An Early Start...

Got up and took the dog out this a.m.  While she was doing her little doggie thing, I was looking around.  I love seeing the mountains surrounding our valley.  There is something about nature that comforts me.  Does it you?  A grove of trees or a quiet lake or the endless prairie are all, in their way, comforting.  Then I noticed the evil influence of man.

Well, it's not exactly an 'evil influence'; it's just a bunch of contrails from planes taking folks from California back east.  It's 07:00 so those folks have been up and about for at least two hours.  I'm not so certain I envy them getting up at 04:00 to catch the early flight east.  I'm liking getting in my rv by 09:00 if we are ambitious and driving a hundred or two hundred miles.  My in-laws were full time rv'ers for many years.  They always liked to leave early and stop early.  I think my wife and I have improved on that plan; we leave late and stop early.  It just makes more sense.

Why make life into a race?  What's the old saying 'All you have to do is pay taxes and die and the paying taxes may not apply'.  I'm for enjoying the process not chasing all over at top speed.  I wasn't always this way.  I used to be on the road by 07:00 to get to work; it would be at least 18:30 before I got home.  I knew where all the light switches were at work just like at home.  It was my home-away-from-home.  The seven day work week, the 02:00 call out, the missed holiday - all part of my life.  No more.  Now I'm all about looking out the window at these beautiful, rocky mountains and enjoying.

Have a good one.

More cooking??

Yep, got all crazy the other day and bought some meat for jerky.  I only do one kind - beef.  I know people can make jerky from all kinds of other meat but beef is what my wife likes so that's what I make.  If I was a hunter I guess I'd try venison but since I'm not a hunter, well, duh! 

I get a cheap cut of beef, something with as little internal fat as possible.  I cut it up one day, marinate it overnight then dry it the second day.  You need a good sharp knife but it only takes me about an hour to cut up 3 or 4lb (just shy of 2 kg) of meat into thin strips.  Marinating brings a lot of flavor and, because you are doing it yourself, you can have it any way you like it.  Most jerky marinades I've seen start with soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce then add spices.  I use about a third soy and two-thirds Worcestershire; ending with about three-fourths of a cup (.2L)of marinade.   Then I add some liquid smoke, onion powder, garlic powder and a good handful of red pepper flakes.  I put the meat and the marinade into a large Ziplock bag, mush it around a bit to distribute the marinade and toss it in the fridge for the evening. 

If I remember I'll give the bag a turn a few times before I go to bed; it really does help to distribute the marinade.  In the morning, we are ready to dry.  It takes 15 or 20 minutes to load the meat onto the trays.  The 3 or 4 lb of meat will fill all five trays.  Because we like it spicy I add a generous grind of black pepper over each piece.  I plug the dehydrator in and we are off and running.  I've heard of people making jerky in the oven and leaving the door open all day to keep the heat down but this is just so easy.

I use a Nesco dehydrator that I bought from Amazon.  Nesco seems to have the home dehydrator market pretty well covered.  I like mine just fine but I do wish they were available with metal trays.  The plastic trays are fragile and difficult to clean.  I remember reading some recipe where the person was patting the meat dry before putting it in the dehydrator; I don't bother.  It takes about five hours to dry to the level we like; I swap the trays around about half way through the process.  Some people would probably want it dryer, some might like it less dry and more chewy.  The dehydrator has different heat settings - 95F/35C for herbs, 135F/57C for fruits and vegies, 165F/71C for meats. 

I'll end up with perhaps 8 oz. (.2kg) of jerky.  How long it lasts depends on how many people are here!  We keep it in the fridge though I doubt you really need to. 

Anyway, that's my report for the morning.  Have a good one!

Duck, duck, goose!

Ok, this is a lousy excuse for a food blog but every now and then I've just got to try.  My wife got to thinking about the tradition of having a goose for Christmas dinner.  Neither of us has ever had a goose but that didn't stop her thinking....  You KNOW you are in for it when your partner gets some weird idea.  I've done it to her plenty of times and this time I knew it was going to happen to me.  Anyway, before Christmas the frozen goose was $64 and my lovely little tightwad wife wouldn't pay it.  However, the last time we were at the store they had three or four that had been thawed; not a popular item so the marked it down to $15.  Needless to say, we bought the goose.

