Win a few, lose a few.

Tanya’s colour scheme looks good :-)

I’ve been scanning the Cape Ads for a jacuzzi for a while. Found one for what I thought to be a rather reasonable price, R 7500 for a freestanding unit. It’s a Superior Spa Barracuda, and it’s currently living on a trailer in the driveway — getting it there was fun too. You see, we have a flatbed trailer in the family, but it wasn’t roadworthy, since they recently made reflective strips down the side of the trailer mandatory — not a bad idea IMO. But that meant I first had to get two strips of galvanised steel which I could poprivit to the side of the trailer so that I could stick the tape to it. OK, there’s a place down the road which sells all kinds of steel, R30 later, we’re done. Cheap, compared to the cost of the tape.

So on Saturday I drove through to Bellville, fitted the steel strips and reflective tape while my father watched the Bokke klup the All Blacks, and dragged the trailer to Kenilworth. By now I’d realised that I was running late, so instead of going through to Fish Hoek to pick up the guys, I asked Tanya to bring them through. Loaded the jacuzzi on the trailer with much grunting and groaning, and strapped it down. Drove back rather slowly (there are three routes, over Ou Kaapse Weg (steep, especially the uphill bit), over Boyes Drive (also somewhat steep, specifically the downhill bit, and Muizenberg Main Road (where they have roadworks and a stop & go system). We went via Muizenberg. Lesser of three evils.

So, for geeks like me — the anatomy of a jacuzzi. (Non-geeks, skip down).

The main pump is the black thing left of centre (left hand pic). It draws water from underneath, pumps it through the canister filter (far left) and then around to the manifold (picture on right) where the water gets split five ways to the five main jets. The main jets also have an air hose each, air feed being controlled by the valve on the jacuzzi rim (top left on left hand pic).

On the bottom right hand side of the first pic, there’s a blue canister. That contains the heater element. Water is again drawn from the bottom, though the heater via the small pump (just right of centre) and into the jet behind it.

So basically the water in the jacuzzi is circulated via the main jets, and the heater circuit is on the side.

The third “pump” is the black thing on the right hand side, it pumps air via an airlock (the U above the deck — to make sure it doesn’t get flooded) and into the bottom of the jacuzzi.

This thing needs a serious power supply. It has four trip switches, 10 and 15 amp for the pumps, and 30A for the heater. Now I have a “spare” (used to be the stove) 20A 3 phase circuit, and the question is whether this would be sufficient — the heater is advertised as 4kW, which is 18A or so, so I don’t know why they needed a 30A trip. Current (*cough*) planning : use one 20A circuit for the heater, use another for the rest, and use the third for the oven — basically replacing a four plate stove with a jacuzzi, electrically speaking.

^^^ Non-geeks : you can skip to here.

The jacuzzi’s going into the corner there. Lekker.

OK, so I mentioned “lose a few” in the topic. Went down to Muizenberg for my weekly brass fix, R72’s worth this time. Almost there. I also bought 6m of 15mm polycop. Only slightly cheaper than the hardware store, R3.50 as opposed to around R4/m. And the bloody stuff is out of spec. Too thick by just enough to make it almost impossible to fit the little ring of the compression fitting. Bugger.

Back to geek : I also bought a 1gig USB memory stick for R80, which is a good price, I think. But it only works in two of the four slots on my D815EEA2 motherboard, gives errors in the other two. No idea why, but the slots are connected to different USB controllers, according to the mostly useless mobo manual. The memstick works just great with my xcarlink, which is what I got it for, so it’s not all bad.

And BTW the xcarlink *rawks*.

Frank screeded the slasto, using a bag and a half of self levelling screed, mixed with some Bond-It for extra strength. I figured that he should have been able to do the job with one bag, I think the screeding should have been thinner. But it’ll do.

Feed a cold, starve a fever?

… or is it the other way ’round? Nobody seems to be sure. I picked up a sore throat from a colleague, and working in the bloody cold (unfurnished) house in uncommonly cold (for Cape Town, it was 6 degrees in Tokai at 08:30 this morning) weather certainly doesn’t help.

I’ve always figured that it’s important to listen to your body, and right now mine is saying “feed me“, so that’s what I’m doing.

On the progress side of things, Frank’s been paving. Looking good.

I’ve been plumbing in the master bathroom, lots of work with little visible progress.

We got quotes for carpeting Jessica’s room (black-with-white-spots Superweave) as well as the living room and hall (matching colour-to-be-determined Tuscany) — just over R10K, which is about what I anticipated.

And the kitchen guys finally gave me a believable (in terms of what they think I need) quote, so I dumped R18K into their bank account, delivery (CKD, in other words, Some Assembly Required) in two weeks’ time. But that excludes the countertops and some other strategic bits I will still need.

Die winter se vendetta, het ons ingehaal.

Valiant word oud. Net soos sy fans, so ons kan relate.

Anywayz, it’s still pissing down in Cape Town. Cold as well, the car thermometer read 5 degrees C going over Ou Kaapse Weg around 1800 last night. (Note to self : my “computer room” area of the garage needs an insulated ceiling).

So it’s Gluhwein time.

The last time I made Gluhwein was probably around 10 years ago, and we used those little bags of stuff that Delheim and others sold. And it wasn’t half bad.

Lacking the little bag, I googled this recipe, halved it (two bottles of wine between the two of us? I don’t think so), and it was great. Better than I remember from years ago.

So, basically :

Stick wine in pot, on very low heat. I used a simmer plate on the gas stove. (Edit, for CH : Some people add water to the pot, I didn’t. I guess it depends on how cold you’re feeling).

Since I was only using one orange, I sliced it and stuck cloves in it. I also only used one lemon, sliced, a small stick of cinnamon, about a teaspoon of freshly grated ginger, and two tablespoons honey.

You want this concoction to start steaming, but not to boil. And then keep it there for a quarter of an hour or more.

And then grab a ladle and serve.

Broke 100k

This morning I had R500 to go to hit the R100 000 mark, so I went out and spent R4 000.

It’s officially cheaper to shoot someone than to throw a brick at them. As long as you load your own ammo. R1.50 a common garden ROK brick? Yoiks.

Shiny!

Well, the traditional first anniversary gift is paper, right? And a notebook is paper, right?

Asus EeePC 900. Tanya loves it.

Now I want one too.

The Foodbarn

Sorta-kinda review.

My in-laws invited us, or we invited them (I’m not too clear on this) to the Foodbarn in Noordhoek. I had a look at their online menu and was not that impressed. Too many ‘porcini’ and ‘verde’ and ‘civet’ type things in quotes (And BTW, I send in a request to El Bulli every year, I’m not squicked by words like veloute or jus on a menu, this specific menu just looked… wrong, with all those quotes).

Anywayz, so we got there (after putting up the small wall between the bath and our bedroom, but that’s another story) to find a completely different menu. Yay!

They actually have two menus. The first is the Bistro menu, a sort of a set menu with about five choices each for starter, main and dessert. With a glass (one glass. One? Are they serious?) of wine-of-your-choice. For R165 per head. All in all the Bistro menu looks good, and we decide to go for it. Oh — the catch is that these are all half portions (no problem, sez I, gives me the opportunity to work through the menu twice. Grootbek).

Well, fair enough, Tanya recently converted to red (and since drinkable red is cheaper than drinkable white (I’m a white wine snob and a red wine slut) this is not a Bad Thing (unlike when I taught her to prefer Cap Classique over Cold Duck. But that’s a different story)), so we order four glasses of white (chenin) and pass them all on to Mr H (Mr H being Tanya’s father). And we order a bottle of Groot Constantia Merlot (Mrs H (you should be able to figure this one out) likes Merlot. Yes I know. Let it go).

First item on the starter menu is bouillabaisse. I read no further (well, actually, I do, because I’m curious, but that’s not the point. Bouillabaisse it is). Tanya ordered something with herbed goats’ cheese, Mr H picked the duck livers. Now for the mains. Oh my. Choices are line fish, a gnocchi based vegetarian dish, steak tartare, lamb cutlets, and roasted pork belly.

Now I have to say that in general, at a restaurant, Tanya orders the steak. Medium to well done. In the case of steak tartare, this is Just Not On (although there is a tale in the family of Mr H ordering well done steak tartare once, but that, again, is a different story). En hier word Wouter se ogies groter as sy magie, and I go somewhat apeshit. I suggest that Tanya orders the steak tartare, I order the lamb, and Tanya also orders the ribeye steak from the a la carte menu. This confused the waitress a bit, but not as much as it would have had Tanya ordered the steak tartare well done, I’m sure.

