One Rainy Day

A Splendid Wedding Rehearsal Dinner

After a half hour drive we arrived at the clients neighborhood in Hamilton, Ohio...

Here is a section of the outdoor dining patio.

Time to unload the goods that we had prepped the day before.

Looking good.

Tools of choice.

Menu plan.

Prep.

Tenderloin.

Decorations.

JoJa and the grilled yellow baby squash.

Mixed baked onion-pepper for veg. and chicken platter.

Lots of veg.

After grilling the veg. we cut it to presentable bite-size pieces.

The Mojito grilled chix.

JoJa and the cheese.

Chefs JoJa and Cody at your service.

Let's call it a day.

Wedding Rehearsal Tomorrow

My buddy Joe called me up a few days ago and asked me if I wanted to help cook for his friends wedding rehearsal, not a problem I told him. So, today I went over to his place and we put together a menu. Later we did some shopping and after that we went Dave's restaurant to prep in Over-the-Rhine... the ghetto of Cincinnati.

The little white building is where Dave works at, he's the Exec. Chef.

We made our way to the basement.

And set up shop.

Stayed tuned to see how we perform tomorrow at the rehearsal... :)

Life's a Beach

The summer is blossoming in North America and I'm craving a warm, white sandy beach. Just a few months ago I was living on the icy beaches of Antarctica at Ross Island, a month ago I was on the remote Black Wallaby Sands beach in Australia, and now that I am settled back into North America I'm yearning to migrate from the midwest to the coasts. But, the big but, is that I also need to pick up a job. There are a few remote camp cook job opportunities in Alaska that are floating around, I should know by next week if the North needs me. If nothing happens in the North then I'll be looking to get southwards to a beach, maybe Key West or the Carribbean. Would be amazing if I could hit (not kill) two birds with one stone (or stick) this summer by working in AK temporarily for a few bucks doing what I do best, cooking, then move south to relax and cook on a beach in the islands. October 1st I'm scheduled to depart again for Antarctica, until give me the warmth!

Dreaming

Speechless

Cincinnati Zoo

I haven't been to the Cincinnati Zoo for about 5 years and I was shocked at how much it has changed. There was a brand new wilderness education center that taught visitors about the medicinal uses of plants, composting, invasive species, and renewable energy systems. The animals seemed to be enjoying the sunny weather of spring just as much as we did.

Lobster

Fun at the Rink

Only two times on the ice and this kid already can skate.

Beneath Our Feet

The Kid Caught Dinner

Nora (aka Beaner, aka Snuggles) got off school around noon and we decided to go for a hike down by the river. After seeing the giant blue heron fish in the rapids a thought came to us, let's go catch dinner.

So Beaner and I went to Brit's house where there is a giant pond behind her pad.

We caught bigger and more fish with the two foot Scooby Doo pole and hot dogs rather than with the rig job I was using.

Our catch was made, filleted, then fried with some grilled asparagus and baked sweet potato steak fries.

Alligator for Lunch

My dad and his dad and his Ma we're out back marking the boundaries for the garden that I have to go dig up after this post.

It's time for lunch and I ain't going to touch this Vegemite.

Alligator sounds good.

With some roasted veggies.

I just did a quick pan fry with seasame oil, garlic, and soy sauce. It natually tastes a bit like frog legs and chicken. Delicious. Next time I'm going to deep fry the gator.

Mother's Day at Nannies

On Saturday day night I ditched the burbs and went to the Middletown ghetto to visit my Nannie and Poppa.

Remember that sweet cherry pie Brit and I made? Well, it got devoured. It was so good with vanilla ice cream.

Vegemite. Oh geez. When I first arrived in Australia the Irish lad told me a story about Drop Bears (creatures that fall from the trees and cling to your back) and how Vegemite wards them off. Vegemite is that potent eh? Franko would put Vegemite out on the table for lunch as a sandwich or cracker spread and over the course of my stay I witnessed 12 volunteers cringe and make funny faces whenever the word Vegemite came up haha. You really have to acquire this taste and if your not Aussie, good luck.

But then again my Poppa really enjoyed it. I couldn't believe it, someone else out there likes Vegemite. Maybe he was just starving?

Here's my sleeping quarters at Nannies. There may be a ghost or two wandering around.

Oldies but goldies.

El gato Lucy.

