The facade of one of the buildings (maybe The Palace Saloon? I wasn't really paying attention) down on Whiskey Row. The details caught my eye, and I really liked the tops of the pillars:
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Pondering Cooking
Rambling ahead.
What is it that I enjoy so much about cooking?
Why, when I get home from an 8 hour shift at work and after playing with the dog, do I want to cook? Maybe it's the relaxation I find in cooking. After helping people with computer problems all day it is nice to just put on XM Chill, and lose myself in the kitchen.
What am I making? Who cares? To be honest, I don't even worry if the end product is edible. There is always Pizza Hut if I really mess something up.
Prep work is probably my favorite part. Cleaning the veggies, mincing up the garlic and rosemary, grinding spices in the mortar, and spicing the protein.
The moment when room-temperature meat hits a preheated pan? Makes me grin every time. Tossing veggies around like they do on cooking shows? Makes me feel like I might be getting the hang of this whole cooking thing. Being able to pick out the flavors of everything that I put in, and determine what needs improvement next time around? Makes me feel like a fancy son-of-a-gun.
On the blog I post all the meals that turned out really good. Things that aren't just your run-of-the-mill dinners, but something that is memorable. The road isn't all puppies and sunshine though. There are plenty of meals that trainwreck into a mass of nearly-inedible food, and that is okay.
Lemon chicken that you can't taste the chicken in? Yeah that was me, and my mouth still puckers whenever I think about it. Pork tenderloin that is so tough you can't cut through it? Been there, attempted to eat that.
And then there are times when it isn't fun to cook. Making potato latkes for example. Sure it is easy to make these, but spending the next hour in front of a wok full of hot oil dipping the little bastards in and flipping. Baby-sitting them so that they don't get overcooked, but are still moist in the inside? Getting oil EVERYWHERE, and accidentally creating a small oil fire on the stove? Sure, it makes a great story to tell your co-workers, but cleaning up after that mess was less than fun.
In the end it might just be the fact that I don't have to THINK about cooking that I enjoy so much. All I have to do is react to cooking. If the porkchop is cooking faster than I want, turn down the heat. If the mashed potatoes don't taste right add another pinch of salt.
And I'm sure there will be a day when the flames of my cooking desire go out, but for now I am content to just let it sizzle, take a few pictures, try to learn a thing or two, and hopefully leave myself satiated.
Food Photoset (up to 88 pictures now!)
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Today's Photo
The photo today is something that I have driven by twice a day ever since moving to Chino (so almost two years now), and have always thought it would be an interesting picture. Now I finally have my pictures of the rusty Drink Coca-Cola sign:
So what stopped me? The no-trespassing sign... but yesterday I couldn't help myself. I stopped in and took 4 shots before driving off, hopefully un-noticed. Two of them turned out decent.
Morning Video fun
Great Commercials:
(via)
Improv Everywhere creates a musical in a mall food court.
(via)
When a news anchor doesn't like the reporter:
(via)
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Picture of the day
Well I am going to try to post at least one picture every day (except weekends of course) from now on.
So for today here it is, a huge dog I saw on my lunch hour:
Some Entertainment for Tuesday
Monday, March 10, 2008
Sycamore Canyon Hike
Saturday we stopped by Best Buy to pick up a smaller case for DaNece's Olympus camera, and ran into Rich. He mentioned that him and Sadira would be heading up to Sycamore Canyon and invited us to go with.
Unfortunately Rich was too tired to come out and play, so me and DaNece decided to go out regardless, although via a different route. Rich's plan had been to head out Perkinsville Rd and end up on the west side of the canyon. Since I had just driven Perkinsville loop the week before we opted to go through Jerome and Clarkdale and hit the South end of the park.
This afforded us the luxury of stopping for breakfast at the Red Rooster Cafe. Not only was the food good, but a large late comes in a soup-bowl with a handle! So I definitely got my coffee fix for the day. :)
From there we proceeded down to Clarkdale, and up Sycamore Canyon Rd. After about 25 minutes on the dirt you get to the trail-head with a look north into the canyon:
The first few hundred feet of the trail are the hardest. They drop you from the plateau straight down to the canyon floor. The canyon walls rise up around you:
Then; a fork in the trail. If you go left (and cross the creek) you will go to Packard trail, which I believe weaves downstream. Sycamore creek was running high and fast, so we opted to avoid crossing the stream and went straight (Parson's Trail). This is a beautiful trail that parallels the creek, and is shady most of the way through. At one point you can see a spring literally bubbling out of the ground. Very cool!
From there the trail follows the canyon back to a point where you HAVE to cross the creek to continue. Unfortunately the water levels did not easily allow this:
We scrambled around for a while trying to find a way to keep hiking along the creek, but that wasn't going to happen, so we turned around and headed back to the truck.
From there we headed to Cottonwood and decided to eat at Murphy's Grill. Man talk about a mistake! There was no hostess at the front (she was busy folding napkins apparently). Eventually the bartender came over and seated us, and got us some water. The girl who was supposed to be our waitress never made it to our table to help us. She looked at us a few times, and just walked by. After 10 minutes of waiting to place our order we walked out. The worst part? There were only 3 tables occupied, so it wasn't like she was too busy.
