Life in Pit Row

Trail ride to an abandoned gold mine

2021-12-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

Wow, has it really been almost 10 years since I've posted here? Well that's about to change!

I'm not sure if I've shared here before or not, but one of my hobbies is prospecting for gold. It's definitely not a money making endeavor but it's a fun way to get out in nature and explore. And it's always cool to see the shiny stuff in your pan at the end of the day.

At least once a year I try to take a week or so and go prospecting in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. Beautiful country over there. Lots of wildlife we don't get to see much on the west (wet) side of the state. It's pretty common to see big horn sheep wandering the hills around camp. Deer and wild turkey are often visitors in camp itself, and sometimes the free range cows wander through as well.

As a gold producing region there are plenty of active claims in the area, but lode mines are fairly rare. This year a group from camp decided to take a trail ride up to one of the abandoned mines in the area. We all loaded up in our trucks, side-by-side, quads, dirt bikes, whatever we had available and headed up the roads to the mine site.

Now I should mention that where we camp is down in a fairly steep valley, and the mine is up near the top of the ridge that runs to the south of camp. There's about a 1500 foot elevation change in just under 2 miles as the crow flies. Luckily the roads (or maybe they're better described as trails at some points) wind around but they're still pretty steep in some spots.

I won't lie, there were parts that I was holding on for dear life. Especially since I was just a passenger, not in control.

In this picture on the left you can see the road we came up just a little bit ago off in distance. The road definitely gains elevation quickly.

Here's a view of the hills and valleys from one of our rest stops. Luckily this day the smoke from the wild fires was pretty decent but you can still see the haze out there. A couple of days during the week the smoke was thick as fog and you wouldn't be able to see more than a couple hundred feet at this elevation.

Finally made it to the mine site. I know it's kind of hard to see in this picture, it's better if you zoom in. It's the black rectangle in the top center of the picture. Below it you can see the remains of the stamp mill they used to pulverize the ore to extract the gold.

Unfortunately this was the only picture of the mine that I was able to get. You see, in camp we get no cell phone coverage at all, being at the bottom of the valley. Usually it's a 10-15 minute drive down a pot-holed, wash-boarded gravel road to get to a place where you can make a phone call. So while we were at the top of the hill with coverage I chose to call my wife instead of immediately heading over to check out the mine like everyone else did. So by the time I'd finished talking to her everyone else had finished exploring the mine and were ready to go back. The mine shaft itself is gated off so you can't get inside so you there's not a whole lot of exploring you can do. However, I will definitely be back at some point to do some more looking around.

As one final parting shot, here is a panorama I took from the top of the hill. Our camp site is where the deeper valley on the left of the other side meets up with this ridge we're on, and it's only about a mile and a half as the crow flies from this spot. But 1500 feet lower down.

P.S. while talking to one of the other guys on the ride he told me about his Garmin In-Link Mini satellite communicator (Amazon Affiliate link). It's main use is to be able to send emergency distress calls and location information when you're in the back country and have an emergency, but he was telling me about how it's able to send text messages through the satellites. I might think about getting one for next year, so I'm able to at least send text messages to my wife without having to drive out of camp each day. Does anyone have experience with one of these devices? If so leave me a comment on how you like it please!

Thanks for stopping by!

Crabbing and Camping

2012-09-21T12:49:00.000-07:00

Well this last weekend we got a chance to get out of town and do a little camping and some crabbing on the coast. Not too many pictures, but I hope you enjoy what I was able to get between pulling crab pots.

Heading out early. Still a little cloudy but nice calm seas in Tillamook Bay.

Getting ready to throw pots

Cape Mears in the distance over Oceanview peninsula

Even the pelicans and seals wanted in on the action

The sun came out for a while...

... but then the weather turned and the wind started picking up. On top of that we started having engine trouble and decided to call it a day. We even got a Coast Guard escort back into the harbor, to make sure we were ok.

In all, it was a pretty good day of crabbing. We came back with about 22 keepers, in 3 or so hours, that's not too bad.

Here we all are cleaning the crabs and getting ready to cook them. Yes, we use the hatchet to split them in half, then clean out the guts before cooking them.

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing by the camp fire and just generally having a good time with friends.

Canadian Bacon

2012-09-11T12:53:00.000-07:00

Way back in July, for Independence Day, I had purchased a whole pork loin that I used part of for a stuffed pork roast. The rest of it has been sitting in my freezer since then. I decided that I needed to do something with it, and what could be better than bacon!?! Here in the U.S. bacon made from the loin is called Canadian Bacon, but in the rest of the world it's called Back Bacon, or just simply Bacon.

It's relatively easy to make, but requires some caution. Bacon is a cured product and as such requires the use of "cure" that is added to the meat. The cure does several things. First and foremost it reduces the chance of botulism by inhibiting the growth of the C. Botulinum spores. Second it gives meat that characteristic pink color of bacon and ham. Finally it changes the texture of the meat and flavor of the meat. Curing salts have traditionally been: Salt Peter (Potassium Nitrate), Sodium Nitrate or Sodium Nitrite. Salt Peter has generally fallen out of use as a cure ingredient, but both Sodium Nitrate and Sodium Nitrite are used today. Sodium Nitrite is by far the most common use in cures because it is fast acting. Sodium Nitrate can also be used as a cure, but it is slower acting, and as such tends to be used more for long-term curing projects like salami. Because both Nitrites and Nitrates are toxic when used in large amounts, you must be very careful to follow directions exactly when using them.