Picture of Poppa and I fixin up a toy car back in the day. I'll probably look like that in 20 years.

A gift I gave to Nannie many years back. It's a picture of our buddy Larry's spot at Senecca Lake. When I was younger we'd all go to the lake once every year to do some fishing and relaxing by the fire.

The tomatoes are doing just fine.

The garden is comming along.

Sunday morning we went to church. I'm not Catholic or Christian... I'm just a human with a deep sense of spirituality.

Cousin Mikeys first trip to church.

Cousin Chris's arrival haha.

Beaner.

Emu.

The smoker.

The smoked pork loin.

Poppa's 70th bday.

Bag worms in the tree.

What's cooking in the burbs?

Yesterday I journeyed to Jungle Jim's in search of rattlesnake. I just have an urge to grill some rattlesnake. I haven't been eating much pork, beef, or chicken... just kangaroo, camel, and alligator. Full moon? Native elders up north tell me that when a warrior is in search of strength, he will kill a giant moose or bear and eat it's muscle to gain strength. I don't have moose or bear, but I've got camel. If you need a strong heart, eat the heart of the healthy mammal. If you need agility, try eating kangaroo. If you need a transformation... a shedding... eat something reptilian, like snake or alligator. You are what you eat. You get your needs from what you eat.

Grilled camel, roasted parsnips and red potatoes with feta cheese, homegrown garden sage and fresh tomato, and fried apple, pineapple, and plantain topped with a thick n' creamy vanilla-nutmeg syrup.

Sweet Cheery Pie

Here comes Mother's Day and there's no better way to celebrate Mama's Day then to get together with family and good food. My addition to our Sunday's gathering is a sweet cherry pie. This recipe is for two pies.

Ingredients:

5 Cups of Flour
4 Sticks of Unsalted Butter
2.5 Cups of Sugar
1/2 Cup of Tapioca
10 Cups of Semi-Thawed Frozen Cherries (If frozen, set a room temp. for 30 minutes)
A Hint of Fruity Liquor
A Hint of Almond Extract
A Bit of Water
One Egg
9-inch Pie Pan

First make your base crust by:

Put all the flour into a big bowl and add a tablespoon of salt, take two cold sticks of butter and mash them into the flour. Break up the big chunks of butter into small chunks and push it into the flour, do this for about 5 minutes. Add the other two sticks in the mix and mash, mash, mash. Once you get a consistency that breaks up into pea-size chunks add a 1/4 cup of water. Instantly you'll see/feel the mix transform into a proper dough. Keep needing, punch it, hit it, slap it (Nannie sats keep your hands off the dough... use a food processor and limit hand contact with butter + flour because heat will change the texture of the stretched flour proteins (glutten). Slowly add a bit more water until you get a nice texture that's easy to play with and has a shine to it. Sometimes recipes call for you to put it in the fridge for several hours/days to make it more malleable. To keep the dough from sticking your hands use ice cold water.


Cut up the batch of dough into four big balls. Two of the balls will be the bottom crust, and the other ones are for creating the lattice crust on top of the filling. Create a clean work space and throw a bit of flour on it so the dough doesn't stick to the counter.

I forgot to take a picture of this step, but what you want to do is bake the bottom crust. Grab one of the four giant dough balls. Flip the 9-inch pie pan over just to get a sense of how big of a circle you need to roll the dough out to, make the dough circle about 2 inches bigger than the pie pan. Then put the crust into the pan. Fill in any holes that you may have made and make it as uniform as you can. Feness the outer rim of the crust by using a fork to make a cool design or use your fingers to make it wavy. A wavy rim helps trap the juices. Using a brush (or your fingers) rub a thin layer of egg white on the crust. This makes sure the crust isn't porous and doesn't absorb the filling, that will create sogginess. Throw the crust into the oven for about 10 minutes at 425 F. When you check 'er after 10 there may be a few bubbles, do the best you can to press them down, and put it back it for another 5. One way to not create bubbles is to cover the crust with foil and add something heavy to weigh it down onto the dough, and then bake it. You want the crust to feel slighty hard (pastry-like) and not be gooey.

While it's baking for that 10-15 minutes period, grab a bowl and mix: all the cherries, sugar, tapioca, and a just a hint of a liquor and almond extract. When the bottom crusts are baked and cooled, drop the oven temperature down to 325, and add the filling.

