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crab with ginger and spring onion

Yesterday, I attended the Advanced Sourdough Workshop with Tara Jensen (author of Flour Power). It was very informative and fun, and with only 8 “students,” there was plenty of time to talk turkey (red) and various techniques. Came home with a loaf of grits bread which I baked immediately since it proofed on the drive home. The grits are Anson Mill coarse grits, which you can see are VERY coarse. Her website is https://www.tara-jensen.com and she offers virtual as well as in-person workshops.

Challenger pan has arrived. Am very happy with the results.

Bruce it was nice to hear from you, I think of you often. Good luck with the charcoal and I'm sure your daughter will do you proud with the KK. You've had many cooks together with her. Hope all goes well with your Senior Home, save a space for the rest of us, we are on the way.

Time for a bit of a ‘mixed grill’ tonight. Corn, yellow squash, small red capsicums, large mushrooms, country suasage links, smash burgers, chicken satay skewers, lamb kofta skewers and a couple of scotch fillet steaks. Nice mix for us and the kids- ended up using most the the 32BB lower grate real estate. Great success as always…

Yay! Nothing beats a good bangers and mash meal. Except, maybe, toad-in-the-hole!

Katakuchi Suribachi & Surikogi Set Last night's KK cook was a pair of white arrugula pizzas. Arrugula from our garden, that wasn't going to wait. We like a crisp, almost cracker crust from whole grain, as one approach to pizza. Last night I made a small change to my technique, that I quite liked: Dress the arrugula with the olive oil topping, and spread onto a dry pizza. This was easier than tugging oil across the crust itself (yes, not that challenging, but this was noticeably easier). It seems the crust had more chance to breathe as it baked. I briefly microwaved a few cloves of garlic, and mashed this in my favorite suribachi (I have all three sizes but I regularly gift the middle one as most used) with olive oil, preserved lemon, black pepper and maras pepper. If one leaves out preserved lemon, add salt.

I’m preparing to ship this telescope to a remote observatory in New Mexico. It’s a Takahashi Banana (AKA Epsilon E-160ED) all tricked out for astrophotography. Just waiting on a new rotating focuser (to better frame my shots) to arrive. Once that’s installed and everything tuned up, off it goes and I fly out to install it. Once deployed I’ll be driving it from my home in Virginia, but it’s mostly automated. One of my images taken with this scope in central VA (Bortle 4 skies). Once it’s in Bortle 1/2 New Mexico (and with better seeing) I’ll be hoovering photons at a ferocious rate. This is the “Ghost of Cassiopeia,” a nebula in…wait for it…Cassiopeia.

Smothered, Covered, Chunked, Baby!!!

So I gotta griddle - a Halo 4b converted to natural gas using their conversion kit. This is a really different type of cooking for me and I'm enjoying it a lot. Still learning and doing small cooks - it's good training in case I need to get a job at the Waffle House.