Today I'm going to use a product from Morton's, called Tender Quick, which despite it's name is not a product for tenderizing meat, but for curing meat. It contains both Sodium Nitrite and Sodium Nitrate in a salt carrier. It is used at a rate of 1 tablespoon per pound of meat.

I started off by cleaning most of the fat and silverskin off the loin. I couldnt' get it all, but that should be ok.

Then I weighed it. Almost exactly 2.5 pounds. This equates to 2.5 Tablespoons of Tender Quick. I measured this out, and added several other spices: granulated garlic, black pepper, turbinado sugar and a generous helping of Mad Hunky Meat's General Purpose Rub.

Then I gave it all a good mix

This rub was then applied to the loin. I did this over a clean cookie sheet, because you need to make sure all of the Tender Quick is evenly applied to the meat so you get the proper rate of cure. Once it was all rubbed in, I put the loin in a vacuum bag and added the rub that had fallen off to the bag too. Then I vacuum sealed it.

Now we need to give it time for the cure to work. The general consensus is 2 days per inch of meat. I like to add an extra day to this just to make sure the cure has made it all the way into the center. This hunk of meat was about 2 inches from the edge to the center, so that would be 5 days total (2x2)+1 = 5. During this curing time the meat must be kept between 36 and 40 degrees. Anything below 36 and the cure reaction is slowed down, and anything about 40 allows bacteria to grow at an increased rate. My fridge is set for 37 degrees and the loin will sit in there until the 5 days is up. I will massage it and flip it every day to make sure the rub/cure stays evenly distributed across the meat.

Well, it's been almost 3 weeks in the cure now. A little longer than I had planned, but life happens ya know? Anyway, This morning I rinsed the cure off the bacon, and here's how it looked.

A nice mahogany red color, and very firm. As is usually suggested, I did a little fry test on a couple pieces to check how salty it was. It had great flavor, but it was a little on the salty side. I attribute this to the extended time in the cure, plus the fact that both the tenderquick and the mad hunky rub have salt in them. To combat the extra saltiness, I put the bacon into a bowl and filled it with cold water and let it soak for half an hour to draw out the salt. After that, another fry test proved to be right on the money as far as saltiness goes.

So, without further ado, I pulled out the smoker and fired up the A-Maze-N smoker with a mix of hickory and pecan dust, and let it cold smoke for about two hours. Then I gradually increased the temperature of the smoker over the course of 8 hours until the internal temperature of the bacon hit 150. Well actually it made it up to 156 before I could pull it out, but that shouldn't make too much of a difference. Just after coming off the smoker:

I couldn't wait for it to cool and I sliced off a couple pieces to try.

So delicious. Once it's completely cooled I'll slice it up and package it for storage. This was a great experiment that ended with a great tasting product. Definitely something I will be making again.

Fresh blueberry pie

2012-07-31T10:09:00.000-07:00

Pineapple, blueberries and strawberries. My favorite fruits hands down. When my wife and I bought our current house a little over a year ago I was pleasantly surprised to find a blueberry bush in the back of the house. It didn't get too many berries last summer, but this year the weather has been very cooperative and it's been going crazy.

Over the weekend I pick quite a few berries, and had enough to make pie. Roughly six cups, more or less, of some very large blueberries. Most of them seem to be about half an inch in diameter. And oh so sweet. Washed and cleaned of all stems and leaves, etc.

Now, being that free time is at a premium lately, I opted for the cheap route and bought a pre-made pie shell. I couldn't find any frozen pie crust, only crusts that were already formed into those cheap aluminum pie plates. Never again will I do that. It would be fine for a bottom-crust-only pie, but trying to thaw out the other pie, remove it from the pie tin and flatten it out and use it as a top crust was impossible. The dough was so thin it would tear just by me touching it. In the future I will make crust from scratch, no matter how much free time I have or don't have.

The ingredients for the filling were super simple. Sugar, flour, cinnamon, a little lime juice and cut up chunks of butter. Mix the sugar, flour and cinnamon together with the berries, and pour into the pie crust. Sprinkle with lime juice, and add butter.

I should have mixed this up a little better, there was plenty of left over flour mixture that didn't stick to the berries. I just added it on top. I should have layered it or mixed it better to begin with.

As I previously said, the top crust was a bear. I couldn't get it do anything without ripping it. So I did the best I could with it. Not very pretty looking, but it'll work. Added foil around the edges so it wouldn't burn.

Into a 425 degree oven for 35-45 minutes, removing the foil for the last 15 minutes. When done the crust should be nice and browned and the juices should be bubbling from the cuts in the top. Cool on a rack for a minimum of 2 hours before cutting.

While it doesn't look very pretty due to the tears and holes in the crust, it sure tastes great.

