Hot Logic Mini

The Hot Logic Mini is a small, portable, electric food heating device. I have had mine for about three months or so. I did not buy it with the pyrex baking dish, I sourced that locally from the grocery store.

The case appears to be nylon with an insulating layer. There is a fabric handle on top and inside is what looks like woven aluminized polyproplyene or mylar. The hot pad itself is slightly smaller than the case and has a power cord with a decent length. I did not measure it, but it's about four feet long. There is a slit in the middle of the rear of the case to feed the cord through. Generally though, the plate just stays in the case.

Here is the data plate on the bottom. 45W isn't much and that makes it critical to have as much contact area as possible. I have seen cooking temperatures in chicken breasts reach 160F. I also experimented with food service grade plastic trays, food cooked faster in them and tended to dry out easily. It is imperative that containers have tight fitting lids.

There is a tunnel on the back of the case where the cord can be rolled up and stored.

This is what the six cup pyrex dish looks like in the Hot Logic Mini. It is a good fit and zips up fine. I have also used a three cup dish with a little foil in the bottom to reheat frozen burritos and a four cup round to make oatmeal. Typically I give it two hours to work for most of the cooking I've done with it so far. Brown rice is the only failure I've had, so I precook that prior to using it in the Hot Logic Mini. 

For the most part I use the Hot Logic Mini to help keep myself to a diet and reduce my instant gratification cycle. Instead of heating something up in the microwave, I put something together in one of the pyrex dishes I have and try to forget about it for a couple hours. I have also used it to hold hot food while I cook other parts of a meal, like the bacon so I can make dirty eggs or a stack of pancakes so everyone gets to eat together.

Depending on what you want to cook, this can almost replace a crockpot. While brown rice and beans can be done in a crockpot, the Hot Logic Mini doesn't have the horsepower to be successful with them. That said, if you keep in mind the limitations of the lower temperature there is still a lot that can be done. If you work a job where you don't have a set lunch break or that break is easily interrupted, this is an excellent tool to free you from that time constraint. As I mentioned before, about two hours seems to be about when frozen vegetables become al dente (except carrots unless sliced thin) so whether you're cooking or reheating seems like a good timeframe. If your meal is interupted, just close it up, leave it plugged in, and when you come back to it it'll still be hot. Remember to use good food safety practices. I have also had good luck with a variety of frozen microwavable meals, just leave them sealed up or transfer them to something with a tight lid.

Size-wise, as can be seen in the pictures, the Hot Logic Mini is about the size of a child's lunchbox, or a large bento. Even with the six cup pyrex there is just barely room for an icepack, two if you take out the heating plate. So you could use it for a cooler if necessary.

Wow, so I unintentionally walked away from this for three years.

Another attempt at a reboot? Why not? On with the update, line by line.

• I have successfully paid off all my debts. I have a perk at work where we can take loans out of our 401K, and this I did a bit more than a year ago.
• I have nearly moved once, and for real twice.
• Both ZAST and Blur are no longer in my possession. ZAST was turning into a moneypit, so I walked away from that one. Blur ate its second timing chain the day before my birthday. 
• Plans were made and broke to move across the country.
• I purchased an urban commuting bicycle and kitted it out for my transportation needs after the above mentioned move, it has one mile on it due to the heinous risk to bicycles in my current area.
• I have more Mora knives than I use, however one is my box opener, another is regularly used in the kitchen, and a third is used for a utility knife. I have two others that will be going into some sort of survival kits.
• I am still using WiFi exclusively, except for the cell phone. I have had to replace the laptop.
• My extended camp kit has been completely changed, the 18' tent was deemed excessive.
• Several of my firearms have been sold off, partially due to living circumstances and lack of security. I felt it was more important to keep them out of undesirable hands and replace them later with more appropriate tools.
• I made a vague attempt at attending Munches and found the few I attended cliquey and unwelcoming.
• I have attended several regional burns.
• My 9V scale which was so integral to my food preparation was replaced by a slim glass topped scale which uses a 2032 lithium cell, about once a year.
• I've moved from doing nearly everything in OpenOffice to cloud based Google Docs, Sheets, etc.
• I am using Google Keep for shopping lists, Journalling and all sorts of things and it syncs to everything I own.
• The paper shredder finally died while processing Polaroids.
• I got a gym membership again, and canceled it six months later.

