Exciting stuff!

 Today we received our mail-in ballots for the election!  Ok!  Here's hoping we can Dump Trump big time.

We have been doing our usual thing:  walking in the morning; going to one of the local restaurants for lunch; cooking dinner at home.  All very normal stuff except for extra hand washing; antiseptic in the car glove box; and wearing masks.  My wife made 5 or 6 masks way back when this stuff started but eventually I bowed to reality and bought extras for us.  Most people are pretty good about wearing their masks but there are a few who either can't manage it or wear them like over the mouth only.  Dumb shits!  

We do like to walk in the morning and sometimes we see something special.  A neighbor has a large cactus in their yard and once in a long while it flowers.  Late last month was it's time.

A few weeks ago we managed a road trip and stayed in a couple motels.  Part of the trip was just to see how our dog would manage travel; turned out he did great!  But there was this one motel that had added a little humor to their decor.  Found on the bathroom wall.

And a rather interesting shower curtain.

Yeah, some people have too much time on their hands!  Really it was interesting traveling during the pandemic.  Restaurants seemed to all have reduced menus and not a good number of employees.  (That isn't happening here in the Valley; you can order anything on the menu and it is as good as ever.)  We had no real trouble finding pet-friendly motels.  We ordinarily don't stop for lunch unless it is something like a sandwich so that was no problem.  (It was way too hot to leave the dog in the truck!)  

Anyway, that's it for me today.  I've gotta go cook dinner:  Choucroute Garni complete with some skinny little pork chops that I smoked for an hour or so the other day.  It should be good.  Take care and be careful out there!

Life in the 'I don't know' lane

Things are still poking along here in Nevada but darned if I know which direction they are going!  The number of people getting ill from covid-19 is increasing but fairly slowly. Our governor has decided we should be wearing masks when we are in public areas which I suppose is a good thing. At any rate the proportion of people wearing masks has definitely gone up. On the other hand some restaurants are having trouble keeping those tables 6 feet apart. Not being able to serve people because the place can't be over 50% full has to hurt! Especially when you've been almost out of business for a couple months. Still, my wife and I both thought this thing was going to be over long ago.

We are going out to lunch much as we did last year; that is 4 or 5 times a week. We are still going to the same 6 or 8 places; most of them have their entire menu back available. During the height of the closures reduced menus were the order of the day. There are occasional times when one needs to wait for a table but mostly the number of customers has declined somewhat.

Our daughter has moved to Austin, TX and is renovating a house. It is taking MUCH longer than anyone could have expected; even getting cabinets delivered was delayed. We had planned to visit her and help her get set up; now they are talking about closing the Texas border. Who knows if we'll get to visit anytime in the near future much less visit to help her arrange things in her new home. That's not going to make any of us happy.

I found a recipe for 'Keto Meatloaf'. It calls for the use of ground dried pork rinds (chicharrones) rather than bread crumbs but two other things popped out. Ordinarily you might use ground pork in meatloaf; this recipe uses Mexican Chorizo (the moist, loose kind not the smoked sausage Spanish kind) and then is wrapped in bacon and covered in tomato sauce! It was really quite good if you like spicy things. (The chorizo has spice and you are to add a chipotle pepper as well.) Here is what it looked like before cooking.

The recipe specifies that sort of pan; not a loaf pan.  Of course there was quite a lot of fat that collected in the bottom but everything got done; even the bacon. 

Of course we've had a few nice sunsets.  This one was especially nice.

Well, that's all the news from this space in Nevada.  Thanks for stopping by; keep washing those hands!

Christmas done!

Happy Holidays to all who are still celebrating but for us it's over.  Haven't taken down the lights and tree yet but it won't be long. 

We were invited to Vegas to have Christmas dinner with our daughter and a friend so headed over there.  We were to bring a potato dish and the carving knife.  We set off in light traffic and had a pretty good drive until something unexpected happened.  We were going along on a four lane undivided road that enters Vegas.  There we found a car that was having trouble staying in his lane; sometimes over the line into the other travel direction and sometimes into the 'slow' lane in our direction.  At least he wasn't speeding, in fact he was doing about 10 mph under the limit so I waited until he was well over in the far side of his lane and passed him on the right. 

That went pretty easy and since he was going so slowly he was soon behind us by quite a distance; maybe a half mile or so.  Well, then we come up on a stop light that is turning red for us.  It's a new light and some people aren't used to it being there.  It is triggered when someone approaches from the side roads; we were on the main road.  So there should have been someone going through the intersection but there wasn't.  I've no idea whether someone got tired of waiting and ran the light or if it malfunctioned.  At any rate, we slow and come to a stop at the red light in the right lane.  I checked the mirror and the people behind us were slowing and the guy we'd passed was still coming but was still a ways back.  Then we stop at the light and about 5 seconds later this guy comes flying past us blowing through the light at his usual 55 mph!  Thank goodness that no one was turning onto our road and that he managed to stay in his lane for that maneuver!  It would have been a big crunch had he hit anyone.

