mountainFrugal Journal

Where are you and where are you going?
Western Red Cedar
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by Western Red Cedar »

I'm always impressed by your illustrations. Keep on truckin!

theanimal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by theanimal »

Have you thought about how you’re going to delve deeper into the cuisines?

Our two things to keep us out of restaurants are pizza and Mexican food. I tackled pizza this year so it looks like Mexican is next. I’ve skimmed through some of Diane Kennedy’s books before but haven’t really tried anything.

Mrs. Animal and I have tried and love dishes from this Mexican woman. Muy auténtica. Most of her videos are in Spanish but she does have some in English as well.
https://m.youtube.com/user/JaujaCocinaMexicana/videos

With pizza, I found the dough to be the most important part. Initially, I think tortillas and salsa are the equivalent for Mexican cuisine.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

@AE You will get a first seat in the ProkoYo! Group.

@bos I think this is what I am going for WRT to niche. There is already a decent amount of art around trout which tells me there is market there. There is something about fly fishing that attracts the romantics (myself included). Have you thought about doing a classic motorcycle collection of prints? This is what I saw for classic car folks. They want to collect anything that is associated with their nostalgic love for the cars.

@WRC - Thanks. I am gonna keep on keepin' on. The highway is long, the tunes are great, gonna jam on down to see what I see. James McMurtry Vibes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBBvXcpMzhk

@theanimal
I have decent experience with Mexican dishes already. I have much less experience with Indian outside a few favorites (Bengan Bartha- grilled/mashed eggplant) and some simple curries.

I made chicken tortilla soup this past week. I used chicken thighs with bones. After the initial meal made in the pressure cooker (instant pot), I took the bones and combined them with vegetable scraps to slow cook a bone broth. After 36 hours of slow cooking we drank the broth for lunch after skiing. I strained the broth and put 2/3 into mason jars to freeze. We made pinto beans with part of the remaining broth for the Mexican cooking this week. The last bit of broth we used last night for a Mexican flavored ramen soup. We rarely use recipes, but want to start to expand the meals.

Resources I am going to start with:
Indian - https://www.youtube.com/@getcurried
https://penguin.co.in/book/masala-lab/

Mexican - https://www.youtube.com/@DemiRanchoaTuCocina

I want to get comfortable enough with basic Indian cooking/spice combos that I could do similar integrative multi-day meals like the Tortilla Soup example. I also want to learn Mexican cooking with simpler kitchen setups like my favorite YT abuelita linked above. We are going to eventually make an outdoor pizza oven and woodfired cooking setup in our yard. We also do pizza a fair bit using my partner's sour dough starter with mixed results. We have not really taken the time to dial it in though the way that she does with sour dough bread loaves or you do with pizzas in your journal.

Thanks for the link I will also check out that channel. Any other suggestions forum?

Add: last New Year's I stayed with my college roommate. We made all the base sauces and staples in the Tokyo Cult Recipes cookbook. All the meals we made for an entire week were based out of this book. It was a really fun way to learn quickly, but it is a ton of work. Between two couples we managed though. I could also be open to doing something like this for either cuisine above. Any recommendations on cookbooks that emphasize staples and combos of those forum?

Add2: Choctaw Bingo link

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Found some discount chicken use or freeze by today.

Karaage Cooking vibes for my friend's Bday din din: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C2BVhtBp6k

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Image
mF Art Biz Mini-Zine

Print, fold and cut following:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGm85tw_3g

Result:
Image

Enjoy!

AxelHeyst
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by AxelHeyst »

Your updates have been really resonating with me for some reason lately. I admit I couldn't make heads or tails of them for months, but the last few I'm like "oh yeah makes total sense" and also I find something inspiring for my own stuff in them. Maybe we just had to meet IRL to unlock? I really love you how lay out the process and think it through while including a vision of the end goal. This is super cool!!

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Thanks @AH. Process as art. Art as process. Vision as loose direction with concrete steps. The winds can change at any time and I have many ways to sense that.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Image

Quick Write-up. I have a few illustration projects to finish up before the end of the year and the only thing remaining was final numbers on some of the stats which most of you do not care about.

I look forward to seeing how you all get after it in 2023!

