birthday dinner -

as we all know my birthday was about a week ago, which means this post is way overdo.

So what did we endup doing?

We went to my favorite steakhouse, buckhorn in Winters and had some amazing clams, a great sirloin and some scampi for dinner with Asparagus/Mashed potatoes as a side.

Robin even managed to find a couple of balloons and a candy bar for me and put them on the table. To announce to everyone that it's my birthday. Great job...

Well we did get free ice cream cake with this procedure and happily they didn't sing for me, but took an awfully bad picture of me.

Thank you Robin, for the great evening and the fantastic dinner!

seared ahi tun with mustard dill sauce and blueberry pie - a cold and rainy sunday

this morning Robin and I decided to take a quick trip up to tahoe to teach her how to snowboard. So after we got up at 6.00am on a cold sunday morning we discovered that it's raining none stop outside. So I check the road reports and they said, chains/4WD required. Mhm risky, but let's head out anyway.

60miles later we encountered such heavy rains that I decided it's pointless to continue with this trip and we won't make it up in time to attend the snowboarding lessons for her. Afterall if there are chain required the trip takes about 3h instead of 90minutes on average. So we just had a quick and easy breakfast and headed back to Davis afterwards.

So what can we do with the rest of this day?

Well how about testing my new knife with a new dish. Thanks for the knife mum and dad :)

seared ahi tuna with rice and dill/mustard sauce

recipe

• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup spicy brown mustard
• 1 teaspoon mustard powder
• 3 tablespoons white sugar
• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons freshly chopped dill
• 3 tablespoons freshly minced red onion

directions

1. Combine the lemon juice with 1/2 cup olive oil in a sealable plastic bag; seal and shake. Add the tuna steaks and store in refrigerator to marinate for 30 minutes
2. Whisk the brown mustard, mustard powder, sugar, vinegar, and 1/3 cup olive oil together in a bowl and  stir in the dill and onions.
3. put an iron cast skillet onto the stuff and heat it on high till water dropped in sizzles
4. coat the pan in a slight layer of oil
5. cover the tuna with freshly ground pepper
6. sear the tuna on each site for about a minute for rare

For desert I recommend a slice of blueberry pie, with whipped cream.

blueberry pie with whipped cream

off roading - the looks of it...

yay for windshield wipers :)

Basically not much to say right now and life is good, now I just need to replace the brakes :)

wetlands - the third trip


A couple of days ago there were a couple of storms in Davin and the surrounding area and so we thought It would be great to visit the wetlands again.
Sadly most of the water drained already of the street and instead of a muddy adventure, we just had to deal with paddles and dirt roads. Which promptly made me feel overconfident in my offroad driving abilities...
Thanks god I got lucky and did not skid of the road into the creek, after all it got a bit scary for a second. But drifting at 40mph was fun :)

To say I enjoyed it is a clear understatement and it gave me sometime to teach robins sister a couple of things about photography and different lenses.

This days motto was, reflections and so It was all about getting close and low angle shots.

Needless to say, tomorrow I'm going to wash the truck again. It's getting way to dirty and the windows were splattered in mud after this trip.
But I'm quite sure I had more fun in this car than the people in front off us in there brand new wanna be SUV's. Driving around every puddle. It does have some advantages to have an old car, where you don't care if you have a scratch more or a ding in the pain.

davis - wetlands the second trip -

yesterday I managed to get out to the wetlands a second time, shortly after a storm and they were totally deserted except for me and one other person. So it gave us enough to take some pictures of the birds and the surrounding area.

entrance to the wetlands

white heron

ducks

great white heron - on flight

unidentified with wet feet

still in one piece afterwards

Basically it was a short relaxing afternoon in the rain and realizing that my windshield whippers can't keep with driving throw water at 30mph. I had fun.

wildlife refuge area - 

after driving back from sacramento today I noticed an awful lot of pickups and other cars driving under the causeway and so I went there to investigate. And it turns out that they opened the wildlife refuge area again to the public. So of I went to grab the Pathfinder and do some quick exploration...

iPhone...

and to be sure it's beautiful and I will grab the real camera tomorrow and take some more pictures around sunset. And my oh my it's so nice to have a 4 wheel drive capable vehicle.

seared ahi tuna with sauteed bell pepper -

not much to say, sometimes you just need these quick 5 minute 8$ dishes.

picture taken with an iPhone, forgot the camera in the office today...

missing knife -

after having a quite extensive knife collection I never thought I would complain ever again that I need one more knife. But the sashimi/gravlox experiment showed me. I need one more knife.

