Sunday, March 14, 2010

Tortilla Española


This is a tortilla española; a potato and egg fritter. Great to take to the field or stream as lunch - can be eaten as is or as a sandwich filler in a crusty bun. Pictured here with roasted marinated red bellpepper and green chile caribe.

R & B Stonefly Pattern


I first saw this dry fly pattern a long time and and I liked it. I named it R & B because the abdomen is made from a ribbon of a cassette tape; in this case, a R & B tape that I had around that had given up the ghost. It works well.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Stuffed Bacon Roll


I got this recipe off the web; so, I can't claim fame to it. I did change it a bit for my likes, though.

It is a Bacon Roll with a ground turkey stuffing.

One and a half lb. of bacon.
Two pounds of ground turkey. (original used italian sausage)

Make a weave of 5 X 5 bacon strips going across and up and down (see photo). Press turkey on the weave to flatten leaving about a half an inch around (treat the ground turkey like a meat loaf with spices and such. Dice the remaining bacon and fry to like. Place the fried bacon bits on the turkey. Now, carefully, roll the ground meat up into a tight roll. Then, roll the bacon weave around the ground turkey. It took me about five hours to cook in a gail force wind. I basted it twice before finishng. I used a couple of large chucks of hickory for smoke. A leafy salad went well with it.

Baste:

One cup of Dr. Pepper reduced until almost think. Added it to my rub (I have posted it prior here). Next time I will just add a tablespoon of ketchup, one of mustard and one of brown sugar with a good dash of vinegar.

Result: My kids and I liked it a lot. My wife said it was little salty for her, but she ate it anyway.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Old Vest


My Old vest is over 20 years old. It is faded and in a couple of places, a little worn. A few years back, a couple of zippers finally gave out and I started to price the new vests available. Some of the prices really surprised me. So, I decided to see if I can refurbish my old vest, or at least, give it a try. I called a couple of tailors to see how much they would charge to change the zippers out and got a few quotes. I started to do the math and the price wouldn't be too far from buying a new vest. Mind you, my mom was a seamstress in her life but at that moment she had too much going on in her life for me to ask her. So, I decided to do it myself. I bought some new heavy duty zippers and went to the task at hand. I remove the old zippers; but, I pinned the hem lines to keep it straight and true. Then, I tacked the zippers in place (after trimming them to fit) and sewed them in (remember my mom was a seamstress, so I got it from her). It worked perfectly. You can see in the photo that one of the zippers needs to be resown but is easy. Then, once I biked back to one of the streams in the local mountains. The access was closed to vehicles but I could use my mountain bike to get back there (I was doing an article for the Albuquerque Tribune on fishing it). Incidently, the fly fishing for browns on the spring creek was great. On the way out, the path I was following got too close to the edge of the slope and it gave way under me and my mountain bike. As I was falling down the slope, my landing net got caught on the bike's seat and got ripped off. My rod was in the tube bungeed to the bike, so it was safe. I sewed it back with a piece of demin; may change it one day for lighter material. Since that day, my wife makes me use a helmet when I ride.

One day, I may have to buy a new vest. I am somewhat traditional towards equipment like that but I do keep my options open. Hopefully, I can get a couple of more seasons out of it.