Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

11-24-2011
Happy Thanksgiving from Fuquay-Varina NC!

Last night I drove to the Central Easten part of the Carolinas, a small town called Fuquay-Varina ( http://www.fuquay-varina.org/ ) to visit Ryan and Callie Clark to celebrate their son first Thanksgiving and our almost family friendship with the Watkins Family.
Its took us about 2.5 hours to drive there and we had a fine evening.
This morning  got up, had a couple cups of Coffee and decided to go for a walk before our noonish eat time.
Shortly after leaving the Clark household I wndred on a sandy road and soon found an old family (Jones)graveyard in the woods.

Shortly after that I ran across the local railroad line.



Looks like they recently replaced the ties



Had a great meal with the Clarks and Watkins!!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!

My First Homemade Peanut Butter!!

11-19-2011
How to.....Homemade Peanut Butter

So I was reading through one of my Mother Earth magazines and found an article on making your own homemade natural peanut butter. Well I picked up a 1.5 pound bag of raw in shell peanuts and moved forward with the project ;)
So for this recipie I need 1 lbs of raw in shell peanuts, 2.5 Tbl Peanut Oil, 1 Tbl Molasses, 1 Tbl Local Honey and some Sea Salt.

In a bowl I mixed 1 lbs of in shell peanuts with 1.5 Tbl Oil and 1 tsp of salt. this was then layed flat on a baking pan and roasted in the oven at 350 F for 20 minutes.



Now the fun part (not!) I had to shell all the peanuts and then, by hand, peel the skins off the nuts. Took about 40 minutes. I understand a salad spinner will make short work of this, but I dont have one yet.



Once the peanuts were ready I placed them in the Food Processor with the Hony and Molasses and some salt.



Then I processed these until they were of a fine consistancy, then I slowly drizzled in 1 more Tbl of Oil to smooth out the mixture.

After some taste testing (yes its awesome!) I put it in a plastic container and placed into the fridge. It will keep for 2-3 months like this (although I doubt it will last that long ;) )

Thats it for now!! Until next time!

Cheers!!

French and Rye Wheat Bread for the Holidays

Saturday 11-19-2011

Hello Everyone!!
So Saturday turned out to be a good baking day. The fine couple (Ryan and Callie Clark) has invited my family and I for Thanksgiving next Thursday and requested that I make some of my delisious Homemade Bread (How could I refuse a request like that? ;) )

So I started out the day assembling the ingrediants for the first 2 loaves of French Style Bread.
( 3 cups bread flour, 1 cup All Purpose flour, 1.5 cups room temp water, 1 tsp Salt, 1 tsp local honey, 1 tsp Goats milk powder and 2 tsp of bread yeast. )

The water, honey and goats milk power is added first!

Here is a tip, put a little oil on your spoon when using honey and the honey will not stick to the spoon!





Here's the dough kneading in the bread machine.

















The dough is ready in 1.5 hours. I then take it out, flatten it and cut in two. Each side is then rolled up to form the loaves of bread.




The dough then placed on a clay pan and covered for 1 more hour (placed in a warm place).

The oven is set for 400 degrees F and I place a dish with 1 inch of water in it in the bottom of the oven (this helps make a crispy crust.  The dough goes in for 10 minutes and then the temp is lowered to 350 F and cooks for another 15-20 minutes. 5 minutes before the last cooking is done, brush on some butter onto the top of the bread. That is all there is too it!!



After this I also baked a Whole Wheat Rye Italian Round Breads. The process this the same except I used 1 cup bread flour, 2 cups of whoel wheat flour and 1 cup Rye flour. I also added 1 tsp molasses to the list of ingredients. Some cooking process except I used a egg white water wash in the last 5 minutes of cooking.

The sure came out nice!!

Next...HOMEMADE PEANUT BUTTER!!!!

Napa Valley, Tastings and the trip home

11-12-11
So I awoke about 7 am PST and took my time, cleaning up, packing up and working on the 11-10-11 Yosemite Trip Blog (as I knew it would take a while.) All my delays paid off as by 9:00am the skies had cleared and it looks like it as going to be a good picture day. 
Breakfast at Starbucks and I was ready to roll!

Now I thought some pictures from the foothills would be a nice way to start. So I headed East into the hills and this is what I found.

I ended up stopping by a winery I had not visited in about.....um 15 years or so. The Robert Mondavi Winery.

I ended up getting on their noon tour and was entertained by our Host Roberto.

 

 

Todays Tasting was a Unoaked Chardonnay, A very nice Pinot Noir and Cab blend

The rest of my day was traveling back to San Francisco to end up where I am now, sitting in the SFO terminal waiting my 10:30pm flight.
I must say this has been a great trip. From spending good quality time with my parents. Running down memory lane in Carmel, PG and Monterey to exploring Yosemite, Gold Country and Napa Valley.
I hope you all have enjoyed my recounting and photos of this trip!

until next time... CHEERS!!

