Storm AAR

Yesterday my wife and I went to visit some friends. They have been without power since Friday night when the storm went though the Chicago area. Lots of trees and power lines down in their area. A number of large trees went down on their block. Not a tornado, but 80+ MPH winds. Power is not expected to be restored until Monday.

First off, no one was hurt in their area, and there was no serious damage to houses despite a lot of big trees coming down. Just sheer luck I guess. The city spent the night cutting up the downed trees and getting the streets clear.

Our friends were able to borrow a couple of generators. They have one alternating between their fridge and their freezer, and the other one next door on their daughter's house for their fridge. The generator they were using failed after about 5 hours of running. Somehow they were able to borrow another one.

The very localized nature of the problem made if fairly easy for them to borrow the gear they needed, and they were able to get out to buy gasoline. Several of their neighbors went out and bought generators as well.

They have phone service through their cable hookup and that is not working either. They have cell phones, but neither had car chargers, so once the batteries wore down their cell phones were not much use. They went out and bought car chargers, so they have usable cell phones now. It would never have occurred to me not to have a car charger for a cell phone. But I guess it is not that unusual.

They were pretty lucky, all in all. No injuries and no house damage. And they were able to borrow stuff they needed, and go buy what they did not have and could not borrow.

Some lessons I took from this.

Just because you have a generator, does not mean your electrical issues have been solved. You are depending on a mechanical device not to fail, one that is far more fragile and failure prone than the grid is. It occurred to me that instead of having one large generator, several smaller generators would give you some redundancy.

Generators go through a lot of gas. Not a big deal if you can go out to refill on a regular basis, but a huge problem if you can't get out or the problem is widespread and you cannot refuel. It occurred to me that a siphon tube to get gas out of your vehicle(s) might be a wise investment. I am not thrilled with the idea of storing a lot of gas out in the garage, due to the inherent safety issues, but a couple of 5 gallons containers would not bother me much. Most cars have a pretty substantial gas tank that could make a decent secondary reserve.

In an incident unrelated to the storm, the water main broke down the street, and several houses were without water down the block. She (friend) mentioned that she did not know what she would do if their city water was shut off and they could not flush. I was tempted to point out that a five gallon bucket of water filled out of their swimming pool and brought inside would be adequate for 3 or 4 flushes. But I chose not to.

$20 Harbor Freight Food Dehydrator Update

Update to http://ilbob.blogspot.com/2010/05/harbor-freight-food-dehydrator.html

Well first the good.

It is still making good beef jerky. I have made well over a dozen batches now. Three pounds of thin sliced meat just about fills all five trays. I or my wife rotate the bottom tray to the top about every 2 hours, and it takes 12-16 hours to finish. I am not real worried about the exact amount of time between tray rotations, so sometimes its more then 2 hours. As the meat dries and shrinks, I move it around so by the time it is done there are usually only 2 full trays or 2 plus a third one that is partially full.

I have adjusted my marinade recipe as follows:

1-1/2 cup vinegar
About 1 tsp each
- ground chipotle peppers
- chili powder
- salt
- ground pepper (mix of black and white, and some red flaked pepper)
- cayenne pepper
- onion powder
- garlic powder

I am not real fanatic about the exact amounts.

I have tried both white vinegar and apple cider vinegar and not noticed any real difference.

I have tried adding soy sauce, worcheshire sauce, and smoke flavoring. None seem to make any real difference so I no longer use them.

I did make a couple of batches where the only flavoring I added to the vinegar was a can of chipotle peppers and a couple tsps of salt. Those batches came out very well. I dried the peppers out and ate them. They were hot, but good.

I have also tried various lengths of time marinading and it seems like it needs to be at least overnight for best flavor. So maybe 12 hours is a good number.

I have also tried marinading it both with and without a vacuum in a vacuum seal container. I can't really tell any difference.

I tried thicker meat once. Did not work real well. About 1/8 to 3/16" thick seems to work best.

I even made a biscuit in the unit once. It took 3 hours to cook, and was not quite done, but it was not bad. I am not sure it was worth waiting 3 hours for a biscuit, but it worked.

Now the not so good.

The instructions suggest using soapy water to clean the trays. I tried this and found it is very difficult to clean the trays this way. I did not want to put them in the dishwasher fearing they were not dishwasher safe, but after the damage to the trays occurred just from normal use I figured it couldn't hurt them any more, so I have been running them through the dishwasher. I have not noticed any additional damage after the dishwasher, and they come out nice and clean.

Cleaning the base of the unit is not real difficult. I just rinse it out with hot water, being as careful as I can not to get the heating element connections any wetter than I have to.

As the photos below show, several of the trays have developed some kind of damage. Several of the the trays have partially deformed, melted, broken or cracked, or some combination thereof. So far it has not affected the utility of the unit, and it may never affect how it makes jerky, but its mildly annoying.

update http://ilbob.blogspot.com/2010/07/20-food-dehydrator-update-2.html