what's with all the recipe blogs all of a sudden?
So you're approaching thirty, seemingly mature, adult........yet you know damned well that you're still a goofy kid on the inside. What do you do to release those childish urges to play the same games you did when you were three? Simple, you lie to yourself and the world around you by making your games seem useful.
Instead of racing your bike up and down the block, you buy a pickup. Instead of pulling on girls hair to show them you like them, there's sex......which admittedly in it's better moments sometimes does involve hair pulling. Instead of playing cowboys and indians, you watch or do theatre. Instead of video games...........hey wait, no way in hell I'm giving up video games too, dammit!!!
Today's subject, mud pies. The secret to playing in the mud and tossing it around without the neighbors calling the guys with the white coats and butterfly nets is of course, construction. Putting in the concrete for fence posts or a deck is one way, however if you've channeled your inner child's pyromania into metalcasting, barbecue, baking pottery, etc, may I suggest the following recipe for refractory.
What the hell is refractory you ask? Simply the best damned mud pie you've ever seen. It's also be used as a heat reflective concrete that's good for a furnace/outdoor oven liner, but that is merely incidental. (I've also seen charcoal pizza ovens made out of it, and the taste of the pizza cooked over charcoal is great!)
First take one wheelbarrow, add 1.5 parts portland cement (don't breathe this, you'll sneeze grey goop for an hour.), 2 parts sand, and 1.5 parts perlite (that white pebbly crap they use in planting soil, it's sold seperately at hardware stores). Mix well, then moisten slightly.
Add 2 parts fire clay (if you can get fire clay, great, if not, sodium bentonite works pretty well. They sell it cheap at feed stores as a pond liner. It's also the main ingredient in cat litter, but unless you're patient enough to grind up 10 or 15 pounds of cat litter into a fine dust, I'd stick with the pond liner version.) Add water and mix into icky-sticky goop. Feel free to use your hands for mixing, but once you add the clay, there's no getting it off your hands without running water.
Play, play, play, 'cause eventually you're gonna have to pour it. This brings us to an important point. When you pour it, it works better if it's about the consistency of cookie dough. However, this is not as fun. (Also, while it may have the consistency of cookie dough, it tastes more like the lye they use in the cement than chocolate chip. Yumaliscious.)
Safety tip, when you have to throw away your toy.....erm, pour the refractory, pack it in very well, and be sure to wait at least two to three days for it to dry, then heat slowly before really cutting loose with the fire. Otherwise, any water, or water filled air trapped in pockets in the cement will heat into trapped steam, then........BOOM!!!!!!!
Which of course is a whole nother way to play, but pretty much destroys whatever you built, and take it from me, it's hard to find concrete shrapnel with an x-ray, so usually that means it's rub a wire brush into the wound time! Experienced motorcyclists will wince at this, because they know exactly what that means.
So from pyros like me to pyros like you, if you try this, then you're a damned fool, playing with furnaces is not safe, may cause burns, explosions, or injuries and I am not responsible in any way shape or form for any injury you may cause yourselves or others by following this. If you attempt to sue, again I am not liable for this, I've posted this warning, I'm dead broke, and all the lawsuits in the world won't bring back your eyesight.
If you are fool enough after that to play with my mud pie refractory, best of luck, and safety first.
NBS