And now for the new stuff and I'm going to forget a lot:

• Latest move placed me in a two bedroom apartment with a life partner and her daughter, and I just moved everything out of storage and am in the process of doing another heavy reduction in preparation for the next move.
• I have been (personally) car free for six months and the next move must take into consideration the need to remain car free.
• I have a lot of mobile technology and changed my calling plan to allow the mobile hotspot to work.
• I have started gaming again, and have chosen Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition and my primary game of choice. Which has required an explosion of rulebooks. All my prior editions I have discovered in electronic formats, not so with the 5e. Also I now have two foot lockers of D&D supplies, which now need to be sorted and reduced. Instead of going to 3D scenery again, I used a large magnetic whiteboard, magnets, and poster printed maps. That has already been reduced to using Roll20, and the laptop with a large TV as a second monitor for the players.
• I have given away most of my oil painting supplies, as I do not have the ability to leave an easel set up for long periods of time. Instead I switched to oil pastels so I still get to manipulate physical media. Recently I started dabbling in digital media and purchased a digitizer tablet to make it friendlier.
• I am back in therapy for anxiety, depression, existential and suicidal thoughts. I am fighting the day job for time to work on my own creative pursuits. I have a large backlog of projects I want to work on, but being hounded to work overtime and being threatened with no job for refusing. . .so I had to "doctor" up and I qualified for FMLA protections.
• I now have a 1080p capable camcorder (they don't call them that anymore) and have been recording audio only for the past several game sessions I have run, and posted them up on the Youtube.
• I am trying to consolidate my efforts to becoming a published creator, the only thing I need is uptime, but when it hits, the dayjob is usually in the way.

Seems like it or now, stay tuned as I attempt to produce content, one more time!

Another Year, Another Recap

It's been a while since I put any posts on here, and it looks like a good time to start with a recap of the steps I've taken or fulfilled towards my goal of achieving a nomadic lifestyle.

First I should mention what being nomadic in the modern sense means to me: being able to exercise the options when they become available to better my life in an immediate fashion.  This requires the ability to pack and move house in short order, not having towering debts that restrict me to a job that pays at least $xx,xxx and other things that result in just being fiscally and materially nimble.  Reducing attachment and dependence to material things is a good start, forgiving myself prior purchases for what is best called JUNK at this later stage and disposing of it as such is another.  Making smart purchases for things that replace large, outdated things is yet another.  A good example is my new Mora knife: at $9 it takes over the duty for every Buck knife I own, it's lighter, just as durable and if something happens I can easily get another and not beat myself up for destroying the $60 Buck 110.  The Mora may see KP duty soon and if so it will have eliminated about four knives.

On to the recap, mostly going line by line with last year's:

• I am now two years into the debt management process, having the manager automatically debt my checking account has been a big stress remover.  I feel like I only have to keep my job.  The downside is I cannot easily become fiscally nimble until the end of this process.
• I no longer even use the 3g wireless modem, the radio internet tower upgrade has been completed for some time now so I surf the gratis connection that was given to the housemate over the wifi.
• My extended camp kit has been expanded to an 18' diameter modern teepee which was just used for the first time in a winter camp.  Over this year I plan to start dropping some layers of redundancy, spreading it out over my EDC, 72hr bugout and long term/permanent kits.  The biggest gear reduction will happen after Pennsic 42 which will be my last Pennsic and I just don't wear the historic stuff anywhere else.  It will drop back into the long term kit.  I have plans to go to PDF which may require a very stripped down camp.
• My largest reduction in material goods happened with things that were never brought here.  The Harley was sold, all my gaming materials were given away, and all of my big ticket tools were sold off, giving away over 500' of extension cords.  I still have the Blur (Toyota pickup at 30mpg avg for cheap daily driving) and ZAST (Suburban reimagined as a survival transport).  I still live in the same situation, I did get a raise but still much less than I need to comfortably afford a place on my own.  I do look for that to happen this year, but the place I have found that is budgetable has no phone or internet connectivity.
• The dating scene has been a total wash, I have either deleted or made unavailable every internet dating profile I had.  I will be leaving the SCA (again) after Pennsic this year which will also remove myself from the "Scadian Singles Club," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the hookups that frequently happen there.  I am content to realize that I am sufficiently unique that few females find me of romantic interest, I've already met most of them, and I'm still single for a perfectly logical reason.
• My 9V scale is still going, though I expect the battery to quit soon.  I am, however, using it much less.
• My heavy glass measuring cups have been replaced by collapsible silicone cups with markings on the inside.  I've also reduced to two plates, two bowls, and four sets of silverware.
• I have repurposed two canvas totes into more re-usable grocery bags, one used to hold my clothes pins (overkill, but it was handy at the time) another was used as a tool bag at work.  They're nice when I'm buying something densely heavy like tanks of propane, cans of turpentine, etc.
• I use Open Office exclusively now, and use the Save As function if I need to make something available to read in other formats.
• I no longer participate in BOINC, I only have a laptop (borderline obsolete) and it was just using too many resources even after setting limits.  I may need to maximize the lifespan of this laptop so it does need to be in sleep mode when I am not using it.
• I no longer use TaskSmash, I switched to Google Tasks which also appear on the Calendar, but I have also fallen into disuse.  I don't do well with to-do lists, I find it is better to just do it when I recognize it needs to be done.
• I am amazed my paper shredder is still working.  Especially after processing all of my old tax records.  I also reused a lot of printed-on-one-side paper.
• I no longer have a gym membership, and have sold nearly all of my workout equipment.  I primarily do yoga now which only requires (optionally) a mat.
• I have added a "Prepper" element to my Nomadic efforts which ties in nicely.  I do have an ECD, have worked out a 72hr bugout kit and can camp self sufficiently.  I did reacquire certain defensive elements again, with strict purposes and portability in mind.  My 30day plan is complete.  I will not hoard anything because it would limit my mobility, and what I have is going to be maintained in the most mobile fashion possible.  5gal buckets with gamma seals, color coded and other plain sense modular storage options which lend themselves to rapid loadouts.

Reuse is Second

There is a hack to get the plastic grinder off the top of these.  I'm going to refill it with some sea salt I happen to have in the cabinet, but other things are possible to be ground in these.  When it wears out I'll pull the top off for recycling.


In short, if you take a dull, rounded tip knife such as a classic butter knife, slide it up under the plastic lip, and start twisting the top, you'll stretch the plastic just enough to get it off.  If care is used and you're watching what you are doing you will be able to snap it back on.  The knife has to get past the glass lip.  There are two of them, the first is there to prevent you from doing this little hack.  The plastic bead that locks the top on sits between two glass lips.  You need to wiggle the knife past the one you see and coax the plastic over the other one.  Once you get it off you'll understand.  Just remember you're prying with a metal knife against glass!

Repair comes first

I went to trim my beard the other day and my cordless trimmer didn't even twitch.  The charger didn't light up, nothing.  So remembering that the manual said something about taking the battery out, I cracked the case open.  To my delight it had a standard rechargable AA NiCd.  Out came the intellicharger and the leads on the trimmer were just long enough to get it in.  Originally the battery was so dead the charger didn't register it.  A pair of jumper wires and a quick connection with a healthy NiMH woke the charger up and I started it off on a refresh cycle.  It took two days, but it looks ready to put back into service.

More Inspiration from Lifehacker

Another idea used from a Lifehacker article.  This was also a concept I considered when it came to organizing my spices, however the pocket to jar size ratio was ludicrous.  Much better for bigger things like all my workout supplies and and other odds and ends that were not space efficient left on a shelf.  Things like storage bags, rolls of foil and cling wrap.

