Are you a bizarre sandwich lover? Even though you might not make them or eat them, you can still be a sandwich lover and its nice to know that there are people like us, who simply love sandwiches. Lets take for example the “St. Paul”, ever heard of it? It is usually found in St. Louis, Missouri in certain old time Chinese restaurants. It is a egg foo young, lettuce, tomato, mayo and sometimes a slice of American cheese all on white bread. How about the “chow mein sandwich” a common menu option in Southern Massachusetts on Route 195. Other bizzare sandwiches include the peanut butter and onion sandwich, the peanut butter and pickle sandwich, the peanut butter, jelly and crushed potato chips sandwich and many more. There are no shortages of bizarre sandwiches out there!

Included in the list might be one of the most bizarre, the “Avraham Karadi” sandwich (A.K.A. Avi Karadi sandwich). It seems like it may have been created as a gourmet sandwich as it involves a tremendous amount of time and effort to gather and prepare the ingredients. I simply could not see anyone actually enjoying the resulting sandwich, but that’s just me as there has been talk that it is popular in some locations. Here is the list of ingredients:

An old Roman sweet wine sauce, Passum, is made by boiling the must, newly pressed whole fruits which include the stems, seeds, leaves and all. And then you would add in honey to thicken it.

Garum, a salty fish sauce from ancient Rome, approximated today by combining passum, oregano and fish paste.

Pine nut sauce, an old Roman stand by, this is made by combining pine nuts, vinegar, honey and some lovage and some pepper.

Finally, spinach, onions, along with lettuce and tomatoes as desired, with rye bread being the usual, though black Russian bread seems to be a distant second favorite. Egg paste, such as found in egg salad, is sometimes used as well. Pastrami or roast beef are favorite meats to use. There are a few variations on the recipe, but they all use most of these ingredients. Curiously enough, I could not find out where the nickname of this sandwich, the “Avraham Karadi” or “Avi Karadi” came from.

1. The Passum: Reducing it to one-tenth its volume, start by cooking the grape juice. Feel free to add honey to taste.

2. The Garum: Add two full tablespoons of fish paste to the Passum. Then add a pinch of oregano.

3. The Pine Nut Sauce: For three hours, in vinegar, soak the pine nuts. Now mix with honey, while adding dashes of pepper and lovage.

Step Four: Building the sandwich. Spread egg paste on your rye bread (or your black Russian bread if that was your choice). Now add on the meat (Pastrami or Roast Beef) and add vegetables. Pour on the Passum, Garum, and Pine Nut Sauce as desired.

There you have it an “Avraham Karadi” (aka “Avi Karadi”) sandwich, enjoy!

Outdoor lighting is mostly used for security. It lights up the area around your house at night to make it easier for you to spot unwanted intruders, animal or human. Besides the security angle, outdoor lighting can actually enhance the beauty of your house and the surrounding area, by accentuating the architecture of the house or the natural scenery around it. All this outdoor lighting is expensive, expensive to install and expensive to operate on a daily basis. Maintenance of the underground wiring is expensive because you have to use armored cabling to withstand the weather, to prevent water intrusion due to normal watering operations, rain and groundwater. Electrical short circuits can cause fires leading to property damage. People and animals may suffer burn injuries. Any break in the insulation of the cabling can give rise to a potentially dangerous situation where lethal electricity can critically injure and even kill a member of the family or a loved pet. You can avoid, both, the high expense and the potential danger by installing a modern low voltage lighting system.

Electrical voltage above a 60 – 70 volt threshold is sensible to humans. Above 100 volts it becomes dangerous. At just 12 volts, low voltage electricity is safe because it cannot cause electrocution. So outdoor lighting systems using low voltage electricity are absolutely safe.

The low voltage outdoor lighting system is powered through a step-down transformer which steps down the 120 volt mains supply to a safe 12 volt supply. Some outdoor lighting systems are designed to use DC electricity. In case of mains outage, as in a storm, such an outdoor lighting system can be operated off storage batteries, like the ones used in automobiles. So your house is protected even in such emergencies. Most of these modern outdoor lighting systems do not use the traditional incandescent lamps. Instead they use LED lighting which is exceptionally economical to run. The high output LEDs that are available today are more than a match for the incandescent and halogen tubes in terms of brightness. Needless to say you can use these lighting units wherever you used the traditional ones. So you have safety, you have economy and you don’t lose out on the brightness! Isn’t that great?

