (due to the slope), carrying away the moisture and creating a convection current (with a key point being that the ridges run top-to-bottom rather than side to side). The screen insures good airflow between the corrugated metal and the black cloth. The black cloth protects the stuff you're drying from getting sun-bleached, and it also adds heat due to the black color. The south facing slope arrangement insures maximum sun exposure. The author of the original article claims this works better in humid climates than other sun-drying methods. I think under normal circumstances, things would dry much faster under appropriate weather conditions, but it's good to know that it works even in extremes.

I'll call this a success. I wish I'd tried it earlier in the year. It should be interesting to try it with some other garden goodies next year.

Simple solar food dehydrator

I built a very simple solar food dehydrator, based more or less on this article. Without diagrams or pictures, I'm not entirely sure I got it right, but it did a fabulous job drying some sage and rosemary before we went on vacation. Now I'm trying it on something a little more challenging: Tomatoes. I got some grape tomatoes and some of the smaller roma tomatoes. I cut them a couple different ways to see what works best.

Tomatoes to be dried:

Tomatoes cut -

some lengthwise,

some crosswise

(for comparison)

Corrugated roofing,

leftover from goat

shelters, propped

up at an angle

Screen from our

old propane fireplace

Black cloth draped over screen

(cut to 2x the size of the screen)

Sliced tomatoes

placed on black cloth

(set on level ground

so they don't roll off)

Black cloth folded in half

over the sliced tomatoes

Glass front from old
propane stove placed
on top of the black cloth

The whole stack
propped at an angle

It was a bit overcast today, and it may be tomorrow too, so it might not be the best time to test it, but I'm willing to experiment on a small batch.

The best part is that the whole thing was made from stuff I had lying around. It didn't cost me a dime.

I'll post an update in a day or two once we see how it goes.