Weekend Eats and Treats

Since the Mai Tai Lounge in Omaha is not a convenient place for me to practice my tiki hobby, we're planning a tiki hut/bar in the backyard next year.  With the house all spruced up now, part of the the plan is to make a little "escape from reality".  We'll build a bigger deck and in one back corner I plan to construct an A-framed hut of sorts and load it up with my tiki treasures.  I've been steadily collecting mugs, artwork, carvings and other Polynesian paraphernalia.  I got two of these cool fish float lights from a fellow member at Tiki Central.  Awesome! 

The Boy had requested bbq ribs the other day so I obliged him Saturday evening for dinner.  What with Ribfest in town the last several days, it seemed the tasty thing to do! I got two fresh racks from Sam's club

Saturday morning, put a sweet/smokey rub on them and rested them in the fridge for several hours.  I have read on several barbeque sites that pecan is the Cadillac of wood to use for smoking so I used that.  The chunks of pecan don't have an in-your-face smell and they don't emit much smoke during the cooking process.  But man does it give the meat an awesome taste.  I smoked them slowly for two hours then mopped on some homemade sauce the last thirty minutes of cook time.  Dem bones was good eatin'!

Tonight was a simple Thai chicken sate and some roasted zuchinni and onions from the garden.  Odd combination but pretty darn tasty! 

Have a great week everyone!

All Spiffed Up

After replacing the siding, we shot new paint on and brush painted the trim and windows.  It's a damn big yellow house! 

Before:  Polished Oak with Hunter Green Trim

After: Quiet Veranda with Fossil Butte trim and Vanilla Milkshake shutters.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Excuse To Rent Machinery

When we decided that the house needed the rotten siding replaced and a whole house paint job, we thought, "We can do that".  My company owns a nice set of scaffolding but after lugging it home and setting it up we realized it was no where near tall enough for what we were doing.

One of our neighbors said he'd rented a "boom lift" for trimming tree branches at his parents acreage.  I checked it out on the internet and the next day we went to NCS Equipment and rented a Genie Boom Lift. What a great machine it turned out to be and we couldn't have done the work on the house without it.  It has a max height of 55 feet and a reach of 29 feet which allowed me to swing up and around the house while I was doing the siding and while the Missus and I then painted the house.  Being towable, we could change the machines position to reach everywhere we needed, including the 30 feet straight up from the driveway.

                                                                                  

Off comes the siding.  I left the Celotex insulation attached and covered it with the Super TUFF insulation which was triple ply.  More insulation is a good thing!  Taped all the joints and hung the new siding. 

Well, Hello There!

Hey how's it going?  We're still here at the West A house doing pretty good for the most part. It was a wee bit warm today wasn't it?  I've been asked by a few folks (Steve and Ryan in particular) to get back to posting. 

I'll spare you the boring details but lets just say I have some stuff saved up for future posts.  And I've done a few things in the kitchen/on the grill that you might want to try.  Or not! :)

We've had a busy busy summer and it's pretty amazing to think that school starts again on the 18th.  Not to say that summer will be over, hardly.  The dog days are upon us and maybe a bit early this year.

We've had a wonderful summer of swimming, walking in the mornings and evenings, cruising around town and just generally having a good time as a family.  Except for that 10 day period in June.  Did I mention that this year I deemed "Year of the House"?  Well I did.  The crappy siding we chose when the house was built was rotting.  It wasn't properly sealed/primered at the factory and then not properly caulked by myself after it was painted.  It had to come down.  Fortunately it was just the north side.  The east and west sides are a different material and it appears to be okay.  The south side will last until we put vinyl or steel siding on.

I can post one picture from the start of the project, the rest of the pictures are on film not yet developed.  That will be for another post.  The Missus and I did all the work to save money on labor and it turned out great.  A lot of hard work but it had to be done.  Next time someone else can do it.  All of it was rotten at the bottom of each 4 x 9 foot section, and over twenty feet up to the roof peak.