Well maybe in a month or so, once I am done with the roasting book and so can focus a bit more on sushi preparation techniques.
After all this knife is a touch pricey at 170$, but it would go well with my other shuns..

crepes with chocolate sauce -

after making the turkey tonight I had this incredible starving for something sweet as desert and so I wanted to make a lemon loaf. Which did not work out, since I was all out of baking powder and baking soda.

So instead I made some crepes again. Now it also turned out I was out of applesauce and had to create an impromptu chocolate sauce from my Saint Nikolaus gift. Yes I kept the 2 bars of Lindt chocolate till tonight. This has to be some kind of record for me. (Or is related to the 240 truffles I ate in the last 2 months...)

So the first attempt of presentation, was not really a spark of creativity...

standard crepes with chocolate sauce presentation

 this got me thinking, how could I present the crepes in a less messy way...

lost at sea

And I think the ducks work rather well in this case.

crepe recipe:

-> here

chocolate sauce:

• 2 bars lind dark chocolate ~50-70%
• 2 tbs butter - unsalted
• 1/4 cup 1% milk
• chili powder to taste

directions:

1. break the bars into even pieces
2. melt with the butter and milk on low temperature
3. add chili powder
4. turn off the flame
5. put in cold water bath
6. keep steering the sauce while it cools

turkey breast with pears -

since I'm slowly running out of lamb and beef dishes and want to live healthier, well now It was time for some turkey. Specially since the last great turkey I had was about 2 thanksgivings ago and boy I could had need somebodies carving skills here.

Since it was a rather sweet dish, I was kinda nervous about the side and so just choose rosemary roasted potatoes with it.

turkey breast is ready togo into the oven

The dish itself was remarkable simple and only took some minor adjustments, since I could not find a 6lbs turkey breast and so had to settle with 3lbs. So barley and leftovers...

and the dish is done

After the recommended cooking time it was very tasty and flavorful (well it's turkey...), but sadly a bit tough. Maybe a variation would be to marinate the turkey first for 1-2 hours in an orange marinade, which should go well with the pears,

And next week we make another lamb dish...

poached eggs - recommendation for a colorful side? Maybe a dill sauce?

it is saturday and this means It's time for a late breakfast after catching up on some sleep. I mean I need to keep the gray hair under control somehow.

poached eggs with toast

next time I need to cleanup the plate better, but I was hungry...

I really should start to take food stock pictures, maybe I can sell some of these. The wooden table does make a great background.

Now off to costco to find some turkey or so for dinner.

Oh and my new cookbook arrived,

seared ahi tuna steak -

after a 16h day at work I wanted nothing more than something tasty to eat, which doesn't need to much work reparation wise.
So after looking into the fridge I discovered that my possibilities are between...

• trader joe's teriyaki chicken
• pizza magherita
• vanilla yoghurt
• and a fresh tuna steak from the sashimi left overs

Since I just had teriyaki chicken yesterday and didn't feel like pizza there was only one possible solution. Seared Ahi Tuna with yoghurt dip.

So while taking a quick shower the tuna was happily marinating in a mixture of whiskey, olive oil, salt, pepper and sugar for about 20 minutes and than was tossed into a salted pan over medium heat. About 1.5 minutes each site provided a nice medium rare steak.

