Lancer09

Thanks for the advice all! I think one of the biggest issues is the thickness of the steaks, mainly being, it's a P.I.T.A. to ask for a thick steak to be cut specifically for me, and don't always have the time to stop at a specialty butcher shop as well. http://www.themeateater.com/cook/recipes/sous-vide-venison-roast-recipe Working on some roast venison that should be going into some french dips for dinner either tonight or tomorrow and freezing the rest! Had to get back in the good graces of the sous vide. I did get the Meateater cookbook as well. Highly recommend. Will be working my way through that as well.

Interesting. It wasn't a long sear but I guess with the meat already being 128 degrees it doesn't take much sear to push the inner temp up into that medium well range. Got a venison roast thawed to start some "roast beef" style lunch meat out of venison instead.

Some of the absolute best food I have cooked has come out of cooking with sous vide. I've done some awesome pork belly, shanks, roasts, Filipino adobo and all kinds of stuff. One thing has vexed me thus far.. the good sous vide steak. I may be wrong but I think part of my issue is the thickness of my steaks. I cooked some nice KC strips on Sunday, somewhere in the normal grocery store steak thickness, half inch maybe? maybe an inch, but not those real good thick bad boys. I have always worried that my sous vide cooked hotter than it was supposed to. It does, but not as drastically as I had thought. I had it set at 128, right at the output it was 130, other side of the sink was 129. Dropped it two degrees on the machine and had 128 all over. 2.5 hours, pulled, dried, and seared hard. Let them rest. When I cut into them they were medium well or well all the way through, but no differentiation between the edges so they had to have been that way before I seared them. They were super tender, tasted great, but still had a firmer texture than a rare steak. Going to long? not a thick enough piece of meat? I hesitate to throw some duck in there for fear of overcooking it with about the same thickness as these steaks were. I want that rare, medium rare edge to edge but just can't get it... thoughts?

Saturday we saw 30 is bird, but 20 or so were in one group. the rest were singles or doubles that would work but never really commit before moving off. Saturday saw 6. had two come into the spread right at first shooting light. I missed. Pretty crappy weekend up south of KC too.

We have three rescue dachshunds, they can definitely be temperamental with new house guests. We have one with the IVDD back issues and he was trying to get into it with a black lab we were watching for a weekend for a friend. Little dudes legs just couldn't keep up with trying to keep up with her while we were playing fetch, she couldn't even be bothered with his nipping at her. slow, small doses is what has always worked for us when introducing friends dogs to ours. Also getting them to spend time together at a dog park, or somewhere that isn't our house. The dogs ours get along with have spent time around them outside of their home turf first before they were brought over to hang out with friends for a game or something.

There is a little taco joint by my house up here in KC... Best thing on the menu is the beef tongue taco. Some finely minced onions and cilantro, on 2 warm soft corn tortillas... Bombass piece of food... and cheap!

My favorite stretch of that little river.

Plateau for Springfield area. Rainbow and K&K for KC area.

I'm not far from this. Still watering my stuff out at the farm, but after everything took a toll on plants this year it was just a losing battle. Fertilizing, watering, pruning, and still losing plants? That soil just needs some real time away from tomatoes and peppers. May put something else in there next year that's a bit easier. Probably plant some corn and okra, may make a few soil mounds for cukes and zukes. Going to put in a couple more raised beds at my house when I get a tree removed and move a lot of my stuff home hopefully.

My peppers are really struggling. The plants never really seemed to take off. Almost as if my ones out at the farm are getting too much light. They are only a foot to two foot tall, and super dense with leaves. Where as my more shaded pepper plants are full and 3 to 5 feet tall at my house and setting peppers pretty well as opposed to my farm peppers. It's an interesting year, and I think unless you can devote a lot of time to it like the Billet it's going to be rough for ya.

Tomatoes are slow for me. The dang heat, and I'm still doing a ton of watering. Fighting a little bit of blossom end rot, and turkey predation on them. Stink bugs are sticking holes and rotting a few also pretty bad, anyone got a recommendation for those little nasty things? However the real issue, what is causing me to throw out more tomatoes than I'm actually getting are over ripening on the bottom and rotting while the top is still unripe, green and hard as a rock. I've probably brought in 30 tomatoes, and pitched 100 out so far this season. Best tomato this season was the first ripe one I had on July 8th, a full hand size ananas noire, took one slice for a BLT!

At least the sections I fished last year there was no bait. That could be different though than where I was in the headwaters and down in the gorge and browns.

They are literally all over my baseball fields at work. all. year. long. Just find a nice dirt patch and you'll always have them around.

