Family Time Back East - Part One

As I mentioned in my last post, we have rented a rather gigantic house in Annapolis so we can assemble the clan together in one location. The house itself is humongous. We find rental houses fall into one of two categories. They are either places that are used almost exclusively as rental properties or they are homes that people occupy that are rented during times when the owner is not using it. This property is clearly of the later category with family pictures and very personal decorations all over the house. It also includes some very unusual rules about what you are allowed to use and what you are not. But trying to find something that fits our needs is difficult with a family or our size so our chief rental research expert, 1A is certainly to be commended for searching this out.

We all arrived yesterday with the exception of 1A and 1.1 who have a commitment back home that she has to fulfill prior to coming out on Wednesday. We decided today to visit the historic center of Annapolis. Oddly enough during the 17 years that we lived in Maryland, Wife and I never visited Annapolis. However, first, early in the morning #1, #3 and I went out to join the Rotary Club of Parole Maryland's weekly meeting. #1 is President of her Rotary Club in Lafayette California, Wife and I have applications into a club in Albuquerque and # 3 is looking at potentially joining a club in Amsterdam. One of the attractions of Rotary for Wife and I is the custom of being able to visit a club wherever you are traveling. This was a chance to experience that and it was quite the welcoming group.

Presidents exchanging Rotary Flags

Then it was off to historic Annapolis

We made a vow that we were not going to travel as a group. It is too hard trying to coordinate going, arriving, balancing the needs of the various age groups. We said we would go as individual units and since this is not a gigantic town, we'd most likely run into each other there. That lasted for about 15 minutes after we arrived, when we all congregated and pretty much did the whole town together with some spinning off of various peoples from time to time.

The weather is very overcast. As is always the case with our Olympus cameras, this leads to lots of issues trying to get shots that really pop. Plus since it is the first time that I've had the camera in had since our last trip, I was fumbling trying to remember how to do things. 

Annapolis has an extensive history. It was the site where George Washington resigned his commission as head of the Continental Army in 1783. There is a memorial to Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of the Supreme Court who was a Maryland resident. There is much more history here but I was kind of going with the flow of family tide so I'm afraid I don't have all the names of the buildings and their histories for these pictures.

Street scenes

Historic structures

Inside St. Anne's Church

Where there are rumors of ghosts

3.1, always the navigator

Inside the Maryland State Capitol Building

The House of Representatives

The Old Senate Room restored to original design

From its gallery of Revolutionary War Portraits

The room where Washington gave his resignation

Silver Plate from the USS Maryland 1906

3A discusses the civil rights movement with 3.1

Easing Back Into Photography

We are headed east for yet another family get together. It is getting harder and harder. We took advantage of #2 being in Washington D.C. before heading off to her next assignment in the Ukraine as the excuse to get all together. So the #1's fly in from the West Coast, the #3's from Amsterdam, and we come in from Albuquerque. As the grandchildren get older (the oldest is going to college this fall!), it will only get harder. And more expensive for everyone. Might as well enjoy this one while we can. We are also using this as a time to meet up with my oldest brother and his clan. My sister will be coming down too.

As it is unlikely we will have another get together like this any time in the foreseeable future, Wife and I are bringing all the camera gear and treating it like one of our trips. So I am looking forward to taking lots of pictures of the family and hopefully halfway decent ones.

To get myself prepped, I have been going through Wife's various photo magazines. A lot of the material is for photographers that are far, far, far more serious and advanced than I. Nonetheless I get ideas from each one. And seeing the pictures, I get a better idea of composition, the dramatic, lighting and so on. Plus Wife and I now that we are on the same system are on the hunt for some more lenses. I really appreciate the clear and simple language used to describe them. Here is the description of a wide angle lens that we could use on our cameras.

"It's sort of a wide-angle ens while offering travel shooters a fast f/1.2 aperture for after the sun goes down. Its design uses 15 elements in 11 groups, combining  extra-low dispersion, aspherical, and high refractive index elements to reduce chromatic and spherical aberrations. A nine blade aperture achieves smooth bokeh, especially when working with shallow depth of field."

I don't know about you but I am death on chromatic aberrations and irregular bokeh, well that just sucks. This is a lens we will have to keep our eye on.

