Blog

Illum Light Graffiti

Photography

Jun 8

My friend Sean Nelson and I spent many nights in high school experimenting with light art, long exposure times, and shadows. Illum was the result.

None of these photos were PhotoshopÃ¢ÂÂd. These effects were created by carefully controlling the exposure time, aperture, and light in the photos.

Our work got some notoriety, including being featured in a few small magazines and the New Internationalist 2010 planner Archived Link, as well as being shown at the 2008 Nuit des musÃÂ©es at Le Compa Archived Link, Conservatoire de lÃ¢ÂÂagriculture in Chartres, France.

We also wrote a short how-to guide that is now linked to all over the Internet.
Spotlight on Speech Codes 2015 Animated Web Infographic

Data and Visualization

Jan 1
I took a static infographic made by a client in Illustrator and applied some web magic to make it animated and interactive. Along the way I developed stronger JavaScript, jQuery, and CSS animation skills.

Note: I made this for a client of eResources, my current employer.

Project and Challenges:
- A client came to us with a pre-designed infographic made in Illustrator. They wanted it to be interactive, sharable, and viewable on the web.
- We had a limited number of hours we could use. This didn’t include enough time for making the infographic fully responsive, so we needed to get creative with how it would work on mobile.
What I learned:
- Structuring code in a clean, readable way
- Pre-development sketching of outlines
- CSS animation with keyframes
- Nuances of layering containers and using selectors in CSS.
- Giving content sections a parallax effect
- Positioning elements by the page’s scroll position
- jQuery for clicking and toggling actions
- Open Graph and Twitter Card metadata
- Making custom share URLs with encoded pre-populated data
- Using Javascript to check User Agents to determine whether or not Skrollr should fire (it doesn’t play well with iOS)
View the finished product in action! →

Third-party tools used
- Skrollr to drive parallax and positioning elements by the page’s scroll position
- Wow.js for triggering CSS animations
- Animate.css so I didn’t have to write all of the CSS animations from scratch
- Chart.js for rendering the pie charts and making them interactive
- jQuery for clicking and toggling actions
In-Progress Photos

I first sketched the infographic out on an IKEA drawing paper roll to plan out where elements should go and how to structure the code overall.

As I wrote the code, I previewed and tested it in real-time with Coda’s AirPreview.

View the finished product in action! →

Original image:
Our Inflated Thanksgiving

Nov 26

For the past 29 years, the American Farm Bureau Federation has conducted an informal survey of the price of a classic Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people. At first glance, it looks like the price of food has been steadily rising. But when you adjust the numbers for inflation, you get a different story. It isn’t the cost of our food that has been rising, but the amount of US currency in circulation.

This year, we’re thankful for technologies like bitcoin breaking the Federal Reserve’s grip on money.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The individual prices of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner this year:
Rebuilding Mogadishu with Local Knowledge

Aug 28

Underneath the bombed-out buildings and bullet-riddled doorways of Mogadishu lies a vibrant marketplace and hidden infrastructure known only to locals. Mitchell Sipus is trying to make that data public that with his “project to digitally map Mogadishu, encoding not just geography but also businesses, infrastructure, and people” (Wired).

The Freeman has covered Somalia many times, with an eye to how society there functions in the absence of a state. In recent times, it appears anarchy might be preferable to formal states there, at least to the kind of state that has held power historically. Ben Powell has done a great job covering the internal effectiveness of Somali customary law and how living standards seem to have improved since the state collapsed.

Most of these articles are a few years old, or rely on stale data. So where is Somalia today?

Two years ago this month, the militant group al Shabaab abandoned Mogadishu. Since then the “world’s most dangerous city” has seen a serious economic boom. Since the unrest has died down, community groups have started cleaning and rebuilding the city. Even so, Mogadishu is hardly a kind of place you want to pack up and move to. Yet. Sipus may help change that.

“We’re not just trying to make a map,” said Sipus of his technology.

