the Lama

 epic

Sheens vs. Jordan

 This is freaking awesome. Martin and Charlie Sheen competing against Michael Jordan in basketball skills. The video is in the link. As a Blazers and 90s Knicks fan it's ALWAYS good to see Jordan lose...

a cool Patagonia Ambassador video

Variables with Kimi Werner from Patagonia on Vimeo.

Movie suggestions / OnionAV

This is a link repository for me, and maybe for you ;)

Summer 2013 independent

2012 2nd half of the year, 1st half 

NWC Superheroes

Traves found this, very cool.

Very Cool Geography Game

it involves guessing where a Google Street View picture is from

Scwinn Stingray / NPR

good story, and they end with the Queen song...

Carrizo Plain video

this is nice

Gingerbread Pigs

I think she's got the recipe wrong, but good story

MRIs of fruit/veggies

awesome

Irrelevant Giant

This is a short film from ESPN about a player for the NY Giants in the early 80s. Very very moving. Plus a Regis Philbin appearance...

Figueroa Mountain, April 2013

We went up Figueroa Mountain this weekend. Went up the west side, spent the night at Figueroa campground, went down the east side, then went in to Los Olivos for wine tasting at Qupe. Nice weekend.Full album here.

we went for the flowers, and the green new leaves on the oaks

from the lookout at the top of the mountain

ladybugs not flying away home

fun with the 16mm nikkor

she got a tick, I got a nice photo

Poppies + lupine = traffic jam

rack focus

really sweet pull-off/view point, 16mm

more fun with the 16mm

cows, greenness, oaks along Alisal rd.

Killing Bees

interesting

Pizza Night

Red sauce, cilantro pesto, co-op mozzarella. Red wine from a Newcastle glass...

Piña Colada Ice Cream

'Ice cream' is a bit generous, but this is the closest I've gotten to it. If there's dairy involved I have used either buttermilk or crème fraîche for frozen desserts. I like my dairy cultured. And prefer yogurt in non-frozen form. But crème fraîche is just so darn full of fat it really doesn't make a very balanced dessert. So for this I mixed yogurt with crème fraîche, along with lots of fruit, and it's pretty damn good. Oh, also I used a trick that I read about in Saveur -- you can reduce the icy-ness of  homemade ice cream by reducing the liquid that is available to form ice, and you do this by adding cornstarch so you are freezing a pudding instead of a syrup. Awesome addition to the Sorbet Chronicles.


Piña Colada Ice Cream
1.5 c water

3T cornstarch

1c dried coconut

1c sugar

salt

1 frozen banana

2c frozen pineapple

2c creme fraiche

1/4c sugar

 

2T vanilla

 ~1.5c thin yogurt

Mix water, cornstarch, coconut, sugar, salt; bring to a simmer and cook till it thickens.

Stir in frozen fruit to cool the pudding, chill in fridge

Culture 2c heavy cream with a couple of tablespoons of buttermilk for 24 hours at room temperature

Whip to soft peaks, then add sugar and whip harder

Fold in pudding, vanilla, and the yogurt. Freeze with some stirring, but not too much is needed

Pumpkin Crème Fraîche Sherbet

No pic, we ate it all before I could snap one. In addition I tried to repeat it (though using a sunshine squash instead of a sugar pie pumpkin) and it was a miserable failure, so perhaps it's a mythical recipe... Awesome addition to the Sorbet Chronicles, if I can repeat it...

Pumpkin Crème Fraîche Sherbet
1 small pumpkin, ~8" diameter
1c sugar
pumpkin pie spice
1t salt
2c heavy whipping cream, cultured with buttermilk to make crème fraîche
1/4 c sugar
1T vanilla

Cut pumpkin in half, scoop out seeds, put in a pot with a little water, cover, steam for 30 min or so
Let it cool, then scrape flesh off of shell
Put in a small pot with 1c sugar and alot of pumpkin pie spice, salt, cook for 30 min or so
Culture the cream with a couple of tablespoons of buttermilk for 24 hours at room temperature
Whip cream to peaks, then add sugar and whip a little more, mix in the pumpkin and vanilla

Tempeh / NPR

nice story

Sweet Spinach Pie

hmmmmm

What a Rube

I was talking with Andrew about the movie Premium Rush, and how it was filmed. He reckoned a camera with a gyro stabilizer, and then recommended this video which also must have used a gyro stabilizer to film it. I think the set-up of the Rube Goldberg machine is astonishing, but it's also pretty cool that they were able to film it!

Jerusalem, Backwards

A friend of mine from grade school lives in Jerusalem now and posted this on his facebook page. Very cool.