What To Do With Bags...Many Bags...of Chile

It started out rather innocuously enough. Wife and I decided we needed to clean out the freezer. We have this tendency to enthusiastically process and freeze food (at least I do) and then equally enthusiastically forget about them. This leads to the amassing of many items that in time become more the source material for an archeologist than for a cook.

I did remember that I had some dried red chile from last season before we started. I use the red chile to make a number of condiments, condiments that I was out of. My age addled memory seemed to remember I had about three bags, not enough to make much of my condiments. So I went to the store and bought a bag of chile pods. Bad decision.

Umm

Just a few more bags than anticipated 😟

The first step of this process is to get the seeds out of the pods

This is not an easy process. It took me a good three hours to do this

Next we rehydrate the chiles by putting them in boiling water and letting them sit

Then I use the immersion blender to start breaking them down

The entire mass is then put through a sieve to get rid of the skin and any residual seeds

This is another long, tortuous process which coincidentally results in the spraying of chile bombs all over the kitchen as my desire to get the freaking job done drives more frantic work activity.

But finally, perfectly smooth, chile paste

By now the day is over, plus I have a crap load of this paste, more than I need for my condiments so the decision is to freeze it.

Producing Harissa and Sambal

Fast forward to this weekend

It is time to actually make the condiments

Out comes one of containers of chile paste

Let us start with...

HARISSA

Harissa is chile based condiment from North Africa

I have bought prepared versions but do not like them as much as the version I make 

I love this stuff. I use it on sandwiches and with eggs. It is good as an addition to soups and stews or with braised meats 

Start by toasting cumin and coriander seeds and then grind them to a powder

Next pound garlic with salt to a paste

Saute the garlic paste in olive oil

Add chile paste and the spice powder

Cook for five minutes

SAMBAL

This is a ubiquitous condiment found all over Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore

If you go online and search recipes, you will find there are hundreds of versions. This tells me I can be as creative as I like with mine. I use Sambal mostly for cooking in stir fries and especially with fried rice but also with any Asian dish I make as a condiment

First I get some Candlenuts. These were hand imported from Malaysia. They are to add texture (I think)

Next I make a paste of Southeast Asian aromatics

From to top and going clockwise there is tumeric, galangal, garlic, lemon grass and ginger

I freeze these roots and then just use a microplane grater when I need some

Next ingredient is Balacan

Belacan is a super funky shrimp paste from Malaysia (I brought two of them back from my first trip)

This stuff is intense. At 4 Ringgits or $1, I think I have a lifetime supply

Saute the belacan and the flavor paste

Add chile paste along with salt, sugar, tamarind and fish sauce to taste

In my case, my home grown chiles are very fruity and citrus flavored so I didn't add any tamarind

Voila (or the Malay equivalent)

I put my finished condiments in very small freezer containers to have through the year

Now with two more containers of basic chile paste I need to think about some other condiments to make. I probably should make some New Mexican Red Chile Sauce at least

All Hail The Monsoon

Comes July

The moisture from the South approaches

Up over the mountains bringing the needed rain

Once again our bodies no longer being dried out like prunes

The gentle monsoon coming to our needs

Blood Letting Blues

Last weekend I donated blood. I like donating blood. What's not to like. You go in. They ask you if you've had sex with another man, a prostitute, been in a jail, stick needles in yourself, lived in countries where they had mad cow disease. Then you get to lie down while THEY stick a needle in your vein and they take blood from you.

You also get to eat snack food like Doritos and Cheetos because you are supposed to be replenishing the lost sodium as soon as possible. I'm never eating those because we don't eat processed foods so that's good right? I started this about 6 years ago when I was diagnosed with high levels of blood iron. The way to treat is take out the iron by getting rid of blood. It has worked wonderfully. So that's good, right?

Oh, and you are saving peoples lives. That's good too right? I mean really good.

About a year and a half ago, the friendly folks at the blood donation center asked if I would like to do a double red cell donation. Evidently such a donation is much more valuable because they get more of the usable components and for people with the most valuable blood type (in my case O+) that helps. First time we tried it, it didin't work. They put the plasma back in your body in the process on my vein was having nothing to do with it. Since I need the blood out for my own health reasons, I demurred when asked again. But a couple of donations later a tech convinced me that she had the magic touch and we would be successful. And she was right. And advantage to doing the double is you can only do them every 16 weeks rather than every 8 weeks. That means you don't come up on their system as often which is a benefit since they harass the hell out of you with phone calls, emails and texts until you set another appointment.