I mean, we get a map, and that’s cool, but through this map we are creating a business-registration system. We are creating a system for houses to have a title. There’s a census component. What condition is this building in? Is there a business there? Who’s the owner? Where are markets? Wells? There’s infrastructure left over from when the Italians operated Somalia, sewers from 1950. A lot of them just need to be cleaned out; they’re full of sand. Right now there’s none of that information.

In essence, Sipus has found a way to encode residents’ local knowledge and make it publicly available—which should dramatically decrease search costs and uncertainty for would-be investors, business owners, and residents.

This is huge—and not just for Somalis. A system like this takes us one step closer to private management of cities. Take Detroit: Residents could feed information directly to contractors who would bid to fix the issue, cutting out the bankrupt government middlemen.

In the case of public-private partnerships in which cities outsource services to private firms, residents could easily find which company has responsibility for which service. Feedback mechanisms can in turn provide on-the-ground information about problems directly to the relevant company’s internal information systems.

Uses of Sipus’s technology could extend further than physical infrastructure. At this stage, it could also collect information on the jurisdiction of different forms of non-state Somali customary law, Xeer, and where the clan elders preside. Or, because some of these groups are pastoral, their jurisdictions could be updated in real time. If someone knows where a crime took place, a citizen (or victim) could look up the nearest clan elder and seek faster resolution.

Imagine how useful something like this would be for startup cities and seasteads. Such areas are designed for innovation, rapid development, and testing, knowing in real time who owns which property, which independent court has jurisdiction over a given part of the city, and which laws or codes affect certain areas, not to mention all of the physical infrastructure benefits mentioned above. Residents could see which organizational rules nearby groups are testing, how they are performing relative to theirs, and possibly make an exit. Such information would be at their fingertips.

Technology like that Sipus is developing is streamlining public administration and bringing us closer to private, competitive cities. There are still many kinks to be worked out, but day by day we are slowly outcompeting the State, that “legacy system for managing physical space.”

Originally published at The Freeman.
Big Wins: Small Changes That Accumulate Over Time

Big Wins

Aug 28

This is a big win (making a very small change in your routine that you don’t even notice after a week but that adds up over time) disguised as a small one (taking the stairs.) I am more concerned that you get the big lesson here, but I think that a story about a small application of this lesson is the best way to explain it.

Two years ago, I went on a hiking trip with my friend Ben Stafford Archived Link out in Rocky Mountain National Park. I knew about the trip for about 3 months, and I was worried that my legs wouldn’t be able to handle the long hikes (16 miles some days) over the rocky terrain. So, I started taking the stairs as often as I could. I noticed that I wasn’t actually building my legs up, though. Taking the stairs was easy. So, I resolved to take them two hat a time for the next three months. It was difficult for the first week, I’ll admit. You’d be surprised how much easier it became after that, though. It quickly became a habit and it is now it feels unnatural and tedious to take one stair at a time. In fact, after about a month, I stopped noticing that I was doubling up on the stairs. (Two years later, it is still a habit!) As a consequence, my legs are stronger and I now get up the stairs with speed and ease. (In the short term, my hikes were much easier!)

I didn’t take a gym subscription, changes to my schedule for more workouts, no time on a leg press, and no aching muscles to build up my legs. Just a very minor change to my daily routine that took no additional time (but a little additional effort, at least at the beginning.)

What minor change could you make to your daily routine that will add up over time and help your achieve a significant result?

I don’t care how you walk up the stairs, but I do care about you making small positive changes that accumulate over time to something much bigger.
Big Wins: Audiobooks

Big Wins, Life, Productivity

Jul 8

This is the first post of a series that will focus on improvements I’ve made in my life that have led to advances in my productivity, effectiveness, or general well-being. I call these things big wins.

Back in high school, I remember a few people recommended that I listen to audiobooks. I tried, but never got into it on a regular basis. Audiobooks were something that my family listened to in the car on long road trips, but nothing more.