As you can see in this picture, some of the flour mixture didn't get mixed in enough and ended up being like chunks of streusel in the filling. Which is still good! In all, this was a great easy summer time dessert, and a great use of my blueberries.

Ingredients

6 cups blueberries
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp lime juice
1 Tbsp butter, cut into small pieces (optional)
Pie crust for top and bottom

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees
Wash and clean blueberries
Mix sugar, flour and cinnamon in a large bowl
Add blueberries and mix well
Add pie crust to the bottom of a pie tin, pour in blueberry mixture, if extra flour mixture is left over, pour on top of blueberries
Sprinkle with lime juice
If using butter, add on top of blueberry mixture
Add top crust, crimping and folding the edge. Cut 4 large slits in crust to vent
Using 2-3 inch wide strips of aluminum foil, cover the edge of the pie to prevent burning
Bake at 425 for 35-45 minutes, removing aluminum foil for the last 15 minutes. Pie is done when the crust is golden brown and juice bubbles from the slits in the crust.
Cool for at least 2 hours before cutting and serving.

Cinnabon cinnamon rolls

2012-03-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

Mmmm. I love me some cinnamon rolls, and other than my grandma's recipe I think my favorite have to be from Cinnabon. Just something about the taste and texture, I could eat 20 of them if I didn't think my heart would explode. So a while back I was watching Top Secret Recipe on CMT (great show by the way) and they were doing the show on Cinnabon cinnamon rolls. If you haven't seen the show the premise is the host, Todd Wilbur, goes to famous restaurants (KFC, Outback Steakhouse, P.F. Chang's, etc.) and challenges them that he can duplicate their recipe in 36 hours. At the end of the show they do a blind taste test with his version and the original version to see if the tasters can tell the difference. He usually gets pretty close, but hardly ever actually wins. I think that may be a setup though.

Anyway, I went and got his recipe for Cinnabon and decided I would try to make it. However there were two things on his list that I couldn't find locally, and didn't feel like ordering. First is a special cinnamon, I suppose had I looked at a specialty foods store or such I might have found it, but I went ahead and just used regular old cinnamon from the grocery store. The second was Xantham Gum or Guar Gum. Apparently this is used in the filling to keep it from oozing out when it bakes. I couldn't find any of that either, so I just did without.

Other than that, it's a pretty straight forward recipe. Mix the dough the night before and let it proof in the fridge for at least 5-6 hours. Mine went closer to 11 hours though. In the morning, punch it down and roll it out to a rectangle shape, cover it with the filling and roll it up, then cut it into individual rolls. Let the rolls sit in the oven (turned off) with a pot full of boiling water for an hour to rise, then you bake them.

Here's mine ready to go in the oven to rise

Once they've risen, bake them for about 15-20 minutes, rotating once. While they are baking, mix up the frosting. The frosting is cream cheese based frosting, with just a hint of lemon. Once they are done baking, frost them with the frosting.

As you can see in that picture, the filling ran out a lot. I think next time I definitely need to find the xantham gum.

Mmmm.... yummy gooey deliciousness.

Overall these were great cinnamon rolls. Light and fluffy, good cinnamon flavor. There are a couple things I would change for next time however. First as I mention would be to find and use the xantham gum so the filling doesn't run out as bad. Next, the frosting didn't have quite enough cream cheese flavor for me. The recipe called for 6 oz of butter and 4 oz of cream cheese for the frosting. I think next time I'll swap the two and use 4 oz butter and 6 oz of cream cheese. Finally, even though the recipe says to frost the rolls as soon as they come out of the oven, I think I'll wait for them to cool a while first next time. This time the frosting just melted, which is not too bad, but by the time it came to take the rolls out of the baking dish and serve them, all the frosting had run down the center and a lot of it was left in the pan. So either wait until they are cooler to frost them, or immediately remove them from the baking pan to the serving plate and then frost them. Not sure which way I'll try, but no matter what I'll definitely be making these again.

Apple Cider Molasses

2012-03-02T09:39:00.000-08:00

Apple Cider Molasses

I saw a post about this a while back on a site that I frequent. It looked really good, so I thought I would give it a shot. Basically what you do is take apple cider, the good stuff, not the "from concentrate" junk, and boil it down until you have 1/7th the volume. So if you started with 7 gallons, you'd end up with 1 gallon of Apple Molasses.

While at the store the other day, I saw this:

So I picked up a half gallon figuring it'd be great to try out for the molasses.

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon so with nothing better to do I put it in a pot and let it boil away. I think it took right about 3 hours to cook down. If I did my math right, 1/7th of a half gallon works out to just over 1 cup. When I had finished I had about a cup left. I think I probably should have let it go a little longer, since the consistency was more like warm maple syrup then molasses, but the taste.... WOW! It's almost like biting into a fresh apple.

The day before we had picked up some cured/smoked pork chops from the butcher while we were there getting our 1/2 side of beef, so since apples and pork go so well together we decided that we'd try the molasses on the pork chops for dinner. We cooked the pork chops like any other pork chop, browned on both sides in the skillet then finished in the oven. Once they came out we drizzled the hot molasses over top. I have to say they were outstanding! The combination of the smoked pork chop with the apple flavor went so well together I wish I had bought 3-times as many. I could eat them for dinner every night.

