Tag: steps

Easy Beef Vegetable Soup

Writ­ten: 12/30/2022

Notes for mak­ing easy beef veg­etable soup from left­overs

What

Beef veg­etable soup made from left­over roast beef and frozen veg­eta­bles

Ingredients

Beef, frozen soup veg­eta­bles, red pota­toes, toma­toes, toma­to paste, gar­lic, chick­en broth, bar­ley, salt, pep­per, herb de Provence, salt, pep­per, sug­ar, mus­tard, red wine, Worces­ter­shire sauce

Time

~35–50 min­utes in a Dutch oven, depend­ing on how much you’re mak­ing and if you’re using fresh ingre­di­ents or not

Steps

  • Pre­pare the beef by cut­ting into chunks. Whether fresh or cooked, the steps remain the same
  • Heat some veg­etable oil
  • Add diced/cut onions and gar­lic (I use squeez­able gar­lic for even eas­i­er cook­ing) and cook until onions are translu­cent
  • Add the beef (I hap­pened to have a rib roast rib bone and put that in there, too)
  • Add sea­son­ings to taste
  • Add any fresh veg­eta­bles after prep­ping them
  • Add 1⁄2 to 3⁄4 of frozen veg­eta­bles
  • Add bar­ley
  • Pour in car­ton of chick­en broth (or beef broth)
  • Taste to make sure you like it
  • Cov­er with lid, low­er tem­per­a­ture
  • When things are boil­ing, taste test again
  • Add remain­ing soup veg­eta­bles (this allows some of the veg­eta­bles to look more appeal­ing)
  • Let sim­mer
  • Taste again
  • Let sit for about 10 min­utes or so. This will allow the fla­vor to get stronger.
  • In the mean­time, pre­pare the rest of the foods. Rice, bread…whatever you want.

Done!

2022 Ford Maverick Tie Down Anchors

Writ­ten: Feb­ru­ary 23, 2022 — Updat­ed: Decem­ber 30, 2022

The 2022 Ford Mav­er­ick requires Ford OE anchors (as of right now). When I first bought the truck, these pic­tures were of the Curt brand D‑ring anchors I found. At the time, nei­ther they nor any oth­er D‑ring anchor out there fit.

Curt 1–1/2″ hole
Uh oh…
Bot­tom hole is cen­tered

Ford OEM D‑Ring Floor Anchors

Ford now offers the D‑ring anchors on their parts site. You can find them here: D‑rings (Comes 1 per pack­age) and screws (Comes 4 per pack­age)

Materials

  • Need­ed: T‑Handle Ratch­et­ing Tap Wrench, M8 x 1.25 thread tap, cut­ting oil, Qty: 2 - Hook Tie Down — Rear, Cen­ter — Part #: NZ6Z60550A74A, Qty 1: Screw — Part #: W721941S450B
  • Cost: $105.98 (2 D‑rings) + $9.90 (1 pkg screws) + tax = $122.84
  • Dif­fi­cul­ty: Easy
  • Time: Around 5 min­utes a hole

Install

My tap and die set. You only need the M8x1.25 tap and wrench
Ratch­et­ing wrench with tap
1.25

Watched a few YouTube videos first. I seemed pret­ty straight­for­ward. I’d been lol­ly­gag­ging on instal­la­tion because I was ner­vous that I’d mess up and break the tap. It’s real­ly not hard, in fact it’s quite easy once you get through the first hole tap­ping.

All that’s need­ed to do it
Vir­gin holes
Dry-fit

Basi­cal­ly, you don’t want to force it. Get the cut­ting oil on there. The begin­ning is the most cru­cial part in get­ting it lev­el and threads start­ed. Some down­ward force is need­ed right in the begin­ning, but as soon as the tap can stand up on its own, then it’s time let the tap do its thing by just turn­ing the han­dles. The ratch­et­ing func­tion was para­mount for the Mav­er­ick giv­en how close the holes are to the bed sides. Turn the tap and feel it cut until you feel resis­tance. Then turn it the oppo­site direc­tion to clear the met­al shav­ings. Don’t for­get the cut­ting oil. All of the videos instruct­ed a short back-and-forth motion. I found it eas­i­er to tap, then back out a ways, then go for­ward again. Halfway through, I would back it all the way out, clear the shav­ings out, and then go back in to pre­vent it from real­ly get­ting stuck in there.

Just get­ting start­ed
Halfway
Test fit, not quite there

Even­tu­al­ly, when you hit the bot­tom of the hole, it gets super easy. That’s how you know you’re done. When fin­ish­ing, it was much eas­i­er to free the tap from the han­dle and just unscrew it like a reg­u­lar screw­driv­er with­out the ratch­et­ing func­tion.

Right around here, it starts get­ting super easy to tap
Eas­i­er to just ditch the ratch­et­ing han­dle at the end and unscrew it by hand

Yay! I timed the last hole tap and it took me 4 min­utes and 15 sec­onds to do; that’s with me tak­ing my time, back­ing all the way out halfway through, clean­ing up shav­ings. Easy does it. The first one prob­a­bly took some­thing like 10 min­utes. I have to say work­ing around my roll up ton­neau cov­er real­ly gets the back aching. LOL.

Close up of thread­ed
vs. unthread­ed (how the Mav­er­ick comes)

Screws took a T45 dri­ver bit.

T45
Screw it in there!

Boom! Done! MUCH eas­i­er than I thought it’d be!

Bedside Anchors

  • Bed Side Anchors
    • Cost: $20 (4 anchors) + $7.50 (25 screws) = $27.50
    • Bought some anchors off Ama­zon which fit per­fect­ly with the Mav­er­ick­’s pre-drilled, unthread­ed, M6 holes.
    • Also bought M6x1.0 — 25mm screws. Decid­ed on the flange head, but you don’t have to
    • Sad­ly, I nev­er did end up installing these, because I could­n’t find what I did with them, and then I sold the Mav­er­ick.