That changed last summer. A post by Sebastian Marshall Archived Link pushed me over the tipping point, but recommendations from multiple friends led me that far. I must have read the post at the right time. At first, I tried finding free audiobooks, but most were classic novels with low quality narrators. I listened to a few, but only on long drives. I couldn’t seem to get into them otherwise. On my quest for contemporary non-fiction books, I signed up for an Audible account. They seemed to have the best selection and had a deal going on for new subscribers.

That was June 2011. Since then, I’ve purchased about 30 audiobooks and so far I’ve listened to more than 20 of them. Most of them were non-fiction (on a wide variety of subjects), though a few were fiction. I’ve learned quite a bit and I have made many changes to the way I live my life due to what I read (er.. listened to..) in the audiobooks.

I do not use audiobooks as a replacement for reading. I still read physical books that I have to hold in my hands, as well as digital books on my Kindle and iPad. (I am currently reading Brothers Karamazov, Deleting the State, and It Starts With Food the old-fashioned way. I can read multiple books concurrently as long as they aren’t the same genre.) I use audiobooks for when I would otherwise have dead time, such as walking to work, cooking, washing the dishes, or generally doing menial tasks that do not require my full attention. Without changing my schedule, I consumed an extra 20+ books in the past year. I’ve learned a little bit about neuroscience, exercise, diet, philosophy, economics, the founding of Google, the lives of people who have accomplished great things, self-discipline, productivity, travel, and more. I’ve also listened to some excellent literature and bought a physical copy of a few of the titles so I can spend some more time with them.

The majority of the books I listen to are informational books. This isn’t a coincidence: I can listen to informational books in 20 minute chunks without getting lost since most of the information does not rely heavily on what came immediately before it. I save the philosophical books and novels for long drives, plane rides, etc.

This year, I am on track to listen to 50+ audiobooks, again without changing my schedule. I am not pushing off tasks or projects to listen to audio, nor am I cutting into my regular reading time. I am simply being more diligent about listening to audio while I am doing menial tasks. For the past 3 weeks, I’ve gone through a book and a half a week.

A few times a year, Audible runs a $4.95 sale. For a few days they list 200+ titles, mostly popular titles that people actually want to listen to, at $4.95 each. At that price, you can grab 5 great books for $25, which is an insanely good price, considering that the books usually go for between $13-$25 a piece. Each time this sale comes around, I stock up on great titles.

Another way I can listen to so many books is that I play them at 1.5x speed. I think most of the narrators are fairly slow compared to how my friends speak, so listening to the books at 1.5x sounds fine to me. This allows me to listen to an hour of recorded audio in 40 minutes.

A note on podcasts: I haven’t explored them. I know there are many excellent ones that my friends listen to, but audiobooks have been more than adequate for me this past year. I will look into podcasts again soon. I am sure there are a few that I would enjoy listening to each week.

My number one complaint with listening to audiobooks is that my headphones are always tangled. I am currently looking into bluetooth headphones to solve this problem. I think not having to deal with wires will be a significant improvement. (Have any recommendations?–Let me know in the comments.)

What could you learn if you consumed an extra 20 books a year without changing your schedule? More importantly, what are you missing out on? Give audiobooks a try and let me know how it goes.
Photo Credit at The Daily Caller

Photography, Published

Jul 2

Last week I had a photo credit at The Daily Caller.

The photo I took at Hillsdale to illustrate a story on medical marijuana was picked up by The Daily Caller to illustrate a story on Chicago’s decriminalization decision.

See the original photo.
Giving to beggars: My policy, reasons, and recent outcomes

Life, Thoughts

Jun 23

I have a policy when it comes to giving to people who come up to me in the street and ask for money to buy food or some basic necessity: I tell them that I do not carry cash (this is the truth, I do not carry cash), then offer to purchase for them what they say they need the money for. (I won’t purchase them alcohol, drugs, weapons, cigarettes, or things like that. But, who actually tells you they need those things?)