# WINS
I had a really great year all things considered. This is not a bragging statement, but a generally stoked about all the past effort I put in paying dividends. I have highlighted a few in the sketchnote illustration, but it was actually hard to widdle it down to those. I put in the work (and hopefully show my hard work here) and I can unapologetically say fuck yeah! Objectively and subjectively my life is awesome right now. I say that in the most grateful tone that one can. One of the goals of ERE is living a Renaissance lifestyle or becoming competent in a range of things. This is why I can say this here and not sound like a total asshole.

I recently listened to an Economist interview with Tal Ben-Shahar on happiness: https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2022 ... -happiness

Did not read his book (seemed like mostly fluff to make a book length essay), but his model is to balance SPIRE with less emphasis money beyond the basics.
S- Sprititual
P- Physical
I - Intellectual
R - Relational
E - Emotional

Seems pretty similar to:
jacob wrote:
Sat Dec 17, 2022 11:52 am
...decide on a form of capital e.g. physiological, intellectual, economic, emotional, social, technical, ecology from the book (possibly adding the bonus option of spiritual, which wasn't on my radar when I wrote the ERE book, if you're into that) that you're not familiar with already. Something that's not your day job or your hobby.
ERE ---> Fulfillment and Lasting Happiness? I am certainly happier by practicing all of these things in approximately equal amounts in my life. So one data point there. Thanks @jacob for framing an infinite game and building the community that supports others to practice.

In lyrical format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIzL6AqP4qY

Dec 22 - I made some fliers for a bike shop owner in town and he offered for me to come in and work on the Capra bike that I just traded with @AxelHeyst. His shop is slow at the moment and he can oversee me learning to work on suspensions. We determined that the dropper post was a goner (faulty design of first gen ones) so I will put in a new one. I also swapped making an event poster (for February) in exchange for a season ski pass now. Art + social capital for other things I want!

# IMPROVEMENTS
Various improvements throughout the year with the main one being the refinement of our "Relationship Broccoli" discussions for our relationship, life, goals and finances.

We also improved and integrated our BUGOUT! systems more. Van --> Bikepack --> Hike --> Run . I will do a longer illustrated post at some point in 2023 on the details of all this.

Dec 22- Working hard on skate ski technique on different snow conditions and slopes. Endless.

# NEW DIRECTIONS
Taking up the Compassion, Attention, Gratitude practice has legitimately helped to make me "happy" more often. Learning how to ping-pong between these three mental states of focus has enhanced my overall enjoyment of life.

At the start of 2022 I had no idea I wanted to do "science communications", but gradually explored different online communities and decided on a niche. Now I am going to get paid for that! Yeah!

I further experimented with eating schedules. Generally fasting after dinner until 11 am works well for me. It has enhanced my ability to do long zone 1 runs while not needing to eat as much. If I am doing a harder zone 3 workout I have a small handful of trailmix or similar. It is not that I cannot do the workout, it is that I do not recover as well. This is especially true during peak training months. I am not scheduling any travel leading up to a race. The risk of getting sick is too high as pushing it physiologically with a few nights of bad sleep or exposure to viruses will more likely lead to being sick.

# DRAWING
Various stats for putting in the pencil miles. I have to say that creating a few small communities around art has been my absolute favorite part of the year. Meeting an IRL art buddy, online art swapping to in person through ProkoYo! MMG to nature journaling meet-ups to drink and draw 1x per month.

Dec 22- I had a zine accepted into an anthology that will be printed sometime next year. I will also get $150 for my successful submission early next year. Do not actually know if I will hit 31 days of full pages this month, but it is damn likely (98%) as I have nothing going on next week except art, exercise, and cooking.

# WORK
I no longer need to work and have not needed to for most of this year. I have really enjoyed my projects and it has offered opportunities to suggest more out of the box projects and directions, which surprisingly, were accepted with little push back. These side projects along with my various creative hobbies is transitioning work from statistics, programming and research to science communications and consulting. We shall see where these other two projects go. They offer access to really smart people and new connections that I could not achieve otherwise. Further, the communications role is a way to make portfolio that can be edited by experts within the org I am going to be working with. I am really stoked on learning this whole other side of science and to develop the art/comms portfolio while being paid to learn while dabbling to create an art business.

