Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Thanks for the cheese curd recipe from earlier. Also I think the picture with the blueberry cream pie is AI generated.

that was as much a piece of cake to guess as the thesis progress.

Ha, the thesis progress was more along the lines of "really wonky, a quarter done and probably won't stand up to close scrutiny but there's at least an outline." Good thing I'm not on any deadline to finish!

March 2024 update

Grinding away. I won a student design competition and a scholarship (that I didn't even apply for!) which when combined equal half a year's expenses. I also am now officially self-employed, paying myself a salary from the corporation.

I made more yogurt tub screened flowerpots to replace some of the old ones that broke due to squirrel shenanigans. I also finally consumed all of my old business cards while drawing portraits! The end of project portraits is in sight!

I have also had a lot of success with physiotherapy. Had some shoulder pain due to a wonky sleeping situation and after two years of it slowly healing I went to physio. 10 weeks of exercises later and it feels 99% healed. No more swearing every time I stretch.

I read Empire of Cotton recently and I think from the author's viewpoint, they would cast ERE as people re-peasantizing themselves and conventional FIRE as joining the bourgeosie. Which makes the perennial "what would happen if everyone did this?" question funny because that's already happened...

Food prices seem to be dropping lately but this homegrown beansprout salad I developed during the lockdowns is still a super-cheap staple for me.



Beansprout Salad

Ingredients

500g beansprouts, blanched, chilled and drained (2 minutes in boiling water then rinsed with cold water)
1 tbsp/15 ml gochujang
1 tsp/5 ml sugar or molasses
2 tsp/5 ml fish sauce (substitute with soy to make it vegan)
1 tsp/5 ml soy sauce (works fine with low sodium)
1 tsp/5 ml sesame oil
1 tsp/2 cloves minced garlic
1/4 tsp pepper (white or black)
2 tsp rice wine vinegar
2 tsp/10 ml sesame seeds
1 green onion, chopped fine

Directions

- whisk together liquid ingredients, sugar, pepper and garlic, until oil and gochujang are well-mixed
- add beansprouts and toss to coat
- garnish with sesame seeds and green onion

April 2024 update:

Some new developments in the lentil jerky project.

1) New flavour, pepperoni! I switched to lactic acid for the isoelectric extraction step, and that fit well with pepperoni flavour. It's really tasty now, my guinea pigs are very excited about it. Thanks to the process changes, it's sustainably pepperoni-shaped and I don't need to use meat glue anymore either (though it still works well if you want a chewy product instead).

2) I've finally decided on a provisional name for the product! Although there's still a soft spot in my heart for the terrible working name "leperoni." Now to ask around for a trademark lawyer.

3) I bought a centrifuge. I didn't want a lab-grade one as the volumes they handle are too small, but even tabletop decanter centrifuges are way too huge. Solution: cream separators! They are relatively cheap, food-grade, built to handle continuous flow but still separate out solids. So I ordered a small one from Ukraine. It works quite well, cutting over 55 hours from the production cycle from both the thickening and dehydrating steps. This is good because a centrifuge was the biggest financial hurdle I was facing for production. They are, however, quite finicky devices.

4) I tried dry-grinding the lentils without washing. I was thinking of a coffee grinder for this use and on my walk home I came across a perfectly functional one being given away. On the finest setting it grinds them down to middlings/cream-of-wheat sizes. This turns out to be way larger than my food-processor wet setup, which dropped yield down to a measly 10% vs. 16% which I normally get. Not being able to wash the lentils first also diluted product quality as ultrafine starch from hulling stayed suspended in the solution. I'm going to try a meat grinder next as I can pass cold water through to keep things cool.

5) I got set up for lab analysis to confirm the protein content and shelf stability, now that the process looks more economically viable. Fingers crossed.

