Spike Lab - Vegan Cooking & Eating

I’ve been a tortilla fan my entire life. This easy recipe has been carefully tweaked to create an aromatic and spicy (heat) tortilla that is easy to work with. The recipe below can easily be doubled to create 16 tortillas. The recipe below makes 8. Enjoy!

• 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of sea salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1/2 cup of warm water
• 1/8 teaspoon of white pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon of garam masala
• 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric
• 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon of curry powder
• 1/4 teaspoon of ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon of paprika

Heat a cast iron skillet or something similar. You’ll want it a little less than medium. Too hot and you’ll scorch the tortillas. Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk well. Add the olive oil and water. Blend it all together until you have a well kneaded ball of dough. It should have a nice burnt sienna color. If it is too dry add 1 teaspoon of water and continue kneading. If it is a little too sticky that is ok. Add some flour to a large cutting board and roll the dough into a long sausage shape about 12 inches long. Cut into 8 equal pieces. Roll each into a ball and set aside. Add more flour to the cutting board. Grab a ball of dough and form a small flat round shape in your hand. Using a rolling pin flatten it into a round tortilla shape. This takes practice. If they come out square or blob-like don’t worry. Try again on the next one! As each is rolled out put it on your hot skillet. It will take 30 to 45 seconds to cook then flip it. If you’re not getting good markings from the heat leave them a bit longer. It takes a bit of practice to learn the proper time.
Continue to roll, flip, and cook until you’re done. Easy stuff. Fill the tortillas with your favorites and enjoy!

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This is once again another redo of SpikeLab.com. This time I’m taking the site away from cars for a bit and heading into something that I keep getting pressure to do - FOOD! All vegan and all good. Enjoy.

Tags:   new · shiny · vegan · wowNo Comments.

Tags:   karmann ghia · volksrod projectNo Comments.

The door glass has been removed and won’t be put back in. I’m going window free with this project. The top of each door has a long metal strip that holds the rubber scraper. This was looking unsightly and needed modification. I used my trusty hammer and beat it into the window channel. Looks way better and cleans up the side profile of the car nicely. I went back after the photos and evened things out. You can see in the photo a little bit of unevenness.

The profile now matches the area where the 1/4 window used to live.

Tags:   door · karmann ghiaNo Comments.

I worked out the dash ugliness. The original veneer and dash pad were toast. Here is a before photo:

And the after shot:

I removed the crusty dash pad after I took the photos.

Tags:   dash · karmann ghiaNo Comments.

The lower right fender was bashed in below the turn signal hole. The turn signal brackets themselves are hammered! That’ll get fixed later. There was also a nasty kink in the edge of the fender. The edge itself has a slight rip so I need to tack that and try to clean it up a bit.

I took the right front wheel off and carefully worked over the dents with a hammer and dolly. The Ghia metal is very pliable and great care must be taken to avoid overdoing the metal. After about 15 minutes the lower area was looking like this:

You can see a tremendous improvement and the kink is nearly gone. I took some 100 grit sandpaper to it and worked it over to find smaller dings and then worked on those as they appeared. This is not going to be a total restoration so perfection is not the goal.

Once that was done I got over to the nose and worked on that some more and cleaned up the crusty paint and knocked out several more dings.

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I made up a template to check for smoothness of the transition for the top of the frame as it mates to the lower section. 5 inches is about all it can be or it will get an ugly kink and not look so natural.

Notice the lines that come together keep a natural flow to them.

I marked off the section that will be chopped with some black dots. I’m waiting on a reply from a fellow volksrodder for the top center section that I need to complete the chop. Once I get the center piece I’ll get out the sawz-all and get down with it.

Tags:   chop · ghia · roofNo Comments.

The right front fender needs attention. Down low is a big kink and the turn signal area is bashed in. I started sanding off the flaky crusty paint today and will just keep going until it’s straight(er).

Tags:   dents · fender · ghiaNo Comments.

The right rear taillight was bonked slightly. The lens is cracked but still in one piece. The outer edge of the body was bent. Some careful massaging brought everything back into shape.

Tags:   ghia · repair · taillightNo Comments.

My Ghia needs a nose job.
I hadn’t laid a hammer to the Ghia until tonight. I reviewed the damage, found a few hammers and dollies, and started working. I was able to gently coax the nose out in the center-most point. It had a dink in the middle that came out pretty easy. It looks like I am not the first one to massage this point. Near the horn was a large dent. It came out easily in a few whacks of the convincer. The finer details in the center nose area took gentleness and about 30 minutes. I am happy with the results considering that this thing was driven into something stout! Next up is a full yank of the left front fender to pull it back into it’s proper position.

Tags:   body · dolly · ghia · hammer · nose · repair · workNo Comments.