Yesterday was to be the big goose cook.  She'd saved up FOUR recipes for goose!  Yep, she's got it bad.  Anyway we discussed the four and finally decided to try this one that was very simple; Goose with Peppercorns and Thyme.  She slaves away in the kitchen for what seemed like hours and finally tosses the goose into the oven.  The recipe said cook it for 2.5 hours but after about an hour and a half the temperature was saying the goose was done.  OK, we left it in for a little while longer but in the end pulled it out.  We tented it for a while then sliced it up.  I had really good intentions to take some photos but forgot until the thing was half-carved.  Oh well.  Here's what the goose looked like on the un-carved side.

And here is the result of my carving efforts.

The goose was really pretty good.  I don't ordinarily go for the dark meat on a chicken or whatever but it was nice if a bit fatty.  Carving was kind of different because while the leg is simple enough to find, the thigh is quite a bit higher and farther back than on a chicken.  The wing was easy enough to remove and the breast, while much smaller than that on a chicken, carved very nicely.  The only problem for us was that the skin was not at all crispy.  We've seen cooking show after show where people are looking for crispy skin.  We definitely had limp skin.  I suppose more cooking would have cooked out more fat and it would have gotten crispy.  Who knows?  We were afraid to over cook and dry out the meat.  Anyway, now we've a pile of goose meat.  Sandwich anyone?

In other news, normally it's about 20F (-6C) when I wake, this morning it was 56F (13C) - and very windy in the bargain.  It blew down my windsock!  A storm front is blowing through; we even got a few sprinklings of moisture but not enough to measure.  It is the amount of rain that only screws up your clean car.  Glad ours is in the garage; not that it is all that clean anyway! 

Have a good one.

Quiet Day

Went out to get the paper this a.m. and got a weird photo.  It looks like a plane flew along and disturbed the cloud formation.  Like some kind of reverse contrail.  You tell me.

Had a pretty quiet day today.  Started off with breakfast at the casino.  It's ok, cheap but not amazing.  Tried our luck at gambling; after a while my wife got back to even so we quit, I was down $1.  So for the 15 minutes of wildness, she was even and I was down 20%.  Guess that should be ok with the gambling gods. 

Spent most of the rest of the morning talking about our intended changes.  As I expected the two middle guys are our favorites; each seems to bring something different to the table.  One drew a nice plan of what was wanted which comforted us that we were all on the same page.  The other talked about building a much more sturdy platform with more rebar and all.  We still haven't really made a decision but I told both that we'd do it tomorrow. 

We did find a goose at the store today that was reduced in price after the holiday.  We were looking at them before Christmas but a 10 lb (4.5 kg) goose was $60.  No, that wasn't going to happen.  Now it is down to $15 so we couldn't say no.  Well, actually, it's my wife who is all crazed to try cooking a goose.  I understand it is all a dark meat; not my fav.  But I'm willing to give it a shot.  By tomorrow night I should know whether or not I can managed eating goose.  Should be interesting.  She had 4 recipes (!) but we decided on one with thyme and peppercorns.  Maybe for once I might get a photo of dinner!  We'll see.

I've spent the last couple days looking at our portfolio.  Some of our mutual funds have gone into the lower echelon of their type.  I'm going to be moving money into some that are a bit better.  Our stocks are doing better; some aren't 'star of the moment', like Southern Co (SO) but the company is strong & the dividends are secure so I'm ok with that.  It's odd but I seem to have better luck selecting individual stocks than mutual funds but I'm not as comfortable having $50K in a single stock as I am in a mutual fund.  WTF, it's all a mind game. 

Gotta go.  Have a good one.

Concrete Guys

We've been talking for months about buying a hot tub.  We've talked to almost every company in Las Vegas; we still don't know what we want but know we need to get a proper pad for it so it's time to talk to the concrete guys.  There are still several companies in the valley who will do concrete.  That's the good news.  Which one to choose is the tough part! 

We took some yellow string and outlined the area.  Then, since we are having concrete guys out, we outlined a new seating area.  We looked at it and looked at it.  The string is becoming hard to see it is so faded!  We changed it several times; finally, just yesterday, we started calling the concrete guys.  Business isn't to pressing these days so we've gotten 4 bids in two days.  The tough part is that even with them coming out and measuring things our estimates vary from $1800 to $3500.  Hmmmm.  One time I read that when selecting a bottle of wine from a wine list you shouldn't buy the cheapest but the third cheapest would be a 'best buy'.  Using that theory I imagine one of the two guys in the middle will get the job but we'll see.  Next we have to get the electrician out to run a 240V line to the hot tub pad.  We are discussing a 120V to the seating area on the simple theory that 'as long as he is here'.