For a month and a half at the beginning of the summer, no one took me up on my offer. I would get uneasy looks, then the person would decline and walk away. Two examples:
1. A man told me a story about how he had AIDS and how he was in a shelter, and he stands in front of the post office (where he and I both were) opening doors for people so that he can get money to go to Publix and buy juice to drink. It just so happened that I was going to Publix (directly across the street), so I made him my normal offer: “I don’t carry cash, but go across the street with me and I will buy you juice at Publix.” Unsurprisingly to me, he did not take me up on my offer. He said, “Oh, I can’t go to Publix. I’ll manage.” It was obvious to me that he didn’t want to get juice… he just wanted money for other things. (By the look of him, it was likely drugs.) So, I walked away, and he continued asking people for money. (I wonder if he changed his story?)
2. I work in downtown Atlanta right now. I walk down the street multiple times a day, and get asked for money at least once a day, usually more. This story is true (and typical of what usually happens): As I was walking between my office and Georgia Pacific, a man approached me and asked me if I could spare a dollar for a sandwich. I told him that I do not carry cash, but I would walk one block down the street with him to the food court and buy him a meal. He looked kind of worried and said, “No, that’s okay,” and walked away. This happens most of the time. I can only assume these people want something other than a sandwich, but don’t want to admit it. It is strange to me that they do not take me up on my offers, though. [EDIT: It was pointed out to me that it does not necessarily follow that people want this money for other things. See the comments.]

After a month and a half, I actually had two people take me up on the offer, just a day apart. One was a woman, the other a man. The woman took me up on buying her a MARTA (Atlanta’s metro system) ticket to somewhere on the other side of town so she could get to a women’s shelter. The man wanted soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant so he could be clean for an interview. I have no idea whether the stories they told me were true or not, but that does not matter to me. I made an offer, and I held up my end of it once they accepted. I can only pray that these individuals use what I bought them to help alleviate their situation.

Some people have asked me why I do this. Here are my reasons:
-Offering to buy someone food or basic necessities instead of immediately rejecting them and walking away acknowledges that person’s human dignity. These people get treated as less them human all day, so the least I can do is acknowledge their dignity and offer to help them out.
-Offering to buy someone food or basic necessities weeds out most people who want money for something else, such as drugs or alcohol. I’ve made the over dozens of times with only two people taking me up on it so far. This way, I can help people who really need it. I know this isn’t a perfect system, but I think it is better than just giving out cash. If people actually need help, I feel an obligation to help them.
-In 2008, when I attended my first FEE seminar, Dr. Anthony Carilli finished out the week by telling the attendees that, besides being a professor, speaker around the US, and an umpire for minor league baseball, he is a volunteer fireman. Why? In his words, “If you believe in the free market, you have to be willing to do your part to support it.” I’ve thought about that statement a lot in the last four years. If I advocate abolishing government welfare programs, I have to be willing to help people out with my own time and money. I am trying to do that.

Some people I know have objected to my practice. One guy said that I am just providing temporary relief to their problem and it doesn’t really help them. So, when I asked him what he recommends, he cited a privately run homeless shelter that has strict rules about work, but actively helps people get jobs and is surprisingly good at doing so. But the guy who told me this does not donate to such shelters or individuals, and isn’t actively trying to start one. That is fine with me. It is his time and his money, which he can do what he wants with it.

One of my favorite professors at Hillsdale always says, “Once you confront a situation or possibility, you have to own it.” The situation I am confronted with on a daily basis is people asking me for help. This is my way of owning it. I know it is not perfect, but I am trying to do what I can.
Photo Credit at Huffington Post College

College, Photography, Published

Jun 6

Back in March, I had a photo of a Hillsdale College Center for Constructive Alternatives lecture picked up by Huffington Post College in an article entitled, “The 13 Most Conservative Colleges.”

