Thanksgiving come and gone...

We travelled down the 99 Highway through the valley towns to Le Grande in about 3 hrs, then took another 35 minutes to run the rough road up into the beautiful hills of East of Merced to the ranch. Thanksgiving 2010 was held in the 150 year old stone farmhouse and headquarters of The Van Ness Ranch. I have uploaded a 3 part 36 minutes in total video of the trip up that @###@! road. It is passable, that I can say, but not without horrendous ruts and potholes big enough to swallow a car. One dodges as a matter of course so it is an exhausting exercize to say the least! Kelly's cousin actually COMMUTES to her job in Le Grand...more to come...Mike's Home! More about THAT in a while! Here's the video...

Part 1 of 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsKQGbzeaf4

and another taken last night (Monday) at Chris's Club in Vallejo, CA. HOT!
More to come!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YvLceYN3Fk

Holly-Daze

It all really starts in October or maybe August when the first gleams of Holloween goods show in the stores. Candy, costumes, orange and black anything, arched back cat cutouts et al. A whole month and half ahead of the unofficial holiday itself. Yes, no day off for hard working Americans to celebrate the eve of The Day Of The Dead. Lots of beer and booze is consumed though and tons of sweets are distributed to tykes to the age of 21 apparently. All is well though and it is a good break from the chill of the fall after all. As a holiday it brings office parties, haunted houses and many unofficial days off as well. I give it a 7 out of 10 for being a "good" holiday.
Then comes Thanksgiving, Turkey Day, Harvest Festival etc. Again the stores bring down the black cat decorations and garish costumes and haul up turkey symbology, dried ears of multicolored corn, scenes of feasts and more orange and red leaf motiff
visuals. Gads. With a whole month to go this magical appearance overcomes the blatant commercialism of Halloween by a factor of at least 2. Groceries get involved by stocking cranberries, piles of yams and sweet potatoes and brussel sprouts, and, of course turkeys by the gaggle. All in preparation for the very real (days off!) Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday of November. The level of commercialism is heightened by the growing displays of Christmas goodies yet!
As a Holiday, Thanksgiving is a 9 simply because of the family and food centric-ness of the day and the days (and leftovers) that follow.
Christmas is coming and boy can you ever figure THAT out! Christmas tree lots are blooming, artificial trees of plastic and aluminum and even paper. Piles of popular toys are found near the doorways of every kind of store. Red and Green rules the season. I don't subscribe to the commercialism at all...nor does my darling wife Kelly. We try to ignore it as best we can and give verbal butressing to ur friends and neighbors. I handed out fresh baked bread to neighbors last year and will follow suit this year as well. I like the UNTIED WAY to distribute meager cash amounts to those in need...don't give it to a middle man to hand out in dribs and drabs, go to an atm near you and withdraw 20, 40, 60 dollars or more. Find a down and out looking street person and hand him/her/them a bill and move on to the next. Don't go home with anything left. Now...don't you feel better? No reciepts to keep track of for the tax man, it's quick and efficient as well. Another great thing is go to a lower cost grocery store and pay for the persons purchases in front of you. Same thing, it feels great! Do it for a break from the damnable commercial side of the holiday. Do this for a perfect 10 holiday experience.
Bye for now!
And HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Thanksgiving 2008 In The Hills

Thanksgiving was a wonderful experience all around. We got up (thanks to Audrey for the multiple wake up calls) at 6am Thursday morning and showered and dressed for our trip south to the ranch. Audrey showed up about 7:00am and we packed the car, drank a copious quantity of coffee and headed for the hills. The fog was rather thick between Suisun and the 5 freeway some 30 miles east of here which slowed our progress a bit. Once on I5 We headed south in rather light traffic at a quite decent clip and l'viola the fog cleared by 8:30 and we jetted along towards the turnoff to Merced to visit hospital bound Uncle Jack. We arrived exactly at the right hour, 10 am, and spent about an hour chatting among the gathered relatives (Kelly's cousins) and Uncle Jack, now 94, presided over the event. He was charming and friendly as ever and always had a twinkle and a jokester's mood in his speech. He's Kelly's uncle on the Lixwiler side of the family. Afterwards we fell in line driving eastward out of Merced towards the Sierra foothills to J&A's stone house in the hills. The road going up was the MOST potholed, damaged, flooded out disaster of a road I've ever driven on for so long a time. 10 mph was a good rate but I sped to 25 occasionally to test both the shock absorbers and my tooth fillings. The countryside was gorgeous. the grasses green and the cattle shiny black, and the dark green almost black live oak trees dotted the landscape high and low.
It took about an hour to make the 18 mile drive to the entrance to the ranch. The gate was open and we drove through onto a smooth dirt road with about 2 miles to go to get to the house itself. The lake was very low with a huge blue heron fishing from the shallows. The usual gathering at the cars commenced, happy chatter and questions ensued and I realized we hadn't been there in 10 years. We all gathered inside the house and had a substantial lunch of clam chowder in rustic french bread bowls, delicious and very, very filling! Burp! After lunch, not to rest and prepare for the dinner to come some 6 hours later we "took a little walk".
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Out of the ranch house into the meandering cattle trails and access roads of the 6000 acre property we went like a herd of turtles. Up and down the hilly and sometimes muddy track we went ogling at the trees, rocks and magnificent scenery of the ranch. Down the hill to the tuolumne river. Audrey and I broke off from the rest and spent time together photographing the environs, finding much to see and she laughed out loud at my throwing of large rocks down the gully into the water below. Overland to see some miner's stone cabins built in the 1840's when there was gold in these hills to be had for lots of back breaking and sometimes thankless as well as worthless work. We climbed up the hill to the dense oak forest and the grinding rocks used by the Indians, long since gone, for grinding acorns for food.




