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

16 mm Nikkor

my new 16mm fisheye. fun lens

love this one, some/most of my cookbooks

crazy sunset, but i was a little late

living room art

Random dinners

cabbage is so photogenic

heart shaped homemade ricotta

pasta/red sauce, pesto, ricotta on the side

let them eat quiche, Sara made this

quick little ground beef tacos

classic NPR x2

cyclocross, and gnomes in Oakland

Figueroa Mountain Catway

Finally brought a bike with me to Figueroa Mountain. Sara walked it. Went a ways out on the catway, though a better bike would have helped....

snow in the road on the North slopes

Grass mountain from a different angle

Dwarf Meyer Lemon

we got this guy instead of a cut christmas tree, it has a ton of flowers on it, so we've since put it outside, could be the best purchase ever!

Wine and Cheese

Holidays 2012

Both sets of parents visited us over the holidays in sunny Santa Barbara. Good times. Full album is here.

 new D600, new 16mm nikkor fisheye (though I had to send it back to have them fix the lens shade that was intruding into the image). pointsettia, live lemon tree as christmas tree.

with my folks we drove up figueroa mountain and then around the santa ynez valley, this pic is of Grass Mountain

rescue cat at Rancho Olivos

 good colors (x2)

with Sara's folks we went in back of Ojai

apple pie

Sara and her pop

Neil Gaiman / NPR

good little article with Neil Gaiman suggesting some tv/movies to check out

NPR x2

Great interview with Mel Brooks.

Interesting story about winter tomatoes from Mexico/Florida. Florida is crying foul about the import of mexican tomatoes. Alas, people are buying the ones from Mexico because they actually taste like tomatoes and aren't gassed red.

Calories aplenty

I'm trying to feed the blog a little bit more. This article on CNN is about calorie-bombs. The pictured dish has 3,120 calories!! Speaking of which, we went to Cold Springs Tavern up in the mountains for breakfast over the holiday break. Cool place, food was reasonably priced and a little funky -- they have wild game, but i'm thinking my home fries/venison sausage/eggs/biscuits/gravy probably topped out near 2,000 calories. We were zombies for the rest of the day. Next time we'll split an omelet or something. 

Jeff Bridges / Wait Wait

 pretty darn close to epic, especially for NPR ;)

By the way, the above pic is from American Heart (1993), this one is obviously from Lebowski (1998), looks like that was a pretty hard 5 years for the Dude...

Raised Waffles

As Marion Cunningham says in Lost Recipes, it's the recipe that made the Fannie Farmer cookbook famous.

Raised Waffles
1/2 c warm water
1 package active dry yeast
2 c milk
8T melted butter (I use extra virgin olive oil)
1t salt
1t sugar
2c whole wheat flour
2 eggs (separated or not)
1/4 t baking powder

mix water and yeast, let sit a couple of minutes to activate
add milk, oil, salt, sugar, flour, mix, let sit overnight in a warm place
in the morning separate eggs and beat whites till stiff, or add them as-is, it's still quite good.
add baking powder just before you cook them.
it is a thin batter, but never fear, it works fine.

Ocearch

These guys put tracking devices on great whites. I saw a blurb on them on CNN because a shark they are tracking was just off of a beach in Florida. Their website is pretty interesting, kinda cowboy science, but not too out of hand. The track for the shark "Madiba" off of southern South Africa is crazy, she goes from a little north of Cape Town all the way over to Port Elizabeth. Very cool.

'88 Mercedes

Good article about a guy and his truck -- with 820,000 km on it...

Robertson

I had this pic saved on my desktop and realized I didn't put up a post about it/him on the blog. This is my friend Chris Robertson. I lived with his brother in the dorms my freshman year, and with him my senior year. We cooked together some during the summers in IV. He's cooking in NYC now.... good article.