Recipe for this month: Eggplant and ham. Works surprisingly well together. Cut Chinese-style long eggplant into finger-length quarter-round batons, fry covered on low heat to avoid getting it mushy, throw in a chopped onion, add some oyster sauce and cornstarch slurry and a handful of cubed ham. Serve with rice.

Wow seems to be coming together @basuragomi. How long have you been at it with the lentil jerky project, you reckon?

Hard to believe, but 2.5 years! My first post about it is on page 7. I've been gradually committing more and more time and money to it as I've passed each technical hurdle towards mass production. For me personally, it is incredibly convenient. I keep a bag of it around at school and when traveling, just stick a few chips onto a random carb and eat a carrot and you've got a nutritionally balanced meal that requires no refrigeration nor cooking, at a fraction the cost of jerky.

I've hoped all this time that someone else would have taken this idea and undercut me so I could buy it cheap without putting in all this work, but alas.

May 2024 update

Kind of a weird juxtaposition this month between everything shifting into lazy summer mode and an elderly relative going through a life-changing health crisis. Everything was exacerbated by their refusal to acknowledge their declining condition until it smashed them in the face. The lesson I'm learning from this is that you need to test the systems you plan to rely on before you need them, otherwise you're at the mercy of whatever (or whoever) shows up to deal with you.

May 24 is the start of bubble season, so the recipe for this month makes for about an hour of bubbling:

Ingredients:
- 1000 g hot ~40C water
- 50 g Dawn Ultra dish detergent - don't use Dawn Platinum, it sucks
- 3 g Guar gum - can get this from health/organic food stores
- 1 g Baking soda

Method:
- Mix guar gum with baking soda then detergent, this prevents clumping
- Add mixture into a bucket, add water and immersion blend for 30s (immersion blender minimizes foaming)
- Have fun! You can use a pair of chopsticks and some braided yarn for a midsize wand. Try 50 cm for the top and 100 cm for the bottom with a big safety pin as a bottom weight.

June 2024 update:

I finished refurbishing my bike, just in time for my other bike's shifter to break while on an adventurous ride with @rube! I also went on a vacation to Montreal, and got some thought-provoking advice on the protein chips.

Meanwhile, lab results came back on the chips and they are quite positive - we're looking at, per 100g: 80g protein, 7g fat, 1.5g carbs and it should be very shelf stable with low water activity. I actually have a test batch traveling with some mountaineer friends right now.

Here's a recipe that uses up the lentil starch that's a co-product from the chip-making process. These are traditionally steamed in a wok, but it's lots to clean and terribly hot in the summer. The microwave method is quick and requires minimal clean-up.

Cheung fun (rice noodle rolls) for lazy people:

Ingredients:
- 50-50 mix of lentil/tapioca starch and rice flour (lentil starch cooks translucent and is pliable, rice flour makes it more white but more brittle)
- 1:3 mix of dry and water by volume
- toppings (e.g. dried shrimp and green onion or ground pork)
- sauce - soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, chili sauce

Directions:
- mix starch and water in a measuring cup/pitcher
- grease 9" flat-bottomed glass pie plate with a neutral oil
- stir to re-suspend starch, pour 1/2 cup of batter into pie plate and tilt to spread evenly
- cover pie plate tightly, microwave for 90 seconds
- remove from microwave and uncover
- add toppings and roll into noodles, cut with scissors if you feel like it
- pour sauce over top and enjoy!

basuragomi wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 08, 2024 8:01 pm

Meanwhile, lab results came back on the chips and they are quite positive - we're looking at, per 100g: 80g protein, 7g fat, 1.5g carbs and it should be very shelf stable with low water activity. I actually have a test batch traveling with some mountaineer friends right now.

I could also be a beta-tester. I think this product would do well with the outdoor sports crowd.

If you seriously want some for a trip, cover the shipping and I can send some as a personal gift! Being legally able to sell across international borders is basically at the very end of the bootstrapping path so it will not happen for a long time.

I'm already running out of productive capacity between test batches and grassroots demand - it turns out that elderly people concerned about protein intake and people with multiple food intolerances really want the stuff.