Up next, I'm going to make some more molasses and try to modify a molasses cookie recipe and make some apple cookies. Stay tuned for that one.

Haven't posted in a while

2012-01-18T09:27:00.000-08:00

Well yeah it's been a while since I've posted anything on here. Too much going on right now to post anything useful. I had plans to make some jerky last weekend, but things got really hectic quick and I didn't get a chance to. Maybe this weekend I can finish it up.

Cold smoked cheese

2011-12-05T12:34:00.000-08:00

This weekend I was down at the coast and made a side trip over to the Tillamook Cheese factory to get some fresh cheese and squeaky cheese. What's squeaky cheese? you're probably asking. It's simply cheddar cheese curd. It's called squeaky cheese because of the texture, when you eat it, it squeaks on you teeth. Well unless of course you haven't brushed your teeth lately :-) Anyway, it's only available at the factory because it only has a shelf life of a couple days before it dries out and gets nasty. So I picked up a couple packs of curds and a few mini-loafs of my favorite flavors.

Here's what's going on the smoker...

Curds, Garlic Chili Pepper Cheddar and Garlic White Cheddar.Sorry about the mini-loafs being cut, I just couldn't wait to get home and had to sample them on the road.

I've had an A-Maze-N smoker for a while now, and this seemed like a great time to try it. If you haven't seen an A-Maze-N smoker before, it's a cold smoke generator that is built like a maze and uses wood "dust" to generate up to 10 hours of cold smoke. I haven't had a chance to use mine yet, as I said, so this is my trial run on it.

I chose pecan dust for this trial and filled up 3 of the 5 channels will dust, since I figured I'd only smoke this for about 2 hours and didn't need a full load. The fourth channel is just spillover and not full.

I loaded it up and got a nice cherry going with my butane torch. Once that was done I loaded up the cheese and a handful of curds onto my modified splatter shield that I use to smoke things that are too small to fit on the smoker grates.

Into the smoker they go....

This is being done in my Bandera smoker, and I think it should work pretty good as far as keeping things cold. With the A-Maze-N smoker in the side fire box, it should be able to dissipate most of the heat by the time it reaches the cheese in the top of the smoke chamber. So far so good, it's been in for about 30 minutes and the temp is holding at 48-49 degrees, which is actually 1 degree colder than it was when I first put the temp probe in.

After 2.5 hours of smoke, here's how the cheese looked.

I sampled a piece of the squeaky cheese, and it had a nice amount of smoke. But it was really harsh, like kissing someone that's just taken a drag on a cigarette. But that wasn't unexpected. For some reason when you smoke cheese it has a really harsh smoke flavor to it, but it will mellow out if you let it age for about a week or so. I decided that these had had enough smoke and pulled them out of the smoker. In 2.5 hours I had burned just over 1/2 of one of the channels in the A-Maze-N smoker.

I wanted to save the rest of it (it'll soak up moisture really quick if left out and become unusable), so I knocked the ash and the burning wood out of the tray and I'm letting the rest sit for a bit. Once I feel comfortable that it's not smoldering anymore I'll pour it back into the zip-top bag with the rest of the wood dust.

Here's the finished product.

From here, it got sealed up in the vacuum sealer and will sit in the fridge for a week to mellow out. I can't wait to try it.

Death Dusted Pumpkin Seeds

2011-11-09T10:52:00.000-08:00

Habanero Death Dust Pumpkin Seeds

Death Dusted Pumpkin Seeds

Awhile ago Oakridge BBQ offered up a limited time release of a special rub they make, called Habanero Death Dust. Now, any of you that know me know I like things with some heat to it, so I decided to give this stuff a try. I sent in my order and a few days later... package #20 of the limited run of 150 showed up on my door step.

Normally, even though I like heat, I steer away from anything "habanero" as it just means "heat" but not a lot of flavor. A little finger tip sample of this showed that it was different though. While it had some nice heat to it, there were also some nice subtle flavors that gave it an overall pleasing taste. Even my cat seemed to like it. Well at least until he made that funny face and ran around the room and ended up sitting in the corner licking his lips!

So I spent some time trying to decide what to try this out on, and being Halloween time, I figured why not try some Death Dusted Pumpkin Seeds? Now, the downside to this plan is the pumpkins. For whatever reason the guts of the pumpkins are my kryptonite. Just the smell of it makes me gag. Somehow I was able to talk my lovely wife into gutting the pumpkins for me. Thanks Honey! Otherwise this experiment probably never would have happened.

After she removed all the seeds from the two pumpkins we had, I gave them a good rinse and then spread them out on some paper towels to dry for about an hour or so. Then I placed them in a medium bowl, and added about a tablespoon of olive oil and gave them a good shake and stir to coat them in the oil. I added 2 teaspoons of Death Dust, one at a time, and gave things a good stir to mix it all up. They didn't quite get as evenly coated as I wanted to, but it all worked out in the end. The oven was fired up to 350 degrees, and I got out my trusty old baking sheet. Well actually I grabbed the new one since it's not as scratched up. I gave the sheet a good coat of butter, yes, real butter, to keep things from sticking and then spread the seeds out in a even layer.

