karlijn vink

I swept the floor today

I cleaned out the chicken coop:

I'm entering this PEP Badge Adventure, starting with these two loaves of bread.

I used 500 grams of flour (a mix of wholegrain wheat and white spelt flour; ), 3 grams of dry yeast, 5 grams of sea salt, 390 grams of water.
I mixed the ingredients with a spoon until there was no dry flour left.
Then let it rise for about 15 hours (i.e. the whole night).

In the morning, I kneaded the dough a bit, formed a bread, put it in the baking tin and baked it about 40 minutes on 180 degress Celsius.

Later that day I did the same to make a second loaf of bread.

Thank you!!
We are designing a 7"-system (to fit our 180mm ID chimney). This 6"-plan is a nice addition to the 8"-plan in the book by Ernie & Erica.

Rachel Royce wrote:Where do those amazing glass jars with glass lids come from?

These jars are made for canning foods. We call it 'wecken', may be 'wecking' in English, because the brand name of these jars is Weck.
For canning you need a rubber seal between the jar and the lid and two or three little clamps to hold the lid until it is 'wecked'.
The clamps can be removed after heating and cooling down. The vacuum will keep the jar closed, unless your food goes bad and some colony of bacteria makes air.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link to a webshop. If not, let me know.
For now, you can see the jars I prefer here: https://weckenonline.com/weckpotten-en-inmaakglazen/weck-stortmodel

There is info about them on wikipedia:
wikipedia in Dutch: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wecken (just for the pictures, I guess you don't read Dutch)
wikipedia in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weck_jar

I use them for canning (wecking), but also for freezing or fridging food. The sort-of-cone-shape gives the food enough room to expand in the freezer, so the jars don't break. If you'd use other types/shapes of these jars, they could break.

Gerry Parent wrote:

Brian Funk wrote:This may have been covered before. I'm new to this style of heating. My question is which is better  thermal mass bench with ducting or a stratification bench.  Looking to build in my basement to keep it warm

Hi Brian,  Here is a good explanation of the two types of heat capture.  Flues vs Bells
If you don't already have it, a lot of information can also be found in the book The Rocket Mass Heater Builder’s Guide by Erica and Ernie Wisner

The link is broken. I think it was meant to direct to this site: Flues vs Bells

Thank you for posting this. I just watched it, enjoyed it. Really cool timelapses.

This thread is a bit old, but I'd like to show what kind of jars we use: glass jars with glass lids. They are made for canning and I use them for that purpose. But I use them more often for food storage in the freezer or fridge. I even used the smaller jars in the oven to bake something like a small lasagne or pie.

I've chosen jars in different sizes (heights), with lids in all the same size. I've also got plastic lids; I use them for food like homemade mayonaise, but the glass lids are perfect in the freezer. And: they stack perfectly

Hi Everyone,

Thanks again for all your replies! I've learned a lot and got some really nice ideas about storing, preparing and saving food in different ways.

Our fridge/freezer is up and running again. Bit emberassing to tell you what the problem was: a lot of dust on the back of it. There was kind of a blanket over the holes, so it definitely couldn't do it's work properly. (To justify a bit: the dust has grown exceptionally last two weeks due to preparing our living room for building a RMH).

The good thing however is that I learned a lot about saving more energy by preserving our food in alternative ways. And I've got time to gradually change some routines. My goal is to need no new fridge when it really stops working.  I'm starting with a lot of hooks and use colanders to store more vegetables outside the fridge, like in this post: permies.com/p/1277585

Yeah: fermenting! Another good idea. And learning all about it is a fun project.

Thank you, Lynne, for your idea!

I used to make ghee a lot. I can do that again.
And we make our own yoghurt, but we are used to store it in the fridge. Is yoghurt originaly meant to store at a warmer temperature?

Fermenting different veggies would be new to me. So far, I only fermented white cabbage into 'zuurkool' or sauerkraut.