BGE...the best acronym you'll ever want to use.

"Let's BGE it."

If you've never used the term, you're sorely missing out.  Here's the BGE, in all of its green glory:

That's the Big Green Egg, for those of you who haven't figured it out yet.

While the Egg currently sits in its portable "nest" (I wish I could have been clever enough to make that up, but alas, the BGE company is full of marketing genius.), at some point, I WILL build it a permanent home that looks more like this:

Seriously.  This WILL happen.

Let me give credit where its due and let you know that this picture came from here: Egg Head Forum

Yep.  There are whole forums and websites dedicated to people's love of the BGE.  It's a force not to be reckoned with.  Once you get a BGE, your life is changed forever- you think I joke, but I do not.

When my husband and I became the proud parents of a BGE (and yes, it will be your baby), my bestest sisterfriend Jen was visiting for the weekend.  Unfortunately, we had NO CLUE what we were doing, and proceeded to overcook a steak, and burn the outside of a pizza crust while leaving the inside gooey.  Needless to say, Jen went home after the weekend a very hungry and ill-fed guest.  I think we made it up to her when she visited this year, by making chicken and pork chops grilled to perfection, but I can't be quite sure.  We may have scarred her for life.  

Lest you think the BGE is just a grill, let me educate you on its usefulness.  It is a smoker:

Low and slooooow, and those ribs just fall apart in your mouth.  Amazing.

It is also a pizza oven.  Forget going out to the latest "brick fired pizza kitchen".  You've got one at home.  This puppy heats upwards of 600 degrees and with its shape and ceramic dome creates....Pizza. To. Die. For.

Cook it hot hot hot! (with a side of garlic green beans..yum!)

Closeup once it's done cooking- I couldn't get that close and melt the camera!!

Last night's dinner consisted of this:

Baked potatoes, more green beans (we can't get enough of veggies on the BGE), and a chicken VERY embarrassed to have a beer up its butt)

The BGE can also be used as an oven to bake bread and pies, although we haven't attempted to conquer that yet.  While you may be giving me the "pshaw" thought, saying to yourself, My gas grill is fine, and it can do half of these things...., I do wish that I could give you a scratch and sniff/taste through the internet.  You'd become a believer in an instant.

In all fairness, the BGE is not for those who want to grill a hamburger from start to finish in 10 minutes flat.  It takes some time to heat up, and takes a few tries of figuring out what temperature and time length you consider to be perfection for your foods.  As the saying goes, though, All good things come to those who wait...

So.  I'll wait til next spring to begin my plans for the BGE to land in a permanent nest.  In the meantime, I'll enjoy all it has to offer up off its hot coals (charcoal wood....no Kingsford briquettes in this baby...blasphemy!!).  Stop on over for dinner- we're probably making something amazing.

**End note disclaimer...I would be remiss if I did not share that my husband does the BGE cooking.  I'm his prep chef, and he carries it through to the end.  He's pretty amazing at it, but we don't need this going to his head, hence the smallest lettering I could find.

Grossest DIY Project to Date

Six months ago, I decided it was time to tackle the basement.  It smelled slightly musty, was full of cobwebs and the carcasses of pill bugs, and my attempt at keeping things in order down there wasn't working out so well.  My washer and dryer set is in the basement, and I frequently do messy projects there when the weather is too cold to head outside.

When we moved into the house, there was a backyard "patio" that butted up to the back side of the house.  I use the term "patio" lightly, as it wasn't really all that usable.  The back stairs were crumbling, the patio stones were overgrown with weeds, and some intelligent person had decided to use asphalt for a foot wide strip that sat between the foundation and the patio stones.  This created a serious problem, as the stones were 2 inches higher than the asphalt, which meant that every rainstorm caused the emergence of a small lake that touched the back of my house.

How awful looking, right???

During particularly heavy rainstorms, you could find me in my galoshes and rain jacket, attempting to forcefully sweep the lake away from the foundation.  It wasn't a pretty sight.  All of this extra moisture had caused the paint on the inside of the basement to flake away due to efflorescence.   Three years ago, we ponied up and had a lovely (and large!) brick paver patio put in that graded AWAY from the house.  While this solved the possible water issues, it didn't fix the damage already done to the basement walls, especially under the glass block windows.

GROSS.

While there are big projects that I will admit are beyond the realm of my expertise, I refused to pay someone for a job I could do myself.  Scraping and painting?  Easy peasy- I could do that.  I did my research first on how I should attack this project, and what supplies I'd need.  Here's what I needed:

1 paint scraper
1 wire brush
1 mop
1 bucket
2 bottles of Mr Clean floor cleaner
1 bottle of DryLok etch
2 bottles of DryLok Fast Plug
1 5 gallon bucket of DryLok latex basement paint (tinted cream)
1 4 inch flat brush
1 roller
3 ventilation masks
2 prs rubber gloves

(I used DryLok products, as they seemed to have the most consistent reviews for basement paint/products)

I started out by using the scraper and wire brush on the entirety of the basement walls.  This was important, as there were pieces of the cinderblock that looked perfectly fine to the naked eye, but were not.  As I ran the scraper over the walls, small pits were unearthed, that would have begun to crumble had I just slapped some paint over them.

Pre-scrape.

After scraping away all of the loose bits, I washed the walls down using good old fashioned muscle and Mr Clean.  This cleaned up any remaining dust particles.

Next, I mixed up the Drylok Etch, and used it on the areas that showed efflorescence.  It's important to wear gloves and a mask for this step, as getting the etch on your skin can be toxic- it's acid!!  (I actually wore a mask and gloves for the entirety of the project, as I wasn't sure when the basement had been painted last, or if the paint was lead based).  The Etch prepped the effloresced areas to take paint and hold it.  Without using it, you take the chance that your next round of paint will flake and bubble off- no one wants that after working so hard to prep a project like this!!

Scraped and etched.

After etching, I used 2 bottles of premixed Fast Plug.  It comes in squeeze bottles for easy application.  Every pit, hole, and crack line got this form of hydraulic cement pumped into it.  I used my paint scraper to smooth out the edges as it dried.  Some pits/cracks required more than one application to really fill the holes.

No picture here for this step.  The Fast Plug turned my plastic gloves into sticky pulp, and I wasn't going to pick up a camera to document it.  Sorry!

Whew.  This was A LOT of work- not going to lie.  Dave steadfastly refused to help with this project, telling me that if I wanted to get lead poisoning, that was on me.  He was ready to make the call to hire someone to take care of it, but my tightwad tendencies wouldn't give in on this one.

After waiting the recommended 24 hours for the Fast Plug to dry, I began with the paint.  If you've never had the pleasure of working with DryLok basement paint before, let me paint you a picture(get it?  HA..I think the fumes really got to me on this sorry excuse for a joke).  Go to your kitchen, make yourself some pudding, add a cocktail of the most nostril burning cleaning products you have, and voila!  Basement paint.  It's super thick, and pretty nasty smelling.  The consistency makes it go on the wall at about the rate of oil based paint- a snail's pace.

For full disclosure, this entire process took me several weeks to complete, as I only worked on weekends, and the holidays and real life got in the way a bit.  I am glad I did it, as the basement now looks and smells MUCH better, but I'm not sure I would do it myself again.  It took me about 50 hours, all in, to complete.  Cost wise, I probably spent a little less than $200.  Brain cell cost, though?  Probably immeasurable.

Much better.  Anybody else have one of these ancient behemoth double sinks?  Love it!!

If your basement needs some sealing, and you've got the time but not the money, DIY.  The vast amount of cobwebs that hit me in the face were enough to cement my desire to never do this again. (Cement...last lame attempt at a joke, I promise:)  I now have one more DIY notch on my belt with this project, but it's one experience that I hope to never have the pleasure of repeating.