Thursday, March 31, 2011

Happy Baseball Season!

Today is a holiday and it lasts until early November. Today is the first day of baseball season.

A good friend, and one of the biggest Giants fans I know sent the following to me this morning and I wanted to share it.

So, at the risk of seeming schmaltzy, sentimental, and overly romantic--which I am--I thought I'd share this with you all before 5 p.m. tonight comes.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Environmentalism – Sanctimony Is Thy Name

Before I get into this I should say that I do care about the environment. A lot. As a fisherman, hunter, canoeist, surfer and cyclist I am “in” the environment quite a bit. I want it to be clean. I want lots of healthy fish and animals available to me to humanely dispatch and put on my plate. I want the rivers and lakes to be clean and enjoyable. However, there is something that bugs me about many “environmentalists”. A disconnect between that which they say and do and the actual impact of those words and actions.

A few years ago during a period of exceptionally high oil prices the cry arose across the land; “Drill Here, Drill Now!” The acclamation was met with the specious argument that if we were to begin drilling now the impact on our domestic oil supply would not be felt for years…so we didn’t. We didn’t open up new permits for millions of square miles of near-shore & deepwater drilling opportunities on the East, Gulf and West Coast, we didn’t tap into ANWR, we didn’t go after the Colorado oil sands and we didn’t tap into the Bakken formation in the Dakotas. Well, it’s been quite a few years and here we are again. Oil is at or around $100 a barrel and batshit crazy lunatics in the Middle East threaten to drive the price even higher. What position might we be in had we decided to “open the taps” as it were on the massive domestic oil resources contained within our borders?

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Beyond The French Laundry - Sous-Vide for the home cook

I'm a member of a small message board dedicated to motorsports enthusiasts. The topics of discussion generally pertain to racing and race cars, but there is the occasional discussion of food, particularly wherein there is room for tinkering with process or solving complex problems with home engineering. Any guy who enjoys working on a car is probably just as likely to enjoy trying to figure out how to soup up his smoker or duplicate a complex cooking process using common kitchen supplies. That's what this posting is all about. 

This is a bit exciting as it's the first (and hopefully not the last) guest submission to this blog. Sean Correia and his lovely bride Sandra have sussed out a home engineered process for Sous-Vide cooking and at my request have provided the following submission for your enjoyment: