Our RV Adventures

Though we had one night in the 50’s last week, I was thinking about taking our two big heaters over to the storage room since the nighttime temps have been in the 70’s since then.

But then I looked at the forecast and saw we’ve got 4 nights in a row in the low 50’s coming up this weekend. So I’ll hold off on that, I guess.

Tomorrow Jan and I are heading up to the Spring area to meet up with long-time friends, Debi and Ed Hurlburt, and Janice and Dave Evans, at the El Palenque restaurant up there.

Really looking forward to seeing everyone again.

I decided to do a test run of our new Sous Vide Immersion cooker this evening, not to actually cook anything, but just to see if it works, and if I can control it from the phone app.

Originally I had planned to use our slow cooker to use with the Sous Vide unit, but I found that the rim of the slow cooker is too thick for the large clip on the side of the immersion cooker. So for the test I just stood the cooker up in the center of the slow cooker to check it out.

I filled the cooker with tap water and turned on the Sous Vide cooker. It showed the water temp as 73°, so I set the wanted temp to 140° and timed it.

It only took about 12 minutes to raise the temperature from 73 to 140 degrees, at which time the timer started counting down from the 11 hours that I had set it for.

The only thing I was missing were the ping pong balls.

The phone app showed me the same information as the unit itself, as well as letting me change the settings, and even receive notifications when it was done.

The Custom Preset section gives me suggested cooking times and temps for many different foods. A neat touch.

I let it run for about 30 minutes and it kept the water temp at exactly 140° the entire time with the built-in pump keeping the water circulating as well.

Since the slow cooker won’t work for actually cooking, I’ll have to check out our InstaPot pressure cooker to see how it will work, but right now it’s in the storage room so that will have to wait a bit. Otherwise I’ll have to buy a large boiler for that purpose.

We did get some hot dogs and some sausages the other day to give our new George Foreman Grill a tryout this weekend, depending on the weather, of course.

Thought For The Day:

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter. – Winston Churchill

I forgot to mention last weekend that when we ate at the Monterey’s up in Alvin last Friday night, we got some more info about the reopening of the Monterey’s near us over in Dickinson. It’s been closed ever since it was flooded during Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, but we kept being told that it was going to reopen ‘soon’. And we been hearing that for the last 3 years or so.

Until last month when a dumpster appeared out front and workers were swarming over the place. And now it looks like they’re adding on to the kitchen area on the north side of the building.

Turns out our waiter used to work at that location, though we didn’t remember him. Maybe because we were traveling, but it looks like it should be opened again in the next couple of months.

Really looking forward to it.

After getting somewhat coffeenated this morning, we went outside, and while Jan supervised (watched) I worked on some of the upgrades we’re doing in our patio area.

But the first thing I did was to check out my idea for a computer-controlled watering system for Jan’s hibiscus to keep it healthy while we’re gone for a couple of weeks this coming June.

I started with an empty kitty litter bucket, a submersible water pump like this,

and a computer controlled plug, giving me this.

As a first test I was able to use the Smart Life controller app to turn on the pump, and the water started flowing immediately. But too much, too fast.

The scheduler program for the computer plug will only let me turn the pump on and off in one minute intervals, and even one minute was going to be too much water at once. But looking over the pump, I found an adjustment lever on the side that let me throttle down the flow until one or two minutes seemed to get me close to the correct amount of water.

So I set up a schedule in the Smart Life app that turns the pump on for one minute between 9:00 and 9:01 every morning. Now I’ll just have to monitor the plant to see how it does over the next week or so.

Another addition to our patio redo was to get a heavy base for our umbrella. Found one that I ordered from WalMart that’s made to self-support an umbrella, rather than support one under a patio table.

So I got this 30# one,

to go with this 80” tiltable patio umbrella.

Though we bought in 2014 for a gate guarding location, we actually never used it, and it was still wrapped up and stored in the back of the truck, so it’s just like new.

And I did order some ping pong balls for our Sous Vide cooker. Actually, thought, they’re Beer Pong balls.

At least the cooking process will be colorful.

After 20+ countries have suspended use of the AstraZeneca ‘vaccine’ due to blood clot problems, including deaths, another one bites the dust.

Now it’s the Johnson & Johnson one-shot version.

FDA, CDC call for ‘pause’ on Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine after blood clot reports

And, yes, though it’s only a very small percentage who have these problems, someone once told me it is a significant problem if it’s you or a family member who’re affected.

Thought For The Day:

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” – Albert Einstein