Senfgurken (Mustard Pickles)

 Greetings friends,

Some family members and friends ask me for my cooking/baking recipes, so I thought this would be a great place to start compiling the ones I want to share. 

My wife and I love pickles. I'm personally a fan of sweeter pickles, and I adapted this recipe from one by one of my favorite chefs, Alfons Schuhbeck. The ingredient amounts in the original recipe are oddly calculated, with some spices measured for the total batch size, and others measured per jar. I converted the values to approximate measurements per quart sized jar, assuming you stuff them totally full of cucumbers. Any size cucumber is suitable for this recipe. I like to use large cukes so I can cut them into spears and stuff the jars full.

Here is my recipe broken down to per-jar measurements. These amounts assume you stuff the jar as full as possible with cucumbers.

I'll update this recipe if I make changes; I like to change things up to improve recipes from time to time!

    1 Quart-sized mason jar:

            70-80 g Sweet or yellow onion

            2 Tbsp Mustard seed

            1 Tsp Coriander seed

            1 Tsp Fennel seed

            1/2 Tsp Peppercorn

            1 Bay leaf

            1 Dill flower cluster

            75/25 mixture white vinegar/water with 200 g sugar per liter of total liquid.

After sterilizing the jars, I add all the spices except for the dill flower cluster. I stuff the jars to the brim with cucumbers, squeeze the dill flowers in, and pour the boiling vinegar/water/sugar mixture into the jars and quickly add the lids and rings. I leave the rings slightly loose while I pasteurize the pickles in a water bath in the oven at 250°F for a half hour. Once they're out of the oven, I tighten the rings fully and allow the jars to cool. I store unopened pickles in a cool pantry, and they stay good for over a year.

Thanks for reading,

Juju

JujuMakesIt Update 2022

 

Greetings friends,

I'm sorry for the long hiatus from writing, but I'm very happy to be back to writing posts to share with everyone! I know it's been quite a long time but frankly, 2021 was an incredibly busy year! In January of 2021 my wife and I welcomed our first child into the world and my hands have been full ever since! Now a year old, my daughter is no less time-consuming, but I do manage to find occasional time to take care of projects. I hope to catch up on a lot of what I've been up to in the upcoming months.

In July of 2021, Blogger decided to suspend it's subscriber emailing service which unfortunately means new followers will no longer be able to sign up for email updates... Luckily, those of you who are already subscribed will continue to get updates, and I will have to find another solution for new readers. For now I have a contact widget on my page; I may manually set up emails if that's what's needed!

In any case, thanks so much to those of you who still read my posts and partake in the enjoyment I get out of my projects. I'm always happy to hear your feedback and comments about the stuff I'm doing. I hope you enjoy all the new content I hope to post in the near future!

Thanks for reading,

Juju

1930s Electronic Metronome Restoration

Greetings friends,

Recently, I lucked out and received a very cool vintage metronome from someone in my local "Buy-Nothing" group. As some of you know, music is a big part of my life and I was very excited about this find and at the prospect of restoring it to fully-functioning condition.

Let's start with a little bit of history on this device, since it has some cool design features and is one of the first electronic metronomes to hit the market. The Franz electromechanic metronome was invented in 1938, and saw production through 1994. The mechanism by which the metronome operates is very interesting in that it uses a synchronous motor to spin a wheel which drives a shaft containing a ledged cam lobe (not sure what else to call it?), which on each rotation strikes a spring-loaded hammer onto the interior wall of the metronome box. Changing the angle of the wheel with respect to the motor spindle by way of the external dial ("selecting the tempo") changes the frequency of the hammer strikes.

The metronome I received was in fairly good condition, but with a fair amount of dirt on the exterior. The mechanism worked well at higher tempi (80+ bpm) but was very irregular at slower tempi. The bottom plate, seen above, is in good enough condition that I won't be altering anything about it during this restoration. I'm happy that the label is legible, so I won't try risking any damage to it by trying to clean it. I'll just have to live with the small amount of rust.

To start the restoration, I disassembled the entire mechanism and right away cut the old power cord which was very brittle and starting to crack in some places. I bought a cheap 8-foot extension cord to re-purpose as the power cord for the metronome. The socket is interestingly designed, and it's plenty obvious how the cord connects. The other end gets soldered to the switch and motor, which we'll see later. 

To clean the exterior, I started off with simple dishsoap and warm water, and used an old toothbrush to get into the dirty crevices. Since the white lettering was oxidized and already chipping out a bit, I decided to just scrub until all the letters were cleaned out. With all the dirt removed the appearance of the case was already hugely improved, but I decided to polish a little bit using rubbing compound just to give it a little bit of shine.

The mechanism itself was quite clean and didn't require a whole lot of manipulation, though I did need to make some adjustments to make the slow tempi more consistent. I noticed that at the lower settings the wheel that operates the hammer was not making full contact with the motor spindle. To fix this I simply cut some pieces of thin leather to act as shims, which lowered the height of the motor and allowed the hammer wheel to make full contact across the full tempo range.

I used a lacquer-stik to fill in the numbers on the face on the metronome as well as the "ELECTRONOME" lettering underneath the dial (although these didn't seem to be filled when I received it). The metal indicator on the dial was polished using Brasso, and the reassembly went without a hitch.

Fully functional again, the metronome has a permanent place on my piano. I use it occasionally, especially when showing off to guests. After 80 years of use, it's great to see some new life in this metronome!

Thanks for reading,

Juju

References:

1. http://www.franzmfg.com/history.htm