It's been kind of cool here but not bad.  We have started walking in the afternoon; not too far but 35-40 minutes.  It's good for us and good for the dog.  Haven't had any rain in a very long time but it's not that way everywhere.  My wife's family all live up in Washington state.  They are getting a snowstorm of fantastic proportions - the reporters are calling in 'Snowmageddon'.  We lived in the area for a long time.  They don't get enough snow in most years for anyone to know how to drive in the stuff.  I can't imagine how locked up the place is going to be.  It's crazy too.  Here's an article on making snow chains for your bike!  Glad that's not in my future.

I got all wild and crazy today and downloaded a new version of Firefox, a new version of Adobe Reader AND a new version of RealPlayer.  I can't see much difference actually but I'm hopeful.  I was about 5 versions back on all three softwares. 

Gotta go.  Have a good one!

More on the Vegas Trip

I completely forgot to mention one really interesting thing about my trip to Vegas.  I'm still not familiar with the city so often use GPS to route me from A to B.  I'm never calm enough to set it up before getting on the road so I fumble with it a fair amount.  Well, last week I managed to change the language to Afrikaans!  Happily it is close enough to Dutch that I could mostly understand what it was telling me.  Amazing. 

Our daughter came over for dinner on Saturday.  She brought a movie with her, Moneyball, the new Brad Pitt movie.  I was actually impressed.  We all thought it was a very good movie though I must say I know next to nothing about baseball.  All the player trades and statistical analysis was actually made interesting.  I think the ladies were mostly watching Pitt but I thought Jonah Hill did a great job at the nerdy economist/statistical analyst. 

I took the truck out for a little exercise the other day.  It's a 4x4 so I like to find a bit of dirt and exercise the front axle stuff.  I went part way up the alluvial fan that forms the side of the Spring Mountains.  Here is a photo of the valley view from up there.

You can see a few scruffy Joshua trees in the distance but most of the vegetation is just scrub.  On the floor of the valley are homes spread out here and there with the Last Chance mountains on the other side of the valley. 

Gotta go.  Have a good one!

Trip to Vegas

As I said in a previous post, we have been staying close to home but it came time for a trip to the big city.  My wife was invited but decided that she would just as soon stay at home so I had a nice quiet drive to myself.  It gives you plenty of time to think random thoughts.  We have about 30 miles of this kind of road - note the nice wide shoulder.

The highway department, in it's wisdom, ordains some of the shoulder as a bike lane.  However for some reason, out in the middle of nowhere, we have a sign "Bike Lane Ends".  Ok, maybe it's an inch too narrow or some crap but how the devil is a biker supposed to get home?  Who knows. 

Later on, close to Vegas, I came upon a biker riding ON the white line.  Now, that's just stupid!  I give bikes a lot of room; will move into the other lane if traffic permits, but to ride ON the line is just cruising for an accident.  Lots of people don't move over and will even crowd a bike.  Pushing it when you are on the bike is stupid.

The speed limit when we come into the Las Vegas suburb of Summerlin is 50 mph (80kph) and I generally keep to it.  I was within a mile of the city limit and someone who has been following me for at least 5 minutes decides they just can't stand it any more and zooms around me.  Of course, I caught them at the first stop light.  What were they thinking?  If they pass when you've got 10 more minutes in your drive, ok.  They might get through that first light but when you've got a minute before you hit the city streets?  Who knows!

Finally I was ready to come home.  Remember I showed a photo of someone who is building a Catholic mission here in the valley?  Here's the other side of the coin. 

Prostitution is legal in rural Nevada.  It's NOT legal in Las Vegas or Reno, the major population centers, but here it is legal.  And the Cherry Patch Bar is much more than a bar.  They say 'Cat House Souvenirs' - I guess that's a new term for it.  But since I know absolutely nothing about it and Mr. Hof has at least four brothels and a tv show about them; I'm thinking he knows what he's doing.

Well, that was my trip.  Hope you enjoyed the random thoughts.  Have a good one.