Kathi Carpe Cyprinus carpio

Back in October Kathi and I were going to take a weeks vacation at Woods Canyon Lake. Due to her Mothers illness, that didn't happen (I'm not bitter). In preparation for this, (among other things) Kathi bought a state fishing license, so she could try fishing, and help me catch some crayfish, (must have a state license for this) on the trip we didn't take (I'm not bitter).

Now that summer is FINALLY coming to an end. We have had a couple of weekends that were rather cool. The first weekend we went out Kathi (who hasn't fished in almost 20 years) in her excitement at getting a bite, either nearly ripped the fishes lips off, or (if she had hooked one) would have launched it across the park. So needless to say (though she got some bites) she did not succeed in her efforts to land a fish. On that Trip I caught 3 Carp. I do not remember if Chris caught anything.

The next trip was not much better, I think I caught one, and Kathi caught none. I think Chris caught one.

On this trip I caught a small Bass using a rattle trap (on my second cast) which I released.
Kathi insisted on taking my picture with it.

The real fun began when after about an hour of waiting, Kathi got a bite, I could tell right away it was a pretty good sized one. At first she started to panic because it was putting up quite a fight, I told her to set the hook and she did without hurling it's lips across the park. Then she said "aren't you going to help me?", no! (if you want credit for it you have to reel it in). Her drag wasn't set quite right so I reached over and modified it so the fish could get some slack without getting off the hook. The fight only lasted a few minutes with Kathi saying "I don't want it to be mad at me" (she feared it would come out of the water cussing and bite her). Once she got it close to shore, Chris was able to get it in a net. It weighed 7.5 pounds. In order to get a picture of it and her, I gave her some rubberized gloved and she went to pick it up, causing it to start flapping about, which caused Kathi to make a weird freakout noise. I took her picture,
and she released it (again making a weird scream). We stayed for about another hour, we would have stayed longer but it started getting hot. No one else caught anything.

Aspersing Asparagus

Some of you may or may not know that Kathi was recently diagnosed "Insulin resistant". She was told to eat healthier and exercise. So in an attempt at expanding our diet and to eat "healthier" we have been experimenting with Asparagus.

Mind you this was not something we were looking forward to as we both had experiences with this so called vegetable when we were younger and neither of us has really touched it since. In my case my mother made me eat it when I was very young and I nearly barfed. Several months ago while at Karen's house she served Asparagus, and taking a "no thank you" serving I tried it and pronounced it "edible" (this had nothing to do with Karen or her recipe).

To ease us into this I looked up some recipes that we might possibly be able to tolerate.

First up was Rachel Ray's Bacon Wrapped Asparagus (what can go wrong with a recipe that includes BACON).

This is pretty simple, coat several sprigs of asparagus with extra virgin olive oil and pepper, wrap with bacon and bake or grill.

First impression:
There was practically no flavor from the asparagus. The asparagus did not taste like bacon, and the bacon did not taste like asparagus. Asparagus taste like.... asparagus. The closest thing to it would be a mixture of grass and very, very, very...... very mild broccoli.

Next up Alton Browns asparagus and mushroom risotto.

I never had risotto before, it takes a rather long time to make.

First Impression:
Once again "is there asparagus in this?" The risotto was pretty good but next time I will leave out the white wine, asparagus, and lemon zest. The portobello mushrooms were extremely good.

and finally pasta salad with portobello mushrooms, grape tomatoes, and asparagus. This is a Paula Dean recipe.

First impression:
What's the point of putting asparagus in this? The recipe as written was pretty bland. I had to spice it up with some zesty Italian dressing and extra red wine vinegar. The salad otherwise was very good, next time I will add some red bell peppers, cucumber and feta cheese (leaving out the asparagus).

Conclusions:

If asparagus is put in front of me in the future I will eat it, but I won't go out of my way to use it. It's relatively expensive and brings nothing to the recipes it is put in. Asparagus is boring and bland. How my mother made it taste terrible I will never know. Like zucchini recipes, asparagus recipes were invented to dispose of the offending item with out actually throwing it away.

It does have one interesting side effect....

Time to Photoshop

I'm bored....

So it's time to photoshop.
Today's Victim is Eric.

Eric's Shop of Horrors.
Hey... What do you want for 20 minutes of work.

Eric and the holy Grail!
Yeah... Yeah... Another 20 minutes.
American Pie anyone?

OK, I'll stop now.

THE GREAT STORM OF 2008

Queue ominous music....

Last night here in Phoenix at about 21:30 a couple of huge storm rolled through the valley. Winds were measured at 85 to 90 miles per hour (officially) and at 100 mph (unofficially). The first storm passed just barely to the south of us and dropped 1/2 inch hail. It also knocked several branches off of our pine tree in the front yard.
Our power went out for about a half an hour. When power came back on I checked out the Weather channel and found that another storm was heading right for us. We went to bed and the second storm hit some time after I went to sleep. It knocked out power again at some point. I got up arround 00:00 and called SRP they were aware of the outage. I went back to bed. I had a 700 watt inverter connected to a truck battery to power a fan so I could sleep. At around 05:00 I woke up again and power was still out. I called SRP again and they said power would be out until about noon. I got up and deployed my 3000 watt Coleman generator (you do have one as well, right???). I used it to keep our Refrigerator and freezer working. I also broke out the new 1200 watt 2 stroke camping generator and used that to power our TV so I could see what was going on in the world.

I drove around to see some of the damage. I found trees down everywhere.

7th street between Oak and Camelback was hit the hardest with multiple poles down in the street.

Plus all the signs over the suicide lane were blown at a 45 degree angle.

Some time around 9:30 the power came back on.

Kill ominous music...

Boring

Nothing going on... Sorry.

SuperStars! (in HDR)

Last weekend was Karen's Birthday. She had her birthday up at Juniper Well Ranch near Prescott. Kathi and I went up Saturday morning and got there about 10:00. First thing we did was walk up and down the train tracks that run by the ranch.
We did not see any trains. It was very warm up there and for most of the day we did not do much. I went around and took some pictures of the horses.
Karen wanted me to take pictures of her and Alyssa, so I did, Here are some of the Cheesier ones:

SUPERSTARS!

Later that night Karen and her friend prepared a dinner of ribeye steaks, potatoes cooked with bell peppers, onions, and paprika, in butter, and kabobs. Some really expensive gasoline... I mean Tequila was served as well, of which I had about 4 shots.

The next morning I got up at 6am, The Tequila from the previous night was un-naturally devoid of hangover, so I went out and took some early morning pictures.


Kathi and I went into town and had breakfast, when we returned everyone had awoke from the dead. We fed carrots to the horses one last time, said goodbye to Karen and went home.

And Now for Something Completely Different