I’m making jewelry and accessories again.

Check it here. It’s still in the pretty early stages, but I’m gearing up to do the Rock N Roll Craft Show! I’m pretty excited about that.

I’ve started to post a couple photos, so you can see some of the stuff I’ve been working on.

It was only a matter of time before my citric companion made it to the blog. Meet Frank, the petrified orange.

Frank

He was gifted to me by our marketing and sales assistant Maddy St. Clair in October 2008. She thought it had gone bad since it had hardened to nearly rock-solid, but now, more than 6 months later … Frank lives on…

For months I have been staring at this anomaly, contemplating its purpose in life. I’ve actually gone so far as looking up pictures of moldy oranges online, just to remind myself that yes, they’re supposed to rot. Frank doesn’t rot. Oh no … Since I’ve kept him on my desk he has lost a lot of mass; very light now. You can still squeeze him as hard as you can and not even dent the skin. He used to smell like an orange. Not so much anymore … BUT … it doesn’t smell BAD!

I should take it on a trip with me across some border, so that when they say “Are you traveling with any fruits or vegetables?” I’ll hold up Frank and say, “You tell me.”

I’m getting a bit worried. I’m just waiting for the day when it explodes with maggots and disease, but after 6 WHOLE MONTHS—MOLD doesn’t even wanna eat this thing! Something ain’t right here…

It’s from Australia. Riversun Exports to be exact. It’s a navel orange, number 4012. They’ve obviously injected it with something to preserve it on its trip to America. Am I nuts? Is this type of behavior considered normal with Australian citrus? I sure don’t want to eat anything from this place after befriending one of their specimens…

I’m not sure what to do with this thing. I’m going to wait a year then try and break something with it … or dissect it like a mad scientist … or just keep it in a jar for eternity …but one thing’s for sure, this piece of former fruit is not obeying the rules appertaining to the circle of life. Perhaps it’s a sign … pigs are flying, oranges are petrifying, hell should be freezing over any day now…

I named him Frank. He’s my petrified orange … Don’t judge me.

I’m on a quest to figure out why Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee destroys my digestive system.  I don’t know about anyone else, but coffee in general tends to send me to the bathroom sooner rather than later.  Not a big deal, if anything an emptying of the bowels first thing in the morning is a good thing, but the Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee is a whole different story.  I mean, I’m in the bathroom before I’ve finished the cup EVERY TIME.  So in my attempts to look for a warning label, I found something very interesting:

the poop line http://errordactyl.wordpress.com

Yes, the poop line.  Though they offer no official explanation, they have included a ring around the lower portion of the cup, politely indicating the point at which you will need to shit your brains out.  AND IT’S 100% ACCURATE, I kid you not.  I am on my way to the toilet every time I get to that line, I had to go to the toilet right after taking that picture.

Something tells me that’s not just the caffeine.  So what is it?  Well lets examine the facts, you can find them here:

dunkin iced coffee http://errordactyl.wordpress.com

Well thank got there’s no crustaceans in there, I could have sworn I tasted some.  However there is disodium phosphate and sodium citrate, but their just stabilizers, so don’t worry about it (you wouldn’t want your coffee to be off-balance would you?)  Alright, so exactly what the fuck is disodium phosphate?

According to Wikipedia, disodium phosphate is used as an anti-caking agent, due to its extreme ability to attract water molecules.  But mommy taught me better than to trust Wikipedia.  So let’s see what the Scorecard pollution information website has to say about it.  Oh, wow, used in “building materials that contribute to indoor air pollution” and “pesticide products”.  That sounds healthy, but then again caffeine is a natural pesticide for the plants that produce it, so let’s look at the other one.

Sodium citrate is also known as “citric acid,” that sounds a lot less scary.  We can find out more about this one on drugs.com (yea, I thought that website would be cooler too).  They say that it’s used for:

Long-term maintenance of an alkaline urine; alleviation of chronic metabolic acidosis; buffering and neutralizing gastric hydrochloric acid.