Well, no harm done but you can be sure we'll remember that maneuver for a while.  Actually I don't know what else I could have done.  Aside from not passing him in the first place.  Anyway, the remainder of the trip was pretty quiet. 

Our daughter had borrowed an 'air fryer' to do a Christmas turkey.  I must say I'm not impressed.  The turkey looked ok but was not cooked through.  It took some time in the oven to get it to completely cooked.  It is only her second attempt at cooking turkey but I'm blaming the method not the cook.  The rest of the meal was excellent as was the company so what more can one ask.  It was dark by the time we arrived home but that's hardly unusual.  And we arrived safely for which I am very grateful.

Merry Christmas then and Happy New Year!

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!

A few interesting things

Life isn't really in high gear but we do have some interesting things going on here in the boonies.  First an update on our cacti; the new parts are coming along nicely (I can't figure out if they should be called leaves or what!).

At any rate we are glad to see them growing.  When you only have two plants in your life any advance by either is great and happily both ours are doing well.  Here's the staghorn.

We did just observe St. Patrick's Day in our own quiet way, no green beer or drunken parties required!  However we did have a lovely dinner of corned beef, new potatoes and cabbage (two ways).

We found this recipe for a 'sauce' for the potatoes and cabbage so tried it.  It consisted of butter, horseradish and mustard and was about a thrid of the way to a success.  It basically melted off the potatoes leaving them pretty much unchanged.  It did sink into the quarters of cabbage (at 10 o'clock in the photo) and pretty much obscured the flavor of the cabbage.  So if you want to eat cabbage but don't like the flavor; it's made for you.  My wife likes a lightly sauted cabbage (1 o'clock) but not 'well done' so she got the one and  I got both.  My wife did a potato bread that was pretty different.  The recipe called for a mashed potato and a raw one that was grated.  It is both dense and fragile.  Anyway, it was pretty darned good!  Pretty too.

On a sadder note, our cat who would be 20 this summer is not doing well.  He hasn't eaten since last Tuesday and is drinking far less than usual.  Here he is just a couple of weeks ago trying to lick up an ice cube that fell from the ice maker.

He's a skinny little guy who has been running about 7 lb for the past couple of years.  It's not like he can hibernate so I'm thinking he isn't long for this world.  If I give him a 'treat' he'll eat it but the regular kibble just sits there in the bowl.  He's getting weaker every day so the end has to be near.  Since my wife and I both believe in euthanasia for people, it's safe to say that we'll be saying 'goodbye' to our kitty before long.  RIP Scotchie!  And yes, we will undoubtedly hold a wake for the little guy.

Off to do exciting things. 

Turkey Day Report

OK, so we did a little turkey for Thanksgiving - a 7 lb turkey.  I didn't know they came that small.  Anyway, it was for just two of us so was plenty big!  We decided to brine the little guy and I have to say it was not a great success but maybe I screwed it up.  The brine recipe called for a gallon of water and a cup of kosher salt for a 12-14 lb turkey.  Since we had half that amount of bird, I cut the recipe in half.  I also added some cracked peppercorns and a few bay leaves which I did not taste at all..  The place where I may have hurt our outcome is that you are supposed to brine for 8 to 18 hours.  Our little guy was in the brine for almost 24 hours.  We did rinse him off after the brining.  After cooking he was certainly moist but he was also quite salty.  He had nice color when he was done and his skin was nice and crispy.  Here he is after resting for about 10 minutes.  I'm not at all sure why the foil that was tenting him is so discolored.  It's just one of those mysteries of life.

You can see his small size by that ordinary table knife that is in the lower lefthand corner.  My wife likes to put a combination of butter and herbs under the skin which really adds a lot of flavor.  She also uses the pan drippings to make gravy.  Unfortunately the gravy ended up REALLY salty without adding any additional salt.  So while the turkey was acceptable, the gravy ended up going down the drain.  Will we brine again?  I doubt it.  We casually watch our sodium intake and this was just too salty.

The day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, was spent watching tv that we'd collected including the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.  It's kind of funny how not having grandchildren means that we aren't familiar with some of the newer balloons.  The Sesame Street float is from when the kids were keeping us up to date with toys!  That's a long time ago now.  We didn't bother with shopping even online.  When we buy we are pretty careful to get what we want; it the hurry to get a bargain it's way too easy to get something that isn't quite the thing.  Well, at least it is for me! 

Man!  December 1st is tomorrow!  It's just a matter of moments until it will be 2015.  Amazing.  Hope things are going well for you and yours.  Take care.

Happy Veteran's Day!