Billet I'm a bit north of you up in KC and I've got a ton set, getting ready to ripen. I was getting tomatoes that would ripen all the way until halloween last year. I lost a few of my tomatoes this year, but so far about 40 of the 48 I got out and alive are setting fruit like crazy. Peppers are taking a bit longer but the jalapenos and anaheims are starting to set a bunch. Poblanos, cubanelles, and california wonders are taking a bit longer. It's interesting, the plants at home are tall, little lanky, but fairly full. The plants out at the garden are about half the height, but about 4 times the number of leaves. Definitely better sun at the farm than at home so I think that's what's helping. I'm sure I'm going to get hit with a bumper crop all at once, but I'll figure out something to do with it all. Though, the watering is about to kill me. 140-160 gallons of water 4 to 5 times a week all carried in five gallon buckets makes for some

A few years ago when we were in yellowstone we watched a big black bear boar enter the river on the upstream side of a hill. Thinking we'd see it walk out on the other side were thought something happened to it. Not long later we see it floating down the middle of the river doing barrel rolls, flips, and generally just floating down the river on his back enjoying hisself a nice float trip. Watched two other grizzlies swim that section as well. I'd say it's not just polar bears that enjoy swimming. The article about the one that drowned said that's normal for a drowned bear to have blood coming out of nose and mouth. I don't know why that would be, but I'd venture to guess there are some anatomical differences between how bears and people drown. I'm super excited they are coming back, it'll take time for people to get used to them though. All the drunk float trippers are going to be the first ones to have issues, though I don't know why people don't put their crap up any way, the coons are just as ridiculous and a lot more plentiful than the black bears are.

Well everything is going well with the garden so far. Lost a plant or two, and a few are looking a little puny, but everything is thriving for the most part. Biggest tom so far is a black krim that has a circumference about the same as a baseball now. Hopefully I'll be eating fresh tomatoes on the 4th.

I mean.. I know this isn't the same thing as the golf clubs, but I'm a Miken guy myself. 34/28 Supermax Freak. This years Freak is stupid hot out of the wrapper.

Yes they do. The knob opposite the side you are cranking on. The reel handle will spin when line is being pulled. Trout won't bust your knuckles. Carp will.

For Taney I only drop to 7 x in real clear and low, or fishing midges just to get the line through the eye. Depending on the fly type kind of varies whether or not I leave a long tag end and tie the dropper to the lead fly that way, or down off of the bend. On a real gradual round hook like a scud I like the tag end just because I feel like the bend is so gradual, I don't want the dropper line effecting the hook up ratio on the lead fly. That's my reasoning and I'm sticking to it. You can't change my mind.. kidding, but that's just how I started doing it, and have done it since. For leader my standard trout leader is a 7.5 foot 5X leader, then I usually drop anywhere from 2 to 6 foot of tippet off the end of that. Building them is easy too, and I prefer a blood not vs whatever it's called that other people do. (I just like the blood knot) Easy things for Taney are things like eggs, 14 and 16 gray, and olive scuds, small midges and pheasant tails are hard to beat. For a new guy try some leeches out too and let those swing in the current. Find a seam, and just let that fly finish right at the edge or pass through it and hold on. The advice I've always given, that always gets a punch in the arm from when I taught my wife to cast.. Just let the rod do the work.

Billet I started a few different peppers this year.... Just for the long game. Doing scotch bonnets for end result real Jamaican jerk seasoning. Doing extra jalapenos to ripen, smoke, and can in adobo sauce, and poblanos to ripen and dry for anchos. And after you talked so much about them, doing a ton of cubanelles mostly for Chile rellenos!

I tried smoking a spaghetti squash one time... It all turned to mush.

48 tomato plants and 24 pepper plants in the ground. I'm tired.

I'm an addict apparently. The Nixa Hardware had some good prices on some tomatoes I had been looking for this season. Grabbed a pair of brandywines, green zebra, pineapple, mr. Stripey, arkansas traveler, an unidentified large tomato, tomatillo, eggplant, anaheim chilis, rosemary, and basil. Then went over to the "Christian County Master Gardeners plant sale" Grabbed a pineapple tomato there along with a German Green tomato also. My dad also picked up a pair of German Striped tomatoes for me a couple days ago when he helped out at a local greenhouse in Lawrence. If these produce half as well as everything did last year I'm going to have more produce than I know what to do with, but I have decided to treat this, along with the next few years as experimental to figure out what works for me, strains and everything else so I can start saving seeds instead of having to buy plants. All of my seed started plants are more full of leaves at 6 inches now than many of these are at 8 to 10 inches. Going to pick up a few more brandywines and a couple cherry tomatoes and that will be all. Do have to get my squash and zuchini going as well. I got in trouble for only caring about the peppers and tomatoes the other day so this week I'll have to spend some time working around with everything else. Need to get a small trellis fence for the peas set up, more soil on the potatoes, and fertilize everything as well. Looking to get almost everything in the ground this coming weekend.

Most of my tomatoes are now between 3 and 6 inches and in 4 inch plantable cardboard pots. Around 50 percent have roots working through the bottom of the pots getting to the trays where the water is. Peppers are a bit smaller but growing. Roots are coming out of the bottom of their 2 inch cardboard pots on the biggest ones. With noticeable growth each day I think tomatoes will go in the ground in 2 weeks. Peppers I'll keep in the greenhouse for the extra heat for another week or two after that. Still have to get a 6 burpee pink Brandywine from Wal-Mart and some hybrids from the HS plant sale but well on the way to rocking and rolling. Didn't lose a single mater in the mater tragedy of '18! Ready for some summer fish frys, fresh tomatoes and beers by the lake.

i think i can safely say the transplant was succesful! All the plants are alive and well with new leaf growth. Thicker and strongsr stems are forming, and they drank up more water in the last 2 days than they had in the week prior. Now itll be a nice surprise when i get them all planted what kind of tomato each grows. Had jersey giants, carbons, ananas noire, black krims, and pantano romanescos in the tray.