You can check out the original photo in this post or read the article over at the Huffington Post.
Photo of Reagan Statue in Dream Villager Magazine

Photography, Published

Jun 6

My photo of the Reagan Statue at Hillsdale College that was picked up by the National Review Online was just picked up by Dream Villager Magazine Archived Link to accompany an article by Andrew Roberts! Download the PDF of the article, or view the article online (go to page 30.)
I am Engaged!

Amanda, Life

Jan 14

On December 24, 2011, at around 12:45 a.m., Amanda Kate Rubino and I got engaged.

Check out Amanda’s blog, The Ring Diaries, to see the ring and for more info.
Interview with John Durant

Hillsdale, Liberty, Primal Challenge

Nov 15

Originally posted at The Primal Challenge blog. Enjoy!

I had the great fortune of being able to listen to a lecture by professional caveman John Durant at Hillsdale College last night. I also got to hang out and chat with him for the evening and he graciously agreed to do an interview for The Primal Challenge! Click on the link below to listen to the interview.

Interview with John Durant (approximately 13 minutes in length)

Topics: The gourmet hot dog party that started it all, the role of community in keeping you with your new identity, advice for people who want to start blogging or doing something in health, why so many libertarians are attracted to paleo, and advice for people just starting out with paleo.

For those of you who don’t know him, John is a barefoot runner who started the NYC Barefoot Run, a health entrepreneur, and a libertarian who runs a popular blog on the paleo lifestyle, Hunter-Gatherer.com.

I had a great time chatting with him and learning from him. Thanks, John!

Here is a photo of John at the Hillsdale Lecture:
Diving

Photography, Strobist

Nov 13

At the beginning of the semester, I got to spend some time down at the pool shooting some fun photos for the Hillsdale Collegian. The sports editor wanted to run a profile on the swim team’s new diver, Gretchen. She is the first diver Hillsdale has had since the 2008 season.

Gretchen
Whenever the Collegian runs profiles on people, we almost always have some sort of portrait and an action shot. Sometimes portraits can be pretty bland, such as a regular mugshot against a white background, so I decided to go the extra step on this one. I used the pool and diving board as the backdrop and used two strobes to light Gretchen. I used a shoot through umbrella from camera left as my main light, then set up another strobe with a spot grid behind Gretchen on camera right to open up the shadows on that side of her face.

Timelapse
This timelapse was the main art for the story. It ran pretty large in full color and I got a lot of compliments on it. The photo was pretty easy to do: I set up three strobes on 1/2 power across the pool from the diving board and fired my camera in burst mode to get Gretchen in 10 different frames as she dove into the water. I then chose 6 of the frames and masked them together in Photoshop.

Hesitation and Anticipation
When we were finished with the portraits and the diving shots, I asked Gretchen if she wanted to do one more shot, a fun one this time. She enthusiastically said, “Sure!”, so I came up with this. I had her carry an umbrella up the diving board and clamp it on to one of the rails. I then had her go to the edge of the board and act like the was afraid to jump off. It didn’t run in the paper, but it was still fun.
Lighting Smoke Trails

Photography, Strobist

Nov 10

I shot this for a story at my college paper about the city deferring the medical marijuana decision ruling four consecutive times. We needed a catchy jump from A1, so I came up with this. This was a fun shoot. We got some strange looks, but good results.
Disclaimer: These are hand-rolled tobacco cigarettes. No illegal drugs were used in these photos. While I am in favor of drug legalization, I am most certainly not in favor of using drugs. They destroy our most valuable asset, our mind.

Strobist info: Gridded LP160 to fill the face in and a bare LP160 at a higher power as a rim/smoke light, shot from behind the subject’s right side. I also used a snooted 430EX to light the hand with the cigarette in it. Cactus V5 triggers.

Strobist info: Gridded LP160 to fill the face in and a bare LP160 at a higher power as a rim light, shot from behind the subject’s right side. Cactus V5 triggers.
National Review Online

Hillsdale, Photography

Oct 10

One of my photos was on National Review Online today!

The photo was of the recently dedicated statue of Former President Reagan that was dedicated here at Hillsdale College last week. The Reagan statue is Hillsdale’s most recent addition to the Liberty Walk.