Into the oven they went, and baked for about 25 minutes. At about the 15 minute mark I gave them a good stir and then back in the oven until they were done.

After cooking I let them cool for a little bit and then gave them a taste test. Hmmm. Not exactly what I expected. Most of the subtle flavors of the Death Dust were gone. Just tasted like plain roasted pumpkin seeds, and some nice heat on the back end. I was a little disappointed to tell you the truth. Maybe I didn't use enough Dust. But oh well, I like the taste of plain roasted seeds and these had some heat to them, so not all was lost. I put them in a zip-top bag and let them sit on the counter. The next day I grabbed another handful, and WOAH, what a difference! That great flavor was back and the pumpkin seeds were awesome! With a really nice heat kick at the end. I'm not sure what effect letting them sit overnight had, but they are definitely much better. Maybe when they were still warm the temperature was covering some of the flavors. Whatever it was, these are really good now. My only wish is I had a couple more pumpkins to make more seeds, as these won't last long!

Bacon Brittle

2011-11-02T09:53:00.000-07:00

The other day I was perusing one of my favorite blogs, Cowgirl's Country Life and I saw a recipe for Bacon Brittle. While I had some left over bacon from my Halloween party this weekend, so I decided to give it a try.

Her recipe is...

1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2-3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup chopped pecans
1 cup cooked bacon bits (about 12 ounces uncooked bacon)

I didn't have any pecans, but I did have some smoked almonds that I made a while ago. They were a little over smoked, and on the verge of being burnt. Not really so good for eating, but I kept them around for just an occasion like this. I figured they'd go good in this.

The first step is to add the water, sugar and corn syrup in a medium pot and stir over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture boils. Then add a candy thermometer and heat over high heat without stirring until it reaches 290 degrees. I think my thermometer must be on the fritz or my technique sucks, because by the time it hit about 260 degrees the mixture was a sticky gooey, lava-like blob and was starting to burn. So I decided to pull it off the heat and continue with the rest of the recipe.

Remove the pan from the heat and quickly stir in the rest of the ingredients. When it stops foaming, pour it into a well greased cookie sheet, and spread it thin with a silicone or grease spatula. Cool for at least 10 minutes and then break into pieces.

Here's what mine looked like finished.

(click to zoom)

It was pretty dark in color, and it was that way right from the beginning. I think it's because I used dark brown sugar. Next time I'll try it with light brown sugar, or even just regular sugar. Also, next time I'm going to cook the bacon just a little bit more. There are pieces in there that are not quite crispy and it takes away from the "brittle" experience.

Overall, it's very good, and I'll definitely make it again.

Vacation at the coast

2011-10-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

Way back in July (seems like years ago already) my family and I spent a week camping at the north Oregon coast, and I'm just now getting around to making a post about it, so please forgive me for my tardiness.

We stayed at Fort Stevens state park and spent lots of time exploring the different forts and museums in the area.

Fort Stevens was built during the civil war to protect the mouth of the Columbia river and was in use until after WWII. We also ventured across the river to the Washington side and visited Fort Columbia, Fort Steven's counter part on the north side of the river. Had a great time, even though the weather wasn't the best.

Fort Stevens holds the honor of being the only main-land military installation to receive hostile fire during WWII. In June 1942 a Japanese submarine fired 17 shells at Battery Russell, but caused no damage except taking out the backstop at the baseball field and several telephone cables.

My youngest step-son Mattie playing in a jeep at the museum at Ft. Stevens

Loading Mattie into a cannon

Looking down on the West Battery @ Ft. Stevens from the Commander's Station

Walking up to the Commander's Station

In the commander's station

Back side of the cmdr's station

Looking over to Battery Pratt from the cmdr's station

On top of Battery Pratt. On the left is where the disappearing gun would be. I apparently didn't get a picture of it but they have a replica of the gun in there. It was down out of view from the river, and would pop up to fire, then drop back down for reloading and to keep the crews safe.

Inside battery pratt. The rails on the ceiling were used to haul the ammunition from the storage rooms over to the pulleys where they'd be hoisted up to the crew on top for loading.

Closeup of a sign at Battery 245 @ Ft. Stevens

Mattie posing in the tool room inside btry 245

Steven playing zombie in the Shell room of btry 245

Mattie posing at the rifle range @ ft stevens

better view of the rifle range. This is the "down range" side where the crews would hoist up and take down the targets.

The boys posing on a huge anchor outside the Columbia River maritime museum.

Boys playing on a small beach as a Bar Pilot ship comes back into the marina

The Astoria Column above the city of Astoria.

Yes, I did haul my fat butt all the way up to the top. My legs were jello for a good two hours afterwards! lol. Looking south from the top of the column. Just outside the picture to the right is Ft. Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark spent 106 days from December 1805 to March 1806.

A pair of Bald Eagles flew past as we were on top of the column

We also stopped by the "Goonie" house in Astoria, if anyone remembers the movie The Goonies from the 80s

On to Fort Columbia on the Washington side of the river.

