daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
We cooked our first Sous Vide meal, which was a chicken dish with green onion and spicy chili oil. The chicken was moist and tender, and delicious! Because of the cooking method, the meat actually looked semi-raw, but it was at the correct temperature so it’s perfectly safe.
We ate it with rice, which made for a simple but delicious dinner.
This morning I woke up at 5 am and right outside my tent was the Milky Way. It was awesome! I got out my Fujifilm X-E4 with 18-55 mm lens, put it on the Ultrapod and took a few shots. There were only a few clouds in the sky so the shots looked pretty good, and I even captured a few shooting stars. In fact, with the 30-second exposure, almost every shot had at least one shooting star in it. It was so cool!
Soon, the sun made its way into the day, and after a sunrise photo and some coffee, it was time to hit the trail. We hiked Laguna Meadows Trail all the way down to the Chisos Basin, seeing one large bear along the way. It was digging a hole near the trail so we had to scoot past pretty quickly, bear-spray at the ready. Very exciting!
At the end of the hike, I splurged on a Topo Chico and mango ice cream bar before we hit the road. After a couple of hours we arrived at Fort Stockton and had lunch at Pepito’s, where I had a huge burger. It was a good way to satisfy my hiker hunger!
Here are a few more photos and the Strava track from the last day of our Big Bend trip. Enjoy!
Koa requested ribs for dinner so I made a rack of baby backs using the tried and true parboiling method. They turned out excellent! I am proud of the job I did putting them under the broiler to finish them off. The color and slight charring of the sugary Stubb’s Hickory Bourbon barbecue sauce was better than I have ever done before.
We had a little bit of fun putting our bones on Mariko’s plate… it made it look she ate a dozen ribs! 😄
I hope you had a good day! またね～
We made one of our favorite curries tonight to share with some dinner guests. It’s so nice to have (fully vaccinated) friends at our house again! The Sri Lankan Chicken Curry recipe is from The Flavor Blender, and tastes great, but what is really remarkable is that the aroma after you add the curry powder and curry leaves is incredible! If you weren’t hungry before, you are guaranteed to start craving dinner once the fragrant smells start to fill the kitchen. ☺
Our guests brought over a salad, samosas, and pani puri to round out the meal. It was awesome and of course yours truly ate way too much! It was just too good.
Today I took a break from my normal afternoon coffee and had some tea. It was delicious! This tea is from Taiwan and I enjoyed three cups of it. I think I might make this a habit as it seems like a more natural way to transition to the later part of the day. 🍵
The toppings for the first pie in tonight’s pizza class was kalua pig with jalapeño peppers and red onion. It was yummy, with just the right amount of oil from the pork. We haven’t had pizza in a few weeks so it was good to “pig” out on it. 🐷🍕❤
I hope you had a nice day!
Tomato-basil soup and Bánh mì sandwiches make for a wonderful dinner!
