Just checking in...

I don't really have much to report.  It's quiet around here and getting warmer every now and then.  Now we are up to the mid-80's(29-30C) most days and we probably won't be gettting much more rain for a while.

Haven't really gone anywhere or done anything since my last post.  Well, I've been making good use of the bbq and the smoker but otherwise it's been quiet.  This week I did a personal best when I smoked beef jerky one day and smoked salmon the next day.  There's only so much excitement an old guy like myself can take!  High point of today, after waking up of course, is going to the grocery store and seeing this sign.

I'm not sure if $19.99 is good for Titos but considering it is a new product - VOKDA - I imagine it's good.

I did visit our local marijuana dispensary the other day.  Since it is legal in Nevada, I want to try it again.  I went into the store on Friday early afternoon and they did seem to be doing a fair business.  The other customers were clearly repeat visitors.  I sure felt like the newbie.  We tried some 2 years ago when they first opened and it just didn't do a lot for either of us.  I keep reading about what a huge market it might become and figure this is something I can test personally.  Besides, I was pretty bummed about how dull the stuff was 3 years ago.  I was impressed though that the guy behind the counter could see my previous purchase in their records!

We keep talking about going places but so far something seems to come up to keep us here.  The house was built in 2005 and we've lived here for 10 years.  Things are needing work; nothing big but lots of little stuff.  Well, it's better than not being able to take care of it.  Gotta go.  Thanks for stopping by.

Still here!

No I haven't dried up and blown away quite yet but it's getting close.  Actually my wife and I have been occupied with planning a couple more trips in the not too distant future.  These will be much closer to home but should be fun anyway.  I'll fill you in more later.  Can't post a photo of someplace I haven't been yet, can I?

We have had pretty good weather but it's getting warm enough to make firing up the bbq rather than warming the house using the stove or oven a valid consideration.  The lesser cleanup with the bbq has absolutely nothing to do with our choices I promise.  I was looking at a video about smokers (food smokers!) the other day and the presenters ended with 'You can never have too many smokers or bbq's'.  Well, I'm approaching the limit I think!  We have a full size Wever kettle; a Weber gas grill and now the smoker.  That's a lot of iron on the back patio!  Of course I didn't mention the little Coleman grill that we carry on the trailer   Hmmm.  Can I spell addiction?

However I must admit to using all this stuff.  The Weber kettle gets the least use just because I'm too lazy to get charcoal going before we are actually starving.  I do love the charcoal taste.  The gas grill gets used at least once a week and often three times.  The smoker is taking it's place somewhere between the kettle and the gas.  You kind of need all day to smoke something so it's not a spur of the moment thing.  That's not even considering marinades which are used quite a bit.  I did learn something new last week though:  reverse sear.

"Reverse sear" as I understand it works like this.  It is a technique for a small piece of meat like a steak.  you smoke it to add flavor then sear it to finish the cooking.  In this case we had a couple of t-bones that were a bit more than a pound each.  So you do whatever you want to with them first.  We marinate in soy sauce and worchestershire for 20-30 minutes; they get to come up to room temp during that time as well.  So now we put them in the smoker for an hour or so.  This is how they looked when they came out.  I cannot tell you how soft they felt; almost like completely raw meat.

So after an hour in the smoker I fire up the gas grill.  These Weber gas grills go from 0-60 pretty much like a Corvette - fast!  So now I grill the steaks for 1.5 minutes on a side.   For us it was a little too much.  Next time I'd probably use a minute on each side.  (Without the smoking, I do my wife's steak for 2 minutes on a side and mine for 3 minutes on a side and it's pretty perfect medium-rare.  My wife's steak lets out a little 'moo'!)  After resting for a few while my wife made some potatoes to go with the steaks it makes a nice plate doesn't it.  There is still some pink to the steak but not a lot.

Sorry but getting cross-checking grill marks in 3 minutes is beyond me.  Guess I'll lose Master Chef!  Have a good one and I'll be back later!

It's not ALL about our travels!

Though today seems like it might be!  I've spent quite a lot of time selecting photos to load to Flickr to share with the family and resizing them in the process.  It takes time but hopefully is worth it.  However, there are other things going on at the old homestead. 

For example, we had a special visitor last night at the bird feeder.

The doves are typically here late in the afternoon.  The bunny isn't usually here!  While we were in Ireland the weeds grew quite a bit in our yard and I'm hoping that Mr. Bunny is eating some of them.  Well, when he isn't filling up on birdseed. 

This morning I was all energetic; I've no excuse.  Sorry.  But I made breakfast of toasted cheese sandwiches with prosciutto and a bit of mustard.  Pretty good if I do say so!  The butter was just from the fridge so the browning was kind of spotty but it didn't bother me a bit.

Then I got started dealing with some pieces of pork sirloin that we bought a couple days ago.  We got this long plastic tube with about five pieces of pork sirloin in it.  Each was somewhere between one and two pounds (something under a KG).  I froze some but two were headed for the smoker.  I used a rub of salt, brown sugar, chili powder, onion powder and garlic powder. 

I smoked it for three hours using a combination of apple wood and hickory chips.  Then we brought them in and put them covered in a pan in a 225F oven for another four hours. 

We had to try a bit from the one on the right; it's pretty tasty.  Two forks pull the meat apart nicely so I'm thinking it is done.  Now the trick is not to dive in right away but let them rest.  That's the hard part!

That's all the news for today.  Have a good one!

Not bragging but....

Sorry Boston but I've gotta say our average temperture for this time of year is about 65F (18C).  This year we are about 75F (23C) today and the forecasters are talking 80F (26C) by the weekend.  I've got to admit though that it's not real pretty around here.  The mountains are nice.

That photo was take March 2 from our front yard.  We are at 2,600 ft. (790m) elevation so I imagine the snow level is down to 4,000 ft (1220m) or so.  Sorry I don't remember the temp. that day.  The camera captures a lot of information but not that.  Not yet! 

Has anyone checked out the new cameras with GPS built in?  It might be cool for a professional photographer but as a private citizen I'm not so sure I want that information available on my photos.  Say you post it on a blog like this; you would be giving the location of your home to anyone interested.  So if you are blogging from San Diego all a person would have to do is look at an older photo of your home to have the address of your empty home.  Nah, I'm going to skip the GPS attachment.

The weather has been so nice our cactus have decided it's spring so it's time to bud.  We don't have any other plants in our yard but the neighbor's trees are budding out too.  Here's the staghorn buds.  It's the small red mass in between the spikes!

Our other cactus has had a dry winter too but when it is stressed by the cold and drought, it turns red or purple.  Now that it's spring I'll start watering it regularly and it will return to green.  Here the buds are the little round guys in the lower third of the photo.

To get off the weather for a moment let me show you my latest adventure with the smoker:  pork ribs!

I finally found some decent advice on smoking them and they actually turned out quite well.  I made up a rub that was basically salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder then smoked them for two hours.  After that I read that I should wrap them in foil and cook for another two hours.  I figured that they sure weren't going to get any more smoke through that foil so brought them in to finish in the oven.  The final step was to just cook them for another hour but not in the foil.  In the last half hour I did baste them with just a bit of bbq sauce.  They were really pretty good.  The first time I skipped the foil and just let them ride in the smoker.  They got dry and tough so foil is my new friend!  There is a pork butt in the fridge.  I'm trying to figure out what to do with it.  Hopefully I'll take a photo or two of whatever becomes of it.

That's the quiet life for now.  We didn't go out to lunch yesterday so I'm thinking my wife will have plans.  Take care!