Established after World War I Veteran's Day (also called Armistice Day or Remembrance Day) it's one of my personal favorite holidays.  Thank you to all vets and certainly to all current active duty service members.  I'm proud of my service and proud of all you do.  I've spoken of the service records of my family and my wife's family.  We think some form of Universal Service should be enacted.  Every person would owe the country two years of service.  You could choose between military service or various civilian services:  hospital work or a free clinic or running a food bank or teaching - anything that helps you grow and helps our society.

Bass Pro Shop in Las Vegas had a nice sale on the Masterbuilt 40" Smoker - I just couldn't say 'no'.  I've been reading the My Old RV blog for a long time and Andy loves his smoker.  It's all his fault that I had to buy this thing.  It is pretty amazing.  Ok, it's electric which some might consider wrong but I just don't have the personality to keep adding wood or charcoal to a fire for 8-10 hours.  Sorry, I've tried it but just don't get it done!  It also has a remote so I can smoke food and fool around on my computer at the same time.  Cool!  We had a chuck roast hanging around so I tried smoking it:  pretty good but I've got to admit the shrinkage astounded me.  I'm climbing a learning curve on this one.  Hopefully I'll even learn to take photos of some of my attempts!  Anyway, here's the new baby.

We've been experiencing some pretty nice weather; much nicer than much of the country.  So we go sit on the patio in the evening and enjoy the sunset.  Or, last week, the moonrise.  I got this photo of the moon just rising over Mt. Charleston while the sun set turning the mountain an amazing color. 

When we look the other way we find a hummingbird just hanging around 'his' feeder.  This guy is pretty territorial and chases most other birds away.

Hope you have a good one.  Thanks for stopping by.

No I'm not dead....

We've been having more fun than you can imagine getting that oven installed.  We bought the oven from an Amazon affiliate; mostly because it was $800 less than at Home Depot or Sears.  However, there was a slight delivery problem.  It was a week late arriving here.  Grrr!  My wife was about ready to fly to New York and kill someone.  However, finally it showed up.  The guys unpacked it and we inspected it carefully.  Happily it was just fine.  The only problem is that the thing weighs something over 300 lb (135kg)! 

Now that we had the oven we felt comfortable getting in touch with the electrician.  They couldn't come immediately so it took a couple days and we had the new oven sitting in our nook.  Now we felt comfortable about taking the old one out but it was a little heavy for my wife to help me.  So we waited for the electrician.  He showed up and was great.  He helped me pull the old one out and unhooked it.  Then he wired up the new one and helped me put it in.  It fits like a glove!  Happy days.  Well, almost.

The instructions for the oven tell you to remove the oven doors prior to installation so we did that; then we couldn't get them back on!  Jeez, let me tell you, we tried!  We tried time and again but finally had to admit defeat.  I called our local appliance repair person and got on their schedule.  Finally, the day comes around and the guy shows up.  I've got to give him credit; he didn't even laugh!  It took him about half an hour but he did get the damn doors back on.  Finally we could trip the breaker and we have an oven again.  Jeez!

We've tried a couple things and so far it's working well.  It has all kinds of bells and whistles that will never be used.  For example, you can connect it to your wireless network so you can use a smartphone to fire up the oven before you get home.  Really?  Gradually we are getting the various settings modified to our liking.  There are a few things to get finished, like painting, but nothing too challenging.  And we get to eat in the meantime. 

We did take the old ovens and microwave to the recycling center.  It was 300 lbs of various metals and glass; we got $20 for it.  It's hardly worth doing but I like the idea that it will be something else someday rather than just taking up room in a landfill. 

There are a few other things going on but I can't talk about them right now.  Besides, I have some kitchen duties calling me.  Have a good one!

Staying home....

My wife and daughter went off to California to spend some quality time at the beach.  I drove them to the airport; stopped on the way home at the grocery store and haven't left home since.  Talk about a dull guy!  Here's my excitement:  taking care of the tomato plants; making salsa and watching old movies.  Wow!  Anyway, I'm doing ok with the tomatoes.

They are about an inch across so they have a ways to go but I haven't killed them!  That's a big deal for me.  I tried getting bugs off some basil and managed to kill it deader than dead!  All we have left is dried sticks that used to have leaves.  Oh well, unlucky in gardening but lucky in love I guess.  Anyway, I'm looking forward to my wife coming home so that's a good thing. 

I'm not looking forward to her coming home because I'm starving or anything!  Here was dinner last night.

One huge cheeseburger, fresh salsa and sauted brocolli.  Yes, I really do enjoy the green stuff!  The salsa is my wife's recipe but I found some new red peppers to put in it; it's hot but won't take your face off. 

How's that for dull:  a post full of photos of food and plants!  I didn't even use the new camera for the photos; the point and shoot is just so easy.  Besides; do you really need a $500 camera to take a photo of a $3 dinner?  Naw! 

But I thought I'd say 'hi'.  Gotta go.  The laundry is calling me now.  Have a good one!

Goodbye Fire!

It looks like the Carpenter Canyon Fire is much under control.  The folks on this side of the mountain have been allowed to go back to their homes.  The other side is where the action is right now but the firefighters are confident of success.   Thank goodness!  And I don't believe anyone was seriously injured fighting it.

My wife and I went out to dinner the other night.  As we were leaving the parking lot we saw a bunch of tents and trailers over in the park.  I pulled the car over to see what was happening; it usually means some sort of circus or rodeo is in town.  Well, a deputy sheriff pulled in right behind us!  WTF, well, turns out all that stuff was for the fire crews and the park was off-limits for the rest of us.  LOL  I haven't been parking with a woman and questioned by the cops in centuries!  Made me glad I'd only had one beer with dinner too!

Since we haven't done any traveling yet this summer and won't be leaving this country,  I've been getting my Europe fix by watching Le Tour de France.  The scenery is simply fantastic - and the cycling!  Those guys are at a level of fitness that I really can't believe.  Riding 100 miles or more a day for three weeks?  Amazing.   The Tour is the only cycling event that I follow; sports aren't really an interest but this stuff is pretty impressive.

The birds are still hanging around waiting to be fed.  The only birds that show up in the birdbath are pigeons but I guess they are birds too.  The hummer keeps his ownership of the feeder chasing anyone else off.

We've been doing a lot of cooking on the bbq but I seem unable to take photos of the event.  It is warm to be out there but it's better than heating up the house.  I've done chicken twice, steak, salmon twice and that is just in the last week.  The meat and a salad is our usual fare.  It's pretty low on carbs for my wife and if I'm famished I can always nuke a baking potato.

After dinner we often go out and enjoy the sunset.    You know I don't have any trouble remembering the camera for a sunset!

Well, gotta go do something even if it is wrong.  Have a good one!

Nuttin' much

Life just keeps heating up around here; the WeatherChannel has us at 111F (43.8C) this evening (20:00).  No matter, we baked French Fries (chips to you Brits) and boiled breaded catfish in oil for dinner.  Can't imagine life without a/c around here.  It is quite dry though so people do use swamp-coolers which are much less expensive to buy or to run.  When it is humid they don't work for f*(k but around here that is a week a year.  It is certainly a tradeoff I would make if I needed to save the money.  When I lived in Army housing in El Paso in the early 1970's, we had a swamp-cooler.  It worked just fine.  Went out for our walk yesterday a.m. at 05:30 - mostly because we were both awake but I 'm just saying!  It's nicer when it is cool. 

Number One Daughter came over to participate in the fish fry; we haven't done that in 25 years or so. Wife and daughter did all the fish frying but there was plenty for me to do getting all the odd stuff done.  Funny how fast the time flies.  We probably haven't a fish fry since we lived in Orlando back in the mid 1980's.   Earlier this week I found some photos I haven't copied to the computer; they are pretty new, only 20 years old!  Did I mention I had to rip them out of the photo album.  What crap, these albums won't even make it 20 years without tearing apart.  Hmmmm, maybe I'm being a bit tough on them.  What do you think?

Number One Daughter works for a company who makes little steel parts that are used in concrete manufacture.  For example, when a concrete wall is pre-molded that is 40' long by 15' high (12.3m x 4.5m and probably 25 cm deep) they mold into the concrete a couple pieces of steel used to lift the wall onto a truck and then into place.  Some of her customers get all out of shape because these little pieces aren't made in the USA.  I find this rather odd since they are complaining about little $5 pieces that are used twice; once to move the piece off the mold and once to put it into place.  I understand that I'd like more manufacturing in the U.S. but I'd rather the bits being made here being the more important ones.  For example, having the truck made here is nice.  I like to think that our standards (maybe not the worlds best but our own, BTW) are being observed.  I'm not saying the Chinese made pieces aren't up to our standards but at least some local folks are being employed making them.  It's a tough question not made any easier by my belief in international trade being a keystone to success in this world. 

Just to end on a humorous note:  our local county council recently debated a rule that if the federal governemt ever enacted a law making ownership of firearms by civilians unlawful then the sheriff of the county was to stop them at the county line and tell them to go away on the basis that it was unconstitutional!  Jeez, are you kidding me???  Let's not even discuss firepower!  It's up to the courts to decide constutionality!  But apparently none of our elected representitives know that.  Happily the city District Attorney was around to point out their rule was beyond stupid.  Thank goodness for small favors!

Hava a gooe one.  Thanks for stopping buy!

Beef Jerky Day

I make beef jerky, mostly for my wife, and thought I'd go through the process.  It's really easy and quite economical compared to buying the stuff in stores.  I start with the leanest beef I can find; usually that means Select grade eye of round roast.  First I remove all the fat that I can then slice it into steaks and slice the steaks into strips.  I want strips that are somewhere between one eighth and one sixteenth of an inch (1.5 to 3 mm) thick.  Uniformity is important of course so the strips dry at the same rate but I don't get too wild and crazy.

