Category: General

I fondly remember my Grandpa taking me fishing once in Florida long ago. I can’t remember what we caught or anything else besides a mental snapshot of him showing me how to cast. Other than that, I can’t remember ever fishing in my life prior to about a year ago. Kinda sad, but I was privileged to grow up being in the woods a lot.

My friend Jacob took me fishing a couple times last year, and gave me a ton of tackle/tools to get me started. I am just an amateur, but I now have my own $40 telescoping fishing pole, net, bucket, and some tackle of my own.

Fishing is such a fun hobby. It’s peaceful, prayerful, and exciting all at the same time. Jill has come with me on several occasions just to be with me and help net big, floppy fish that like to jump the hook.

Once you find a less frequented spot, and if you are not picky, you can eat pretty well. I’ve caught 36 edible fish in four trips in the past couple weeks! This is not including the many fish that were too small or got away.

Above we have a bunch of Bluegill, a Smallmouth Bass, and a Pickerel. Some guys would throw these back, but if you prepare them right (and Jill certainly does) they are delicious. Jill breads and fries them in coconut oil. For the Bluegill we found this video helpful and entertaining.

This is the first time in my life that I’ve provided food for my family. Not in the “work/acquire currency/buy food” sense, but in the “I just pulled this out of a lake” sense. It feels great. Every man should be taught this skill in boyhood. I was missing out all these years.

Jill and Alice have become really good at cleaning and preparing the fish too, and they enjoy that part of it. It’s great teamwork for the whole family. Sitting down to a “fish fry” at dinner is rewarding and very tasty!

I suppose the early 2000’s were the days of the weekly updated family blog sites… much less so today! And we only get updates here every few months or so. Oh well! Here are some of our pics and happenings. 😛

I love the idea of oil lamps because they run forever and don’t have to be replaced continually, like candles. In the past I’ve tried the paraffin lamps, but then you have to keep a supply of expensive/flammable/poisonous paraffin wax or kerosene around.

I learned that the Orthodox use these lamps a lot for shrine/votary/church type applications, and now I know why. Olive oil burns very clean and doesn’t leave stains on your ceiling, it’s safe and fairly cheap.

So lately I’ve been intrigued with burning olive oil and have made several different lamps of my own. Some were leaky or hard to fill without spilling (I hate drops of oil getting everywhere). Others don’t burn as long as I want.

You can’t just buy a normal oil lamp either. Olive oil is thick and will not wick very well. Because of this, you have to keep the oil very close (within an inch or so) to the burning wick. Fortunately this isn’t dangerous. Olive oil doesn’t easily catch on fire, in fact you can put out the lamp by dipping it in the remaining oil! One downside is that a soaked wick can take about 20 seconds (or a few matches) to light.

After a bunch of testing and fiddling I have made a lamp that I really like. It’s cheap, easy to make, and runs for 6-8 hours before I have to refill it, depending on the height of the flame. I can refill it while it’s burning, and it doesn’t spill! It’s open on top but less susceptible to getting knocked over than a tall candle. Adjusting the wick and lighting it is very easy.

All you need is a jar, some cotton wick about 1cm thick, a coat hanger, and some olive oil:

Brilliant, huh? Doesn’t get cheaper than that. I got a whole meter of wick for about $3 shipped. The jar is a plain old jam jar. The piece of coat hanger was bent into shape with some pliers. It hangs on the side of the jar and holds the wick.

The burny part sits off to the side of the jar, but that’s ok because it makes it easier to fill while it’s burning. This is the lamp equivalent of pumping gas with the engine running! Here’s a video of it burning. Goes all day like this. The water in the bottom lets me see when to refill it.

One of our favorite family books. I read it to Jill on our honeymoon and multiple times to Alice (along with the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy). For years we would finish one book and move right on to the next, repeating those four books in series – and by Alice’s request!

Last year or so Jill requested that I do my own recorded version of the Hobbit. I finished it recently! You can listen here. It’s over nine hours of audio and took me a long time to finish, editing mistakes out as I went, and mastering the whole thing at the end (with a few fun effects).

If you get some use out of it, feel free to donate me some moneys. Since I don’t have any way to accept it electronically, it’ll have to be in person, or a mailed check or something. But no pressure, I am just glad this masterpiece of fiction lives on.

I enjoy looking back ten years and twenty years and finding photos in the archives. These are funny ones in how they match! 😀

Alice 2013. Nathan 2003.

I never realized what you could do with the stuff! Here is my latest projects with it:

Vanilla extract! You get the beans and use them for stuff like homemade ice cream. It makes those little tiny black specs and tastes really good – especially with my homemade butterscotch sauce. Then you put the used beans in vodka! After a couple weeks it’s vanilla extract – the expensive kind! A tiny bottle costs around $20, and the picture above is 10+ bottles. It tastes wonderful. The fudge Jill made with it had a delicious, distinct flavor. No, there isn’t anymore left.

Following on the heels of the extract theme, I decided to pick some mint leaves from our tiny garden and use them the same way. This makes a drink very similar to a mint julep – just add some sugar syrup and ice. Jill loves it, and it functions pretty much the same as it did in 1952.

On the left is my first attempt at limoncello. It’s the zest of two lemons. After this picture was taken, I then filtered out the zest and combined with sugar syrup to taste. It’s about the same process as the mint julep, and also tastes amazing. Very lemony.

All of these projects out of one $18 bottle of vodka!

Some photos from the collection, including, but not limited to, double batch cinnamon rolls, cinnamon roll BREAD, cooking on the tiny cast iron stove, a picnic feast for a tiny one. 😀

And Little Mushrooms photo shoot. Just this cutie growing out back amid the moss. Photography by Ben. 🙂

I enjoy looking back through the photo collection 🙂 What was happening 10 years ago mid-Sepbember? How about 20 years ago? And the winners are….

Pop and Alice with a smiley snuggle.

This lovely portrait of the Murphy family, by Alice.

And Pumpkin Nate, with side-pistol, admiring Finny the Fish! 😛