Dum de Dum... tick tock

So far today (1600) – highest gust recorded by the trusty weather station; think we got lucky so far…

(56 mph at 9:36 am)

Back to Life (as we know it)

You know the feeling you (I) have when going to the doctor you sit in the reception area for maybe 20 minutes past your appointment time?  Just kind of marking time sitting and waiting for someone to call you?  Then finally sesame opens and a nurse bellows out “WILLIAM MOODY” and you’re ushered to the exam room and after the stock questions are answered, she leaves with a cheery “He’ll be right in”.  then ensues another 15 minutes (on a good day) before doc appears.  Meanwhile you sit in a state of suspended animation, alone with your thoughts and apprehensions (you are, after all, in a medical facility).

Well, I see parallels between that and the “virus” lifestyle.  You sit, sort of waiting for “something” to happen (or not). But it’s hard to get on with life or interest in any endeavor, like reading for instance.  So you sit waiting for time to pass for…..  anyway, that’s me.  Hopefully you are not similarly afflicted. 

Side dishes

The closing of restaurants appears to be causing devastating consequences for those whose only/largest source of income came from serving, washing, on up through cooking.  So called “relief checks” while helpful, will not make

them whole.  And if this condition drags on much longer, there may not be place to return to.  Take out proceeds will not replace a sit down dinner.

Restaurateur (note: no “n”) Gerard Craft* puts it thus on the cover of “Sauce" a magazine that follows the food trail in St. Louis

*Gerard Craft last year became the first St. Louis-based chef to win the James Beard award for Best Chef: Midwest. His cadre of St Louis venues is large: niche, brasserie, taste, pastaria, porano pasta; all of which receive many accolades for their food.

Another more local instance is the pretty well confirmed rumors that “Smokey Joe’s on the Town” in Leonardtown will go permanently dark, pushed over the brink by the recent COVID-19 shut downs.  The owner (Denise Canter) has been a leader in serving up BBQ around here forever. Used to be in that little place on 235 across from the Immaculate Heart church.  Now a car staging area.  Tough way to make a living, thank goodness there are those that choose to..

We got the meats!

Since housebound, have been messing around with cooking beef (in the Ninja Foodii)  Turns out there is a learning process involved which I have not yet mastered.  I figure if you’re stuck in the house, eating well is the best revenge (as FOJTE is fond of saying – and he does).

Experiments so far have included a strip steak, from a local source of local beef (along with all the essentials of a good cook)

And pre-grilled a bit for me by the source.  Turned out pretty well.  Am having trouble getting a nice sear on the outside and still rare/medium rare on the inside.  As usual, got involved with consumption and forgot to document results.

Another attempt was with a filet obtained from Double R ranch, a partner of Snake River Farms.  Decided to try a technique from Thomas Keller’s Master Class.  He used a rib eye, but figured the filet would be worth a try.. SO, the day before we figured to eat it, I unpackaged it, salted both sides, ties a string around to hold shape, and stuck it in the refrigerator for overnight “dry aging”

When I took it out the next day, it had darkened considerably (it started out rosy pink)

I made some compound butter for it

and got it ready for the "device"

Results much better, I think the aging tightened it up a bit, and only took it out of the refrigerator an hour before cooking, so maybe that helped keeping it rare.  Once again it was plated and consumed without pictures..

So latest (aren’t you glad?) was last night with a locally raised and butchered cow resulting in a nice “(boneless) prime rib”

Well while browsing around the web I found a recipe called “Chef John’s Perfect Prime Rib” (“This is a specific formula for achieving a perfectly pink prime rib cooked somewhere a shade under medium rare”)

What I found intriguing was that it called for being coated with another compound butter recipe (Herbes de Provence – which I had to substitute for) and then put into the oven at 500 ͦ for a specified time, turn off oven, keep the door closed and leave it for 2(!) hours. That meant that cocktail hour was unsullied!

So, I cobbled together the butter mixture

Slathered it on the meat

And stuck in into the 500-degree oven for 11 minutes (weight times five) and at the end of the 11 minutes, it looked like this

Turned the oven off, closed the door and proceeded to cocktails

After two hours, I sliced into it and by golly! Much to my surprise (and relief) was a nice rosy pink

It was plated and served with MFO’s twice baked potatoes, and a glass of Hanna Cab. Happy Easter!

And, it appears that we are (hopefully) out of the woods on the weather..

Be safe, be isolated, protected, observe social distancing, and I guess

DFTV

Hello spring (?)

Kind of a gentle snow today, so what do you do?  You get your camera and fool around.  So no food content with this quick edition, although one is in work, but not ready for prime time.   MFO’s New Yorker often has food content (plus a weekly restaurant review, of some NYC restaurant), and there is an interesting article I’m plowing through.  The trouble is with the New Yorker is that while they have in depth coverage of any subject, that translates to many pages of three column information.   TMI as they say…  The Washington Post kind of suffers the same malady.   After a while you say: yeah, yeah, yeah, and either abandon the effort or put a bookmark on the page which is what I did in the case of the New Yorker.

