Of the Abyss flight, the general consensus was that the ’07 was the best from a style standpoint, and the ’09 had some brett funk that actually made it fairly remarkable.Of the other brews, the Dissident aged very well. It was one of those beers I was expecting to turn into vinegar or be too funked.

My wife’s aunt dumped an old Dell desktop tower on me last weekend, wondering if I could take a look at…to see if it was worth keeping, selling, erasing, etc. As it turns out, Windows was jacked, but with a handy O/S disc I was able to restore it to its pre-2002 state. Threw a stick of RAM in it too.

It’s actually funny how primitive Windows XP looks these days, to someone who’s used to seeing Win7 or Macs exclusively for a couple years. Not to mention, it was WinXP SP1…and after installing for twenty minutes to get up to SP3, I was presented with: this…many…updates…

Windows XP gives me flashbacks of how Win95/98 used to look to me years ago. To anyone who says that XP has aged well, I would be inclined to disagree. It’s just so clunky and fragile.

Said Aunt has an iPad and a newer laptop, so this Dell will likely just show up on Craigslist, but it was a hoot to work on this blast-from-the-past for just an evening, and to restore it to it’s former glory

Favorite brews so far, included the Biere de Mars from NB and some excellent homebrews from the S.O.B’s

“This will not do!” I said resolutely to the dog, who eyed me suspiciously before curling back up into a fuzzy ball to resume her post-breakfast nap. I laid the pack out on my office floor and began to tear all the offending items out, discarding them around me like confetti. I had twenty minutes before work, and was determined to make the pack

presentable to a panel of REI employees for judging, if need be.

I scampered into the other room and opened up the big chest that held all our other camping gear; tents, sleeping bags, and an entire crate of campground crap. I fished out everything that ‘should’ go in a well-provisioned backpack: the bug spray, flashlight, first aid kit and survival gear. With stuffed arms, I marched proudly back into my office and began to load my frame pack like I meant business.

I have a reputation to uphold, a rugged and prepared sort of reputation. I would woefully rue the moment when I fetched the pack for a zombie apocalypse last-minute hiking trip… and a lone bocce ball rolls out, thudding sadly to a carpeted floor.

I am happy to say, that in case of any backpack-related-eventuality, I am now golden.

We generally feed our dog a mix of dry kibble and some sort of wetter food mixed in. This wet addition has been everything from pureed pumpkin, leftover people food, canned dog food, or occasionally a raw egg.The dry kibble we use is decent, from Nutro. It’s middle-of-the-road. It’s still got lots of grains, but no corn. It’s not organic, but it’s cheap. We’ll occasionally mix up the flavor, but it’s generally the same brand.

One thing we also started recently, is to make our own dog food.This is something that anyone can do, and if you follow these quick suggestions, you might even enjoy doing it, as well as justify the time and cost. I’ll list my tips first, and our exact recipe will follow:

• Leftovers! Most dogs will eat everything including the kitchen sponge. If you have dinner leftovers, institutionalized canned food in the pantry, barely overripe produce… throw it all in. Obviously be conscious about dog allergies/toxicity. Avoid chocolate, avocados, and all those no-no food items. If you’re curious, just google the food to see what vet’s say.
• Shop in bulk. Rolled oats, rice, and other stuff is incredibly cheap from bulk bins.
• Plan to make the food in a single pot; easy to clean up

Now for our recipe, and price breakdown. Obviously your exact concoction can be anything you want. This is what we put together for the most recent batch:

• 2 cups of rolled oats (these puff up like 4 times their volume when cooked) bulk: $.40
• Broth and water. (our broth was made from a chicken carcass weeks ago, and frozen. I don’t recommend canned/boxed broth, as it’s often very salty) broth/water: $free
• 2 russet potatoes, 1 big sweet potato, 1 butternut squash. These were are from cupboard, starting to spud-out and get rubbery. The butternut squash had been hiding for like 3 months. $1
• Bacon grease…so tasty. This was the drippings from a pack of bacon, maybe 3-4 tablespoons. $free
• 1 cup of apple sauce. Again, old fridge leftover. $.50
• 1 cup de-shelled spanish peanuts. These were leftover from x-mas baking $.25
• Other ideas: rice, ground beef/pork/turkey, peanut butter, canned pumpkin, stale cereal, carrots and veggies, pasta, egg, etc.