I want to try bubbling — thanks for the instructions! I’ll braid yarn and tie it around chopsticks. Why did you stop adding lube?

I stopped for a while because I ran out of lube! Most personal lubricants use glycerin which is no good for large bubbles, so it was hard to find more stuff with polyethylene oxide. I've since taken the plunge on a bottle of J-lube and started adding it again - you can add 1.4g of J-lube to the previous recipe for even better performance.

July 2024 update:

I refurbished my hat as it was looking a bit worse for wear after three years. I changed out the crown and plugged most of the holes.



So this month's recipe is going to be hats.

The kind of hat you can buy in stores is almost invariably the stitched-braid spiral type:



Where black outlines the straw braid, and grey is thread. This kind of hat is very simple in construction. Make a very long braid of material, then stitch it into a spiral. A flat braid can make the hat a bit lighter and wider.

Pros:
- Easily mechanised, low-skill work
- Can use very narrow material like straw or shredded paper
- Easy to shape the hat as it's constructed
- Full sun blockage

Cons:
- Hard to repair
- Fairly heavy
- Very floppy - brim can't extend very far before it weighs itself down.
- Practically demands a sewing machine

The corn husk hat I made is the tensegrity/bike wheel type, with a basketwoven crown:



Instead of a continuous braid spiral, there are distinct hoops of material. Thread joins concentric hoops together, and they are held in place relative to each other purely by tension in the threads. Flat, wide infill material (like corn husks!) fills the space to block the sun. As I used corn husks, I just telescoped husks inside each other to make easy and large hoops.

Pros:
- Very light
- Brim can extend very far
- Works well with a wide variety of material (like corn husks!)
- Modular and repairable

Cons:
- Incomplete sun coverage
- Mind-bending to build (tip: baste everything onto a flat piece of cardboard, then cut it loose when you're done)
- Hoops can distort over time if you make them lazily (as you can see)

The final type, which I would probably do if I made another hat, is the basketweaving method:



It's manually intensive, but uses flat-braided hoops. Crucially, insert extra reeds that poke inwards as you braid the hoops. These stringer reeds are woven into the next inner hoop. You could also braid a spiral instead of separate hoops. Then the space defined by the hoops and stringers in between can be filled with infill material. Unlike the tensegrity hat, these reeds act in both compression and tension.

Pros:
- Light
- Brim can extend pretty far as flat-braided hoops are self-supporting
- Stiff brim
- Repairable
- No thread required, can be made entirely in the field

Cons:
- Needs uniform and and long reeds
- Manually demanding work
- Incomplete sun coverage (unless you double-layer it)

August 2024 update:

Dog days of summer. Tons of fresh local produce, summer thunderstorms and heat waves (by Canadian standards).

Made the first unofficial, personal sale of lentil chips to a backpacking buddy! I bartered a previous batch for a kilo of citric acid. I started developing a ketchup flavour and I now know two ways which don't work.

Had the annual paid vacation. This will probably be the final time I get to do this trip, unless something goes terribly wrong. I might go back privately as the area is just so nice. Despite TAing having gotten worse generally (10% boost in wages for 40% reduction in hours - it's not worth it anymore) this course, being a camp, must have the same amount of hours, which means I kept the entire pay raise plus overtime. I brought myself an epipen for $130, inspired by @theanimal's wasp experience, as we were two hours from the nearest hospital. Kids were pretty good this year despite some wacky occurrences, only had to bear spray them once :p


Came across a new beaver dam.


I'm stumped as to what this thing is. Any ideas? The stalk did not feel woody, it was like a succulent stalk. It was a maximum 25 cm tall, growing in a fen surrounded by bryophytes.

Our driver turned out to be an ancient aliens creationist?? It's a shame, I love discussing hominid evolution. Very friendly dude, but when he said "if humans came from monkeys why are there still monkeys" I couldn't help myself and quipped back "if white Americans came from Europe why are there still Europeans?" Talk about a conversation killer, he never mentioned it again the entire trip.