Anyway, I took a couple of shots out the window, there was Mr. Basil plant rooting (pun intended) for spring… thought it was kind of a nice juxtaposition..

Something to do on a quiet snowy day..

And despite my melancholy sort of mood, I gotta say:

DFD and NMMJ

and tomorrow we get Punxsutawney Phil's Prognostication if we will get perpetual winter....

Foolin' Around

NO…. not THAT kind of foolin’ around!   Where’s your brain at (yes, that’s a preposition)?   Remember the Feeder is in his upper 70’s…   maybe memories of long ago, but never mind that… Uh, what were we talking about?? Oh, yeah

Lately, spurred by Joanie Simon of The Bite Shot (food photography blog), I have been paying more attention to my innumerable food shots.  Pretty much my history has been take the image, suck it into Lightroom (Photoshop “light”), maybe adjust the white balance a bit, crop it some, and BOOM! Put it in the blog.  Well, by watching her blog I am learning there is so much more to generating an appetizing image of "food"  instead of just taking a picture.  Lightroom has such capability and I have been only scratching the surface, kind of like drawing with crayons instead of painting with brushes.  So I’ve been experimenting with some of the techniques of post processing she uses (the whole world of lighting the original image is still out there, although B&H has benefited from my increased interest.

So I’ll give you a little peek behind the curtain…(isn’t this fascinating???)

Here is an original shot that I took of some Feeder made fried oysters alongside some on the half shell with house made (by moi) Mignonette sauce. Untouched, just straight out of the camera:

Not bad, documents the stuff, but really doesn’t grab you (me).   So I went to work with some of the tools I am learning and although this isn’t great, it does attract your eye a little bit better, but still could use some more pop.   A learning experience.

I had a little bit better session with a shot from the Ruddy Duck Seafood and Ale house where we went for lunch.

The original

Which was manipulated into

So, in the future I intend to spend more time on my own shots, and post processing them and also those not generated at the digs.  Next time you read a food magazine (which I almost sure you do), take a minute to look at the images of the food.  Are the shadows too long?  Like the angle? Too much extraneous stuff in the shot?  Is your eye drawn to the food? I kind of use the reverse of the old Playboy aphorism “I only read it for the articles”; and say “I only read it for the pictures!”

Speaking of food, have had a couple of outings at restaurants (besides the Ruddy Ale House).  One was at the venerable Linda’s for kind of a brunch.  Looking for low sodium menu items at that place is a chore among the rashers of bacon, corned beef hash, scrapple all of which taste so good because of liberal uses of SALT.   Anyway after a discussion of same with our server, I finally settled for a “Veggie Benedict” it had tomato, avocado, spinach with a poached egg, which sounded manageable.   Well, upon presentation, I was served

“Oh, I forgot about the sauce”.   Tasted like the ocean.  Can’t win

On another occasion I had an early lunch for a (80^th!) birthday celebration of a friend, who ordered the Shepard’s Pie.

Pretty basic stuff.  I had their Chicken Souvlaki Pita, and sort of scraped the chicken off the Pita, and it proved a bit “Chewy”, but the Tzatziki sauce helped.  I so love this, eating what you must, rather than what you want.    

Oh, a entry on the sandwich menu caught my eye:

Exactly WHAT kind of Roll????

Hello Gia!

Holy smoke… hope that was an early “President’s Day” storm!   We (SOMD) were predicted to be kind of ground zero and for once they weren’t far off.. Saturday night into Sunday brought maybe four inches, and last night the second punch gave us at least that much more.  A wallop, but was kind of pretty this morning

And gave our “porch heron” a bright new suit

In the early morning there was lovely light

With the ground covered, we had plenty of customers at our feeders, especially the Suet Cakes from the woodpecker set

Red Bellied (never have understood the nomenclature)

And the more diminutive Downy

Who just happened to depart when I snapped the next picture..  Sometimes you just get lucky

Okay, a pleasant day, “stuck” inside and watching the pretty snow.  Another joy of being retired!

And we’re having MFO’s Storm Meat Loaf tonight, so no particular need to

DFD

And in the HOM (House of Moody) never a worry about observing

NMMJ

Apres Storm

Last look was during the storm, so we’ll wrap this up with an “after the storm”, report.  Here’s a time history of the maximum gusts (blue) and the barometric pressure (gray) starting midnight (M) through noon (N) on the first through about noon yesterday

 

We didn’t experience the 60 – 70 mph gusts reported elsewhere, but 55 is sporty enough. If you would like to see real time what’s going on up on the Feeder’s roof, click here

Yesterday morning, there was remaining evidence of the storm as the water was as low as we could remember, the westerly winds forcing the water from the river out into the Bay.

