6:30 AM - 17 Degrees Farenheit - My Morning Walk

Food Processing

I take perverse pleasure at making use as much of the food that I purchase as I can. I think I was beat on the head with all kinds of old world values about not wasting when I was growing up. So I am always happy when you have something like turkey which provides so much in the way of sustenance beyond the meal that is is served.

Unfortunately we didn't have Thanksgiving here and turkey is not our Christmas tradition. So I decided to just buy a bird so I could process it. Of course we did roast it and have a meal but there was pretty much the whole bird left.

First thing is to get all the meat off of the bones

Then I started making a stock. Onions and carrots of course but I also added the liquid from mashed potatoes I'd made and the pan juices from the roasted turkey.

I also put in the neck and the pack of giblets (out of the pack) in as well

I cut my turkey into smaller bits - mostly dark meat

And larger slices - white meat

The small bits were cut further because they will be packaged as ingredients to go into soup.

Here are nice individual packages of sliced meat for sandwiches and bits (3 oz each) for our soups.

The stock after it had cooled has a very lovely gelatinous character from all the bones and skin.

I put the stock into 14 oz units.

And individually wrapped them for easy conversion into our soups.

A Camera Sherpa Christmas

With all of our family gathering having been done with our trip to France and Italy and Thanksgiving in Tampa, Wife and I were by ourselves for the holidays. So Wife wanted to bring the camera gear up into the mountains and take advantage of the opportunity of the recent snow.

So with her Camera Sherpa in tow, we spent almost 4 hours on Christmas morning in almost complete isolation up in the mountains with Wife taking shots to her hearts content.

My attempt at one of Wife's 'art' shots

Our tradition for decades has been to make pizza on Christmas. While this looks a bit uneven and rustic, it was one of our best efforts in quite some time.

Good Morning

I'm always kvelling (Yiddish term - look it up) about our great New Mexico sunsets. But this morning we were graced with an awe inspiring sunrise.

Approval

After 13 years and 147 thousand miles my Dodge Durango is showing its age. This year we've put a lot of money into it and it is showing signs of needing more.

I'm not much of a car person but with the help of my business partner Formula 1 Frank, I found a vehicle I really liked. The only problem was getting approval for the purchase.

Here at the dIWHQ (de-I World Headquarters) you don't just buy something like a car. You have to go through an approval process.

So first I submitted a request to purchase to the fixed asset approval department (Wife). Fixed assets gave their approval.

Then you had to submit a certificate of need to the finance department (Wife). They indicated that there would need to be a budget review.

The budget department (Wife) ran the numbers and indicated that funds could be allocated for the purchase.

I now submitted a formal request to the budget committee (Wife).

With that approval, all I needed was the sign off from the CEO (Wife) which I got today.

Hallelujah, now all I need to do is buy the car.

First Winter Snow Hike

On Thursday when I called home from Austin, Wife told me that we were having stormy winter weather. When I flew in Friday morning it was clear that the mountains had gotten snow. I was pretty psyched - The first snow hiking of the year.

I wrote last year about my transformation from winter hiking hater to winter hiking lover. And I've also written about our wonderful respectful snow here in Albuquerque which unlike Terri's snow in Minnesota knows that its place is in the mountains for recreation and water supply, not in the city mucking up our roads.

So I conned Wild Bill into accompanying me. What I didn't know was that they had gotten almost a foot in the lower elevations and that we were among the first to be breaking trail. It was much harder going than I had anticipated but a lot of fun and beautiful nonetheless.

It took us twice as long to go the distance we normally do.

Also a couple of scenes from my trip with AinA to Seattle and the Bay area.

Our Korean meal with partner Frank - Once again my need to feed a minimum of 30 people affected my ordering.

Motherrocker handling taping of the video logs we will be putting in my new business marketing efforts. She had AinA sing some opera to test the video.

End Almost in Sight

After last week's grueling three city, six day trip, I'm on to the last trip of the year. Actually two trips. It's 7:30 PM and I'm on my way to Dallas, TX so I can get to Austin for a meeting in the morning. I don't normally fly this late but I had some of my business partners over for a thank you lunch this afternoon.

This was a four course French meal including my first ever cheese souffle (which turned out great I might add - thanks to Wife for the valuable collaboration). We also had a charcutrie course (cured meat), a slow cooked pork roast with soubise (onions cooked down with rice plus cheese and cream), a salad, a raspberry tart made by Wife. Three wines were served. A prosecco (not sure of the spelling - its a bubbly wine from Italy), a dry riesling from Oregon, and 2000 Bordeaux. Just your normal 1.5 days worth of cooking lunch.

Anyway that's why I'm leaving so late as I had to leave enough time for me to clean up after everyone was gone. I come home tomorrow afternoon. But then have to go back again on Wed for another meeting on Thu coming back on Fri morning.

Then THREE WEEKS solid of no travel. Can't wait.

Phase 2 Over - On to Phase 3

AinA are sitting together at the Loris Diner concession in the United terminal of San Francisco International. She's heading home. :( I've really enjoyed working with her. Being a relative is no guarantee that you can work together. I know that more than anyone.

Now it's off to LA. I get to stay in the same place for 2 nights in a row. Woo Hoo.

Scooting Down the West Coast

After a brief trip to the small oil producing town of Artesia NM earlier in the week (got to fly on a private corporate plane - soooo much better and easier than commercial). I headed up to Seattle to meet with a client. Joining me is AinA who is doing some training with me and LA Frank my partner. We are now going to the San Francisco Bay area for meetings on Sat and Sun where we are going to be producing a social media campaign for my business. Then on Monday it is on to LA for a few days more of work.

We ate some really good Korean in Seattle and had some excellent Washington wine and beer. I have a picture of the Korean but forgot my cord to download the picture off of my phone.