Recipe this month: Whole-wheat flaxseed sourdough. I buy white flour and mix back in the bran and germ. It's a cheaper, more flexible approach and each component keeps for longer separately. This is also the same way most commercial whole-wheat flour is made. Add more or less bran/germ to your taste. You can also do the instagram-friendly scored round loaf, but I make and eat so much of this stuff that I just want it to pack and store conveniently.


It's a bad photo. It's bread, though.

Yield: Two high-rising bread loaves, approx. 20 slices

Equipment:
1 large metal mixing bowl
1 silicone baking mat
2 chopsticks
1 rubber spatula scraper
1 bench scraper
1 sturdy mixing spoon
2 empty starter tubs
2 bread loaf tins
Oil spray
Parchment paper

Ingredients - starter:

20g sugar
1 tbsp oatmeal
300g AP flour
700g warm water

Ingredients - bread dough:

10g sugar (optional, without it total rise time would be ~16h in cold months)
30g flax seed
40g wheat bran
20g wheat germ (you can add more! it's tasty!)
680g flour
450g sourdough starter (in 750 mL yogurt tubs)
290g warm water
2 g salt
1-2 g yeast (optional, without it total rise time would be ~16h in cold months)

Directions - starter maintenance:

Open sourdough starter tubs and pour off standing water/hooch. Tubs should have about 500 mL of starter each.
Divide starter dry ingredients into empty starter tubs and mix.
Add water to starter tubs while mixing vigorously until a thick slurry forms without lumps.
Pour out half of sourdough starter into new starter tubs.
Thoroughly mix old sourdough starters into slurries.
Let filled starter tubs stand for 2-4 hours before refrigerating.

Directions - bread dough:

Mix dry ingredients into large mixing bowl.
Pour and scrape remaining sourdough starter into metal mixing bowl.
Mix starter into dry ingredients.
Add water. Slightly more water (e.g. 30 mL) may be necessary if sourdough starter is especially old.
Knead until elastic, 15-20 minutes. Dough should not stick to hands (it'll get stickier as it ferments).
Form into a ball and place back into mixing bowl.
Cover with silicone baking mat and let stand someplace warm.
Let rise until doubled in size, 3-5 hours.
Oil or line loaf tins with parchment paper.
Punch down, knead for 1-2 minutes.
Use bench scraper to divide dough for loaf tins.
Form loaves by hand and place into loaf tins.
Recover with silicone mat and let stand someplace warm, about 3-4 hours.
Remove silicone mat when bread begins to rise above loaf tin rim.
Let rise until bread is 2-4 cm above loaf tin rim.
Prewarm oven to 175C/350F.
Score top of loaf (if it looks bulgy) and bake for 35 minutes.
Turn out of loaf tins onto cooling rack, let cool.
Slice and freeze.

basuragomi wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 12, 2024 7:39 pm

I'm stumped as to what this thing is. Any ideas? The stalk did not feel woody, it was like a succulent stalk. It was a maximum 25 cm tall, growing in a fen surrounded by bryophytes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotropa_uniflora - Really cool parasitic plant! They are that color because they do not have any chlorophyll of their own.

Cool! I've actually seen one before, 1,000 km away! It was ghostly white with no spots and in a completely different setting (old growth pine forest floor), the coloration and fruit capsules really threw me off.

Wow! This has been one of the first journals I've read mostly all of the way through. The leperoni (insert actual name here at some point seems awesome and it's inspiring to see some of the process of invention. I'll hope to try it sometime.

Thanks for the kind words @philipreal. Forget lab-grown meat, the lentil revolution is coming! I would for sure recommend @theanimal's journal and I think @tophatfox's journal is also quite entertaining if you're looking for longer reads.