The installation of a modern outdoor lighting system is quite simple, mainly because lethal voltages are not involved. If you are conversant with electricity and electrical circuits, you can manage the installation yourself in an easy one-day job. You don’t need any kind of special equipment or tools to install the low voltage system – no insulated gloves and no delicate measuring equipment. Be warned, however, that short circuits can still cause fires, so be very careful to use fuses or the modern miniature circuit breakers (MCBs) of appropriate rating at strategic junctures. You can afford to use high quality cable and MCBs because the overall saving you make by implementing this system is much more than the cable cost.

So just how much money can you save with LED lamps? Well consider that they typically use about a quarter of the electricity of standard lamps. That’s a 75% savings every month on your outdoor lighting bill. Figure that out over the course of a year or even ten years, and the numbers become significant. Then when you add in the fact that these bulbs will last at least 10 times longer, the savings get even better. And as an added benefit you won’t be forced to change the bulbs nearly as often. As we all know, outdoor lights always seem to go out when we would least like them to, like when the temperatures are sub-freezing.

The wiring for low voltage outdoor lighting need not be buried underground. Because the load of LED lamps is so low, the wiring is commensurately light. This means that you can change the wiring around quite easily whenever you feel the need for a change (of outdoor lighting, that is). This is a very handy feature when your house has many special features. Highlighting them all at once is garish, and that defeats the very definition of highlighting! So one month you can highlight the gable roofing, the next month the side elevation, and the colonial columns the following month. The same applies to the landscaping or wooded area around the house.

Changing your outdoor lighting system to a low voltage outdoor lighting system using LED lamps will be a power and money saving idea. You’ll be contributing to environmental conservation as well by reducing the demand on large power generating stations. The main benefit of a low voltage outdoor lighting system is that you are now completely free from the risk of electrocution accidents. You can watch your children play out there and not have the teeniest fear about them getting a fatal shock. What could be better than that?

You can find the Wii console everywhere today, so many people have bought the Nintendo Wii for their familiy or to play with friends. Adding to the excitement, the Wii Fit helped make the console desireable for more users than just gamers. What can Nintendo do next for the Wii console system?

Nintendo has just released some new features, accessories and game titles. For example, the biggest release in May 2009 has been the Wii Motion Plus. This is an accessory that is added onto the motion-sensitive controller, but increases the sensitivity of motion that can be achieved with the controller. By fine tuning the motion, players can excel at new sports and challenges. A new version of Wii Sports is being released as well, that uses the new MotionPlus accessory, called Wii Sports Resort.

New console bundles are also coming, with the new Sports Resort game as well as the MotionPlus. New games are often bundled with a Wii console, for new users to buy who have been holding out on the console, but now want the games and decide to take the plunge.

Nintendo is also developing a new “vitality sensor”, which is a clip onto your fingertip with a sensor using a light sensor to read your biorhythms. The idea is that this would then measure your brain waves, giving users access to biofeedback readings. The possibile uses are to learn meditation, reduce blood pressure, learn tof ocus and concentrate – if it works as proposed! This accessory is targeted for release in 2010, but is not yet confirmed by Nintendo.

Nintendo keeps attracting plenty of non-gamers to its console, with new games and fun for anyone, not just gamers. The perfect example is the Wii Fit which was huge for Nintendo, and helps anyone of any age start and maintain a fitness program using the balance board to work out, track progress, and build workout routines.

More sports games are being released as well, and finding Wii Sports bundles includes the games and accessories needed to work with the Wii console right out of the box. Virtua Tennis from Sega and Grand Slam Tennis from EA Sports are both new, and Grand Slam Tennis uses the new MotionPlus.

One new sports release, EA Sports Active, gives users a much more active experience, with a sensor pad attachment that wraps around your leg and tracks body movements like running and kicking. These types of new games and accessories will keep the Wii console at the top of the heap for a while.

The Samsung LN52B750 52 inch 1080p LCD HDTV has been breaking records since it’s recent release. This is probably because of some of it’s newest features are the best possible that money can buy.