Being foolish I didn't weigh this piece of meat before starting to slice it however I ended up with two pounds three ounces (1 kg) of sliced meat.  It cost $3.99 a pound so I've got about $9 worth of meat here.  That isn't a very good price, I often find it for less but this what I could find today.  (Well, yesterday was when I actually started this process!)  You see how I take the fat off the outside of the steak.  I leave those small white pieces of fat in the slice unless they are considerably larger than the ones you see.  You don't want the fat because it will get rancid.  This is a nice size roast for me since my dehydrator has only five racks.  The most meat I can get onto it is about three pounds (1.3 kg). 

Next comes marinating.  I marinate the meat overnight in a Ziplock bag in the fridge; hopefully remembering to turn it over once or twice.  Here are my marinade ingredients.

You can check the internet for marinades; there are probably as many as there are jerky makers but this is somewhat representative.  Soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, liquid smoke, onion powder, garlic powder and red pepper flakes is what I use.  I try to have about three-quarters of a cup (175 ml) of marinade for this amount of meat.  It really helps if you don't spill the onion powder all over the counter and the floor like I did!  I squeeze as much air out of the bag as possible and let it work overnight.

This morning I loaded up the dehydrator and let it do it's thing.  Here I have four of the five racks loaded.  This is a Nesco dehydrator; it claims to be drying the jerky at 160F (71C) and has lower settings for fruits, vegies and nuts.  It works well but the racks are plastic and are just nasty to clean and pretty easy to break.  I usually add a grind of black pepper over the jerky just before turning it on; I like the bite the black pepper gives.

At the end of a few hours (three to five) we have beef jerky.  Some people recommend drying off the meat with a paper towel or something prior to drying it; I've never done that.  One of the things about making your own jerky is that you get it the way you like it.  My wife likes spicy so I use quite a bit of red pepper flakes and add the black pepper.  She also like it somewhat chewy so we don't dry it as much as someone else might.  Others might like it sweeter so they might add honey to the marinade.  Bottom line is that you get it how you want to make it. 

Here are the three baggies full of beef jerky.  I got twelve and three-quarters ounces (.34kg) of jerky from this batch.  That's not bad for $9 and a little time. 

Have a good one.

Yet another AWOL

Well, what can I say, I live a dull life. For example, here is my hot photo of the week.

I woke the other morning to find this little guy resting on the pillar in front of our house.  The glow is from one of our outside lights.  Apparently he just needed a place to stop and catch his breath and doesn't like the dark. 

We have family visiting kind of - my sister-in-law and her husband are staying in their motorhome in one of the local RV parks.  We had been expecting them to stay at our place but apparently they highly prize cable tv which we cannot offer them.  Guess I'll survive the disappointment.  The downside of their visit is that we are eating like we've never seen food.  My wife actually made brownies!  Dessert is NOT something we usually have.  She let me pick the recipe so I chose the one with the most chocolate.  Go figure.  Turns out the SIL isn't all that fond of chocolate, who knew.  Happily her hubby likes it just fine.

I got sent to the store for a few things; basil was one of them.  They had 2 different packages; one really looked a lot better.  Did I bother to read what it said on the outside, hell no!  Turns out what I bought was a little tiny basil plant with a 1 inch square root ball!  Happily there were enough leaves for the recipe and now we have a little basil plant sitting out on the patio.  Hmmm, maybe we'll have an herb garden this year after all.

We managed corned beef and cabbage on St. Paddy's Day - the corned beef was a tip cut and was the best we've made in the past several years.  Unfortunately the cabbage was overcooked and tasted like green slime; which is basically what it was.  Oh well, the corned beef was definitely worth skipping the cabbage.  Had to have a Guinness with it of course.  Guinness is ok in the bottle; better from a tap; I can't wait to taste it in Ireland!

Gotta go.  Lunch, leftover pizza, is calling.  Have a good one!

Holiday Weekend!

No, I haven't fallen on my head.  This is our new holiday weekend.  At least for this year!  What has happened is that Number One Son and his Significant Other (SO) have trouble getting time off on the holidays so we decided to make our own holiday.  Number One Daughter can pretty much schedule her time her way so she has no problem.  We are retired so no problem.  What we are hoping is that having a mid-December holiday will enable us to all be together for a couple days.  So far it seems to be working.  The only problem is to not become too blimp-like from eating too much three times in a month! I'm sure we can figure out something. 

