Tag Archives: mock fish fillets (vegan)

2015/11/04 (W) Southbound Liberty

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Linda decided last night to work at home today rather than driving into the bakery in Hamtramck.  That meant she did not have to get up at 5:45 AM.  She was up just before 7 and I was up just after that.  I made a large pot of Sweet Seattle Dreams half-caffe coffee and Linda toasted slices of cinnamon raisin bread for breakfast.  After breakfast she settled in to work at her desk while I tended to several chores.

I last changed our whole house water filter in May (of this year) and it looked like it was overdue for replacement.  I had one filter element left so I used it.  The process is simple enough:  I turned off the well pump, shut off the valves on either side of the filter housing, released the pressure in the housing, and unscrew the removable bowl.  When I unwrapped the filter and read the directions I was reminded that I am supposed to clean the bowl with warm, soapy water, rinse it clean, and then sanitize it with a bleach solution and rinse it out again.  That requires water, of course, but I had the water shut off and the filter housing disassembled so I had n way to turn the water back on.  The only way to accomplish this would be to stage the needed water before shutting off the water system but I never remember to open the new filter element are read the directions before I start.  I mean, really, it’s not the sort of procedure that requires me to read the directions each time.

One of the old swivel bearings (L) and one of the new swivel bearings (R). The new one is obviously smaller than the old one and was not compatible with our pedestals and power bases.

One of the old swivel bearings (L) and one of the new swivel bearings (R). The new one is obviously smaller than the old one and was not compatible with our pedestals and power bases.

Not having any running water I wiped out the bowl with paper towels as best I could.  The directions called for lubricating the main O-ring with silicon grease.  I knew I had some from the last time I changed the filter.  It was hiding in plain sight but took me a while to find.  After greasing the gasket and installing it back on the bowl, I put in the new filter element and screwed the bowl back into the filter head, tightening it with the filter wrench.  I turned the well pump back on, opened the inlet and outlet valves for the filter, and let the trapped air out with the purge valve.

Our filter housing takes a larger than usual element.  It is 10″ long, which is the most common length, but 5″ in diameter, which is much bigger than usual.  It’s a dual density spun polypropylene material with a 50 micron nominal rating at the large outside surface and a 5 micron nominal rating towards the smaller core.  These filter elements are not available at the local home stores so I get them from Adam’s Well Drilling and Water Treatment, who installed out current water treatment system.

I gathered up the laundry and put a load in the washer.  I took the label from the new filter element and headed out on an errand run.  My first stop was Adam’s where I bought four filter elements and two bottles of chlorine tablets for the taste and odor portion of our water treatment system.  Wilson Marine is located next door to Adam’s so I stopped there to see if they sold marine grade plywood.  They didn’t but I had a good chat with the associate.  He suggested that for patching the floor in the bus I just use treated plywood or use Thompson’s Water Seal to treat whatever wood I use.

One of the new swivel bearings on top of one of the old swivel bearings clearly showing that the new bearing is small in diameter, inside and out, than the old one.

One of the new swivel bearings on top of one of the old swivel bearings clearly showing that the new bearing is small in diameter, inside and out, than the old one.

My last stop was O’Reilly’s Auto Parts.  Their parking lot was finally open so I could park near the door.  Ronald had me load the containers of used oil and the bag of filters into a shopping cart.  The bag had leaked onto the paper towels I put under it in the back of my car so Ron gave me a cardboard box to put it in.  He simply put the bag of filters in a container but he emptied the six containers of oil and gave them back to me.  They recycle oil but not the containers.

When I got home Linda checked to see if we could take the plastic oil bottles to Recycle Livingston.  Used motor oil is considered hazardous waste and anything that has had used motor oil in it is considered a hazardous material so we could not take the containers there.  I helped Linda load all of the other recyclables into my car and she made a run to the recycling center, the first in a few weeks.  After moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer and putting another load in the washer I got back to work on the bus floor.

The area behind the panel to the right of the co-pilot/navigator seat. The mouse nest is gone and the damaged wood has been removed from between the side-to-side seat mounting rails.

The area behind the panel to the right of the co-pilot/navigator seat. The mouse nest is gone and the damaged wood has been removed from between the side-to-side seat mounting rails.