We don’t remember seeing the waves breaking beyond our neighbor’s pier.  During my neighborhood recon trip (see below) I ran into our landscape guy who was out doing tree duty, and he said he was going  just walk out and harvest oysters.

So as I said, I decided to drive around our “hood” and found a lot more evidence of the force of the winds man made things:

As well as things that took Mom Nature a while to erect

                

                                                   

And those are just what you can see from our streets, all within our Neighborhood.

After that,  MFO had some errands to do around town, and I rode along, seeing more damage

(Our New Nissan dealer)

While parked in Wildewood Center with MFO going inside a store, I watched the State Police helo going round and round, perhaps training in the still pretty brisk wind.

And there were also other birds training, providing “traffic”

And finally, to inject a tiny bit of food content, the good folks at Golden Corral wanted us to know about their “Butterfiy” shrimp being served for your “Diner” and maybe a harbinger of things to come if they don’t pay their rent

So we bid adieu to winter storm Riley, which left many monuments

                    

If I were to go for the Butterfiy shrimp, I don’t think I would bother

DFD

Newspaper

Weather Pages

Well, it’s not a hurricane but winds are almost in that range.   Thought I would take a minute to comment on the weather.  You may recall that I used my Christmas money (from The FOJ’s; MFO, and some of “my own”) to check a bucket list item that I’ve had for a long time.  Have my own personal weather station! And not just some pretend device, a real semi-professional station.  So after a lot of research, I finally settled on a Davis Vantage Pro 2.  Next question was where to put it.  Well, sticking it in the back lawn would be one solution, but I wanted to get data unsullied by local conditions, wind currents, warm surfaces, etc.  So what about the roof of the digs!  The peak of the roof is probably feet off the ground, and we’re one of the highest locations nearby anyway, so maybe 90 feet or so up in the pristine air.

Well, at my age (and present condition) I’m not about to clamber up there, so we contacted Lincoln Contractors who had done an excellent job of fixing roof leaks for us in the past.  They said sure, and sent out “Mike” who took the project to heart.  He’s a neat guy.  So I assembled the various piece and parts, got the mounting hardware put together, made sure the thing “talked” to its display console, and eventually they came back and installed it on the roof.  It was an excellent choice of location since it is quite unobtrusive on the digs, you can hardly notice it

Kind of reminds me of a lunar lander

It collects and measures rain amounts and rates, temperature, wind speed and direction, and calculates relative humidity, dew point, wind chill, heat index, keeps track of maximum gusts on and on. 

Well, today it got a real workout.  With the Nor’easter bearing down on us, high winds and strong gusts were predicted.  And mother nature didn’t disappoint.  The river was in full roar

We watched the console as it gave us real time data on wind speed

31 mph (MFO doesn’t like Knots) from the NNE, at 3:02pm on 3/02 (hey!) 

And with the push of a button, the maximum recorded gust

of 54 mph at 9:53am

Neat! But wait, there’s more! By hooking it to the router you can (with days of hassle) upload the data real time to Weather Underground which has a nice display.

Along with graphs (near and dear to an Engineer’s heart!)

Don’t know if it will be readable in this small format but here’s the wind speed (blue line) and gusts (red dots) for today.

 

note that after starting this morning it has more or less increased all day.   Anyway, I greatly enjoy watching it..  great stuff.   You should be able to find “me” through Weather Underground; station ID is KMDLEXIN32.

Natural History Pages

We often tell people that one of the joys of “living on the water” is that there is always something going on.   The other day when we had another front/storm pass through I am pretty sure there were some waterspouts.  Hard to tell, not well formed, but quite possibly were

And same day/time there was “something” over by the base

And not only are we treated to meteorological events, but we get a lot of “visitors”

Like the Canada geese

Tundra Swans (the good kind)

Always stately Herons

And “Henry” (I am terrible at raptors, so won’t guess – assume probable red tail or shoulder)

Food Section

Not much to report, we went back to a Blue Apron today, but it arrived too late to thaw the proteins, so MFO is going to do what she calls “Chicken Rags”, those boneless skinless (tasteless) chicken breasts.

We are still very pleased with Sea to Table, the seafood has been excellent, and you are not bound to a recipe (and ingredients) that come with “The Apron”.  Had some Maine Redfish the other night that was superb. 

Cocktail hour approaches, and I think maybe I’ll use some of my precious Plymouth Gin and have a martini (Stirred NOT Shaken, up, with a twist) so pleasing to the eye and palate.

Personals

Yesterday was Frederic Chopin’s 208^th birthday.  I hope Brian Ganz raised a glass (or piano lid) to him and maybe celebrated with my faithful reader ABusyBee.

We were supposed to go up to Hopkins today, but we bailed and they thanked us..

Okay, cocktails are neigh, as is

DFD