Here is a larger version:
Recently on The Primal Challenge

Primal Challenge, Recipes

Oct 7
Above: Chicken Stuffed with Spinach, Feta, and Bacon – my latest recipe at The Primal Challenge.

I’ve been posting frequently over at The Primal Challenge Archived Link. Check out some of my recent posts:
Welcome Two New People to the 30 Day Challenge!
Mass Production, Restaurants, and Food Quality
Primal Apple Crumble (a recipe from my parents!)

Also, here is the recipe for the delicious dish in the photo above:

Chicken Stuffed with Spinach, Feta, and Bacon
Ingredients:
3 chicken breasts
1 bag of fresh spinach
Feta cheese
1/2 lb of bacon, dice all but 3 pieces
1/4 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
Black pepper
Olive oil
1. 1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
2. 2. Heat your favorite fat (I used olive oil) in a skillet and start cooking the diced bacon along with the diced onion and the spinach. Saute it all together. Donât worry, the spinach will cook down quickly.
3. 3. Butterfly the chicken breasts.
4. 4. In a bowl, mix the sautÃ©ed spinach, onions, and bacon with however much feta cheese you prefer.
5. 5. Spread the minced garlic inside the butterflied chicken.
6. 6. Put the spinach, onion, bacon, and feta mixture on 1/2 of each butterflied chicken breast and fold the other side back on top of it.
7. 7. Top each stuffed chicken with the pieces of bacon you set aside earlier.
8. 8. Place on a pan and bake at 425 degrees for 35-40 minutes, or until the chicken is fully cooked. Turn the broiler on for the last 2-3 minutes to brown the top of the chicken and crisp the bacon.
The Primal Challenge: Smoothies Revisited

Primal Challenge, Recipes

Sep 29

I posted about three of my favorite primal breakfast smoothies over at The Primal Challenge today. Click over and check it out!

I know I have been linking to my posts over at The Primal Challenge quite a bit. I will post some original stuff (photography, thoughts, recommendations) on here soon. Stay tuned.
Light temperature, Sleep, and F.lux

Primal Challenge, Tech

Sep 17

I posted again over at The Primal Challenge today. Here is the post, in its entirety, below:

I don’t know about you, but the “no glowing rectangles an hour before bed” rule is difficult for me. At Hillsdale I am usually so busy that I can’t avoid using my laptop before bed, lest work go unfinished. That used to affect my sleep a great deal, but then I came across a tip in Matt Madiero’s book, Roots.

Matt recommends a great piece of freeware called F.lux. Made by Stereopsis, F.lux is a free, cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) piece of software that changes the color temperature of the screen on your computer at night to the ambient light around you. Normally, screens are set around 6500 K, roughly the temperature of sunlight, which is great for waking you up, but not for allowing you to fall asleep. Some CRTs go all the way up to 9300 K. F.lux changes your screen temperature at sunset to around 3400 K, which is roughly the temperature of halogen light.

When I first installed the software, I didn’t think it made a noticeable difference until I turned it off a few hours later in order to edit some photos. When I turned F.lux off, the screen hurt my eyes! I can’t definitively say it has improved my ability to fall asleep since I’ve used it because I am getting more exercise during the day and I am usually exhausted by the time I go to bed, anyway. Since turning it off hurts my eyes so much, though, I suspect that f.lux is at least not hindering my brain from making melatonin to make me sleepy.

Stereopsis cites a lot of research which deals with the effects of color temperature. Here is an excerpt:

“…we surmise that the effect of color temperature is greater than that of illuminance in an ordinary residential bedroom or similar environment where a lowering of physiological activity is desirable, and we therefore find the use of low color temperature illumination more important than the reduction of illuminance. Subjective drowsiness results also indicate that reduction of illuminance without reduction of color temperature should be avoided.”
– from the paper: “Effect of Illuminance and Color Temperature on Lowering of Physiological Activity”

So, does this mean it is okay to use your computer all of the time before you go to bed? No. It is still best to keep things pretty low-key and dim before you go to bed. You should also avoid having lights in your room at night. (I covered up all of the lights on my gadgets.) When you must use your laptop at night though, lower the color temperature with F.lux. Also, if you are the type of person who reads for an hour before bed, use a bulb with a lower color temperature. Wikipedia has a good chart of common bulb color temperatures.