Now we’re on to something.  WHAT HAVE I BEEN DRINKING?  Maybe this is why I feel like an old person all the time (or it could be the chain-smoking).  Either way, that’s a pretty serious chemical tag-team they have going on there, and regardless of what exactly is causing the acidic liquid-shits, I think I’m going to wake up the old fashion way from now on:

crack cocaine http://errordactyl.wordpress.com

Just finishing the last bottle of homemade summer lemonade, now the nights have drawn in, the leaves have turned and the temperature has dropped this is like a taste of summer but still excellent and the kids love it!

Last of the Summer Lemonade

Ingredients:-

• 4 lemons
• 3lb sugar
• 4 pts water
• 2oz citric acid (you can buy it from the local chemist)

Method:-

• cut away the outside peel and zest of the lemons and place in liquidiser with half a pint of water, if large lemons cut the ends off and discard.  top speed for 1 minute.
• pour into saucepan with remaining water and bring to boil.
• extract juice from lemons and add sugar and citric acid to pan, stir to dissolve.
• strain and bottle in hot sterilised bottles.

The lemon soda acts in a wonderful way against the rheumatism. For it, he washes himself, he is cut in tracks, one takes the pepas from him and is cooked slowly in water. At first one takes 2 lemons with half a liter of water that is allowed to boil slowly. This cooked lemon soda is sweetened by sugar and takes during 2 nights, regularly before going to bed. Later it does the same operation to itself with 3 lemons during 3 consecutive nights and later 4 lemons, then 5 successively up to 7 or 8, to measurement, it happens that the rheumatism disappears completely before finishing the treatment. It is tambiés of very good effect against the indigestion, the sickness and scurvy. In Nice from time without memoriables, they mix his juice with the coffee to cut the fever and it does not make medical Dr. Magliari eminete of Capture great he realized from notable priests of refractory fiecres to the quinine sulfate. The preparation consists of cutting the lemon with his rind in pedacitos and of doing to him herviren three small valuations of aguahasta that remains limited to a third. The lemon (juice) is of big utility in surgery, many doctors use it often for the treatment of the ulcers and gangrenous ulcers. It is also the best tonic against the diphtheria, very effective xontra Is the cough, the lemon puts itself in a stove of high temperature until it is softened, then the jugocon honey is mixed in equal quantities and it takes warmly in teaspoonfuls them rinsing later the mouth. The lemon juice treats the gums that they bleed. For the pain of the gums the lemon juice takes in water to clean the teeth and the pain disappears slowly. Half a lemon juice teaspoonful in a glass of lukewarm water in the teeth, destroys the tartar and purifies the breath. It is necessary, nevertheless, mouth to be rinsed bienla because despés the citric acid attacks the enamel of the tooth. The squeezed lemon is used also in the boudoir as beautification way, simultaneously that is curative against the granites and the roughnesses of the face and hands, is the same way it gives a wonderful aspect. If fortamos hard the face and the hands with the low part of a lemon, before going to bed and dejemps that the juice dries on the skin, we will see in only one night the curative power.

New studies suggested once again that citric fruits including oranges, tangerines, and grapefruits help fight cancer, high cholesterol, and obesity.

Studies both at Texas A&M University and Kanazawa Medical University in Japan showed that compounds in citric fruits can help reduce the risk of colon cancer. Researchers at Texas A&M University found that freeze-dried grapefruit, similar to the whole grapefruit, can reduce the incidence of early colon cancer lesions in animals. The Japanese researchers found anti-colon cancer properties in nobiletin – a compound found in tangerines.

Grapefruit can also reduce the risk of cancer caused by smoking. A study on the cancer prevention was done by the researchers at the University of Hawaii. The researchers found that drinking 6 ounces of grapefruit juice a day reduces the activity of a liver enzyme that is thought to activate toxic chemicals in the smoke.

On another front, scientists from the USDA and a Canadian company isolated a compound – polymethoxylated flavones (PMFs) – from orange and tangerine peels that can actually lower cholesterol in animals. They found that use of food containing 1% PMFs can lower cholesterol by 32 to 40%.

Grapefruits also promote weight loss. Researchers at Scripps Clinic in San Diego found that grapefruit may trigger weight loss by lowering insulin levels, an excess of which is linked to weight gain. Effect of grapefruits on weight loss was confirmed in humans. An early study by the same researchers confirmed that eating grapefruit or drinking juice with meal can help the obese lose weight.

