Ping Larkin

cooks

day.

The hot stuff in peppers is actually healthy--good for a number of things. And the peppers themselves have the highest vitamin-C / gram content of any food I know. A decent bell pepper has maybe 250mg. An orange? About 65mg.

So, under Obamacare, these peppers may actually be mandatory. Suits me--I love 'em.

And, under Obama's Great Leap Forward re-education program, you might soon be one of the ones in the fields growing them ;-)

-- Cheers, James Arthur

So grill the fat out of them. They're good like that. 80/20 hamburger has the same basic feature - it's too fatty unless you cook out the fat, but the fat burns, making things tasty.

-- Les Cargill

but beyond cayenne... which is a nice pepper...

I've grown several generations of habaneros from plants from Wal Mart. Freeze 'em - a couple of plants will produce enough to last months. Habanero chili is good chili, habaneros mixed with olive oil and rooster sauce makes the best chicken "paint" for grilling... just chop the habeneros with a chopper or veggie knife, mix ingredients, microwave for a half a minute.

But gloves are a good idea.

-- Les Cargill

Number one son has an extraordinary green thumb... all kinds of wicked peppers decorating his yard ;-) ...Jim Thompson

On the news a few days ago: They had to close the "environmentally compliant" new wing of a school because of H1N1. The old (real) buildings exhibited little problems because you could open windows, "hallways" were outdoors, etc. The newfangled building was essentially a giant petri dish and so the kids there got sick. So much for progress.

Yep, I remember that one. Best accompanied by a pint of McEwan's Heavy. Kyle of Lochalsh would be too touristy for me now. When I was there the giant hotel didn't exist and there was no bridge to Skye. One day a group of tourists missed the ferry leaving Skye. A train was waiting, guy from the ferry ran up there, the engineer turned off the big Diesel, came out of the locomotive and had a smoke. Waited for the next ferry. Only in Scotland :-)

My maternal grandfather Murdo Nicolson was born in a peat hut on the Isle of Skye--at Glenmore, near Portree. I got to see the hut when I visited there with my Mum when I was 11. My great uncle had lived there until a few years before, when his son built him a house nearby.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

And he probably smoked, had his regular glass of whiskey, the granite blocks of the new house were highly radioactive and nevertheless he lived to a ripe old age. Yet meeting healthy guys in their 90's (in the pub, where else ...) was quite normal there.

Folks up there are very practical-minded. When I stayed overnight in Durness I was asked whether I could carry the mail to Inverness and drop it off at the post office there. The regular bus had broken down and nobody else was going down there. So for a few hours the next morning I was an official Caledonian mail carrier, driving an old Cortina where a fuse fell out (!) on the way to Inverness.

Alcohol in moderate quantities (up to about 3 drinks per day) is beneficial to middle-aged people--it reduces heart attacks and strokes. Granddad did smoke some, but that was the least of his worries.

He was gassed at St Julien in April 1915 (Second Battle of Ypres, first gas attack of the war), serving with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles (8th Canadian Infantry). They held the left wing all alone for 30 hours against a determined attack, after the French Territorials broke and ran (and most of them died even so). There was a Canadian officer who was a chemist in civilian life, who saw the green clouds and passed word along that everyone should piss on their handkerchiefs and breathe through that. (Not too palatable, but a lot better than chlorine.) Wet handkerchiefs and sheer bloody-mindedness was what enabled the 8th to hold on.

He lost about half his lung function, was in hospital for three months, and then got sent back to the front for the rest of the War. (It was a way they had back then--there was no conscription, so there were few reinforcements.) He was at the Somme, Passchendaele, and Vimy Ridge, and was one of less than 60 survivors of his original battalion (1000 men at the start of the War.) The 8th finished the War with the (afaik unique) record of having never surrendered a trench to the enemy.

Granddad lived to be 87.

Granddad had a Cortina too. It must have been genetic. (Cortinas always reminded me of Corgis, somehow. Short and poky, but kind of cute.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Yep and will get worse, as the cost of energy rises and more people turn their houses into sealed air locks. We still don't have double glazing as we originally never planned to stay in this house for long. Now, 2 kids and much lifetime later, it's no longer economic to fit in terms of payback when we sell.