All but a few of the feautures of the Samsung LN52B750 are self explanatory. There are, though, one or two features that not a lot of HDTV shoppers know a lot about. One is the term “1080p”.

1080p means 1080 “progressive scans”. A progressive scan is a vertical line of reslolution on your TV screen. 1080p is now the highest screen quality available to buy since 720p.

The higher number of progressive scans an HDTV has then the higher amount of pixels it will have. The more pixels a TV screen has, the better it’s images will be. A good example to use to explain this would be to compare mobile phone cameras with top quality digital cameras. If you were to compare the images of the two, the digital camera would have much sharper images. That’s because its images have more pixels, and are therefore, much sharper – the same principals apply with HDTVs.

Each HDTV screen is made up of tiny little squares or “pixels”. Imagine your TV screen as a grid with hundreds of thousands of tiny little squares on it. In each square are the colors that make up your images.

If you replaced this grid with one with many more, smaller squares or “pixels”, then the images of your HDTV would be much clearer and sharper from then on. This is because the smaller each pixel is, the more detail can be shown on screen.

Let’s assume you’re watching a 1080p HDTV with typical 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. Your TV will have 1920 lines of horizontal resolution and 1080 lines of vertical resolution. Now, that means that you’ll be getting 1920 x 1080 pixels making up your images. That’s 2,073,600 pixels – and crystal clear images.

So in conclusion, the more progressive scans your HDTV has, the more pixels it will have, and the more pixels it has, the clearer and sharper the images will be. 1080p is the pinnacle of HDTV technology and the sharpest picture quality money can possibly buy.

The Samsung LN52B750 52 inch 1080p LCD HDTV provides crystal clear, mind blowing images, and is the best money I’ve ever spent!

Saunas are best loved for their rejuvenating powers. One version or another has been utilized by more or less every culture from the Mayans to Native Americans to the Greek culture and right through to today. The deep heat cleanses the skin, relieves tension, and helps improve and increase circulation.

Common saunas are wooden rooms with wooden benches for seating that are insulated and heated to between 160 and 195 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat is provided by rocks, usually granite, which can absorb the heat without cracking. The rocks can be heated by a variety of sources but a wood stove is the most economical.

Building a sauna on your own is a fairly ambitious project, but there are many sauna kits on the market that make the job much easier. Some kits can be completed in as little as just one day. Before you pick either an outdoor or indoor sauna, you must first choose the type of foundation that you will need.

The building of the sauna begins with proper planning of the project that includes checking out any local building codes that may put restrictions on your project. As well, unless you are a licensed electrician, one will need to be hired to hook up the heat source.

In order for your sauna to stand the test of time, the foundation needs to be stable and solid. You want it to be permanent and strong so you should use materials that will not deteriorate once the sauna is in place. This is especially important if you live in climates where frost could shift the soil in colder months.

Keep in mind that small buildings tend to shift more than larger ones so you will need footings between 12 inches and up to 48 inches, depending on the climate. The colder the climate, the deeper the footings will be. In warmer places, railroad ties on a level bed of sand and gravel will be secure enough to hold the sauna. Remove the grass from the area that will be the floor of the sauna and fill the area in with course sand and gravel. This gives a base to float the floor which is known as “floating slab” foundation. The sand acts as drainage so there will be no water collecting under the slab, and therefore there will be no freezing to worry about. If you decide on a concrete foundation, make sure that you think about sloping the floor for drainage purposes. Railroad ties can be used to frame in this foundation. The ties need to be laid into trenches to secure them, and then nailed at the corners where they meet to secure them together. The inside of the frame is lined with a porous fabric liner and then covered with gravel. Let the gravel settle a few days and then add the concrete pavers on the gravel. This can also be the base of a wooden floor. If a wooden floor for the foundation is desired, sloping for drainage is a must, but you also have to make sure the wood is sealed to prevent wood rot.

The foundation is the most important underpinning of sauna construction. Having a solid foundation with quality support is essential to building a sauna. If you are unsure about your abilities to build a solid foundation, you should enlist the services of a qualified professional. It could actually save you a lot of money in the event that you had to bring someone in to repair your own damage.