This is the third one I've done and I still am not use to the side effects which are substantially more noticeable than the regular one. The day after I was completely lethargic, as if I was the avatar of the deadly sin of sloth. Then I went hiking the next day and I was gasping for air as I realized that with the fewer red blood cells I was getting was getting less oxygen into my system. The whole week I was real tired despite taking my regular naps. It was only yesterday, a week later that I felt up to snuff.

One REALLY good thing happened when I did the donation. At the end the tech asked me if I'd like to set an appointment for my next donation. I was hesitant as I don't know my schedule that far out. But she sealed the deal by letting me know, "You won't be getting any reminders if you do." It was a done deal. That was pretty good, right?

World Cup Fever - Death By Underachievement

I coached football...I mean soccer...even though it is called football in all the rest of the world but the US...for 20 years. I think I have a pretty good appreciation for what the 'beautiful game' can be. But I have never been a fan of the World Cup (or for that matter any of the tournaments featuring nations' National Teams).

The reason is simply that the quality of the soccer sucks. There are all kinds of reasons for this and they've been around for decades but are blithely ignored by some kind of mass delusion among the football faithful around the glove. First, all the players make their money playing professional soccer for nine months out of the year. These tournaments all come when the top players and even middling players are exhausted from their long, long seasons. Second, they are played in summer when it is freaking hot. The combination of these two tend to drag the speed of play down to a crawl. Combine this with a third factor, most teams play to not lose. They pack their defenses back, try desperately to not give up a goal, are perfectly happy to take their chances with penalty kicks. This leads to some incredibly dull action.

I managed to avoid  the entire opening round and just read about things in the paper. But my buddy, The Count, who is a big football fan, goaded me into joining the event. This has led to my actually watching some games (sadly given their quality) and of course missing the few games because of schedule that were pretty good. Because the Count and I tend to text back and forth during these encounters, it also has led to a happy revival of my innate cynicism. Here is a sample dialog:

de-I
    Russia vs Spain - ah now we are at the real World Cup - 90 minutes (including the overtime) of no attempt to score whatsoever  to get to penalty kicks. Can’t wait for more excitement like this

The Count
    Yes, that was a boring match.

de-I
    I love the between game commentators “Could the incredibly heavy schedules of these stars affect their play?” Really you think? This why I am not a World Cup fan. The game played at its most exhausted
  
 -------------
de-I
    Let’s take a deep breath and hope game two (Denmark vs Croatia) does not put us to sleep

The Count
    Lol
    I really like Croatia
    Tough team

de-I
    Onwards Catholics against the Protestant for glory in the World Cup

The Count
    What a start (two goals were scored in  the first 4 minutes - the only goals of the match!)

de-I
    Now time for the two of them to pack it in for the rest of the match!!!

The Count
    LOL

de-I
    I am very disappointed in Denmark...actually trying to possess the ball and attack. What are they thinking?

The Count
    You are on a roll today

de-I
    I should have stuck to just reading about it in the paper
    Donated blood yesterday and too tired to do productive work

The Count
    LOL
    I am much happier you are watching now
    This cynicism makes it incredible

de-I
    This unseemly actual playing of the game is not giving me much to be cynical about
    It has been very difficult to nap with all this attacking taking place

The Count
    LOL

de-I
    I’m counting on Denmark packing it in in the second half so I can rest (which they did!)

So as we come to the quarter finals,



Let's see what’s on our sumptuous buffet

I’d say two games that have promise and two that one would hope they would just cancel

Croatia vs Russia - Well Russia is just going to pack it in so can we cancel the game, promise we’ll watch 15 minutes of commercials and go right to the shoot out?

England vs Sweden - Hard to imagine much excitement here. They will sort of attack but look tired doing so and most passes will miss. So I recommend the organizers limit us to one half of action, we promise 10 minutes of commercials and then go to PK’s

Uruguay vs France - Hmmm this actually might be something worth watching as long as the Uruguayans don’t revert to their pre-Tabarez thug mentality

Brazil vs Belgium - dare we hope for what these two teams can bring us? I hope so.