This year though my wife was determined to do a Prime Rib.  (Prime is the highest quality rating that is commonly available.)  I won't say how much that damn roast cost but will tell you it was $19.99 a pound.  If you care you can figure out the price per kilo; personally I don't want to know!  I must say it was very good and remarkably easy.  We made a garlic/salt/pepper/thyme paste to put on the outside and let it sit in the fridge for a day to soak up the flavors.  Then tossed it in the oven for half an hour at 450F (230C) then reduced the heat to 350F (175C) until the internal temp. was 115F (46C).  It took about three hours.  When we tried the crust, it was AWFUL - totally salty but it also just fell off the roast.  Without the crust the roast was great.  The two end pieces were fairly well done but the interior was just medium rare; just like everyone likes it.  I had one of the ends and even it was nice and juicy and even the exterior was tasty.

Everyone who watches the various cooking shows has seen someone using a mandolin.  It is used to cut  uniform slices off potatoes, onions, etc.  I just had to buy a cheap one a couple weeks ago and yesterday we decided to use it for the first time to slice some potatoes for a dish.  I managed to slice a piece off my little finger on the second slice!  Grrr!  What a chump.  My wife did use it to slice the rest of the potatoes and you can believe she was careful.  I must say it did a great job though; uniform slices and the job didn't take more than about a minute a potato.  This is about the cheapest mandolin on the market & I can recommend one if you are careful.  Maybe it's not so great if you are a chump like me. 

Now we have three whole weeks until the next holiday.  Why don't we move Christmas to April or sometime?  I'm going to break the scale if this over-eating and over-drinking keeps up. 

Have a good one!

The holiday is still with us!

Well, at least the leftovers!  And Number One Daughter though I imagine she will be leaving in a couple hours.  Per our new tradition, we forgot to put the cranberry sauce on the table AGAIN this year.  Grrrr.  I suppose I should say that I forgot it since I'm the only one who actually likes the stuff but I was not the one who made it.  We do the real stuff with real cranberries as opposed to those cans of whatever.

I decided to try making dressing from scratch.  There are plenty of recipes but I couldn't really find any that called to me so I cobbled together something using about eight 'starting points'.  It turned out fairly well.  I used marbled rye bread and sourdough to start with and those seemed to be good choices.  I added sage sausage, onion & celery and basically called it a day.  I used a cup of chicken broth to moisten things up.  One of the recipes suggested cooking it covered for a while then uncovered so I tried that.  Somehow we ended up with bread that was partially crispy and partially soggy.  Weird.  Guess maybe that covered thing was a mistake.  Some of the 'recipes' didn't even have a cooking time; the ones that did varied between thirty minutes and an hour and a half.  Do you wonder why I ignored them and did my own?

I found a new blog to read The Caretaker Chronicles written by a Canadian who is living in Vienna.  I've always heard it is a lovely city and he is nice enough to post the ocassional photo.  He's also got an irreverant, humorous way of writing.  I'm liking it.

I went all crazy the other day posting photos so I'm pretty low on anything new to share.  I apologize in advance for the quality.  We did have a slightly demented 'centerpiece' on our table.  Here's the photo:

The pine cone turkey is something Number One Daughter made when she was much younger.  The squash I just bought.  My wife is always telling me that an odd number of things is more interesting than even so I got three.  I wanted different shapes and colors but nothing too large so here I got these three.  Then my wife set them out in this manner.  Is it me or does it look like that turkey is getting the goose? 

So much for the excitement of Thanksgiving.  Now on to Christmas crazyness!  Have a good one.

Promised Photo

I'm still fooling with the shed.  It's together but we get some really interesting micro-burst weather events around here so keeping it on the ground is a priority.   I bought the thing from our local Sears affiliate.  They had a little demo version put up in front of their store that was bolted to the concrete.  One day they came to work to find it totally knocked down.  It was still bolted down but apparently the wind got in the open door and just ripped it apart.  So keeping it in place might be a challenge.

The maker suggests bolting it to concrete or wood or using an auger type anchor.  We decided to try the augers.  They are kind of a pain to dig into the ground but seem pretty sturdy.  I’ve done the front pair of augers and installed a steel cable going over the top of the building.  The other set will have to be installed another day.  Anyway, here is the promised photo of the building.

I went all crazy and made chili yesterday.  It takes me about four hours from start to eating.  Good thing I’m not competing on any of those cooking shows where you get half an hour to create something!  One time I put about two-thirds beef and one-third pork in my chili and kind of liked it.  This time I tried putting in some chicken thighs (diced up of course).  It didn’t really work for me; the chicken just kind of disappeared into nothingness.  I use ancho chili and chili arbol mostly then toss in a chipotle with a bit of adobo sauce for a smoky touch. 

Tomorrow we might go into Las Vegas and look at computers.  My wife’s laptop is 7 years old; she is still on XP!  It is getting really slow; especially when she is using big files like in some of the games she likes to play.  Still, we are hesitant about going to Windows 8.  Have you tried it?  I haven’t played with it enough to tell if it is actually different or if it is just more of the same with a different face. 

Have a good one!