A rainy travelling day...

Happy 11-11-11 Day!!!
Today's weather was very overcast and damp. With rain clouds spitting on me throughout the day, the light just wasn't good for photos.
Still I took a few. I was hoping to get to Napa and get some clearer weather but it was not to be.
I stopped in Auburn and drove around for a bit. I did find this interesting old tractor at the Auburn County Fairgrounds (and not much else besides a very big Veteran's Day Parade going on (which I side stepped as the traffic was getting really bad))
By the way, a big thanks goes out to all the past and present armed forces personal, thanks for keeping us safe!!

I did stop and take a few interesting photos before heading towards Clear Lake and Sound to Napa Valley.

As it turns out the closer I got to Napa, the worse the weather got, eventually turning into full rain showers.
I rolled into Napa around 3:30pm, hoping to score a good hotel/motel and a nice relaxing evening. But that was not in the cards.
first off I had trouble finding a Wi-Fi hot Spot and then any hotels. Once I found some hotels I soon found out that this weekend was the Napa Valley Film Festival and that all rooms in all hotels/models in Napa we booked. So I headed down 29 trying to seek out the hotels I was told that might have rooms.
as it turns out I had to goto all the way down to California Valley and the Double Tree Inn and Suites before I found a room.
I really...I mean REALLY wanted to stay in Napa, but after searching for a room for almost 3 hours, I was done! The good news was that this Double Tree was VERY nice and had an upscale restaurant with a wine bar. So I had Prime Rib and a couple glasses of wine followed by a dessert glass of Port.

We hopefully the weather will cooperate tomorrow and I can gte back to some good adventure and photo taking opportunities.

Cheers!!!

Fritz's eye on Yosemite!!!

11-10-2011
So I was up early, got the blogging for the day out of the way, ate a nice breakfast at the local restaurant (had a great omelet, hash browns and English muffin with coffee and headed north to Yosemite.

As I drove up there I got into some real dense forests. I really couldn't see anything beyond the trees. Once I got to the Southern Gate and paid my $20 entrance fee (which is good for a week) I headed in and turned towards the giant Sequoias. Did I mention I was seeing a fair amount of snow on the side of the roads. Well once in the park it got worse. But I think it just added to the beauty of this park.

Now in my youth my parents often would take me and my brother Max down to Big Sur and we would play amoungst the giant redwoods. So I knew how tall trees like this could get. But these Sequoias were MAMMOTH!!

These trees were in the parking lot. I hadnt even gotten to the grove yet ;)
It was only about 9:30am and the sun was still rising which gave me some awesome photos to take....

So a side project of mine is to take a picture of my feet once a day. Today was cool because I was standing in snow (and ice)!

As as I was following the trail to the grove I saw a sign that said Grove Museum 1.6 miles ahead. I thought thats not far, ill go for it! That 1.6 Miles was all up hill! It was a beautiful hike but up and down took me close to 3 hours (got my exercise in for the day ;) Here are some of the cool sights I saw on my way up and back down.

The first stop was the Grizzly Giant. this Mammoth tree is over 1800 years old. These trees are the oldest living organism still alive today!

The tree limb on the upper right, near the top, is itself over 8 feet in diameter.

Next up the trail was the last standing tunnel tree. Now the famous on you see a car driving through collapsed a while ago as these "tunnels" are man made. This one is smaller (cant get a car through, but 4 people could walk side by side through it!)
But it is still impressive.












This is what it looks like from the inside....













and the dead center looking up looks like this.....






As I was hiking up and up I was startled by a noise to my left which turned out to be a family of dear having breakfast. I was standing only 15 feet from them. I think they are used to us 2 legged tourists.

The higher I got the more the terrain started to change.

When I got to the top, where the Museum was, I found....no one there!!

So now I headed back down following a grove trail (which was very snowy) and made it back down in about just over and hour and a half. 

I really like the clouds in the shot below!

I know this has been a long post, and I have many more pictures, but I had no idea the best was yet to come. I get back to the parking lot and head off into the park proper (I was just on the southern edge)

The drive into the park was very winding and I had tall trees on either side of me as I was driving along, so there was no opportunity for good pictures. Once I got closer to the valley itself things started to open up.

But I had no idea what was about to happen next. A moment in my life when my jaw dropped and I was speechless. I got to the park of the road that entered a long ....long tunnel. There were signs flashing warning of ice on the roads and to slow down when exiting the tunnel, which I did as well as the car in front of me, when I popped out of the tunnel exit I was utterly stunned!!

This valley entrance was sooooo massive. I was Awestruck!

I wish I had more time to explore this National Treasure and I WILL bring my family back here to experience what I have.

So I headed out of the valley and on to the Gold Country to find a place to stay and get ready for my trip into NAPA!!!

Tomorrow....the Gold Country and my trip into Napa Valley!!

Cheers!