Panorama of Battery Murphy @ ft columbia

Looking up at the barracks and mess hall from btry Ord

Back side of Battery Ord

the boys playing "jail" inside the battery

Coming up from inside Battery Murphy, gun emplacement on the left

One of the replica guns at Battery 246

Mattie posing with the gun at Btry 246

We also stopped by one of the many light houses while up in Washington. I'm surprised I didn't get an overall picture of the lighthouse, but here's one from the base looking up.

Me and the boys posing at the base

The lightkeeper's station

Me with the two fuel storage houses from back when they used oil burning lamps in the lighthouse

Looking south from the lighthouse. You can see the north and south jetties of the Columbia river in the distance.

And of course being at the beach we couldn't help but do some playing in the water.

Looking south on Indian Beach. For you "Twilight" movie fans (my wife is a huge fan) you may recognize this. This is the beach they filmed the surfing scenes on, and where Jacob tells Bella about the Cold Ones.

Well, that's all I have for now. In all it was a great camping trip, and I can't wait to do it again soon!

Saucijzenbroodjes (sausage rolls)

2011-10-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick easy Dutch recipe for you. Saucijzenbroodjes are just sausage rolled up in puff pastry and baked. They use uncased sausage, but the alternate version, called Worstbroodjes, uses small cased sausage. In this version I'm making Saucijzenbroodjes.

The original recipe calls for ground beef/pork mix, with Mace, Nutmeg and black pepper for seasoning. But I was lazy so I just used some Sage flavored Jimmy Dean sausage. This simple recipe only requires 3 things: Sausage, Puff Pastry and an Egg.

Once the Puff Pastry is thawed out, cut it into squares. I cut one sheet into 9 equal(ish) squares.

Then you take a small piece of sausage, and roll it into a "log" shape. I always have a tendency to stuff too much sausage in them, as you'll see later it doesn't really hurt anything, but they don't look quite as good.

Once they're filled, fold the pastry over, and seal the edges with a fork, and put them on a baking sheet.

When you have them all crimped and put on a baking sheet, mix a little water with the egg and beat it well, then brush it over the rolls and coat them well. Be sure not to drip any on the sheet, as it makes a mess when baking. As you can see, I'm not real good at not dripping.

Then, simply pop them into a 350 oven for about half an hour... until the tops are nice and brown. As you can see, I over filled this again, and they blew out the side. Still nice and tasty, but don't look quite as good.

Eet Smakelijk! (That'd be the Dutch version of Bon Appetit!)

Makin' pizza.

2011-10-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

Home Made BBQ Pulled Pork Pizza, from scratch

Gosh it's been quite a while since I've posted anything on here, so I guess I should start again.

I decided to try my hand at making pizza the other day. After much searching online and perusing dozens of recipes I decided on one from Food Network's Alton Brown.

16 ounces all-purpose flour, plus extra for peel and rolling
1 envelope instant or rapid rise yeast
1 tablespoon kosher salt
10 ounces warm water, approximately 105 degrees F
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus 2 teaspoons for bowl
1 tablespoon malted barley syrup

All pretty standard stuff, except the malted barley. I had to go to a natural food store to get it, and it was pretty expensive. Next time I'm going to the home-brew supply store, it's much cheaper there, and many different options for it. Anyway, I didn't have instant yeast so I just used regular active dry yeast. I think I need to get some new yeast though, since it never did rise very much. The yeast is almost a year beyond it's expiration date, so probably time to pitch it and get new stuff anyway.

The next stumble was I couldn't find the dough hook for my mixer and ended up kneading it by hand. That was a ton of work. Took me almost 45 minutes of kneading to get the "baker's window" to form in the dough. Guess my kneading technique is pretty rusty and I should do it more often!

Once it was kneaded, I let it rise in the over with just the light on for about an hour. As I said I don't think the yeast was very healthy since it hadn't quite doubled in that time. At that point, I punched down the dough and rolled it into three balls and put it in the fridge overnight.

Now we get to the fun part. Are you ready for some pictures? I finally have some! Here is the dough just out of the fridge, warming up while I get everything else ready.

The pizza was a bbq pulled pork pizza, with some left over pulled pork, bacon, sauteed onions, pineapple and pepperoncini. Mmmm. Drooling already.

I took about four strips of bacon and cut them into small pieces and fried them until just a little crispy. I also cut up about half of a red onion into thin slices and fried them in the bacon grease until just translucent.

Up next was rolling out the dough. I think I should have let the dough sit out a little more and relax, because it was still a little "springy" when I tried to roll it out. I used a combination of rolling out with a pin and hand-tossing. This was the first time I've ever tried to hand toss a pizza and I sure wasn't very good at it, but at least none of it ended up on the kitchen floor, and I didn't tear it. I was aiming for about 1/4" thick, but it didn't quite get there. It wasn't very even either. Some of the first one was almost paper thin, while towards the edges it was more like 3/8" thick. Oh well, it's a learning experience right? Here's the first one after rolling, I haven't yet tried tossing it. Now it's time for the toppings.