The pockets are even big enough to fit that 500g bulk container of creatine monohydrate.  I did put two small thumbtacks through the organizer and into the door about a third of the way up from the bottom to reduce the swing when the door was used.

Once I did this, I moved my tubs of whey protein to the empty shelf I discovered during yesterday's project, which then left two fully unused shelves on the other unit.  So I moved my (very) few small appliances down from the very top which made the unit wobble less with the weight further down.

As a side benefit of having this stuff stashed in a flexible organizer, when it does come time to move, I can just unhang it, roll it up and drop it in a tote.  I may see if I want to organize the bathroom in a similar way.  Obviously the TP and towels aren't going to fit in there, but I'd say the boxes of band-aids, bottles of OTC's, and all the other assorted toiletries will go just fine.

Inspiration from Lifehacker Strikes

So I'm reading one of the posts from Lifehacker in my G+ stream, about hacking small apartments.  Anyone that's followed any of my posts across the social networks will know I have been streamlining things, and a current peeve of mine is some clutter I just cannot seem to permanently correct.  I present exhibit A, the before image:

Plastic food bins and things on top, fairly accessible, nested, a little chaotic, but liveable.  Spice shelf, bad jumble, cannot see half my stuff, and a time waster when cooking.  Bottom shelf, more of the same, with two sets of measuring cups, three sets of measuring spoons, and a tableware sorter piled up with things that don't fit.

What got me started was in one of the subarticles it mentioned the use of the ceiling for storage and magnets for smaller things in jars with ferrous lids.  This reminded me of an old Boy's Life magazine that suggested using baby food jars or mayonnaise jars to sort things like small nails and screws.  You could drive a couple roofing nails through the lid, securing them under a workbench.  Just look under the bench, see what jar has what you need, unscrew it take out what you need, and screw the jar back on.  No wasted workbench space.  So I got the sudden idea of grabbing some extra adhesive velcro I had laying around and was going to cut tabs, stick them to the lids of spice jars, and glue them to the underside of that top shelf.  Then I didn't have as much velcro as I thought I had.  It would have to wait until I go in to work, we have it in bulk rolls, and it's not a big issue to grab some.  We're always using it for the oddest projects anyway.  On further thought I decided that the whole side of the shelving unit was open, so I'd just put long strips of velcro on the side, mating strips on all the jars and just slap them on the side, freeing up the shelf even further.

Next I looked at the jumble of measuring accouterments.  They have hanging holes on the end, and I have a stock of cup hooks.  Those shelves are freecycled and will be again, so I got out my DeWalt cordless drill and started putting pilot holes in the particle board.  I hung up the good stainless set of cups and spoons and put the plastic ones off to the side.  I have long handled nylon spoons, drilled holes in them while I was at it.  Cup hooks went in the fronts of the doors and all the long stuff went there as well as my GSI Outdoors Fair Share Collapsible mug.  Next I noticed there was a lip all the way around the tableware sorter, so more cup hooks went in the underside of the shelf and the sorter became a drawer.

Well, I didn't feel like waiting to pick up velcro, and I remembered there was a scrap piece of baseboard trim laying outside.  I sold off my chop box, but I still had a sharktooth tool box saw.  So I used an old trick I learned years (25??) ago and made a mini-shelf.  Quick, dirty and free.

Here is exhibit B, the aftermath:

The two white rectangles you see on the left end of the first shelf are some labels I made, volume conversions for the common kitchen measurements.  I reuse many of the metric serving scoops that come with supplements (you can see a few extras on the shelf next to the knife block) but rarely are they exactly any of the sizes in typical cooking use.  For example there is a 33ml, 60ml, 90ml.  I just pick one that will do the job and leave it in the container.  If I want a different serving size, I just pick a different one, consistency is what is important.  Previously I had been looking at the other set of cups and spoons for the conversion which was printed on them.  The metal ones do not have metric equivalents on them.

No more jumble, but not excessively organized.  Much more efficient.  Another expense free project completed.