Living in a Fishbowl

Well, I finally finished my TV-to-fish tank project. For those of you who are long time readers you may remember that I had a 1950 Motorola TV that I bought at a yard sale. It never worked, but the cabinet was nice solid mahogany, the speaker cloth was fine, and I knew it had potential.

I took the guts out of it- that picture tube was heavy! It had a few scratches (OK, gouges) and water marks on the top, so I had to refinish it. After my coffee-table makeover project earlier this summer, I knew this would be fairly easy.

Here's the 'before':

And the 'after'. Came out pretty well! I also restored the knobs with a little elbow grease and some black marker to color in the dial numbers (remember those? LOL).

But that was the easy part. The hard part was finding a fish tank that fit inside and that covered the whole porthole window. I finally found one at a yard sale this weekend for $3. It's actually a hermit crab tank, but it fits great and has a cover. I had trashpicked a filter pump and aerator from our neighbors and two seascape backdrops, so all that went inside as well. At some point I want to find a large black and white still from a vintage TV show to use as a backdrop, so it looks more like the TV is still playing a 1950s show. 

I had to buy some lighting for inside the tank. Since there is very little headroom, I decided to get a string of rope lighting and attached it to the inside upper edge. It's not real bright, but it does the trick- it was more important that the lights didn't get very hot.

We made a shelf out of plywood to fit on the rails that held the TV chassis and slid the new tank in.

It's hard to see, but we have two fish in there- Gomer Pyle and Barney Fife. One fish is white and the other black and white. My son is a huge fan of the Andy Griffith show, so hopefully we'll find a B&W photo from that show that we can use as a backdrop. (We lost our best fish, Nemo, earlier in the week, so he never made the move. RIP, Nemo.)

And lit up at night, with a Helmscene 3D TV lamp on top. (I must have taken 100 pix trying to get a good one, and this is the best of that lot. My camera stinks!) That is a vintage ad for the 1952 version of this TV on the table next to it. I used that for reference when putting the knobs back together.

Nov. 2011 update: I changed the background to a vintage test pattern, and added period rabbit ears and a UHF tuner:

It is definitely cool, and I think just about anyone with an old TV could do it, if I could!

Make-it-from-scratch Monday: A Little Help from our Friends

Hi all! This week's MIFSM is a little bit of a departure from our "home cooked" theme. In fact, it's probably the complete opposite, but hey, I'm not a stickler for rules around here anyway.

I know most of you are into eating better (that's why you're here on Mondays, right :) and what could be better for you than minimally processed raw foods? Better yet, what if those foods were chips? Vegan, raw, locally sourced, sustainable chips?

No way!

Yes Way! (OK, my 4th grade self got in the way there, but I am so stoked about these things!)

You all know by now that here at Chez QT we eat as much home-grown or locally sourced vegetables as possible. And we hunt and fish for our meat. We are not vegetarian, vegan or raw (though I do enjoy me some sushi) by any menas, but I would describe our eating philosophy as "whole foods" and sustainable. Of paramount imnportance to our family is knowing where our food comes from.


We eat very little processed food, and one thing we cannot do ourselves is make a good tasting, healthy snack chip (though I have a pretzel recipe I'm dying to try). The option for us is to eat crappy Frito-Lay products and feel really yucky afterwards or go without. And homemade granola bars only go so far (that's an upcoming Monday post.)

So I was delighted to learn from a friend about Brad's Raw Chips, a start-up operation just a few miles away from home base here at the PIT.  And they were gracious enough to send me a sample of their products to review. (Obligatory disclaimer: I was in no way compensated for this review- except for some delicious free snacks, LOL- and my opinion is strictly my own!)

Brad's Raw Chips are the product of one man's (that would be "Brad's") quest to develop a truly raw chip to fit into his raw diet. All the products are vegan, gluten free and truly raw- dehydrated to become crunchy, not fried or baked. And while you and I may not be on a raw diet, we can still enjoy the benefits of eating healthy with this tasty chip.

I sampled two different types of snacks- two kinds of dried leafy kale, and two kinds of more traditional "chips".

 The dried leafy kale came with vegan raw cheese (which is made from a blend of spices, raw nuts and nutritional yeast) in the "Naked" form, and added garlic in the "Vampire Killer" variety.

It is melt-in-your-mouth tasty, with a very light nutty crunch, lighter than popcorn. The "cheese" is very good- I don't know how they do it, but it really does taste like cheese! Before I knew it, I had eaten half the carton.