I spent most of the afternoon working on the floor under the front passenger seat.  First I removed the blocking that provides support for the bottom edge of the switch panel but also spans the three floor boards.  I cleaned out the mouse nest behind the switch panel and found the skeleton of a small mouse.  I then got the piece of wood between the mounting channels out.  The drain line for the front CruiseAir evaporator went through this floor near the outside edge but the floor was rotted enough that I was able to break out the wood on the back side and pull the board out.  As I did this I was reminded, once again, about how much of this conversion was built with the idea that it would never have to be disassembled.

I took a break for lunch, which was leftover lentils and quinoa pilaf with some fresh fruit.  After lunch I resumed working on the floor under the front passenger seat in the bus.  I managed to remove most of the rusted metal filler plate.  I made a lucky guess as to where my wire brush was stored and used it to clean the surface of the rusted metal that remained.  I played with different combinations of wood thicknesses and pondered how I will rebuild this area.  I then sprayed the rusted areas with POR-15 cleaner/degreaser and scrubbed them with a sponge soaked in hot water.

I moved to the driver’s seat area and repeated the process.  There was one area with damaged wood that I still had to deal with.  There was an edge about 10 inches long capped with two thin gage metal angles that were badly rusted.  I removed as much of the angles as I could.  I cut off a strip of wood about 2″ wide and 10″ long and removed the rest of the angles.  I wire brushed the area but left the POR-15 cleaner/degreaser for tomorrow.  In anticipation of applying the POR-15 tomorrow and coating it with black spray on rubberized undercoating paint I began masking off the area with painter’s plastic.

For dinner Linda made a salad, roasted eggplant with garlic and breadcrumbs, and mock fish with vegan tartar sauce.  We finished the Frey Natural Red wine with our meal.  I would love to support this company but this wine is too dry for my pallet.

PBS had an interesting lineup of shows this evening on continental formation, natural wonders, and the human brain.  I dealt with e-mail before the shows and we turned in after the last one.  Chuck and Barbara were planning on leaving this morning, southbound for Florida in their 1993 H3-40 Liberty motorcoach.  I did not have any messages from Chuck today so I presume they got away as planned.  They bought a lot at the Pelican Lake Luxury Motorcoach Resort in Naples where they have spent the last six winters and that is where they are headed.  We will be staying about 90 minutes north of there in January and February and will get together with them as time and commitments permit.  We are looking forward to seeing their lot; it has a coach house and they are doing some landscaping, including large palm trees.

 

2015/08/31 (M) A Major Sub-Project Done

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We both took Advil PM before bed last night as both of us were sore and tired from a long day of work and needed a good night’s sleep.  We awoke at 8 AM to dense fog but it was not unexpected as I saw the advisory on the weather forecast before I went to sleep last night.  I made a pot of the Costa Rican half-caff coffee while Linda washed blueberries and got our granola ready.  We enjoyed our coffee in the living room with the cats on our laps and listened to Dr. Michael Greger’s daily research summary on NutrionFacts.org.

We were still a bit tired and sore but finally got back to work on the bus at 10:30 AM just as Keith showed up to mow the grass.  After opening up the bus and the “workshop”(garage), and getting out the air-compressor and hooking it up, we got the piece of underlayment out of the bedroom that we cut last night but still needed to trim.  I cut about 1/8″ off of the passenger side end and cut off the front corner on that end so it would clear the piece of vertical trim.  With those adjustments it dropped into place and I stapled most of it to the subfloor.  I would have stapled the whole piece but we ran out of staples.

We had already measured and drawn the second piece for the bedroom but without staples we were at a standstill.  Linda needed to pick up a few things at the grocery store, so we closed up the house and bus and made an errand run.  I dropped her at Meijer’s and drove across the street to Lowe’s.  I bought another pack of 1,000 #18 staples, 3/4″ with 1/4” crown because that was the smallest quantity they sell.  I also picked up a small bottle of pneumatic tool oil.  I drove back to Meijer’s and waited in the parking lot for Linda to emerge.  When she did she had eight grocery bags.  I guess “a few things” is relative.  She got a real hamburger patty and one slice of real cheese from the deli to serve to Kate tomorrow night.

