Workin' in the basement
These last few nights Sara has been out of town on a field trip to other museums to see how they do things and get some ideas of what works and what doesn't.
That left me with lonely evenings, and there was only one thing to do. Yep, work in the basement! :-)
The first night I got an additional 6 recessed lights hung and wire run, but not connected since I had forgotten to get the needed grommets for the wire going into the metal boxes attached to the lights. I had just enough time to lift some weights and take a shower before hitting the sack at about 10pm. Yep, that's my bedtime. What can I say, I'm getting old.
The second night, with grommets in hand, I wired up the lights and removed the temporary switch for the first bank and installed the two permanent switches to control the 12 lights. Nice and bright once again in the basement. There are some parts that still need more light, and I have 4 more lights that I will be installing for that purpose. The dimmers on the two banks give a nice effect allowing you to have just enough light for whatever you're doing. I then turned down the light levels and rode my mountain bike, clamped into a stationary stand, for about 25 minutes. Boy am I out of shape.
The third night, after coming home late from work, I only had time to install a new electrical outlet up near the ceiling for the wall mounted TV and ReplayTV that I had mounted over the weekend. No more extension cords, which is a good thing. Adding that outlet allowed me to easily get two outlets working again as well. Those outlets had been wired into the ceiling lights, so when I removed the lights, the outlets went dead. But, they had enough wire poking out of them that I could wire them into the new outlet which saved me from having to tear out more drywall just to get to them. Yea for my side! Another quick 25 minute bike ride and I was left unable to fall asleep until after 11:30pm. Argh, exercising too late at night can really throw off your sleep schedule.
And on the fourth night, Sara returned from her trip. I wanted to reinstall the low voltage wiring for the TV and ReplayTV, which is currently dangling from the ceiling since the wall it used to go into no longer exists, but Sara wanted to relax with me on the couch. What's a guy to do?
After a bit I told her that I needed to get up and exercise before it got too late, and she said that she had to make some "old time" candy to give away the next day at The Ramsey House. I finished riding the bike after about 30 minutes and came up to see Sara looking sad and complaining that making candy on an electric stove is impossible. I tried to help her out, but yeah, making candy on an electric stove, at least my stove, is an exercise in frustration.
The problem is that the cook top doesn't produce an even heat, instead turning the burner on and off as the stove deems necessary. What this does to a high sugar content fluid is a crime. Alternately boiling it and cooling it. Two things that are just no good for candy. I think if we had used a little more heat than medium and less than high, we might have been able to get the butterscotch and sugar to melt without burning, but in Sara's frustration she turned the stove up to high. That certainly caused the sugar to start to melt (the sugar and milk had turned into something resembling brown sugar when we added the butterscotch chips), but it was too hot and no amount of stirring and moving the pot on and off the heat could keep the butterscotch from turning a shade or two darker than it should have.
We did get it all melted, and I thought it tasted great, though it had a very smokey or Oakey flavor to it which meant that it had been burnt. Didn't taste anything like butterscotch if you ask me, but I think it was yummy none the less. Breaking it into 100+ pieces was a real chore, however, since it was supposed to be cut into squares and not just broken into random sized pieces. Unfortunately, she let it cool too much and I think I would have had better luck cutting it with my glass cutting tools than a kitchen knife. In the end, we just scored and snapped off pieces that were roughly, and I do mean roughly, uniform in size.
Hopefully everyone will like it, and I say that it's probably more authentic anyway since cooking over a wood-fired stove would surely result in uneven heating as well. I told her I would eat anything that they didn't, but to please not bring back any leftovers. It's just too yummy and I'm trying to be good. It was actually the first sweets that I had all week and I'd like to keep it that way. Too many temptations with Halloween coming up and all.
That left me with lonely evenings, and there was only one thing to do. Yep, work in the basement! :-)
The first night I got an additional 6 recessed lights hung and wire run, but not connected since I had forgotten to get the needed grommets for the wire going into the metal boxes attached to the lights. I had just enough time to lift some weights and take a shower before hitting the sack at about 10pm. Yep, that's my bedtime. What can I say, I'm getting old.
The second night, with grommets in hand, I wired up the lights and removed the temporary switch for the first bank and installed the two permanent switches to control the 12 lights. Nice and bright once again in the basement. There are some parts that still need more light, and I have 4 more lights that I will be installing for that purpose. The dimmers on the two banks give a nice effect allowing you to have just enough light for whatever you're doing. I then turned down the light levels and rode my mountain bike, clamped into a stationary stand, for about 25 minutes. Boy am I out of shape.
The third night, after coming home late from work, I only had time to install a new electrical outlet up near the ceiling for the wall mounted TV and ReplayTV that I had mounted over the weekend. No more extension cords, which is a good thing. Adding that outlet allowed me to easily get two outlets working again as well. Those outlets had been wired into the ceiling lights, so when I removed the lights, the outlets went dead. But, they had enough wire poking out of them that I could wire them into the new outlet which saved me from having to tear out more drywall just to get to them. Yea for my side! Another quick 25 minute bike ride and I was left unable to fall asleep until after 11:30pm. Argh, exercising too late at night can really throw off your sleep schedule.
And on the fourth night, Sara returned from her trip. I wanted to reinstall the low voltage wiring for the TV and ReplayTV, which is currently dangling from the ceiling since the wall it used to go into no longer exists, but Sara wanted to relax with me on the couch. What's a guy to do?
After a bit I told her that I needed to get up and exercise before it got too late, and she said that she had to make some "old time" candy to give away the next day at The Ramsey House. I finished riding the bike after about 30 minutes and came up to see Sara looking sad and complaining that making candy on an electric stove is impossible. I tried to help her out, but yeah, making candy on an electric stove, at least my stove, is an exercise in frustration.
The problem is that the cook top doesn't produce an even heat, instead turning the burner on and off as the stove deems necessary. What this does to a high sugar content fluid is a crime. Alternately boiling it and cooling it. Two things that are just no good for candy. I think if we had used a little more heat than medium and less than high, we might have been able to get the butterscotch and sugar to melt without burning, but in Sara's frustration she turned the stove up to high. That certainly caused the sugar to start to melt (the sugar and milk had turned into something resembling brown sugar when we added the butterscotch chips), but it was too hot and no amount of stirring and moving the pot on and off the heat could keep the butterscotch from turning a shade or two darker than it should have.
We did get it all melted, and I thought it tasted great, though it had a very smokey or Oakey flavor to it which meant that it had been burnt. Didn't taste anything like butterscotch if you ask me, but I think it was yummy none the less. Breaking it into 100+ pieces was a real chore, however, since it was supposed to be cut into squares and not just broken into random sized pieces. Unfortunately, she let it cool too much and I think I would have had better luck cutting it with my glass cutting tools than a kitchen knife. In the end, we just scored and snapped off pieces that were roughly, and I do mean roughly, uniform in size.
Hopefully everyone will like it, and I say that it's probably more authentic anyway since cooking over a wood-fired stove would surely result in uneven heating as well. I told her I would eat anything that they didn't, but to please not bring back any leftovers. It's just too yummy and I'm trying to be good. It was actually the first sweets that I had all week and I'd like to keep it that way. Too many temptations with Halloween coming up and all.
posted by Mark at 9:44 AM
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