Awesome Video on the Death Of Hot Rodding

Dont Bother Watching this video, It is great to just listen to it. This guy can paint a better picture with is narration than the pictures that are supplied (which are not bad either). Awesome Video.

Totally stolen from my friend Josh's blog at Better Than Some, Worse than Others.

Yeee.....Corned Beef and Cabbage.

One of my favorite meals ever. This was an old pic. One of those ones where you are browsing though your camera and take a nice pause on it.
I will need to cook up some, This was i believe 14 pounds of brisket in two different slow cookers for St. Patti's day. I had almost a couple dozen friends over for corned beef and guiness onion soup.

Car Bombs Of Course, were in the mix.

Quick Catch, nice 28 inch Butt

Weird Lookin Fish, That is for sure! When they are born, their eyes are actually on both sides and they actually start to move over to one side. They got some mean lookin teeth too.

Hella good cooked up though. Halibut is up their with one of my favorite cooked fish.
Caught this one right out in front of San Quintin. This one is for all my homies locked up....WORD

Doesnt look very big from my huge hands in the picture.

First full Dinner from the Garden

Last night, I was able to go out to the garden and put together a pretty complete meal. I did not feel like going to the grocery store so I did the usual and came up with something that would work.

Behold a stuffed 8ball zucchini stuffed with seasoned ground beef, basmati rice, garlic, onion, tomato, parsley, and cheese. This thing was pretty bomb and I have found a new must have vegetable in the garden which is the eight ball zucchini. These are perfect for stuffing.

I accompanied the zucchini with a mock up Greek salad with all veggies out of the garden. It consisted of Snow white tomatoes (which are awesome), cherry tomatoes, green beans, and lemon cucumber. I tossed it all together with red wine vinegar and crushed feta cheese with some S&P.

Im stoked to have regular dishes straight out of the garden from this day forward through the summer.

Pictures - July 3rd - Silverado Country Club Fireworks

I got some pictures back last night from the Silverado Country Club Fireworks. Silverado puts on fireworks every July 3rd and it has become a pretty large event. Someone told me that there are more than 50,000 people that attend. They shut down their golf course and allow the public on their greens to watch a firework display. I live almost across the street and my roommate and I each have our own golf cart. This was good times and I look forward to it every year. Good times getting hammered with friends.

Pumpkin Update 7/14/09 - Gopher Count = 7

Yes, we have fruit. And actual pumpkin growing. It is now starting to pay off. I actually caught a gopher that was right under the hole that was created last week. I know that he is not the last, but it is a step in the right direction.
Thats it for words today.

LTKG - It has come down to this! Varmit Cong

The war has escalated to the home front.

Holy Crap. I did not expect to come out this morning to water, and find this huge gopher hole 4 inches away from the end of my primary vine. Yesterday when I got home from work, I checked my gopher traps and was almost bitten by a gopher who was still alive and in one of my traps. He must have only been there for a matter of minutes I would think. That brings the gopher count up to 6, but it seems that I am still loosing ground, and maybe even the war.

I am not sure what I am going to do at this point. Do I scrounge up a bottle of oxygen and propane and start fabrication on the Gophernator? Do I continue to trap, hoping that I am wearing them down every time that I catch one. I have pulled six gophers out of my garden just this year, How many more could their possibly be? With just my luck, I will kill all but one, and Rambo underground will become a one man army and completely destroy my dreams of growing a "World Class Pumpkin".

I will assess the situation when I get home and check my traps that I have strategically placed around my pumpkin. I will most likely just place traps out tonight all around my pumpkin and hope to eliminate the recent threat.

And one last comment: To the maker of the noise spikes that you put in the ground to deter gophers......YOU SUCK....BIG TIME!!!

Halibut Fishing 7/5

So after coming up Ghost on last weeks fishing trip, I decided to head on out last Sunday and give it another shot. We launched out of loch lomand in San Rafael again and headed out to the flats. Within 20 minutes of drifting I hook into the first Halibut of the day. After a really quick fight, we were able to bring it into the boat and give it a quick measure resulting in being 1/2 inch under sized. I bait back up and head back to make another pass this time hooking into a 28 inch Butt and now I am excited because I have dinner on the table.
I end up leaving the day being 1/2 inch shy of limiting out and going home with a 26" and 28" Halibut. Overall it was a beautiful day and I am exited to go back out this next weekend.

When I got home, the first thing that I did was clean my catch. I was not sure how I wanted to prepare dinner but I was sure that I did not want to go shopping. Using ingredients that I currently owned, I was able to come up with a pretty awesome dish.

I lightly salted and peppered the halibut and pan seared it with olive oil. Placing my cooked catch on a bed of seasoned basmati rice and cooked asparagus and topping all with a Garlic Butter lemon parsley cream sauce that I was able to concoct quickly. Overall it was a very good quick dish and cannot wait to pick up some more this weekend and experiment with flavors some more.

Next time I will remember to take a picture of my catch, but I was burnt out from the sun and I completely forgot.

Pumpkin Update 7/7

Today is a big update for me in the world of growing "World Class Pumpkins". I am not really sure where to begin.
I called Pete Glasier and emailed him a picture of my pumpkin and he gave me the go ahead to pollinate during the "Golden time window" of July 1st-10th. Within two days of him giving me the go ahead, I have two female flowers coming up in the exact positions that I was hoping for (between 8 and 10 feet on the primary vine). You can recognize that it is a female flower by the small ball at the end of the flower. Before the flower has an opportunity to open up, I am going to cover it with a clear Tupperware container so that there is no chance of cross pollination. I will be cutting off a male counterpart and will be conducting a little self pollination to increase my chances for a successful pollination.
Overall the plant vegetation is coming into its own and growing larger and larger by the day. I am hoping to get a little more size out of it before all energy is focused on producing the fruit. For a world class pumpkins, it is said that they grow on an average 40 lbs a day (Truly Amazing).
I have also been able to successfully eradicate 5 dirty stinky flea ridden pieces of garbage gophers. The war is not over, but the battles have been swaying in favor of my cause, which is good news. And the fact that my pumpkin is still here, is a good sign (knock on wood).