I started with a little bit of barbecue sauce. I just used store-bought bottled stuff, since I didn't have any of mine handy. I think it was Sweet Baby Ray's original. In hind sight, I was a little light on the sauce and it could have used more. Not a whole lot more, but probably half again as much as I did. In the finished pizza you couldn't really taste the BBQ sauce at all. On top of the BBQ sauce I put fair amount of left-over pulled pork and the sauteed onions. Then it got a light sprinkling of shredded "Italian" cheese. I can't remember exactly what the blend was, but most likely Mozzarella and Provolone, maybe something else in there. It was a store bought pre-shredded pack. On top of that went the bacon and pineapple pieces and the pepperoncini slices and it all got covered with a little more cheese. Time to get the oven up to speed and bake these babys!

For our recent wedding my wife and I were given a pampered chef pizza stone, so this was a great time to try it out. It went onto the bottom rack in the cold oven, and the oven was set to 550. Took it about half an hour to get up to temp, but that's ok, I was busy making the pizzas while this was happening. Once everything was ready it was time to get the pizzas into the oven. The recipe said to use a pizza peel or the back of a cookie sheet. Well not having a peel I went the cookie sheet route. Next time I'm definitely getting a peel. Despite heavily flouring the back of the cookie sheet, it was almost impossible to get the pizza off and onto the stone. I eventually got it done and only lost one big piece of pork. Oh well. 7 minutes at 550 proved to be just right. Again not having a peel, taking the pizza out consisted of using a spatula to lift up a corner and sliding a plate underneath it while sort of shuffling it onto the plate with the spatula. Not the easiest, but it worked. A peel is in my near future though.

In all the pizzas were excellent, with a nice crisp, yet chewy crust. The only thing lacking was the BBQ sauce flavor. These are definitely on the list to make again.

She made me do it....

2011-01-25T12:16:00.000-08:00

So Jeri (my fiancée) noted that I hadn't posted anything on here in over a year. So....

This one's for you baby!

Life's been a little too busy lately to post much on here. Lots of changes in the past year. Jeri and I got engaged, we're going to be married August 27th. I've sold my house and moved in with my honey. We our buying a new house and should be moving in in the next couple weeks. Can't wait to get out of that cramped apartment. 800 sq. ft. is just too small for two adults and two kids.

Let's see... work is crazy, both my day-time job and my various side jobs. It's the off season for racing so at least that's not taking my time, but we should start gearing up for the new season soon.

And last but not least... tomorrow is my sweetie's birthday! Happy Birthday baby!

Vacation pics

2009-11-02T12:03:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a very long time since I've been on here, sorry about that. Summer has been pretty darn busy. I've finally started to upload my pictures from my cruise, you can check them out at http://vang.smugmug.com/Travel/Magic/

I'm uploading them as I finish them, so check back often.

Thanks!

Been a while

2009-08-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

It sure has been a while since I dropped in here. Just wanted to let anyone who actually reads this know that I'm still here. Just been really busy since I got back from my trip. I still haven't even finished converting the pictures from my trip, but rest assured I'll get them done and uploaded and add my notes from the trip too.

Hope everyone is enjoying the summer.

I'm back!

2009-07-07T11:41:00.000-07:00

Well I'm finally back home from my trip around the Mediterranean. I wasn't able to update my blog because internet access was pretty expensive (they charge by the minute, usually around 50 cents per) so I chose to spend my money on other things. I did write a journal though, so I'll have to post those entries on here once I get a chance.

I also took somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 pictures so I need to weed out the bad ones and get them posted online for you to see.

The trip was excellent, I had a wonderful time and saw many great places. There are definitely a couple places that I'm going to have to return to soon.

It's good to be back though!

Sure is quiet

2009-05-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

Well, sorry I haven't really posted much in the last week. It's been pretty hectic around here with work and trying to get everything ready for my cruise. Still have lots of little loose ends to try and tie up before I leave thursday.

You ever get the feeling like you're running around like crazy but not managing to get anything accomplished? That's how I feel right now. I'll get started on one task and then realize that I need to do something else before I forget and then it's a while before I get back to the original task.

Feeling kind of overwhelmed with it all. I'll be glad when I'm on the plan and going. At least then I'll know there's nothing more I can do, and it's time to just relax.

Beach Trip!

2009-05-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

Well, the mercury was supposed to hit close to 90 in the valley this weekend, so we decided it was a good time to head for the coast. We is me, my girlfriend Jeri, my best friend Mike and his wife and 5 y/o son. So we all loaded up in my truck and headed for the central coast where it was supposed to be mild, though windy. It turned out to be both those things.

First stop was Depot Bay, home of the worlds smallest navigable harbor. This place is great when there's a storm coming it. The waves crash against the rocks and shoot water spouts hundreds of feet in the air and up over the highway. Pretty calm today though. Lots of fishing charters and whale watching boats come in and out of this harbor, and we stuck around and watched for a while then headed further south to play on the beach.

A few miles down highway 101 we stopped at Beverly Beach state park so my buddies son could play in the sand. Yes, it was windy there, just look at my hair!