Oh, BTW, the Foodbarn is run by Franck and Pete. Franck’s been the chef over at La Colombe for the past ten years or so, and incidentally, that’s where I last had steak tartare. And it was probably rather close to the start of Franck’s tenure there, I will have to go find my notes (no, I don’t throw things away, why do you ask?) of that experience (which, of course, is another story).

OK, bouillabaisse. Great. Bit of a strange texture, those crazy Michelin fellows would probably have had much to say, but I’m closer to the other Michelin fellow, so… Mr H raved about the duck livers, and Tanya quite liked the cheese and aubergine thing (of which I tasted a bit, nice). I’d peg Tanya’s starter at a half portion but both the duck livers and the bouillabaisse were most definitely full portions, IMO.

Steak tartare arrives first. Mince, with an egg yolk in the half shell balanced on top, with fried potato slices and a very interesting sauce and four lines of… call it salsa… onion, gherkin, olive and parsley (I think. But hey, I’m not Remy, so if one of you guys from the Foodbarn google across this blog, please leave a comment to tell me what you really put in there :-). So I start the taste exploration, with comments from Tanya on whether I’m doing this The Right Way. I of course feel that my way is the right way and if you don’t like it, order your own portion. Bit of this, bit of that, I find that the sauce goes well with the olives and a bit of egg, the egg goes well with the onion, hey, I’m having fun. Guy on the other side of the room is mixing everything on his plate into one big frikkadel and proceeding from there, but who cares (Tanya cares, that’s who. Like the time in France with the fondue which was actually raclette, but… different story).

Next up, the lamb. Two small cutlets, and some sausage-ey stuff (that’s a technical term used by people like me who don’t speak haute cuisine, OK?) in pastry, on a sauce. Very nice, but the sauce is extremely rich. I just could not finish it.

Now as an aside, Tanya and I tend to swap plates, so that we both taste what we both ordered. Although most of the time this is more a case of me finishing what she ordered. And in this case, she had a bit of steak left, and I would have loved to taste it, but I just could not face any more meat (it must have been around 150 grams steak tartare, and the cutlets were small — and as an aside I often kill an eisbein at the Nag’s Head right next door to the Foodbarn — but I think it’s the sauce, and the bouillabaisse, that sunk me).

Anyway, Tanya liked the steak a lot, but she did report that her potato slices were somewhat burnt. The in-laws had Good Things to say about the line fish (yellowtail) as well.

Of course my choice of dessert was never uncertain — I’m not much for sweet stuff, and there’s a cheese platter on the menu, and of course they have port, so, call me Larry. Four cheeses, three of them excellent, the camembert just… camembert. With some very nice preserves, and the port was Bredells, very good.

Tanya and Mrs H ordered the dark chocolate samoosas, which are interesting, but the difference in texture between the samoosa crust and the melted chocolate is a bit… strange. Mr H was somewhat indifferent to his millefeuille, which maybe looked better on the menu than on the plate.

So, a good time was had by all, and the grand total for the evening, tip included, was just that… a grand. Not something I’d do that often, but it’s nice to have a somewhat upmarket restaurant in our neck of the woods.

Glass bricks

So, Frank built a 900mm high wall closing off about a third of the back stoep, the idea is to build a glass block wall all the way to the top. This will shelter the jacuzzi-corner from the Fish Hoek wind, which blows up the valley from the sea and gives me a permanent runny nose.

But Frank doesn’t know how to build with glass blocks.

Neither do I.

Homebase makes it look complex, DIY Divas makes it look easy. Fine Homebuilding says it’s somewhere in between. With those three references, I’m sure we’ll get it right. I’ll ask some questions at the hardware store tomorrow morning.

Edit : Frank ended up building the glass wall just like a normal brick wall, using 5mm tile spacers, and normal cement. He strung wire between the wall and the steel pole (self tappers on the steel side, nail-in anchors into the wall) every two courses, and it came out well. Well, sorta well, see later post on same subject.

Progress update

Problem with writing a blog is that once people know about it, they start nagging if it’s not updated regularly (yes, I’m looking at you, CH). But Mondays are hectic, and so’s the end of the month, and yesterday happened to be both.

This freestanding jacuzzi was advertised in last Thursday’s Cape Ads. It’s just around the corner from where I work, and the price is good (R7500), but I have no idea how I’m going to get it on a trailer. Plans Will Have To Be Made. But the current owner first needs to get an electrician in to disconnect the thing first.

