Product review: Mayonnaise maker

As preppers, if there's one thing I'm always on the lookout for, it's something inexpensive, hand-operated, and highly useful. I hit the jackpot on a spiffy, unheralded little product from my beloved Lehman's store: a mayonnaise maker.

As many of you may know, Don is a sandwich guy. As such, he goes through mayonnaise fairly fast. We normally buy it in gallon jugs from Costco or Cash'n'Carry. In the past, I've tried re-canning mayonnaise into pint jars and it was a total failure. Therefore we have something of a perpetual gallon-sized jug of mayonnaise taking up room in the fridge.

I've made homemade mayonnaise before. It requires the oil be titrated into the egg in a blender at a fairly slow and precise rate. I did it once and it was enough of a hassle that I never bothered repeating it.

But here was a little gizmo that promised to take the hassle out of making mayo. Intrigued, I tried it out. (The device is made in France, hence the ungrammatical description on the front of the box.)

There is literally nothing to it: a lidded jar with markings on the side, and a silicone "mayo turber" that looks like a wrinkled rubber ball and acts as an agitator.

The directions (printed, literally, in 15 different languages) are very simple. Interestingly, this mayonnaise maker "should never be used by children under 15 years!" (exclamation point in the original) Um, why 15? That's a fairly advanced age for anyone to swallow the "mayo turber."

But whatever. Following the directions, I added an egg yolk, a tablespoon of mustard, and enough oil to reach the first line on the bottle. Then I dropped in the "mayo turber."

I put on the lid, shook the bottle for about 30 seconds, and added a bit more oil, and repeated this until I had reached the third line.

And it worked! Holy cow, it actually worked! The mayo comes out yellow (due to the egg yolk as well as the mustard), but it tastes like mayonnaise with a slight mustard tinge.

This silly little jar quickly morphed into a "Where have you been all my life?" item, ideal for the person who isn't fond of the preservatives found in store-bought mayo but up to this point the homemade stuff was too much of a hassle.

Like all homemade mayo, this version will not last as long in the fridge ... but conveniently, the jar makes just enough to enjoy for a few days before it's used up. And the mayo can be stored in the jar as well (just another convenience factor).

I'm going to start playing with recipes now: a whole egg instead of just the yolk, a little less mustard, maybe a different type of oil (I used olive oil), perhaps a touch of lemon juice....wow, this is gonna be fun.

I'm absurdly pleased with this little mayonnaise maker. I never thought to find something so simple, so useful, so inexpensive, and so easy to clean. Yep, definitely a keeper.

Does anyone have a kidney?

I was in Coeur d'Alene doing errands last week when I saw this desperate plea:

I have no idea who this person is, of course, but I thought I'd do my part to help spread the word.

The Magic Pear Fairy strikes again

If you lived in our neck of the woods, you might have found a mysterious bag on your doorstep this past week, a gift from the Magic Pear Fairy.

Yes, the Magic Pear Fairy has stuck again. Each fall, she polishes her magic wand, flexes her sparkly wings, and flits around from house to house, bestowing the blessings of pears on any unsuspecting mortal she can catch.

This is a very necessary yearly ritual because let me tell you, pear trees produce abundantly.

Here's the Pear Fairy's assistant, plucking from the upper branches.

Estimated weight: 100 lbs.

When the day came to distribute the pears, the hay sled came in handy to handle the load.

The pears landed anonymously on multiple doorsteps.

Others, the Pear Fairy was able to visit in person. Altogether seven neighbors (and one friend in town) were blessed with pears. When the Pear Fairy returned home, nothing was left but a few rotten specimens that went to the chickens.

The Magic Pear Fairy struck again!

Powerful father-son duet

A (more cultured) friend sent me a YouTube link to a powerful duet song by the blind Italian classical singer Andrea Bocelli with his son Matteo Bocelli. Beautiful.

The fruits of fall

Fall is falling fast around here. We've had some below-freezing nights and are cutting firewood and harvesting the garden like mad (which accounts for my silence here on the blog -- I'll have a harvest update in the near future).

But it's not just the garden that's putting out fruit. The wild plants are producing abundantly before the first snow falls.

The rose hips (rich in Vitamin C) are very abundant this year.

The elderberries are ripe as well.

The wild honeysuckle put out some startlingly florescent-orange fruit.

Lots and lots of snowberries this year.

These are berries from our Virginia creeper vines. The wild birds gorge on them.

With the exception of the rose hips and elderberries, the other fruit may or may not be edible -- or only edible in small quantities. They taste yucky anyway, so none of us bother harvesting any of them (we have no shortage of fruit from the garden).

The fall colors have been especially vibrant this year too. Of course we don't get the explosive jubilee of the east coast deciduous forests, but the undergrowth turns lovely shades of orange, red, and yellow.

As I said, I'll have updates on our harvest and wood cutting in the near future. Right now we're too busy harvesting and wood cutting.

One year ago today

“Today is my one-year in the Navy mark,” Younger Daughter emailed this morning. “A year ago today I arrived at RTC, stayed up all night stenciling and peeing in cups and getting screamed at by people in red ropes.”

Younger Daughter has been stuck in the same spot (Great Lakes, Illinois) for a year now, undergoing lots of academic training, but this will shortly change as she heads off to another location for her specialized “C” school training, and then hitting the fleet – at last!

I’m being purposely vague about her whereabouts because I don’t want her movements public – but she’s moving ahead in her naval career and will soon be facing life aboard a ship.

Happy logs?

I was coming back from a nearby town a few days ago and found myself behind a logging truck.

I noticed one of the logs had a happy face.

Is this a happy log or a happy logger?

Silly Darcy

Here's just a few photos of Mr. Darcy being silly in the front yard, playing with assorted stuff like a bundle of baling twine and an old cheap Frisbee.

And here's Mr. Darcy barking at some cows, who are supremely indifferent to him and calmly chewing their cud.

Only after a couple minutes did the cows leisurely get up, stretch, and wander away. Mr. Darcy was very proud he'd routed the animals All By Himself.