September 2024 update

I got COVID again, thankfully mild, but ended up fixing up a crappy guitar at the same time. It was meant to be a gift, but that fell through for reasons that will become obvious. So here's "how to fix up terrible guitars for very little money with whatever tools are at hand while quarantined."

This guitar had quite a life - it was a kid's guitar, obviously stored leaning on the floor, dropped a few times, had been messed around with and obviously well-loved. I'm sorry for whoever was around the kid playing it though as it had horrible intonation and couldn't even play a simple chord in tune. It was off by an entire note at the 12th fret (AKA what was supposed to be one octave)!

Easy work
- I started by taking off the old rusty strings and cleaning the guitar. It was generally grimy and greasy - a soft cloth with some ammonia cleanser took care of this.
- A very loose volume knob just needed the backing nut to be screwed into place.
- The jack plug was also loose, and this was because the backing nut had a burr on it.
- I deburred the backing nut and reversed it for good measure which fixed the issue.
- Light rust on the hardware was cleaned up with steel wool.
- I restrung the guitar with lighter strings that I bought 15 years ago as the neck didn't have a truss rod (foreshadowing issues to come).
- The high string had a slight high-pitched buzz coming from the nut, indicating that it was not being held securely by the nut. I dropped in half of an unraveled white poly sewing thread into the string's nut slot which resolved that issue.

Harder work
- The guitar had been switched to lefty so the nut was backwards - thankfully this was not glued in. I popped out the nut with a plastic dowel and reversed it.
- The bottom strap button had been smashed in from being dropped - I filed the button smooth and filled the divot in the body with body filler.
- There were several scratches and chips in the finish overall. Since the hardware was already off, I sanded these down, filled them with body filler, painted them with black marker, sanded it with a nail file and 600 grit sandpaper.



- I masked off and oversprayed the body with some polyurethane finish. I polished this down with toothpaste and an old eyeglass cleaning cloth - toothpaste won't polish metal but it worked fine on polyurethane finish, you just need lots of it, on the order of 1 mL/5 cm diameter circle.



- Black shoe polish finally got everything back to a high gloss.

Remedial actions that indicate I shouldn't have bothered with the project

- A saddle setscrew was missing from the bridge. I made a new one by reducing the head diameter of a machine screw down to match, via filing and diamond-tipped rotary tool.


(left: final product, mid: the thing I was replicating, right: the starting point)

The intonation was still quite off. A quick measurement showed that the bridge was far too forward. The frets indicated a scale length of 504 mm (the 12th fret is always exactly at the halfway point of the scale length) while a maximally adjusted bridge could handle 495 mm.

At this point the guitar was a total write-off so I moved the bridge. Taking it off showed that whoever made it had ignored the template position for the bridge. I moved the bridge back, the screws were narrow enough that I just drove them in directly without a pilot hole - good, because I didn't have a drill bit small enough to do so.

The intonation was now better, but still significantly off. I figured at this point it was because the action was too high. I took the neck off, and shimmed it with a bit of tofu tub. This reduced the string height at the 12th fret from about 8 mm to 4 mm.



Adjusting the bridge saddles now fixed almost all of the intonation problems. The adjustment screws used a M1.4 hex head which I don't have bits for. Thankfully a T5 torx bit (bought for replacing laptop components) fit. I adjusted the saddles upwards a bit to address some fret buzz and I had a playable guitar, rescued from the scrap heap!

In conclusion: Don't buy a guitar value-engineered to the point that it lacks a truss rod. Unless it's a $1,000 classical guitar, don't encourage this evil in our world.

This is mad, well done! Are you going to record something?

I can now fully endorse @basuragomi's lentil chips for a post activity savory snack! Yum! The flavor is mild enough ("pepperoni" in this case) that I would not get sick of it easily. The taste can be a problem for longer efforts and I usually can tell right away whether I would use this during a race (in this case no), but I would for sure eat this after a race or on a multi-day back(bike)pack.