We crossed another creek and climbed yet another hill to spy a distant lake and watch the hawks circling overhead. We came upon a carcass of a recently dead cow, maybe killed by a broken leg or some other misstep of fortune, now a meal for a family of large buzzards it's bloody rib cage splayed out before us. Back along the fence line of which there are many to divide the property so cattle cannot wander everywhere unchecked, we came finally to the house about 2 hours after we left having walked a distance that felt like 10 miles but was actually about 3. A good hike, my hips complained but we sat in the living room of the stone mansion and drank beers and whiskey and filled the rest of the afternoon with happy family chatter. About 6 we all sat down to a wonderful meal of Turkey, mashed potatoes, Waldorf salad, peas and onions in a mini-pumpkin, a swell white wine, rolls and butter, a lovely green salad. We ate like kings! What a feast! We all spoke of dinners past, other family gatherings and the future of our dear beloved United States amidst this financial disaster.
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7 trillion dollars now in bailout monies...what? 7,000,000,000,000 is the number but what does it mean? That is a subject for another time I'm sure but not now. If I've forgotten some zeros, I apologize, it's easy to do with numbers like these!
10 to the 12th Power
(1 000 000 000 000; 10004; short scale: one trillion; long scale: one billion)
ISO: tera- (T)
BioMed — Bacteria on the human body: the surface of the human body houses roughly 1012 bacteria.[1]
Mathematics: 1.1×1012 - The approximate number of known non-trivial zeros of Riemann zeta function as of August 2005[update].[4]
Mathematics — Known digits of pi: As of 2002, the number of known digits of pi was 1 241 100 000 000.
Marine biology: 3,500,000,000,000 - estimated population of fish in the ocean.
BioMed — Cells in the human body: the human body consists of roughly 1014 cells, of which only 1013 are human.[2][3] The remainder of the cells are bacteria, which mostly reside in the gastrointestinal tract, although the skin is also covered in bacteria.
Computing - MAC-48: 281,474,976,710,656 (248) possible unique physical addresses.
Mathematics: 953,467,954,114,363 is the largest known Motzkin prime.
Computing — magnetic storage: 1TB largest 3.5inch hard disk as of 2007.

An Apple Pie for Thanksgiving

A good, decent American Holiday with tons of history, a great simple cuisine and excuses to get out on that ol' highway and head for someone else's place to eat. Just what we had in mind. So off tomorrow morning at the break of dawn (anything for a free meal!) to Kelly's cousin's place in the foothills of Central California we go... daughter dearest Audrey in tow. They live on a 6000 acre cattle ranch east of Merced in an large old stone house built about 1850 during the gold rush. We have been there many times but never on this most charming of holidays. We will bring a bit of Wild Turkey whiskey for she and her cowboy husband. They don't own the ranch, just caretake it and have for about 15 years now. In addition to the cattle ranching operation he runs a specialty hunting business thereon serving mostly asian clientele (Japanese, Korean, and others). He has a shooting range for practice sessions, all the guns a person could want or use and enough ammunition to take on a Russian brigade. And...he's a dead on shot just like my wonderful wife. I am shooting challenged but good enough to have shot and killed a wild boar with a 45/70 black powder rifle on his land one year. He hunts deer and boar and the million or so ground squirrels that inhabit his lands and it is great fun to say the very least. We had the good fortune one visit to see him and his son "riding the range" herding severel hundred beef cattle to new grazing land along with his group of Australian Sheppards trained to keep them in with the herd. We sat in our car as they moved past us off to the pasture in the distance. He even chews tobacco! Where's the spitoon?! Nearby if he's in the house, that's for sure. When out among his charges and the chores of the ranch he comes in at noon time to watch on satellite TV his favorite soap opera "All My Children". Yes, a slice of Americana for sure. I'm baking an apple/ginger tart to share tomorrow at the feast. I'll get pictures of the event for your enjoyment.
Now for the Apple Tart Recipe:

APPLE FILLING PREP:
2 qt saucepan
6-7 medium apples of your choice, Granny Smith, Fuji or Braeburn. Peeled, cored and sliced thinly ( 1/8 inch max )
1 cup of sugar
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg
1" piece of fresh ginger cut into thin slices.
Water to cover the apples, approx 4 cups.