After this disappointment we drove around cottonwood, but didn't find anything that piqued our interest. So we headed back up the hill, and ate at the Mile High Grill. WOW! This is the second time we have eaten there, and it is awesome! Great burgers, awesome service, and we got a window seat so we even got a nice view!
One peculiar thing that caught my eye was this painting of Whiskey Row in Prescott.... in Jerome.... am I the only one that thinks that is weird?
The drive home afforded a nice view of the San Francisco peaks:
What a great Sunday!
PHOTOSET from the day
EDIT: DaNece has also posted her pics from the trip
*NOTE*: you will have to forgive me, I am on a bit of a BW photo kick. I totally blame this site, which is making me love the black and white goodness. Bear with me.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Blog slowness and some more pictures!
Rich mentioned to me today that my photos take a LONG time to load lately. The only thing I have changed is loading my pictures through blogger (instead of linking through flickr), so I will stop doing that and see if the speed goes back up. This means that the thumbnails that I post on the blog won't look as good (so click to see full sized), but hopefully will fix my problem. :) Keep me posted guys, if it's taking too long to load just drop me a comment or an e-mail. Thanks!
And while I am posting, I figured that I might as well post up some pics from today.
Granny J's post on reflections sparked my interest, and I spotted this one while eating breakfast, which overlayed "Caffe St. Michael" over Gurley street:
Some cool gradation in the parking garage:
We also stumbled upon a treasure trove of old newspaper printing plates on a wall downtown (Sadira has seen them I am sure, since they are right next door to her office). Almost all of them are from 1964.
Meat Prices:
Smooth Whiskey:
Good stuff!
EDIT: Catalyst brought to my attention that Granny J also did a post on these newspaper plates.
Friday, March 7, 2008
A new toy, plus photoshop goodness.
I love when UPS shows up for me.
Today they had a greatly improved memory card for me! From 2GB to 8GB!
That should take care of my new RAW workflow (which means ~14MB for each photo). Now I just have to decide if I want to start archiving my RAW files, and eating away at my available hard drive space.
And, for anybody interested, the photomerge tool in Photoshop CS3 is much improved over CS2.
A 3-shot vertical panoramic of the Ken Lindley field gate:
A little bit of weird shading around the tree on the left, but no obvious stitch lines that I can see.
Poland has officially invaded France!
Don't believe me? Well you shouldn't, because of course Poland hasn't invaded France. That would be silly!
But a recipe from the polish side of my heritage has invaded French territory in the kitchen.
This recipe is a family secret. Read in a magazine (correct me if I'm wrong padre) by my father, and passed down one whole generation to little ol' me. This might actually be the oldest recipe in the family (which is to say that I remember eating it when I was a kid). Prodigious indeed.
It is a take on Chicken Cordon Bleu. Most preparations of this dish involve breading and either baking or frying, and this is where our recipe differs. No breading. No baking or frying. Instead we boil it.... in wine!!!
Caution to those with heart problems: Don't make this dish, as it will almost definitely clog your arteries beyond repair. You might want to skip even reading the post.
Chicken Cordon Bleu w/ Mashed Potatoes:
What you will need to make the dish:
- 3 or 4 chicken breasts
- Sliced cheese, lots of it. I used provolone and monty jack, but swiss would also go really well
- Ham (black forest, or honey) 9-12 slices
- 1 bottle of cheap white wine (yeah I accidentally bought red, but you should buy white zinfandel.)
- 1 small onion (or 3-4 shallots preferably, but I didn't have any on hand)
- 5-10 white mushrooms
- Fresh garlic (I used about 10 cloves, but I am a garlic-whore)
- Salt, pepper, some basil
- 6-7 small potatoes
- butter
- bread of some sort (yes it's required)
How to make it:
- Mince your garlic and set aside
- Slice your onions and mushrooms really thin
- Get a (big-ass) pan pre-heating for the onions on medium, and get some water boiling for the potatoes.
- Trim the fat from your chicken breasts (or pay more for already-trimmed breasts), and pound it out to between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thickness. Have some fun with it, pretend it is the face of your boss, or ex-wife!
- Apply a coating of minced garlic on top of the chicken. If you aren't a big garlic fan, don't use much as it still has a lot of flavor at the end of cooking:
- Now stack some slices of cheese on top. I used 2 slices of monty-jack and one (big slice) of provolone per breast.
- Throw 3-4 slices of ham on top of the cheese
- Get some toothpicks ready, and meditate. Pray for positive rolling goodness, because it invariably turns into a fuster-cluck.
- Attempt to roll chicken into one huge mound of debauchery. Once the chicken is overlapping, shove your toothpicks in to keep it in place:
- Now throw your onions into the pre-heated pan with a little bit of oil. Cook on medium until translucent. It is pretty important that you cook these all the way, otherwise the texture will be too crisp at the end.