Want to know something interesting? Those most of those curly florescent bulbs that Congress is trying to get you to buy are around 5500 K. So not only do they contain mercury and are more expensive than incandescent bulbs, but they are also ruining your ability to fall asleep. As Bastiat noted so long ago, government intervention has unintended consequences.
The Primal Challenge: Chicken Tacos with Guacamole

Primal Challenge, Recipes

Sep 17

Check out my lastest post over at The Primal Challenge: Chicken Tacos with Guacamole.
First Post at the Primal Challenge: Sausage, Spinach, and Tomato Frittata

Primal Challenge, Recipes

Sep 15

I had my first post today over at the Primal Challenge. I met Bob and Antonie, two of the people who started the site, at the FEE mansion this summer. After they graciously linked to a few of my posts, they invited me to contribute! I will post recipes and thoughts on living primally in college. Head on over to the Primal Challenge blog and check out my first post!
Homemade Primal Kits

Primal Challenge, Recipes

Aug 29

A few days after I started the primal challenge, I was on the look-out for a quick snack idea that could double as a light lunch. I saw that a few websites recommend Paleo Kits from Steve’s Original, so I ordered a sample pack of Steve’s products to give them a try. I was a huge fan of the Original Paleo Kit and the Coconut Paleo Kit. I almost ordered more, then I thought, “Why can’t I make this myself?”. I went home for a week between my internship at the Foundation for Economic Education and heading back to Hillsdale, so I teamed up with my parents and made some goodies of my own. Since they are a mix between Paleo Kits and Primal Pacs, I am dubbing them Primal Kits for the time being.

Though we used some specialized equipment, there are some alternative ways of making these, so try it out!

What are in the kits:
Beef Jerky
Almonds
Pecans
Dried Blueberries
Dried Cherries
Dried Strawberries
Dried Coconut
A few dried Apricots

The Grimmett Household is no stranger to making jerky, so we marinated some beef in our favorite batch of seasonings, put it in the smoker for a few hours, then finished it in the dehydrator. If you don’t have a smoker, you can make it entirely in a dehydrator, but it takes much longer. If you have neither of these things, an oven or a grill works just as well. Search Google for methods. Also, search Google for jerky recipes…there are thousands. Like I’ve mentioned before, I am not a big fan of measuring things out, so I just mixed together a few different sauces and spices for the marinade. That is what I’ve always done and it always turns out to be delicious. Don’t fret over exact recipes.

We also dried the strawberries in the dehydrator. I store-bought the rest. I bought the dried berries with the least amount of added sugar and preservatives in the store. If I could do this over again, I would have dried everything myself, but I simply did not have enough time. I was leaving for Hillsdale in two days and needed to finish these up. I figured this would be okay, given the 80/20 rule and the fact that a tiny bit of extra sugar is still better than the massive amounts of bread, pasta, and candy I was eating earlier this summer. I know this is less than ideal, but again, I was short on time. The next batch will all be dried at home and preservative/added sugar-free.

To finish things up, we Seal-a-Meal’d everything in convenient portions. If you don’t have one of these nifty machines, use zip-loc bags. (The shelf-life might not be as long as their vacuum-sealed twins’, though.) We didn’t measure anything out…we just put in what we thought was a good relative ratio of nuts, berries, and jerky and didn’t lose sleep over it.