THE CRUST:
2 cubes of butter, 8 oz very cold. Cut into small pieces.
2 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
1 Tablespoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Sugar
1/2 cup very cold water
Makes 2 crusts.
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Chill the flour, butter ahead of time, at least one hour in the refrigerator
In a bowl place the four and 1 1/2 cube of butter pieces (save 1/2 a cube for the filling itself) and cut them into the flour until the mix looks like small pebbles or grains, no more than 5 minutes...work fast.
Add the chilled water a bit at a time until the flour/butter mixture barely holds together on a wooden spoon. Place 1/2 of the dough on a piece of waxed paper about twice as long as the dough mixture is. Fold and seal the waxed paper over the dough and refrigerate for one hour or longer. Do the same with the remaining mass of dough. Makes 2 crusts remember?
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Meanwhile, core, peel and slice the apples and place in a quart pot with 4 cups water and the sliced ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. Put the pot over low heat to simmer. Cook til "al-dente" about 30 minutes. Drain the apples with a colander, save the liquid. Allow the apples to cool.
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Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll out the dough to 1/8th inch and place in a well greased tart pan. Trim the dough to the pan edge, top with 2 sheets of waxed or parchment paper. Fill with beans, rice or ceramic marbles. Place in 400 degree oven for 30 minutes or til lightly browned. Remove, allow to cool 10 minutes.
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Fill the pie shell with the apples, diced chilled butter and about 2 oz of the reduced apple liquor from the cooking of the apples. Sprinkle liberally with sugar, Place into 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. Enjoy!
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Photos of The Ranch

Roast Turkey! No...BBQ Beef! What? Outrage!

The #$$#@! Stove Story, well it goes like this...I personally with malice and forethought killed the lovely self-cleaning GE Signature in-wall stove by totally FRYING it's gas igniter device to the point it could not even be replaced! No shit! The self=cleaning feature always worked so well, I didn't do it often but maybe once every two months. I LIKE evenness in stoves so had inserted a large 18" square 1.5" thick ceramic kiln shelve as a heat sink. I did this on the very bottom and it was the maximum size I could fit in the box that was this particular stove. I enjoyed it very much as it was capable of >500 degree temps within a 1/2 hour and at that temp I could do quite good homemade pizzas and breads. The large ceramic surface was the cooking surface and heatsink for the oven little did I know that it had blocked the heat vents from the gas burner underneith. I used it often and did the self-cleaning feature about every other month to cleanup my messes. Last March I made a terrific mess in the stove with a lassagna thaT OVERFLOWED IT'S DISH and thus did a cleaning cycle afterwards, the one that fried the ignitor and left the stove unable to light at all. Damn. I called in a repair guy when I couldn't free the ignitor from it's receptacle. He worked for 2 solid hours trying to extracate the bloody ignitor thing to no avail. I paid him his 70 dollar fee and gave up on it. So we went to France knowing we would replace it when we got back. In the first week of October we orderred a new replacement oven, one very similar to the now dead GE only made by Maytag. It was to come from Michigan. It arrived about three weeks after it was orderred and upon Kelly's inspection the rear corner was bashed in, not just a little, it was totally uninstallable. So we refused the thing after calling the company and reporting the damage and the trucker left with it. Goodbye stove, goodbye pizzas. The company reassured us that a new one was being orderred and we would see it in about three more weeks...in time for Thanksgiving. Sure I thought and thus planned the meal I told you about BBQ'd beef instead of turkey. Time went on, two then three weeks and then another big rig arrived. This time was different, the driver saw the box from the hydralic lift gate and said himself..."You gunna refuse this one too I imagine", sure enough, the entire front end, glass doors and all were smashed and hanging inthe crate. Shit. (French word Merde...mare-duh). So I signed the slip of paper he presented and wrote as I did a few weeks before "Refused" across it. This time I called the company and asked them to personally inspect the bloody thing there before it got here...and double crate it and I would happily pay for such, the reassured me that the WOULD do these things THIS time and here we are. I will BBQ the beef tomorrow and hope the damned thing arrives sometime before Christmas in one piece. We shall see.