9/11 again

I doubt if there are many in the Western world who don't remember 9/11; where they were, what they were doing.  My smartphone tells me it is Patriot Day.  Well, I don't mean to be a grouch but who really needed a named day?  And what the hell does it have to do with patriotism?  Tragedy Day; Terrorism Day; those mean something but Patriot Day?  The soldier who gets killed today in Afghanistan is a patriot.  The people killed in the terrorist attacks were mostly victims; the first responders might be called heroes; but I just don't care for the term Patriot Day. 

Ok, rant is over.  My wife and I are self-described weird people.  Take our eating habits for example.  We will start out a week with the fridge almost empty then we cook several days in a row and then darned thing is stuffed with leftovers.  Does anyone else do that?  For example, right now we have a big tub of ham & bean soup; another of a beef & barley stew; several pieces of leftover steak; some leftover salmon; leftover taco filling and more!  There is enough food for a dozen people; no wonder I'm overweight.  One thing we are both proud of is that we don't eat a lot of processed stuff.  No Hamburger Helper in our cupboard though we do have at least 30 different spices.  We might cook up some noodles and put hamburger in with them but it won't be out of a box. 

Of course that isn't our only weirdness.  Take vehicles; we keep them quite a while. It's not a contest or anything; I don't like unreliable vehicles but we keep them and take care of them.  Our last truck stayed with us for 9 years; the car 15 years; the one before that 10 years.  We are having a party in December; we'll be paying off the RAV4 after three years.  (Toyota was offering 0% interest & I just couldn't say 'no'.)  That means we'll have 6 to 10 years without a car payment.  That makes life a lot nicer!  The truck is an 08 model, nearly five years old, paid for, but it's only got 30,000 miles (48,000 km).  We are planning on keeping it for quite a while too.  What do we care if it's old? 

Being atheists marks us as weird too.  I doubt if I could get elected dog catcher in this country; much less in this town.  We have a church around every corner and at least two church related schools.  (Oddly, there is  no Catholic school here though there is a fairly large church; the fundamentalist sects are the ones with schools.)   It must be a reflection of my age and upbringing that I am unfamiliar with churches like The Rock Vineyard Church or The Foursquare Faith Fellowship or the Heritage Bible Church.  I'm more used to the couple different kinds of Lutheran or Baptist Churches. 

Speaking of religion; I came across an article on Thomas Jefferson and his religious beliefs.  Apparently he didn't care for the entire bible so he selected the parts he liked and physically made up his own version.  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/multimedia/videos/A-Brief-History-of-the-Jefferson-Bible.html  For me it is an astonishingly thoughtful and ambitious undertaking.  Apparently he was a person who took his religion seriously.

On that odd note I will leave you.  Have a good one.

Huh???

Last night it didn't get lower that 89F (32C) here; that's pretty warm.  So when we heard on the LV station that 108F (42+C) was possible we thought it pretty normal.  However, we actually got rain here!  I'm guessing at least three-quarters of an inch (1.9 cm).  Here's a photo of our back patio; the rain is being blowing in from the east at least eight feet(2.4 m).  It only lasted 8 or 10 minutes but it was intense. 

 Ok, iin our home in Florida this was an almost every day occurrence in the wet season.  NOT SO MUCH here, though it is true that rain is often accompanied by some wind.  This was pretty fierce though!

It is very welcome though because we had our own little wildfire going up in the mountains this a.m. caused by some natural lightning.  (I'd offer a link but the local tv station seems beyond that.)  The estimate was that it was about 20 acres (8 hectares)  This rain should help fight the fire.  It was up in land that isn't accessible by truck so the firefighters have to either fight it using aircraft or being taken up there by aircraft or by hiking up there.  None is very fast or easy or cheap so having some rain to help things along is great. 

We are having a quiet day.  Had some cheese, sausage and bread for breakfast (ala our German friends) and talked about our forthcoming California trip.  Tonight there is a chicken in our future though I don't know it's form.  We often buy a chicken to bbq half and do something completely different with the other; the weird weather might force us to modify our behavior.  Gee!  Guess that's life.

Have a good one; regardless of the weather!

GRRR! Google is doing an Apple

As of a couple days ago I started getting a message when I log into Blogger - "Your browser is no longer supported by Blogger.  Some parts of Blogger will not work and you may experience problems.  If you are having problems, try Google Chrome."  Grrr!  That's the reason I hate Apple, they try very hard to force you into using all their proprietary shit.  Now Google is doing the same thing!  Double Grrr!

I'm going to go on using Firefox as long as I can.  I've got a copy of Chrome but have been avoiding using it simply because I don't want to.  It's probably a perfectly good browser, maybe better than Firefox but, it's the principle of the thing.  What a bunch of jerks.

We have decided our trip up to Washington was a success based on a new criteria:  we are willing to get into the trailer again!  Sometimes we just don't look forward to another trip.  This time we are already planning a trip to San Diego and LA.  Again we are talking just a couple weeks rather than a whole month; we are thinking that is part of the difference.  We also didn't have many long days on the road.  We think that makes the trip much harder. 