- Once they are done, put a whole bottle of wine (minus a glass for the chef or course!) in the pan. Place your chicken in the pan, and toss your mushrooms in.
- Place a quarter piece of cheese on top of each chicken, and spoon a little sauce over the breasts. Turn heat to medium-high and cover.
- Cut up your potatoes and drop them in the now-boiling water with some fresh garlic.
- After about 10 minutes flip your chicken, and add another quarter piece of cheese to each mound.
- Once the potatoes are done, throw them in the strainer for a few minutes (Yes, a few minutes. Let as much water evaporate off of them as possible before mashing, and you will get much creamier 'taters).
- Flip chicken again and add another quarter piece of cheese
- After a total of 25-30 minutes of cooking your chicken should be good to go, so pull them out of the sauce and tent with some foil (live dangerously, add more cheese to the top). Turn the wine-concoction onto high-heat and allow to reduce down.
- Mash your taters with the usual milk, butter, and salt. Plus throw in some fresh garlic, basil, and a healthy amount of black pepper.
- Butter your bread and throw under the broiler for a short time to melt the butter. If your potatoes are getting cold, stick them under the broiler too.
- Now dip at least one hunk of bread into the sauce and enjoy the yumminess that is wine and bread.
After your sauce is reduced, plate everything up. Then cut into your hunk-o-cholesterol and bear sweet witness to the magic of oozy cheese!:
Notes: Yes, I bought regular Zinfandel wine instead of White Zinfandel. Why? Because I don't like paying attention while shopping. The white is better, as it imparts more sweetness to the sauce, and makes the chicken juicier (something about alcohol content, blah blah blah).
Edit: I just found a picture of the last time I made it, with the correct wine:
Thursday, March 6, 2008
I want one bad!
For some reason I am totally not in a type-it-out post kind of night, so here is another quick entertainment:
So does everybody remember the Airzooka?
That fun little toy that you let rip to have a ball of air go up to 20 feet?
Well these guys built a monster airzooka to celebrate their company's 20th birthday. It will blow out your candles at 180ft. Freakin cool.
(via)
Hopefully tomorrow I will be a bit more ambitious and post up my dinner review.. :)
Great Commercial
The folks at Dove made this commercial a while back (most of you have probably seen it):
Well, Fosters Farms have outdone themselves with this parody ad:
That's one way to crack an egg.
Though I don't think it's the way I would choose. Watch it all the way to the end... amazing:
(via)
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Hoooray Adobe! Booooo long time to install.
So I finally got CS3. And I want to play with it NOW!! But first I have to backup my hard-drive (because you just never know what can happen with a big install) - 35 minutes, uninstall CS2 - 25 minutes (wtf is with that?!), and install the new software - 20 minutes and counting now. Then I have to do all of the ridiculous registration stuff, which I'm sure will burn up another 15-25 minutes. An hour and a half to switch software title?!?! Crazy.
It's not like I've got some old slow computer. I'm not generally one to brag about computer specs, but I think I run a pretty kick-ass rig. I built this thing with all the goodies (3GB memory, AMD X2 4200+ processor, 1,500GB hard drive space, GeForce 7950GT video card, blah blah blah...)
But an hour and a half and counting!? My roommate says that I am just a ridiculously impatient person... I guess he's right.
Sporting event proposal
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
A whole bunch of random.
No theme to these, each one just caught my attention.
1. Abandoned Hydroelectric Plant:
Ten stories under Niagra falls sits an abandoned hydroelectric plant from the Toronto Power Company.
Not a lotof information about the people who explored the pipes, but a there is some history about the plant, and some more pictures at the website.
That is the kind of place you hope the batteries don't die on your light!
(via)
2. Uncle Dirty
Uncle Dirty is an old man who has lifted weights and worn thongs around on the beach all his life.
His hobbies? Cutting and pasting pictures of penises onto people in magazines.
A seriously interesting look into this man's life, with lots of pictures (yes, most of them are him in a thong). And probably NSFW.
(via)
3. How the Internet gets from A to B:
See, the basic premise is that your ISP isn't really part of the whole world, so they have to connect to other ISPs in order share the information. That way your cable provider in backwater Idaho can talk to another provider in backwater China, so that you can read that cute little chinese woman's blog.
How is this done? With what's called 'meet-me rooms', where lots of ISPs connect to eachother. The link goes to a picture gallery for a meet-me room in LA where 260 providers all come together and hook up with each other. It takes up almost an entire high-rise building.
4. Quote by Henry Clay:
“Let him who elevates himself above humanity . . . say, if he pleases, "I will never compromise"; but let no one who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromise.”
5. A few new blogs that I have been reading:
- First of all, Catalyst is back up and running. Hooray!
- Tequila Mockingbird - funny funny funny.
- KatyDidNot - hilarious adventures in mom-hood.
- Beer is NOT food - doesn't post often, but very entertaining.
- New York Photography - posts often and takes nice bw photos.
Monday, March 3, 2008
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