Even the interaction of grapefruit juice with drugs, a bad trait for grapefruit, has been explored. Researchers at Texas A&M Citrus Center studied the interaction between grapefruit compounds and drugs in hopes that this interaction can be taken advantage of to increase bioavailability of drugs in humans.

These studies were presented in the American Chemical Society Annual Meeting being held in Pennsylvania during Aug. 22 through 26.

About The Author

John Roberts is a freelance writer for http://www.foodconsumer.com. This article was originally published at http://foodconsumer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1241

kontact@foodconsumer.com

There’s this old corny saying that goes “it takes a lot of beer to make good wine.”  As I am about a month into my first harvest experience here at the top of Howell Mountain, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  You know what it takes?  Water and electricity.  All day, and my days are running about 14 backbreaking hours of physical labor I am surrounded by two of the most deadly elements when combined: water and electricity.

It would behoove me to wear a rain suit all day , but then I’d sweat like Josh Howard in a VFW hall.  It’s been really pleasant weather wise, just balmy, cool, and clear unobstructed views across the valley to western Mayacamus mountains.  I wake up at 5:30 every morning, it’s dark and I make coffee.  I shower at the END of the day now which is in reality a really nice way to go about life you end the day on this super-clean note and wake up, hit the ground, get coffee, eat some Kashi, fill up on Sportscenter and head out the door.

I pray to Jah that each day is not going to be the day when I need to start my routine with a face off with the family of racoons that live in the vicinity of where I live.  I may start packing some steel with me in case this happens, and by steel, I mean a big gnarly sharpened hoe in case I need to chop off some racoon heads one morning.  That would be sad, but I’m also not trying to go hand-to-hand with these bastard trash-guzzling rodents.

Once I’m in my car, NPR is a wasteland so I go through the ipod.  Because it’s dark, but it’s early I opt for some deep shit that’ll get me thinking and freaked out.  Burial, some Tricky, Eluvium, sometime I go shuffle just to see what fate will deal me that particular moment.  Today I went that route and I was really stoked by the time I got to work.  You know how sometimes shuffle plays TWO songs from the same album back to back?  Well I got Jay Reatard “My Shadow” and “Death is Forming.”  Holy cow, I was waiting for the Swedish orgy team to be on the side of the road and give me road massage for giving them a ride to the rainbow they came from.

The ride up the mountain is really pleasant.  You’d have to be Scrooge McDuck’s broken bill not to love the view in certain places/  Once I’m on Howell Mountain road I gain about 1000 feet straight up and then the road continues on the back side of the mountain for about 2 miles.  Conn Valley is way below and the hills are surrounded by morning pockets of fog and cran-orange light from the horizon.  This road is not so much a road as paved surface.  A couple times my heart has taken a nose dive right on top of my nuts as a huge cement truck or equal sized  vehicle comes barreling around a blind corner at about 40 mph +, no big deal and it does more for me than the coffee.  One of these days I’ll bring my coffee with me, pull over to the side of the orad and watch the day come alive wrapped in a electric blanket of 87 degree emotion.  Both hands on the mug, held close to my pursed appreciative lips, losers.

I arrive at the winery, talk shit with my fellow harvesters, mostly focusing on how ugly, stupid and sex deprived they all are, we laugh, it’s cool.  Oh we all have mustaches.  All 5 of us, mine is the best, that’s not me being all uppity, my mustache is the fucking bee’s knees, it’s sick, it howls at the early morning moon then I get to work.

There are two chemicals that dominate my daily existence:  TSP and Citric Acid.  If you found a maggot-infested armadillo carcass on the side of the road, dipped it in TSP/water/Citric/water it would come out a 8 ounce cut of the best damn filet mignon the world has ever seen.  We spend about an hour cleaning all the equipment we will be using that day with this system.  The equipment includes sumps, trays, shovels, hoses of various sizes, an irrigator, pitchers, buckets, graduated cylanders, hydrometers, clamps, and gaskets.  Once the fruit comes in and it is sorted and de-stemmed it is pumped into anywhere from 739-2269 gallon stainless steel tanks where the berries and juice begins to ferment.  Each morning we do pump overs which involves all the equipment listed above.