I want to invite you all to the Mt Fuji's in Omaha on September 25th.  You can read about it here or check out the cool promo that Ryan (see above) made.  I'm excited to get back to Mt Fuji's and hope to see you there!

Time to wrap this up with some tasty weekend treats.  Some grilled shrimp and roasted asparagus, very tasty.  Simple marinade of sweet soy sauce, fish sauce, coriander, garlic and lime juice.  Today I made a stuffing of sautéed artichoke hearts with garlic, thyme and red pepper flakes. To this I added sun dried tomato, goat cheese and fresh basil.  Rolled that up in some chicken breasts that I pounded out to about a quarter inch and then grilled them.  I should have tossed some apple chunks on for this I think.  It was pretty good.  Put some balsamic and more goat cheese on garden tomatoes for a side.  Aren't good tomatoes about the best thing ever? 

Thanks for hanging in there with me, more posts coming soon!
Have a good week and please stay cool.

Tiki Tower

Please visit TikiTower if you can. If you see something you like, buy it!!  I did.  I get no kickbacks from Robert but I sure got a kick out of the artwork he did, mounted on a solid slab of wood all tiki style.  "Cosmo at the Moon Palace" is going up on the wall as soon as I get home from work (night shift boo hiss).  

His artwork is digital, put down one layer at a time from the background to the foreground.  Very cool stuff and a very cool process.

I'd love my backyard to look like this one day although I probably won't have the chimp and snake! Eeeek!!  Now if we can just get a hybrid palm tree to survive Nebraska winters I'll be set.

Sunshine on my shoulder, WOULD make me happy....

Talk about your Seattle like weather today. I thought it was supposed to be cruddy Saturday but it was beautiful. I hope you got to enjoy the weekend anyway.  Yesterday I worked till noon, forced the family to help me grocery shop, put 2 coats of polyurethane on some baseboard trim that we finally purchased (we've declared 2010, Year of The House).  I'll document the new pre-hung front door when that project happens. I laid in our new hammock for a bit in the sun, very nice and I was almost asleep when either a dog or The Boy ran past and whacked me! All in good fun of course. (Shakes fist in general direction)

Today the missus did her weekend cleaning she likes to do (stress relief). We walked to Coddington Market hardware store and purchased a load of veggies that she then planted in the mist/rain.  If just one of the tomato plants produces well this year, I'll be happy. Should be some garden activity in a few weeks/months.

Had some tasty eats this past week, smoked pork loin (leftovers for pork chili, hat tip to The Dish), low and slow barbecued chicken thighs (a repeat, and much better this time) and spicy grilled pork and mango kebabs.  The kebabs were the winner, dry rub of chili powder, cumin, oregano, granulated garlic.  Toss the cubed pork with olive oil, them sprinkle the rub on and toss well again.  Getting decent mango chunks proved tougher than expected as my mangoes were too ripe, dang good but too ripe.  The fruit wanted to fall apart on the grill but turned out really tasty.  Have to try that one again soon.  The final dish was served with a reduction of orange and lime juices, some honey and a bit of salt. 

Yes, I eat a lot of broccoli!

Have a great week everybody!

Happy Mothers Day!

To all the Mothers out there today, I hope you have a wonderful day.  To Mindy, Bonnie, Ginger and Cheryl, we love you here at the West A House! And the Boy and I will be thinking about you all day.  You are our Sun and we revolve around you. Thank you for all you do for us every day of the year not just today.

Now on to the food!

Roasting carrots and brussel sprouts in the rain, pork chops and roasted asparagus, Cinco de Mayo shredded chicken soft tacos, Angus steak with roasted new potatoes, baby button mushrooms and Vidalia onions, shrimp sate and sticky rice.

I hope you're all enjoying spring so far (except for that blasted wind).  The tulips are pretty much gone but the Iris are opening and the lillies are getting ready to pop.  All the cold crops are doing well in the garden, onions, mixed greens and peas.