I assume everyone has heard of the possible malware that is supposed to infect your computer and makes it impossible to convert DNS codes to legible names.  If you haven't heard, this hack was done quite a while ago but was caught by the FBI and foreign security services.  However, the only way they could figure out to keep people from crashing was to substitute temporary servers for the hacked ones.  Now they need to remove those temporary servers so if your computer won't talk to the internet on Monday, lucky you!  Do a search on 'DNS problem' or something and you'll find sites to help figure out if you are infected and what to do about it.

I found a book at the local Friends of the Library store about chili.  Written in 1981 it is 'The Great American Chili Book'.  The author talks about chili (the soup) as a food, then offers some recipes.  Some are interesting, one or two might even be useful.
- chili from the U.S. Army Tm 10-412 - start with 24 lb ground beef....
- chili for 600 - 25 lb dried ancho chile pods!
- mountain oyster chili - 2 lb calf testicles....
Some of the folks have strong opinions:  "This business of putting tomatoes in a dish of chili is an abomination, and anyone who would do such a thing should be forced to consume a whole fried chicken cooked in castor oil."  You can bet I'll be modifying my chili making in the near future.  Not to say I'll be stealing a recipe but making some modifications to my own. 

Gotta go.  Have a good one.

Happy Belated Mother's Day

I hope all you mothers had a good day.  Hearing from the kids is good regardless of their age.  We did well:  called the remaining mother, got a call from number 1 son and a visit from number 1 daughter.  What could be better?  Daughter brought lobster for herself and her mom; steak for me (shellfish allergy).  It worked out beautifully.  She also brought a DVD from Redbox.  It is the first Redbox we've ever gotten that was in just awful condition.  Someone must have been handling it with peanut butter on their fingers.  It took half a dozen cleanings before the thing would play.  Nasty!

On Saturday I indulged myself in doing something I've always wanted to do:  create pulled pork on the bbq.  I started about 08:30 making a rub and soaking wood chips.  I stole ideas from a couple people on the instructables.com website.  My main guide was this instructable.  By 09:00 I had the pork butt on the bbq.  I was having trouble getting smoke, perhaps the fire wasn't hot enough, but had a serendipitous moment.  We had a couple of uncooked sausages that we wanted for a late breakfast so I tossed them on the bbq directly above the charcoal.  The fat dripping off the sausages onto the charcoal got the smoke and fire going very nicely.  I tried keep the fire low and indirect and was successful for a while.  After an hour or so though I was unable to stay in the 225F - 275F range (107C - 135C); got up to 300F (149C) for a while.  It went quite well though; this is a photo from about 13:00 - 4 hours into the cook.  That hard layer on top is a fat layer that was hopefully dripping down into the meat as well as the drip pan.

Finally about 14:30 I started losing heat.  I did not start with as many charcoal briquets as suggested by my guru (didn't have any more!) but I did have some lump charcoal.  Lump usually burns faster and hotter than briquets which is the reason I didn't want to use it but when I put it on top of the already burning briquets, it just lay there.  It didn't even smoke.  I've no idea what happened there!  Anyway, I needed heat so I turned on the gas bbq and moved the meat over to it.  I figured it had gotten a big enough dose of smoke anyway.  Using the gas (Weber Genesis) with one burner on as low as it would go and the other two off, we were sitting right at 275F - perfect.  I had to shove the bbq back next to the house so the wind wouldn't blow out  the flame but it worked!  It was almost 17:00 when I wrapped the meat in foil and took it into the house.  We prepared a salad and some vegies while the meat rested - we are trying to learn to rest meat after cooking but it sure is hard after you've been working on it for eight or nine hours!  We finally got to eat; and I must say it's good.  The wood chips I used were mesquite, not what the guru suggested, and we did find the meat has a slightly odd taste.  But it was what I had and it is very good; just a little odd.  I was pretty shy about making the rub too strong and as a result it was quite mild.  Next time there will be more zoom to the rub.  For a first try though, I'm very happy.

This week we have medical tests for my self and my wife and a return visit with the vet for the dog.  We sure do spend on the medical front!  Last time we talked with the vet she noted that the dog as cataract on both eyes.  "There are several vets in the valley who will remove that for about $3000 an eye."  Jeez, give me a break! 

I've downloaded a utility called TreeSize Free (via a link from CNET).  It lets you know how much space is being used in various files on your computer.  It has always bothered me that I can't get that information from the operating system but maybe I'm weird.  This thing though went through my computer in a few minutes and told me all kinds of interesting info.  For example, all the photos I've been taking and scans I've been doing are taking up 9GB of space!  And I'm no where near done!  I'm going to back everything up though.  Losing all those photos would just be a killer!

I've got to go.  Hope you have a good one.  I'll try to post a bit more; once a week is just bad.