The sump is a large stainless steel bin that holds 100 gallons. The steel mesh tray sits on top.  We open a valve at the bottom of the tank and the berries and juice come rushing into the tray, the liquid goes in the bin, the berries stay in the tray.  When the berries get too full in the bin, I shovel them into a 5 gallon bucket that weighs in at 35-40 pounds and haul it up about 20 stairs to a cat walk above the tanks and dump it back in the top of the tank.  There can be up to 4 or 5 of these trips and sometime I do 4 or 5 pumovers each morning.  It’s similiar to watching events in World’s Strongest Man competitions, except we are making fine wine.  The liquid is constantly being pumped via a hose through the irrigator at the top of the tank creating a cycling effect, mixing berries and juice and making a smooth even ferment process.

After you use anything, you clean it with tsp/water/citric/water, this may not sound like a big deal, but this is 80% of what I spend my time doing, every winery is this way.  The morning is a stellar time up here, the light comes over one side of the vineyard and lights up the grapes, then it’s behind the guest house, then it’s over towards the west illuminating the valley.  Today after lunch our Assistant Winemaker put a tee in our dirt patio area and blasted a couple balls into the abyss this is below our property.  It drops about 700 feet right off the patio.  We eat lunch together at a big table in the guest house.  Lunch is provided by the winery.  Today we told some dead baby jokes and clown suit jokes, killer stuff.

We have a rough idea of when fruit is going to come in, but it’s never certain.  If fruit shows up at 5:00 pm you have set up the sorting table which is about the width and height of a large dumptruck, de-stemmer, stem bin, auger, pump and make sure the tank the fruit is going into is sterilized and read to go.  It gets cold here at night, down to high 40s, low 50s and when you spend 3 or 4 hours in that temperature handling cold fruit, you get antsy in the pantsy to get it over with.  My hands these days are quite stained purple and there are lots of lines I never had before.

I’m really tired in the morning, and really tired when I get home, my whole body is sore.  But when I get to the bar, that first beer tastes so damn good when I have it, it’s stunning.  I get a little loopy, sometimes there’s a million things happening at once and I’ve been working for 12 hours staright and I haven’t had a day off in 18 days.  It’s hectic, but overall it’s incredibly rewarding and cool to be a part of producing some of the best wine on the planet.  More on that to come.

Says who? Says Chupa Chups! Sta ik aan de kassa in de supermarkt. Zie ik daar bij de last-minute candy rekken een uitzonderlijk herkenbaar pakje staan. Rel@x heet hun nieuwe concept waarbij je in een pakje 6 mini Chupa Chups vindt met Strawberry-Citric Flavour (mét citroenmelisse & lindebloesem).

Er staan een aantal frapante boodschappen op het doosje, zoals:

• ‘Sucking Relaxes’,
• ‘0%Sugar’ (sometimes we DO care!) en
• ‘Does not harm those around you!’.

Denk je bij het zien van deze foto aan sigaretten? Kopen dit pakje! Super marketing, speciaal voor alle rokers die maar niet uit die orale fase geraken!

Trouwens, Chupa Chups heeft een prachtige website ter ere van zijn 50ste verjaardag waar je in een cartoon meegenomen wordt op een tijdreisje. Soo cute!

]]> http://opiated.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/using-citric-acid-when-mixing-your-hit/ Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:12:34 +0000 opiAted http://opiated.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/using-citric-acid-when-mixing-your-hit/

Of late a number of harm reduction agencies are beginning to distribute little packets of citric acid or vitamin C along with clean needles, condoms, sterile water, and other supplies.

The Ontario Harm Reduction Distribution Program provides supplies to needle exchanges in the province, included packets of VitC or citric acid.

The OHRDP has produced a little video showing how to use citric to prepare heroin injections. Remember to use as little citric as possible since it can be quite rough on the inside of one’s veins (burn, baby, burn!).

Have a look see: Heroin / Citric video

A lot of these packages of acidifiers – whether VitC or citric acid – ends up being used by folks to make their crack from cocaine powder. Which is alright, provided these smokers have access to good glass pipes.

For the first few years that our wine and beer making supply store existed we sold acid blend which we purchased already mixed from our wholesaler.