Once we had the groceries unloaded and put away we got back to work on the underlayment.  I laid out the next piece for the bedroom which had 11 angles.  Even though I worked from a consistent reference point the numbers did not quite work out so I took additional measurements and made adjustments accordingly.  When I was satisfied that the layout was close to correct we cut the piece out of the partial panel.  I then cut it in half crossways to create two pieces each of which could be installed.  We started with the half piece closest to the driver side.

Keith finished cutting the grass and came to get his check so we gave him the inside tour of the bus.  He had seen the front part before but never been all the way to the back.  He recognized that it was an ambitious project.

The other half of the back bedroom piece, towards the passenger side, took some tweaking but we finally got it in and stapled.  The last piece for the bedroom should have been the easiest, a 42″ x 18″ rectangle for the aisle at the foot of the bed/storage box.  It wasn’t a perfect rectangle, of course, so it also required adjustments.  Things that should be at right angles rarely are and the flanges on the bottom of the HVAC chases do not have straight edges as I assumed they would.  The adjustments are usually small but necessary to get the pieces to fit.  So it was with the last piece for the main floor.

We thought we were done when Linda noticed a small “L” shaped area around the media cabinet behind the driver’s seat.  We still had pieces of underlayment left over that were big enough to cut this piece.  After measuring carefully and laying it out the numbers were once again not adding up.  We still had the piece of art board that I used to create the templates for the base of the refrigerator alcove so I laid out the “L” shape on that but made it larger than needed.  We positioned the template in the bus, trimmed the inside corner (not 90 degrees) and then marked where all the edges needed to be by tracing from underneath.  I trimmed the template down and checked the fit.  It looked good so I transferred it to the underlayment and we cut it.

We were finally done with the main floor underlayment so we cleaned up the bus by moving stuff to the garage/workshop.  I disconnected the DeWalt 15 gallon air-compressor, moved it to the driveway by the garage, and opened the drain valve on the bottom,  it had a LOT of water inside which reminded me that I really need to set up a water separator and inline oiler for use with this thing.  Linda coiled up the power cord while I coiled up the air hose and stored it with the air-compressor in the front corner of the garage.

Somewhere in the middle of all this work we stopped and had lunch around 3 PM.  It was now 6 PM, too early for dinner, so we decided to get cleaned up and go to Lowe’s to look for metal tile edging.  As long as we were going to be out I thought we might drive over to Chuck’s shop in Novi to look at the air ride seat base.  I called Chuck to see if that would work and he was headed that way anyway, so that is what we did.  The Lowe’s in New Hudson did not have what we were looking for but the associate suggested that we try Blakely’s on West Road near Beck Road in Wixom.  Chuck was still at his shop when we arrived so we had a nice chat, got the air ride base, and then went our separate ways.

It was 8:30 PM by the time we got home.  I spent a few minutes checking e-mails and then we sat down to dinner at 9:15, a simple meal of mock fish fillets with vegan tartar sauce and fresh steamed Brussels sprouts.

I continued checking and responding to e-mails after dinner and then checked into RVillage.  I posted a comment on a new topic in the Friends of Curtis YAY! group and a few minutes later got a call from Curtis.  After catching up on each other’s activities and whereabouts he e-mailed me a couple of things to read and react to.  When we concluded our chat I watched the 3rd installment of the video update series from Technomadia about the renovation of their vintage GM4106 bus conversion at MasterTech in Elkhart, Indiana.  I sent them an e-mail regarding a pet friendly hotel that we used years ago when our Golden Retriever (Einstein) was still alive and went with us on a week-long visit to Elkhart to tour motorhome factories.  (Einstein’s AKC name was Karie Jame Ricky Ricardo.  We got him from the Karie Jame breeders and he was from the Latin Lovers litter.)  It was then off to bed to write for a while before going to sleep.

 

2015/08/04 (T) Back to Busics

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The weather finally turned cooler yesterday and the overnight lows dropped into the upper 50’s; perfect sleeping weather.  We had the house open all day and left windows open overnight.

After breakfast and coffee we worked in the bus for the rest of the morning.  I wanted to clean out all the remaining items from the drawers and cabinets before we start sanding the residual thinset and mastic.  Our first task was to get the refrigerator out of the way.  We laid it down on its face with cardboard under it and slid it forward and over to the passenger side behind the co-pilot seat.