Orange Peel Bread

Yum. Here's the deal. I got a bunch of oranges to make marmalade, but then lost momentum cause I have a bunch in the pantry already. Plus all that white sugar isn't so hot for you. So I went looking for other uses. Somewhere I once read a recipe for chocolate cake where a whole orange is blended up as part of the batter. And getting familiar with marmalade and candied citrus peel I knew that citrus is worth more to us than just as fleshy fruit and/or juice. Plus, the whole Tartine zucchini marmalade bread phase I went through last summer. I ended up using it in a quick bread, tried it both with blended peels and chunky as-is peels, both were good. I based my recipe on this, which cites an old Fanny Farmer recipe, used it for proportions, didn't follow it too closely [Honey + peels instead of white sugar marmalade is way healthier, plus whole wheat for white, and buttermilk/b. soda in stead of milk/b. powder]. Essentially the fermented peels become soft and you are using them as you would bananas or applesauce or whatever to provide moisture and a little bulk, and flavor, of course, to a baked good.

Orange Peel Bread
inspired by the Fannie Farmer Cookbook by Marion Cunningham

2c orange peels prepared as if you were going to make marmalade
2c buttermilk
1/2 c or so honey
1/2 c or so raisins
1T oil
1 egg (optional)
pinch salt
4c whole wheat flour
1 1/2 t baking soda
bunch of sesame seeds

Slice up a whole bunch of orange peels and cover with water. Let them ferment for a day or so. Heat to a simmer. Let them sit for a day. Heat. You can keep doing this for a week, no problem, until you have time to make marmalade and/or bread.

375 oven
Either use the peels as they are, or stickblended, or a mixture of the two, it all works.
Add the rest of the wet ingredients. The egg doesn't matter, the last few times I made it we were out of eggs, it still works fine.
The baking soda reacts pretty vigorously with the buttermilk, so once it is mixed in get it in the oven quick.
I've been making this in a 9x13 pyrex with sesame seeds coating the bottom so it doesn't stick. I like that technique alot. Rolled oats work well, too.
about 40 min does the trick.

Snow in the Front Range 2013

Pizza Night

When I was home in Newport this summer my folks had procured a stand mixer and I tried it out. It was a kitchenaid and I wasn't that impressed, but it got the juices flowing. I used to make pizza and bread all the time but got out of the habit. I ended up getting a Bosch compact mixer, their smaller, euro one. Got it off of ebay so saved a bit, too.

Red sauce, olives, sun dried tomatoes, feta, cheddar (in focus above); leek, onion, garlic, anchovy, cheddar (in focus below)

Yellowstone Wolves / Outside Online

fascinating

Southern Big Sur Overnighter

We went up willow creek road a bit. Did some of the willow creek trail and in the process found some chanterelles! My first wild mushroom find. They were good last night alongside a Hearst Ranch beef burger. Found a sweet campsite for the future, camped down at the bottom of the road to watch the epic sunset. Next day we stopped off to check out the elephant seals near San Simeon. Had lunch at Sebastian's Store, a Hearst Ranch beef burger from cows eating grass right there. Divine. Also got 3 lbs of ground beef for a very reasonable price. Beer at the micro micro brewery in Cambria is good, too! I took my D200 (with a 300mm lens) and D600 (switched between the 24-85 kit lens and the 16mm). LOTS of pics at the links, here are a couple of highlights:

Ninjas / NPR

heck yeah

as a side note, when I lived in Kommetjie way back when, the house of one of my classmates was used for filming the 80s classic American Ninja 2. The fights on the beach were also near his house. Motorcycle chase was on the highway on the west side of the Cape Peninsula.It's already a classic 80s camp movie, but the South Africa connection puts it over the top for me.

Kris Kristofferson / NPR

good interview

Butternut Shrimp Curry

This is more or less from Nigella Lawson in Nigella Bites. It was amazing the first night. Leftovers were awful (the squash got super mushy). Though upon fishing out the remaining shrimp and stick blending it, it was GREAT as a pureed soup.

Butternut Shrimp Curry
1 can coconut milk
1T green curry paste (it's what we had)
1.5 c fish stock
3T fish sauce
3 lb butternut squash (approximate, we had a big one)
1.5 lbs wild US shrimp
1 bunch beet greens
few sprigs cilantro

typical curry method, skim off the coconut fat from the can and put that in the pan. fry the paste in that for 5 min or so. then add the coconut liquid and the fish stock. boil down a bit.
add fish sauce, squash, cook ~15 min
add chopped beat greens, cook ~5 min
add shrimp, cook 3 min
serve on red thai rice with cilantro