It's important to note that while the product is much healthier than your average potato chip, there is a large proportion of cashews in the "cheese" and it does add up in calories eventually. But the nuts do add a lot of protein (6 grams per serving!) to the snack, and that is definitely a good thing. They are also incredibly high in vitamins A and C- over 100% per serving.

And best of all, it looks like leafy, green kale- no mystery about what it is!

As you can see in the package above, since the kale is so delicate it tends to disintegrate a bit. If you're creative like me, this can be a plus. I mixed the remaining kale bits into some plain yogurt (sour cream would also work) for a great-tasting dip. They would also be great stirred into mashed potatoes (not raw, I know...) or as a topping for steamed broccoli or cauliflower. In fact, maybe Brad's could market them this way, like a Hidden Valley Ranch-type dip packet.

The other products were more traditional "chips" made from whole vegetables and seeds with a dash of olive oil and salt. Again, they are dehydrated, not baked, so all the ingrediants are still totally "raw". I tried the Red Bell Pepper and Sun Dried Tomato varieties. They had the texture of Sun Chips, but all the flavor of the vegetables they are made from. The Red Bell Pepper was my favorite- it had the sweetness of a ripe bell pepper with a bit of nutty crunch from the flax seeds you can see ground into the chip.

The tomato variety really reminded me of sun-dried tomatoes, but in a crunchy chip. I could totally see myself serving this at a party with some homemade salsa or guacamole, or with a yogurt dip made with the kale bits!

The texture is light and crunchy and not at all greasy, heavy or salty.

One of the best aspects of the company, and one that we here at the PIT share, is that Brad's Raw Chips supports local farmers by buying their produce nearby when in season. And all the waste product is composted and returned to the fields, just like it is here at Chez QT.

Brad's Raw Chips are available mostly on the East Coast, in Wegmans and Whole Foods markets. But you can buy them online at http://www.bradsrawchips.com/collections/all . And if you follow them on facebook, and subscribe to their newsletter, you are entered their giveaway to win three free bags: http://www.facebook.com/?tid=1425698061342&sk=messages#!/bradsrawchips?sk=app_7146470109

Hey Mikey, you'll like them!

It's not easy, being green.

Whew! Sorry folks. It's been a crazy couple of weeks. I knew when I started this blog that it would be hard to keep up with it, and for once I was right. So bear with me; I hope to be able to post more often.

It's probably not real obvious when you meet me, but we're just about as green as we can be. I mean, I'm not a dread-locked hippie wearing hemp clothes (heaven forbid!) and my politics are probably the polar opposite of what you might expect. But I do think it is our responsibility to preserve what we can of our beautiful world.

As kids, my mother got us into recycling and composting back when that was probably considered 'weird'. (We're talking late 1970s.) I have a really hard time throwing away things that could be re-used or recycled. I guess that's part of the reason why I love vintage.

My love for vintage usually fits neatly in with my environmental consciousness. I mean, what's not to love about 70 year-old furniture, clothes, etc? They're not wasting precious new resources, they're better made than new things, and they're not supporting the American drive for conspicuous comsumption.

However, lately I've been having issues with lighting, and the holidays make it all the worse. I'm all for using low-energy types of bulbs when possible- most of our light bulbs around the house are CFLs. But they just don't cast the same warm glow, and I need that in the winter! Plus, if you have many different types of vintage lamps, as we do, they take oddball shapes and sizes. Your standard CFL just won't work in that milk-glass torchiere that needs a wide base bulb. I shudder to think what will happen when standard incandescants are phased out once and for all. Something tells me that you'll be able to spot the true vintage enthusiast by how many incandescants they have stockpiled!

I used to be one of those people that preferred only white lights at the holidays. But lately, I've embraced the old-fashioned C9 colored lights of the past. I just love the looks of them strung along the roofline of our barn. But they get hot as hell. I can't imagine having them on a cut tree indoors- no wonder people always worried about Christmas trees catching fire. And I'm sure that they are the main reason our electric bill is 20% higher in December.

But I won't give them up for anything. I like the idea of LEDs, but I can't stand the looks of them at Christmas. And even though the energy savings would probably be significant, I think there's got to be a plus side for the carbon footprint of my C9s. I mean, they were manufactured 50+ years ago, somewhere in the USA, and aren't using any new petroleum or rubber products, either in manufacturing or transport from halfway around the world. So there- string up your lights and show some incandescant pride! (If you can get them untangled, that is.)