Various work stats. I really enjoyed incorporating a zettlekasten like workflow into my research workflow. Just keep feeding the idea monster and the writing projects will get done. NOM! NOM! NOM!

# SOCIAL
We had at least 1 group dinner every month this year which was my main social goal. I learned a few different cooking techniques through these dinners and am excited for what this next year will bring with our focused theme of food. Introverts get benefit from social interactions... perhaps more benefit when it comes on our terms?

* if folks want to know more details about any of this for clarity, PM me. I try to be as open as I feel comfortable on the open interwebs.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Congrats on the successful year! I've got to say, reading your journal has been such an inspiration because you've got this relaxed, positive attitude while still being very focused about pursuing goals. It seems like the perfect balance between getting things done and enjoying the ride. It looks like its paying dividends in your life!

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Thanks a lot @AE! I just want to keep moving the ball forward. :)
----

2022 Totals Minor update for my own tracking:
97694 m gain/loss.
2244 km Trail Run
633 km XC/BC ski
551 km MTB
425 km Hike
~40 hours of dedicated cross training outside of cardio exercise lifting routine (chopping wood, shoveling snow, etc.)

guitarplayer
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Yes I think it is a good journal too!

For a while now I have been wanting to go back to the first two pages of it and read through a few posts from there. So finally I made it there and figured I would copy things I want to read into a word document so that I stay focused.

Turned out a 6621 words piece. Makes me wonder - there is heaps of good stuff on the forum!

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

guitarplayer wrote:
Wed Jan 11, 2023 3:10 pm
Turned out a 6621 words piece.
I am glad you found that many words useful for contemplation. :)

guitarplayer
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by guitarplayer »

And actionable too. The one about spending, about identity based goals, system project setting (so that goals x, y, z, ... are ticked). There is many people writing about it, but like you said you had spent quite some time coming up with these and it shows.

I have copied it so that's the first step but have not re-read it yet (I read it half thoroughly a good while back). Will reshape it to meet my needs and use it. For example, for the system project setting I might give the goals different importance and apply some distribution other than uniform to pick them when deciding on smaller projects.

Thanks!

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Image

Quick Pickling of discount (use today!) organic Carrots and Cucumbers.
1 Tablespoon Course Kosher Salt (non-iodized)
1 Cup White Vinegar
1 Cup Water
----- Boil Above- (Adjust to volume of containers, 3x for the 3 canning jars pictured above)
Dill
Black Peppercorns
Garlic
Jalapenos with seeds

Veggies (chopped in carrots case)

Pack jars full with veggies leaving 1 cm of space at the top. Fill remaining space with boiling brine. Refrigerate (or in our case pantry is cold enough) for at least 48 hours, but ideally 2 weeks. Will keep for at least a few months (not pressure canned). Scraps thrown in freezer bag with other scraps to use for bone or veggie broth/stock).

Also pictured: $2 chopping block (estate sale) and restaurant supply discount store stainless steel table.

Add: a few details to make recipe more complete.
Last edited by mountainFrugal on Mon Jan 23, 2023 12:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ertyu
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by ertyu »

Very nice. I didn't realize it was this easy. Is there anything special about the salt being kosher or would any odd table salt do?

jacob
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by jacob »

ertyu wrote:
Mon Jan 23, 2023 4:15 am
Very nice. I didn't realize it was this easy. Is there anything special about the salt being kosher or would any odd table salt do?
If you can get it then "pickling salt" is preferred. Other types contain iodine et al. which can change the appearance over time. (That might be a US only problem.) E.g. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Morton-Canni ... x/10318924

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

ertyu wrote:
Mon Jan 23, 2023 4:15 am
Very nice. I didn't realize it was this easy. Is there anything special about the salt being kosher or would any odd table salt do?
Table salt will work, but as @jacob said it contains Iodine which can produce off flavors (or clouding in the case of pickling) when used in cooking or preserving. Kosher salt usually does not contain iodine. Table salt crystals are also smaller than Kosher course salt (most common crystal size). If you want to cook with table salt, you usually need to add less compared to Kosher salt because there is technically more salt for the same volume because of the difference in crystal size (e.g. 1 TBL of Course Kosher is less salt than 1 TBL of table salt). This article explains a bit more and has a conversion chart: https://www.acouplecooks.com/what-is-kosher-salt/ . This is also why really technical cooking books have exact grams for all spices and ingredients.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Image

Stopped by the discount organic section today while I was out. ~18 medium/large jalapenos! They had some browning soft spots, but those are easy to cut out when you are chopping anyway.