These are quite tasty and keep me going throughout the day. Try your hand at making some!
A Year Ago… Longs Peak

Hiking

Aug 27

A year ago today I summited Longs Peak in Estes Park, CO with a wonderful group of people from the RMNP Forums Archived Link. We took the Keyhole Route. At 14,259 ft, Longs Peak was the first “fourteener” I’ve ever climbed. Here are a few photos by John Swadley. Click to enlarge. I will post some of my photos from the hike this coming week.

Lora, Allen, Ed, and me (I am at the bottom of the photos) making our way across the Narrows.

The group at the Boulderfield around 7 a.m. (after 3.5 hours of hiking already)

Me on the Ledges

At the summit!

More photos to come soon! Stay tuned!
Canna Leaf

Photography

Aug 20

I am home for a week and my Mom has some Canna plants in both our back and front yards. The leaves look absolutely brilliant when the sun shines through them.

ISO 100; f/13; 1/60. Only natural light on this shot.

I am going to experiment with some strobist tricks on the leaves soon. Stay tuned.
Eggplant Dish

Primal Challenge, Recipes

Aug 14

Strobist info: Canon 430EX in a shoot-through umbrella camera right on 1/4 power. Fired via a Cactus V5 trigger.

Inspired by the delicious food I ate in Turkey and the primal challenge, I made an eggplant and meat dish for dinner last week. I took a stroll through the Irvington Farmer’s Market Archived Link that meets every Wednesday and saw the eggplant a local farmer had at his booth. I’ve never cooked eggplant before, but I thought, why not? So I bought some. It turns out to be pretty simple to prepare.

Ingredients:
Eggplant
Steak
Tomatoes
Onions
Garlic
Olive Oil
Hot Peppers
Spices

First, I cut the eggplant in half lengthwise and soaked it in cold salt water for 30 minutes to take away the bitterness. Our fabulous Turkish tour guide Mehmet told me to do this. As I let the eggplant soak, I cut up some steak into small pieces and browned it with some onions. I also cut up a few large tomatoes and finely chopped some garlic and one of the hot peppers. I mixed this all together in a casserole dish with the browned meat and onions, and put the eggplant in the dish flesh-side up. I cut some slits in the eggplant and put in chopped garlic, then drizzled quite a bit of olive oil over the whole dish. I also cut the remaining pepper in half and put it in the dish as well. I baked everything (with the casserole dish covered!) on 400 for an hour.

Here is a shot of the dish when it came out of the oven:

I have two other ways I’d like to prepare eggplant, including stuffing one, so check back!
Zucchini “Pasta”

Primal Challenge, Recipes

Aug 8

First off, I apologize for the low quality cell phone photo. I was pressed for time tonight and didn’t bring my rig out like I usually do. As I wrote about in the last post, I am taking the 30-day Primal Challenge, so no grains or processed sugars for me for the rest of the month. This includes one of my favorite foods: Pasta.

A few weeks ago I came across an article somewhere on the internet about zucchini “pasta” so I decided to give it a try.

Let me tell you, it was simple to make and delicious. I used to be quite the skeptic when it comes to foods outside of my comfort zone (I am getting better though, right Mom?) but this was so delicious I would eat it even if I was not taking the Primal Challenge.

To make it, all I did was take two slightly larger than medium zucchini, make “noodles” using a vegetable peeler (a julienne peeler would have worked great for this, but I do not have one), and throw them in the microwave for two minutes. (If you boil them, watch them closely. They will turn brown and soft quickly, which is not what you want. You want them still translucent and al dente. When I took them out of the microwave, I drained the excess liquid out of the bowl, lightly seasoned them with salt and pepper, then put half on a plate and kept the other half in the bowl. I put the marinara sauce I had left over from the last post on that half and I put garlic and olive oil on the half still in the bowl.

I personally enjoyed the half with garlic and olive oil more than the half with marinara, but that is merely because of my personal preferences. I enjoyed both quite a bit, though.

If you have a ton of zucchini from your garden this summer that you don’t know what to do with, give this a try! Or, if you are just looking for a change from the same old, same old, try it!

Let me know what you think. Post a comment if you make it!