Sadly the picture does not do the tasty fish any justice...

the finished tuna steak

I think there is one knife missing in my collection. A very sharp fish knife.

sashimi -

since I haven't dined out last month I didn't had sashimi in a while, so I thought I make some quick tuna sashimi, since I can't really find sashimi grade salmon here.

fresh piece of sashimi grade tuna

 It's remarkable simple. You just buy some fresh sashimi grade tuna and slice and pepper it. Since all the tuna you can buy here is ahi tuna. I normally add some slices of lime and let it site for 10-15 minutes to absorb a bit of the flavor.

sashimi

It is tasty, but salmon is so much better...

the power of paper -

less is sometimes more. Whenever I get stuck with a programming issues. I tend to leave the office, find a coffee store and a bunch of paper. And start drawing the problem to get to the mathematical solution first instead of keep trying to work on the algorithm.

What does this mean to be precise?

I spend the last 2 days, writing hierarchical and tree layout algorithm in javascript (don't ask why...) and for the love of it could not avoid the collisions I keep getting.
So I went to mishkas and 20 minutes later I had a single elegant formula to describe the relation of parent and child elements on the horizontal axis in my tree, without any collisions so far.

now I just have to adapt this formula to work with complex graphs, but the implementation took all of 5 minutes and the result is:

terrific! Sometimes less really is more.

giving things up month 1 review -

so besides having the business related dinners in berkley and 3 'emergency' dine out in january I managed to avoid dinning out and cooked a lot at home instead.

The balance of my checking count at the end: +500$

berkley again -

after being in berkley for the consulting gig I just had to go there again on saturday to pickup some of there IPAX and grab another burger.

Sadly it was to wet and cold togo for the beach, but a couple of fun rounds of carcasonne made for than up for this.

I guess this has to become a monthly trip now. There is also this tiny french restaurant in SF, I haven't been there in a long time and it's calling my name again...

Which one?

this one

sure it's a bit pricey, but you only live ones after all.

pork chops -

tonight was another night to cook some tasty and this time really expensive food. My coworker Angie and I made some couscous stuffed pork-chops, which were plain amazing and rather simple.

Sadly we went to nuggets and so ended up paying 50$ for this meal, which translates to 4 servings. A touch pricey and I really need to stop cooking that much.

pork-chops - rather tasty

a manly day, here at our place.

So we decided to fixup the cars and to get rid of some of the leakage issues with the benz and the pathfinder.

pathfinder to the left, 72 benz to the right

The first task of the day was to tackle the leaking gas tank on the benz and to replace some connectors. Needless to say we had to drive 3 times to the store to finally get the right part for this job and to drain as much gas as possible. Since the lowest gas pickup was leaking.
The actual work was rather simple and only involved removing a couple of clamps, putting a new hose over the leaking fuel-line and getting the fuel-line back into the gas tank.

Now the pathfinder:

• check differential fluid
• check transmission fluid
• do oilchange

the oilfilter, nissan what were you thinking

 Now after I have done 2 oil changes on this car I'm still frustrated that the oil filter is in a position, where is splatters oil all over the lower car body during the replacement. Wasn't there a better way to place it?

getting the car level

 To check the transmission fluid, the car needs to be perfectly level...

jack stands to the rescue

Looks scary? Not at all, the car is actually supported by the jack stands left and right and not by the jack in the middle. I only put the wood below the differential to distribute the weight over a larger surface while jacking it up.
So mum no reason to get nervous! The jack stands are rated at 4 Ton's and the car is 1.8 tons.

drip, drip, drip...

during the oil change today I discovered that the rear differential plug is leaking ever so slightly (not the big deal) and that the transmission plug is leaking to.

Now I need to get the car even again to figure out how severe the leak is and if I need to refill the transmission. I guess I need to check this all 5k miles now.

berkley - breaking my resolution -

Currently I'm out in Berkley for some consulting work and so have no real chance to not eat out. I have no kitchen in this hotel room or even basic utensils.

Instead I have very strange looking lamps here

and the food is neither tasty or cheap. 24$ for a cheeseburger with some water is a touch much for my taste...

I think next night I'm going to a pub close by and rather dine there.