Left:
Quick Hotsauce (2 are going away as gifts)
1 cup water (no chlorine)
1 cup white vinegar
1 tablespoon course kosher salt (no iodine)
~6 jalapenos with seeds left in because we are not babies.
~5 pablanos (we had in freezer from previous discount bin)
1/4 red onion
3 cloves of garlic
Blend/food process
Eat immediately or keep in fridge/cool pantry for longer term

Right:
Fermented Hotsauce (per quart canning jar)
1 cup water (no chlorine)
1 tablespoon course kosher salt (no iodine)
~6 jalapenos with seeds left in because we are not babies.
1/4 red onion
3 cloves of garlic
pack the veggies in tight and make sure fully submerged in the brine
place in sealed jars at room temp
burp 2x per day if you do not have any airlocks
wait 2-3 weeks
Blend to desired consistency by slowly adding additional brine or vinegar depending on your taste
put back in jars or bottles and seal.
Keeps for a few months at least. If you put them in sterile containers it will last a lot longer.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Image

# WINS
This was the first month of my part-time gig doing science communications for a large organization. I made 3 pieces of content that I am proud of (2 visual summaries and one piece of writing). For two of the items, I got a surprising amount of feedback (positive and constructive criticism). I was expecting to get feedback from smart people in this role as this is one of the reasons I took it, but the quality of feedback has been great. I made the correct choice in taking this position as it would be nearly impossible to get the same feedback on my own.

I attended a work meeting in October and did a live sketchnote of the event (similar to these monthly reviews). The organizers are hosting another event on an adjacent topic and invited me to come just to sketchnote! That will be in March and will be fully paid for.

My art goals are to be making $500 a month in "easy" art sales (zines, commissions, prints etc.) by July 2024 when my comms contract ends. I outlined how I am going to do all of that, when the content is going to be made, how it will be shared etc. I am currently working on the marketing components with a few testers. This is really fun. It has the same "it is up to me" vibe as my previous start-up. I do not need to make a ton of money, just be strategic in how I want to share/offer the things I already am interested in making. At least for me, knowing that others are going to see something with my name associated with it makes me put in the extra effort at my current ability levels. If I am not embarrassed by my art from a year ago, I am not pushing it or learning enough.

# IMPROVEMENTS
I got Covid early in the month. One would think that if you are sick you should stay home from a small gathering of people. Not so! We arrived at dinner just as a lady was coughing, sneezing and hugging the host..."I have a bad cold, but decided to come anyway... hope that is okay." She was there for 20 minutes at gave 8 people Covid. WTF! We all started having symptoms 2 days later...[rant edited]

I was sitting in my living room sketching and generally feeling gross when I was like hmmm... I do not smell right now... I suppose my B.O. has gotten better... O Right! These flu like symptoms are Covid! 5 minutes later as if on cue my partner walked into the living room and said "Man mF your B.O. is ripe! Take a shower or something." Lulz. H.T. to @AxelHeyst for the comic title.

Recovered now, but took 2 weeks off exercise just as I was peaking for skiing. Slowly started back into exercise and now getting back to regular 6 days while ramping up volume on the weekends.

# NEW DIRECTIONS
Being sick did have some perks. I got really bored ... so related to the Art Biz, I went through all of my 2023 goals illustration and made separate notes for each of them within my Obsidian set-up. Each one has a checklist of either old illustrations, data visualizations, or sketchnotes that can be used, cleaned up, or finished for the visual content side of things. I made a schedule for all of them and have been fairly consistent over the month for finishing something everyday that can be used as content in some way. I further refined the design of the content funnel for what I want to spend time on. Doing further research, it becomes apparent that people like to follow along so creating short videos of how the stuff is made can be beneficial and usually worth the time.

# DRAWING
296/1000 for the drawing challenge of figures in action poses from imagination (examples on page). This directly gave me the confidence for doing the pose on the race poster discussed below without reference.

My partner and I have a pact. Whenever we see the other on a website or our phones or whatever, we ask "Are you working on..." . In my case that is the portfolio. It is a fun way to push each other creatively.