After having enough playing in the sand we headed on down the road to Newport, where we did some window shopping and browsing in the stores along the historic bayfront. Then we headed to the other side of town and had a great dinner in a restaurant overlooking the ocean. In my 34 years of living here I've never seen a whale spout until saturday. We're just catching the tail end of the whales spring migration from the warm waters in baja mexico up to the feeding grounds in alaska. I finally saw a whale spout as we were sitting eating dinner looking out over the water. No one believed me though until they saw it too. There were at least three of them and one was pretty close in, no more than 50 feet off shore I'd say.

Once we'd stuffed ourselves with dinner we high-tailed it out to the Yaquina Head lighthouse to watch the sunset. Spectacular views from there.

This little cove had a few harbor seals with new pups, but they weren't very active at this time of day.

Yaquina Head Lighthouse

Sunset

Me and my girl (can you tell it's windy?)

Two weeks and counting

2009-05-14T11:17:00.000-07:00

Well, in two weeks and 4 hours I'll be boarding the plane, headed for Seattle, London and eventually Barcelona. It's starting to finally sink in that it's actually going to happen. Looks like I'm going to need to get some new luggage, because my old stuff doesn't fit within the new size rules and doesn't have TSA accessible locks. Oh well. Time for an upgrade anyway. And what's the deal with charging fees for checked baggage these days? I know it's only $25, but still that adds up. They'll find any way to get your money I guess.

In a way though I'd rather have them do that then just add the extra cost onto the ticket. That way if I don't need to check baggage I'm not paying for it.

So, since there will be a couple formal nights on the cruise I need either a tux or a suit to wear. I inquired about renting a tux on the ship, but apparently the clothier in Barcelona doesn't have much selection and I'm out of luck on that front. And I'm certainly not going to buy, or even rent a tux from home for that long. So I bought my first suit last night. I can't believe I've made it 34 years so far without needing a suit. Lol. It's funny, everyone says I look good in it, but I still feel like a monkey.

I feel naked

2009-05-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

I left my cell phone at home today. It's funny how you feel so disconnected without it. How did we ever survive without cell phones? lol. Oh well.

Licenses and fees

2009-05-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

Well I finally got around to getting my hunting/fishing license for the year (yeah, I know the year's almost half over, what can I say, I'm a slacker). I was surprised at the cost. Almost $75 for a combo fishing/hunting license, shellfish license (gotta have crabs!), and salmon/steelhead/sturgeon tag. And that doesn't include any deer tags I might get later this year. Blah. Guess I better get my butt in gear and actually use the licenses this time. I think last year I only went fishing once.

This weekend's race...

2009-05-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

Well after being rained out last weekend, we wanted to get some racing in, but our series is not scheduled to race again until may 30th. So we decided to load up and head 3 hours south to a track that was running a class we could "compete" in. Now, I put compete in quotes because the class we run in is a crate motor class... we go buy a sealed motor from GM and that's it, you can't do any mods to it. Maybe 350 HP on a good day. The class we were running in this weekend is the same chassis, but an open motor class. Some of those guys are running full aluminum block 800+ HP motors that cost 30 grand.

Anyway, it was a pretty good weekend. Had a couple of mishaps. The fuel line got tangled in the axle during hot laps and yanked it clean out of the fuel cell. Got that repaired just in time for qualifying. Turned in a time that was almost a full second faster than our best at that track last year, and landed us in 13th place, out of 17. Not bad for bringing a knife to a gun fight.

The main was going alright, pretty much outclassed the whole way, but we were holding our own. Managed to make it up to 7th place by the time a yellow flew with 5 to go. Mostly due to cars wrecking out (two cars completely flipped) but we were still holding off and passing some of the slower guys. Coming into turn 3 with the white flag flying we hit a big bump in the upper groove and knocked the battery out of it's tray and disconnected the positive cable, which shut the car down instantly. So we coasted across the white and finished 3 laps down in 10th place.

Not bad for a crate motor against the big boys, and we think we knocked all the gremlins out, which was the point of the whole night. Plus my driver says the car is hooked up better than it ever has before, so we're right on track with the setup this year.

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone

2009-05-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

Not quite sure why we as Americans celebrate a "mexican" holiday so religiously, I guess it's true we'll use any excuse to party and drink. Enjoy everyone.

Rained out

2009-05-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

During the summer months I'm crew chief for our racing team, Keevan Motorsports. We run a Dirt Late Model in the Warriors of Dirt series. After spending the winter repairing damage from last year and building a new body we were supposed to take the car out this weekend for it's first shake down of the year. Unfortunately the Oregon weather didn't want to cooperate with us.

After raining most of the week, and off and on all saturday morning the track management cancelled the race at about 11 am. It's kind of a mixed blessing, we weren't totally ready, still had a few minor things to button up on the car, but those could have been done at the track after checking in. Talk about cutting it close though. Luckily this wasn't a points race for us, so it didn't hurt us any by missing it.

The down side is, I'm leaving for Europe at the end of the month and won't be back until the 4th of July, and our next scheduled race is not until after I leave. So we're going to have to try to find another track that our car fits the rules to run at before then so we can break in the car and make sure everything is setup right.