We surveyed all of the storage areas and decided it would be easiest to remove all of the drawers from their slides with the stuff still in them.  The drawer boxes release from the two side-mounted slides at the front via a plastic clip.  The back edge of the part of the slide attached to the box then slides out from under a small tang, allowing the drawer to be lifted out.  An added benefit to removing the drawers is that it will be easier both to clean them and clean the face frames on the built-in cabinetry.

Linda decided to go through all of the stuff as it came into the house, sorting it initially according to whether we should keep it or and throw it away.  Of the things she thought we should keep the next step was to clean them if needed, or queue them up for cleaning.  That included almost everything related to the kitchen.  She reorganized the stuff that was already in the small bedroom, putting cardboard boxes in the recycle pile while I took some ham radio related stuff down to my office.

Linda emptying the inside of the bus.

Linda emptying the inside of the bus.

By noon we had the kitchen and part of the bathroom cleaned out.  I decided to take a break from bus work and install the new bottom weather seals on the garage doors.  I unscrewed the mounting track from the bottom of the 16 foot wide door and removed it.  It had years of accumulated dirt in it so I cleaned it out.  With Linda’s help we got the new seal installed, using soapy water as a lubricant, and reattached the track to the bottom of the door.

Our luck did not hold up with the 8 foot wide door.  Both doors are Wayne Dalton products but the 8 footer is not as thick.  The bottom track for the weather seal is only about an inch wide and the replacement seal, which is designed for a “T” channel would not fit.  Closer inspection suggested that the proper seal would have a cylindrical edge rather than a “T.”  We checked online and found a supplier through Amazon but held off ordering until we had a chance to check for local sources.

We had lunch, after which I went to The Home Depot to see if they had any garage door seals that were different from the one’s at Lowe’s.  They did not.  There is a branch of our bank adjacent to The Home Depot so I stopped there and then headed to Lowe’s where I returned the weather seal for the 8′ door.  I then bought a 400 foot long roll of 9 foot wide 0.31 mil painter’s plastic and four roles of 2″ painter’s tape.  We will use this to mask off the cabinetry before we start sanding the floor or taking on other parts of the interior remodeling project that might affect the woodwork or furniture.

Back home I continued emptying out the house portion of the bus.  (The basement bays are a whole other story.)  In order to remove one of the last three drawers in the bedroom we needed to remove the bed platform.  It is 3/4″ cabinet grade plywood sized to support a queen size mattress, definitely a two-person job.  It is hinged about 18″ from the head end, so we folded that piece over and secured it on both edges with tape, shortening the total length by that much.  It was still heavy and very awkward to handle, especially getting it through the cockpit and down the entrance stairs, but we managed to get it out.  I used a hand truck to move it to the garage for safe storage.  Linda commented that perhaps we should cut it down and switch to a full size mattress.  I think that is an idea worth considering as it would give use more aisle space.

The storage base for the bed with the plywood platform removed.

The storage base for the bed with the plywood platform removed.

The plywood platform is 80″ L by 58″ W so even after removing the 18” piece at the head end is 62” x 58”.  That means it was not cut from a 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood and would be almost impossible to replicate.  Our mattress is approximately 78″ L by 60″ W whereas the foundation box (storage compartment) is 72″ L by 43″ W.  Our full size mattress in the middle bedroom is 72″ L by 52″ W.  Cutting the plywood platform down to full size (or building a new one) would gain us 8″ of isle space at the foot of the bed and 3″ on each side.  That may not sound like much, and would be irrelevant in most bedrooms, but it would be a significant difference in the aft cabin of our land yacht.  If we do this I would keep/store the existing plywood and build a replacement.

With the bed platform out of the bus I was able to remove the last three drawers across the back.  The one farthest to the driver side, in particular, could not be removed with the platform in place.  Another reason for building a new bed platform is that I can hinge it closer to the head end and use longer gas springs.  This would allow it to open far enough to provide easier access to things stored under the bed and be able to install and remove the three drawers whenever needed.

Linda heated up some frozen breaded mock fish fillets for dinner.  She made fresh vegan tartar sauce to go with them, boiled some corn-on-the-cob, and roasted some potatoes in the oven.  It was a simple but very satisfying meal.  After dinner I uploaded more blog posts, getting two of the three that cover the ARRL Field Day event done.  That means I am almost through the month of June!