I am finishing up my first of three commissioned race posters today after I post this. I will get a portfolio piece, some high quality prints and each will be ~$150 commission for 4-5 hours of work. They are also on topics (mountain races) that I very much want to be drawing and doing layouts for.

# OUTDOOR ADVENTURE
Sad stats because Covid recovery. This is the first month I have done less gain/loss than the previous year. I planned a spring van trip to New Mexico for a wedding and to hit up some of the few native trout drainages down there and a fall trip for spey fishing (double handed fly rod) for steelhead in Northern B.C.

# WORK
There are some components of the requirements of my job that are easily automated. For example, there is a data collection component for monthly newsletters. I am nearly done with version 1 of a program for all the time consuming, but easily automated steps. This will free up about 1/3 of what I am currently paid to do.

Communications is not surprisingly very social. I have had a number of short intro meetings and have been invited to a handful of online (e.g. slack or similar) groups to discuss or ask questions. As far as I can tell this group of professionals really like their jobs. This is very different than anything I have done in the past (formally). @mooretrees would be proud of my social engagement.

Many of the items I made this month have very distinct graphic elements to them. While I have spent a lot of time drawing, painting, and sketchnoting, I have spent less time on summarizing topics in a graphical form for a very broad audience. This is where the feedback mentioned above comes into play and learning this is one of the reasons I took this job. Each word is scrutinized from many different perspectives, depending on how the item will be used primarily, secondarily, etc. It is really interesting to see this level of refinement outside of scientific papers (more narrow audience though). I enrolled in the Art Center Coursera series on graphic design to hopefully get better at this theoretically as well as practically through the job.

One of the tools I was most interested to learn was mailchimp for making newsletters. This is something I want to do for my Art Biz. I watched a number of tutorials (tuts for short in the illustration). There is still a lot to learn especially with A/B testing etc. I get to play around with all of this before I need to be doing it for myself. Additionally, there is a website migration/update that needs to happen that was in my contract to figure out. Fortunately, the website is just content and nothing interactive besides one email sign-up list. The old one is written in drupel. The new one is also written in drupel, but it is customized for the larger organization and branded as something different. The comms people do not typically have a technical background so they thought it was going to involve rewriting everything from scratch for the branded version of the site. In reality, 98% of all the content of the old site was easily transferred over and ready for review. More time saved, although I was interested in playing around more with Drupel. In time I guess.

# SOCIAL
We made a detailed wedding plan and started collaborating on a bookdown (hugo/R/markdown) project for our travels. Parts of this will be used for the travel zine later in the year.

My partner's Uncle and Aunt visited from Utah. We did a lot of skiing, cooking, and hanging out. I took Uncle out for a good back country ski tour where we found some good soft snow (sun affected) on exactly the aspect at exactly the right time of day that I was expecting. I planned this based on my daily snow observations and on mountain decision making based on updating conditions. He was pleased with the quality. He is a very hard person to please as a former hotshot wild land firefighter and general mountain badass so it felt really good to be trip leader and bond over finding and safely skiing the primo snow. :).

Our Italian friend had us over to make a bunch of pasta by hand. We made a number of different kinds and got to use some of her grandmother's early 1900's wooden pasta making tools. The pasta is drying out a bit and we will cook tonight. I will update with tastes!

The quick hotsauce above did not make it as a gift. It was too damn good and condensed a bit after being aerated from the blender. The fermented hot sauce and pickles need more time.

mooretrees
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mooretrees »

I am SO proud of your socializing efforts! Now you're inspiring me to up my social game.

I was a little confused about one of your notes. Did you take your previous sketches from this journal and made them into separate pieces that can be used independently? If so, that's totally neat. You are making your own database of images! And the idea is (if I have this right) that you can easily pull together a new piece without having to draw every single part of the image?

Handmade pasta is the best. I've had good luck making it without a pasta machine. Those are nice, but I couldn't get over how to clean them very well. Making it entirely by hand is deeply satisfying. I think a decent rolling pin and happiness with a thicker cut of pasta works for me. The machines make it easy to have very thin and skinny pasta, but if you can roll (pun intended!) with a thicker cut, then there's no need for the machine. Just my two cents.

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