One piece of shutterboard, four blocks of wood, a few screws and a bit of cretestone, and the original doorway is no more. Doing it this way allows me to build a shelf on the other side, behind where the bath is going (you can see it on the left in the second photograph, which is basically our bathroom as it looked last Thursday — they’ve since knocked a few holes in the blue wall for the plumbing).

I had to go back to the place I bought the glass basin from, because I could not figure out how to use the supplied fasteners to fix the thing to the wall. Included in the baggie were two chemical fasteners with capscrews and washers, which must be intended for the two wall brackets. But the two chrome caps don’t fit over the capscrews. Turns out the guys who installed the demo unit had the same problem, because they ended up using fasteners which are not in the kit at all. So sometimes the suppliers of these things don’t know best. I’m planning to ditch the lot and use either rawlbolts or sommer drill a hole all the way through the wall with a piece of threaded rod and acorn nuts.

Hopefully the last brass purchase. R250 at Muizenberg market. I also bought 15m of 22mm polycop for R5 a meter — the guys estimated the length, I saw I was getting a good deal, didn’t ask for change from R80 — turned out to be 17 1/2m in total.

I also had to buy two more mixer taps, one for the bath and one for the shower. Both with diverters, since Tanya wants a hand shower by the bath. and we’re planning to fit two showerheads in the shower, depending on whether you want to wash your hair or not. On the 8th of May I paid R564+VAT for a mixer tap. On the 27th of June (7 weeks later) I paid R780+VAT for the identical tap from the same place. This is a 38% increase! The mind boggles.

Looks like our lime tree is doing well — new flowers. One can but hope.

This was the view driving to work from Bellville side this morning. I had to stop, take a picture, and share.

Quick Food

So I’m spending an hour or two each evening at the house. Which means that I don’t have time to cook, much. But we’ve already done pizzas and fish&chips this week, and Tanya had to go collect the kids’ reports, so… I decided to slap something simple together.

We had most of a roast chicken in the fridge (supper-in-a-hurry from earlier in the week) as well as mushrooms and red peppers so we decided to do a risotto (something I make often).

So I sliced some meat off the chicken and fried that in my black pot. Also cut op one small turnip that was lurking in the back of the fridge, added that. Took the chicken out, fried the mushrooms. Took that out (the turnip was also done by now) and started frying the onions.

This is where one would add the rice and then start slowly adding the stock, but I figured that all of this was going to take too long, so I stuck the rice in a separate pot, added some turmeric (some? Eish, Idunno, prolly about a level teaspoon, I didn’t measure. How much rice? Didn’t measure either, 3/4 of a cup I’d guess).

Added the red peppers to the pot, stirred a bit, deglazed the pot with some Petit Chenin, and put everything I’d taken out earlier back in. Added some water and a bit of chicken stock powder (won’t do that again, next time I’ll put the rice on sooner). Added some frozen peas.

When the rice was done, drained it, stuck it in the pot, stir, serve. My only complaint? Not enough chili. Figures, since I didn’t put any in.

It even looks nicer than Barbara’s Hillbilly Fried Rice. But she writes better than I can. And I bet her Hillbilly Fried Rice is divine.

Doing the iPod shuffle

Jessica’s iPod is borken. Looks like the battery doesn’t hold a charge any more. And it’s one of those second generation shuffles, they’re tiny.

Fortunately there’s an online procedure showing how to replace the battery. And BatteryMill in the UK has batteries for £ 10.99, not including shipping. Also, Pieter is over there at the moment, coming back on the 4th of July, so I don’t have to worry about losing the parcel in the mail.

If I don’t blow myself up there will be an update here after the 4th of July.

Update : Pieter bought the battery from the UK, it’s made by Cameron Sino Technology and comes with a plastic spork which is completely useless, I had to rely on my 1984 Swiss Army knife. Model number CS-IPOD278SL, part number 616-0278, 3.7V, 200mAh (supposedly).

The guide is not that clear — the white cap on both sides need to be removed, and also the two metal brackets (four screws in total).

The battery didn’t want to just “flip out” it had to be persuaded quite a bit — it’s glued to the PCB.

The battery comes with a security label “Warranty void if sticker is removed — but this label and the sticker around the battery has to be removed for the battery to fit. The sticker claims 200mAh, while the battery inside the sticker is clearly marked “100mAh”. Seems like Cameron Sino is guilty of a bit of… creative marketing…