Cooking Club & Seseme Chicken

Last weekend Katie and I hosted our first Cooking Club get together. Only one other couple was able to make it – short notice and we didn’t ask what was a good time for the other people.

The theme for the night was Chinese. Katie made her family famous Chicken Fried Rice and Beef Egg Rolls. I decided to make some Sesame Chicken that Katie had found a recipe for, and some Sweet Potato Poppy Seed balls for desert. Our guests brought a broccoli dish with an Asian flair that was really good. It fit very well with the rest of what we had.

I have always liked Katie’s Fried Rice. The Egg Rolls where new to me. She kept talking about them, but never made them for me.

No event can go without it’s drama, and the egg rolls where the drama for the evening. Egg roll wrappers are near impossible to find. Katie had thought she had some, but they turned out to be spring roll wrappers. A last minute trip to 2 stores came back with no egg roll wrappers. So, spring roll wrappers it was. To boot, we forgot to dig the bean sprouts out of the fridge. Best tasting disaster I ever had I think. We ate them all!

When the guests arrived, I made some egg drop soup to cover for Katie while she was tearing the stores up. It tasted fine, looked horrible. I mean, it looked like cream of egg drop soup or something. Closed your eyes, it was all good.

I fried up the Sweet Potato Poppy seed balls while we where playing Dominoes. Fun game! Decent snack.

I think the Sesame chicken was the surprise of the night. It was very very good. About 30 minutes, start to finish, including a 20 minute marinade. Well, maybe an hour when your as disorganized as I am. Luckily I started early.

The chicken was so good, I made it again today. I think it’s going to be a standard of mine. The recipe is found at http://www.recipezaar.com/Flawless-Sesame-Chicken-Restaurant-Style-129598

I have left over sauce this time. That’s going into a jar, going to see how long it lasts in the fridge.

I am looking at it, and I think I will try a sugar-free version at some point. See how that turns out. I am guessing I will need to have some sugar in it for it to be the right texture, but maybe end up with a low-sugar version?

Upside down Aquarium

You would think, with all the water I have had on the floor in the last week, that I would not want to try something as crazy as an
upside down fish tank.

Uh-huh. Not me.

Yesterday, during lunch break, I slapped together an inverted tank to put into my nanotank.

You see, upside down fish tank is only telling half the story, you need a regular side up tank as well to make them work. Have you ever done dishes, and pulled a glass out of the dishwater upside down? Notice how the glass stayed full right up until you pulled it out of the water? This fish tank works the same way. You put the upside down tank into another container of water, and suck all the air out of it.

Brilliantly simple, really. I saw it on YouTube.

Upside down aquarium
Upside down aquarium

This is what the upside down tank looks like right after I made it. Notice the two open areas on each end. This allows the fish to swim into it.

Inverted Aquarium in my nano-tank
Inverted aquarium in my nano-tank

Looking down the length of my nano-tank (nanotank means VERY small fish tank – mine’s 4 inches by 4 inches by 4 feet) you can see the inverted tank at the far end. It’s just a tad on the wide side, so didn’t want to go in on one side. I guess my home-made aquarium isn’t perfectly square. I cut the end pieces myself.

Upside down Aquarium in a regular Aquarium
See the 2 platys in the lower right?

Here is the inverted aquarium looking at it from how you would normally see it. There are two fish in it here, you can kinda pick them out against the busy backdrop.

My upside down tank in my nano tank on my 75 gallon aquarium
My upside down tank in my nano tank on my 75 gallon aquarium

The whole mess sits on top of my 75 gallon tank, and is actually functionally part of the 75 gallon tank.

You see, Nano-tanks can be VERY difficult to manage do to their extreme small size. They don’t have any thermal mass, the water can go bad in a matter of hours if something starts to decompose in them. Just fussy tanks all the way around. I cheat, I have a 75 gallon ‘buffer’ tank to act as a filter for my nano tank. Yeah, Yeah, I know. I cheat.

The inverted fish tank is just a prototype. I will probably only keep running it for a few weeks until I make the next version of it (read that as Months or Years).

Not quite as impressive as it sounds, is it?

What do you think?

4 foot LED light fixture for an aquarium..

I picked up a bunch of LED christmas lights on clearence this winter. I have been intending on using them for making a LED grow lights for my plants.
Well, I have been on an aquarium kick lately, so I decided to make a 4 foot LED aquarium light.
I ended up using 7 strands of LED lights, for 175 LED bulbs.


I started with a scrap piece of plywood.



Drilled 175 holes in it. I thought I was going to be able to put more bulbs in then I did.


And started sticking the bulbs through the holes.


You can see the light bar starting to come together. I took a photo as I added each light strand so I could see how bright it would get.







I zip tied the wires to the board to hold the hole mess together. It looks terrible, but it is what it is. I can always take it apart when I want to try something different.

The lights kinda go all willey nilley, but that’s ok I guess.

Internet Explorer

This is my 500th blog post.


I started blogging, thinking that it may just be a fad for me, but it looks like I may be a lifer. I think my writing has improved a fair amount over the years, from all this practice!


My situation has changed dramatically since I started. Basically an entirely different life then back in Janurary of 2006.


I am still using that same computer I started blogging with – it’s been ‘promoted’ into the living room reciently. I can now blog on the comfort of my own couch!


I have some ideas for where I want to take my blog. I started twittering, and want to integrate the tweets into the blog timeline somehow. The template may get a slight update as well.


The blog will be moving soon to a new host (same URL – webiste address, just on a different computer) which should help speed things up a bit.


Oh, if your wondering about the title tag, a friend twittered today that he found a page where the title tag was ‘Internet Explorer’. I wanted one too. So, here it is. Just a gag thing, for me. But, it’s my blog, so I will abuse it as I want to.


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You can see here my most popular pages.


Fifteen percent of people view my homepage. That means 85% of people aren’t interested in what I have to say now, just what I said at some point in the distant past. How is that for a boost to the ego… “Shush, I don’t care what you think right now…”

Oh well, I just keep talking to myself on my blog.

The trouble with water

The trouble with water is that it likes the lowest point it can find. In my case, it’s the carpeted floor.

I am struggling with the overflow box.

I found a small pin hole in the top part of the siphon. This only showed when the hole was dry. I guess when it was wet, water couldn’t be pulled through, but dry, air can get through. Some silicone fixed that easy enough.

With that, I got the water flowing again through the siphon.

About 10-15 minutes later, the tank overflows. It looks like with my new, longer tubing routed the way it is along the back of the big tank, air bubbles form and block water flow.

This caused the tank to overflow. Again.

I will try routing the tubes to go into the tank more directly. With no horizontal tubing, the air bubbles should not form.

If THAT doesn’t work, i will find bigger tubing and outlet ports. It’s drilled for a size larger tubing with a reduced outlet port.

If that doesn’t work, I will drill the ports directly into the side of the tank. I will probably take the glass end-cap off and put in acrylic so I can drill it more easily.

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