Total cost for a huge pot of dog food: $2.15

Cut up the starchy things into 1 inch cubes. We baked/roasted them in the oven, as we were making some seasoned taters for ourselves too. You can also boil. Roasting will make the texture less slimy though.

Make the rolled oats per instructions in a large pot. You can also do rice instead of (or in addition to) oats. I believe for either, the ratio is 2:1 liquid to grain. Once the oats are cooked and steamy, dump in all the other ingredients except the tater chunks. Cook everything for 10-15 min until it’s hot and consistent, then gently fold in the potato chunks. The idea is to maintain some texture…otherwise everything can quickly turn into just a pureed paste. I like to think Jaeda enjoys the chunks, heh. In the end, it should be thick grey gruel. Go ahead and try it. It won’t taste terribly appetizing by people standards…but have you ever tried to eat dog food?

Let it cool, then portion out into either freezer containers or ziplock bags to store. We keep one pack in the fridge to use, and pull one from the freezer when it gets low. We mix a few spoonfulls of the gruel in with half a cup of her dry kibble, and she looooves it, nosing around and eating the gruel bites out first.

Cleanup is a breeze: one pot, one mixing spoon, one cutting board (and a cookie sheet if we decided to roast the taters).

Frozen and stocked up for the next month. The orange chunks are squash and sweet per-tater.

1. Products with olive oil. Whether it’s mayonnaise, salad dressing, crackers, or frozen food, generally people will pay more for something with ‘olive oil’ emblazoned across the label. Truth is, most of these things could have 2% of the oil, with the 98% of other oils…canola, corn, cottonseed, hydrogenated oils, etc. Check the label. Even if olive oil is #1 on the ingredient list, there’s all sorts of issues with olive oil out there. Basically, be skeptical when paying more for something with olive oil as a selling point.

2. “Light”. This one has slowly become a no-brainer. For years now, things are branded as ‘light’ or ‘low fat’. In all honesty, how different is a light wheat thin compared to a regular one? You’re still eating a whole box of carbs, who cares if it’s got a bit less grease. For many products, the manufacturer exchanges fat for sugar (usually HFCS). A lowfat ice cream or salad dressing may be less fat, but it’ll be pure sugar. In the whole low calorie battle, it’s more about quality. A potato will always be a healthier purchase than a bag of Ore-Ida fries, a pack of preservative-free bacon is better than a box of low-fat JimmyDean frozen ‘sausages’.

3. Vanilla. This spice is damn-expensive, and nearly any big-brand processed product uses only something called vanillin, a synthetic compound used from everything from food to that car air freshener. This is not vanilla, and the jury is still out as to it’s health effects, as the majority of vanillin is now made synthetically, mostly in China. This fake vanilla can even have ‘all natural’ or ‘naturally flavored’ on its label, as those words are not regulated…which brings us onto the next issue.

4. “Natural”. This doesn’t mean shit. The term “Organic” does have quite a few federal guidelines, but ‘natural’ means nothing, only somewhat regulated in the meat and poultry industry. Even for meat, ‘natural’ just means that it has no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives. This has nothing to do with hormones, genetically modification, living conditions, or any other chemicals or ingredients…and has no bearing in the non-meat industry. Long story short, if it’s not meat, and it says ‘natural’, there’s likely no difference between it and any other product on the shelf, don’t waste the extra money.

5. Vitamin C. Here’s the thing…pasteurization destroys vitamin C molecules. To compensate for this, juice companies that advertise ‘vitamin C’ prominently add ascorbic acid or other synthesized chemicals to the drink to bring the C back up to 100%. You might as well just buy vitamins, because that’s all this is. If you like juice or fruit snacks a lot, buy them, but the big flashy “Vitamin C” graphic on the label is crap. Don’t buy OJ or sugar-water just because you think you need vitamin C… If you want to fight scurvy, go grab yourself a grapefruit or something.