This was in 1973, on a trip to visit an old 60's friend living in Shetland. I took an old Alfa spider 1600, who's engine i'd rebuilt the previous weekend, all the way from Oxford to Aberdeen to catch the St Clair ferry. The car had to be winched into the ship's hold and was surrounded by sheep on the trip back. Stopping off at various locations, with trusty Nikkormat and Kodachrome II recording the trip. Camera and slides I still have and both in good condition, but the croft house the friend lived in burned down years ago and was eventually rebuilt. There was no running water or sanitation at the house and no road to it, though there was electricity. A narrow 1/2 mile path ran right round the loch, where we caught sea trout for supper. Can't send a link, but plug the following into google earth:

For a view of the area.

Other than the far north highlands of Scotland, the most peacefull place i've found on Earth :-)...

Regards,

Chris

Same here. Single pane, prohibitively expensive to exchange. But we heat with wood so it's not so bad. Especially in Europe they seal up the houses so tightly that mold develops. We never have mold here.

It wants some sort of download. Google maps has aerial views of Shetland but won't take coordinates.

Even western Aberdeen was. First couple of nights I visited a pub. Third night I had to work, came home late, no pub. Fourth day back in the pub. "Hey, where were you yesterday? We thought you must have gotten sick or something". Never been in Aberdeen before, amazing ...

We get a bit of condensation on the windows in winter, but that's about it. It's more expensive to heat, but at least we have fresh air through the house as compensation. Double glazing would be good for the cold winter nights, but it's not worth the added expense most of the time.

If you have an email, can send you the google earth .kmz location file as an attachment ?.

Different pace of life altogether. Strange how scotland has the worst health and life expectancy of the whole of the uk. Probably the drinking influence of the big cities slewing the statistics. The old friend of mine started a computer software co in Shetland which sells all round the world now. Project management software for the likes of oil and big infrastructure projects. With software or consultancy, you don't need to be in the city all the time...

Regards,

Chris

That is a weakness of a lot of the no external opening windows designs. Sick building syndrome as the formaldehyde and other junk from the furniture and carpets accumulates in a poorly ventilated space. There is no excuse for not having fresh air heated by outgoing stale air though.

Now fully double glazed with a mixture of sealed units and internal secondary DG for the otherwise prohibitively expensive antique windows.

There are DIY secondary glazing systems that are fairly inexpensive and relatively easy to fit and that do not require sealed unit technology. At its simplest are magnetically attached 3mm plexiglass sheets.

They date back a long way. Some of the modern ones are very slick. I remember insulating my incredibly drafty college room with an ultra cheap variant that was little more than clear heat shrink wrap film and double sided tape. Fitting was done with a hairdrier...

Regards, Martin Brown

Not in the US. In the hardware stores there are a some el-cheapo plastic frame windows but only very few standard sizes. The rest is sold by some guy in a suit sitting behind a posh counter, at corresponding prices.

That would definitely not fly with my wife :-)

Yuck ...

Sealed double-pane is pretty standard here in AZ. ...Jim Thompson

Same here since years, for new construction or major remodels. But this building is from 1970.

My home here (three years new) has not only double pane windows, it also has plastic sealing in all the exterior walls. In a 70 mph wind, there are only a few places where I can feel a draft - one by a wall outlet, and the other around my back door. The door flexes enough to release the weather stripping!

But, my HVAC system also has a timer that causes it to go on with the fan only at least every so often, and the system has an intake to the outside for fresh air. The timer was required by code to provide fresh air to the house to prevent staleness and build up of pollutants.

Charlie

I've always wondered where to get those. It would need to be before the filter or have its own filter. This whole concept of whole house fans is so strange, they rely on venting out instead of in so all the dust and pollen is sucked into the house. In Australia there are (IIRC) systems that blow in instead, makes a lot more sense. Never seen that in the US.

I think it's probably the retrofit issue. Attics all have vents, so pretty well all you have to do is put a big fan in the ceiling of the top floor.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

What does it matter, push or suck? As long as the filter is on the inlet side? I think, actually, suction is more efficient. ...Jim Thompson