We wanted to give the pies a real homemade touch so we made a lattice top crust. Take one of the giant dough balls, break it up into 12-18 smaller balls. Roll the balls out into flattened strips like seen in the picture above. Then create a matrix with the strips like seen below. The way we did it was we took 5 strips and laid them across the filling equally spaced apart. We would pull up two or three strips and lay a strip horizontally across. Put the lifted strips down and then pull the other the other ones up and lay a horizontal strip down.

With any leftover dough touch up the rim of the crust to make it look presentable (i.e., use a fork to make a thatched design after filling any holes between the lattice strips and bottom crust). Here's Brittany perfecting the lattice.


Here I am adding a toothed design around the rim. We wanted to make the design look like shark teeth.

"She's My Sweet Cherry Pie" was rocking out in the background while we kept an eye on the beauties in the oven. Bake for about 45 minutes or until the juice at the top of the filling becomes kind of jiggly and the crust is browned. Pull out and just let it cool.

And BAMM!!! Totally homemade and totally muy muy rico.

The Story of Ike

Mr. Ike, the 3rd most destructive hurricane ever to make landfall in the last century, hit Texas in September 2008 and then moved eastward with the prevailing westerlies through the midwest. What made Ike so powerful in the interior of the U.S. was the fact that a massive autumn cold front was making it's way across the central plains right when Ike decided to make landfall. The result was that the cold front was stalled and the tweaking of geostrophy led to a sudden increase in winds at the Z axis. Normally wind doesn't come straight down, but with the fast moving diverging high pressure system in the plains and the slow moving and strong converging hurricane low pressure system in the midwest... this yin-yang effect led to vertical air motions. Pressure gradient force on high caffeine. Couple that with the Emerald Ash Bore (photo above), who is an invasive tree murdering insect from Asia that arrived in Ohio in 2003 and is wiping out our suburban neighborhoods Ash trees, and you get weak trees that split in half straight down the trunk and get uprooted easily at minimum wind gusts of 50 mph.

You can check out the Ike climate video here. Highest recorded wind for our area was 75 mph, and I was out running in it, with my hurricane gear on of course ;) The gist of the picture below is that the low pressure system created a wall of warm moist air that blocked the cold front from making it's normal stormy debut by creeping under the warm front. Instead the cold front slammed head first into the uprising warm air wall and fell straight down. No rain, no thunder... just crazy winds.

Base picture source: https://fretzreview.wikispaces.com/file/view/hurricane-diagram.gif

You can really see the weakness of trees in the picture below. Most of the tree limbs just fell straight from the trunk and onto the ground due the strong vertical wind gusts and their illness associated with the bore pest.

One minute I was watching a tree crack and fall in the backyard, then I heard a loud crash in the front yard... it was my neighbors jeep getting slammed.

This all happened about 9 months ago... Tornado season is just starting, so I'll keep my eyes on the weather channel and camera charged. My favorite courses in uni were climatology and cosmoclimatology, but nothing beats being a full blown rider on the storm.

But hey, keep the tree murdering pests in their native country/continent eh?

I tried to put a number on how many alien species have arrived in Antarctica over the last decade, not too much public data on it... just the fact that 44,000 human visitors arrived this year. Are humans the greatest invasive species? I think so. Any opposition to that idea? How do invasive species spread in the first place? Haha by boat. Well, if you ever travel to New Zealand or Australia you will see how much their governments care for inspecting your shoes for bits of mud and check your camping clothing for any type of plant/animal material. In fact, when I left Australia and flew to New Zealand... a small little pup on a leash to a customs patrol guy stopped at my backpack and put his paw on it, signaling to the customs agent that I had some sort of biological material in my bag. We dug through it and only found crumbs from a snack I had earlier. The agent said that crumbs could even transfer alien species. I'm calling the transfer of alien species via social elements (i.e., snack packs, boots, camping gear, etc.) 'involuntarily artificial selection'. Not to mention the hour I had to spend explaining to the New Zealand customs desk where, when, why, who, and what the heck I am doing with a Hog Deer antler in my bag.

Anyways, what I meant with this tangent was that invasive species are everywhere. They are killing our Ash trees and they are polluting Antarctica, and in most cases they are thriving. So is this what survival of the fittest (evolution) has become?

Catch a Snake