Grilled Not-So-Cajun Ranch Pasta

So my cousin Foo has her own blog where she posts about meal plans, various recipes, and how they turned out. This past week she posted a meal plan that included a recipe for Chicken Cajun Ranch Pasta.  I liked the sound of it and have been looking for some new chicken recipes to use on a regular basis.

As usual I changed things to fit what I had on hand and prefer.  The words struck out are what I didn't use and the words in bold are the additions or changes.

Chicken Marinade
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup ranch dressing
3 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp Cajun Seasoning
2 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp white vinegar
1/4 tsp ground black pepper, or to taste
1 Tbsp white sugar, or to taste
3 Skinless boneless chicken breasts
1/4 cup of hickory barbecue sauce

The recipe also asked you to pound the chicken ahead of time.  But my daughter was sleeping so just pressed them out with a rolling pin.  Then I put it in a Tupperware container and put it in the fridge overnight.

Pasta & Sauce
2 cups of orzo pasta
2 1/2 cups Homo Milk (3.25%)
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 Tbsp pepper
2 tsp Cajun Seasoning
1/4 cup butter
1/4 c. shredded Parmesan cheese (not a huge fan of parm)
2 cubes of frozen chopped spinach
1 tsp of Sriacha Sauce

While my daughter was sleeping I cooked the chicken in a George Foreman grill cuz it's freaking freezing outside (-20 C with the windchill) and I liked the charred effect I saw that you can really get in a pan.  Then I put them in Tupperware in the fridge until later.

I cooked the orzo until it was nice & fat.  I strained it put it back in the pot and added the sauce.  It was still REALLY soupy.  So I put it on medium-low and stirred while I chopped and mixed in the chicken into small bite-sized portions (my daughter is only 19 months).  Then I put turned off the burner, put on the lid, and let it sit for about 10 minutes until it had thickened.

Overall I liked the recipe and I'm going to add it to my go to list.  Though I think it will have to wait until the summer when I can do it on the barbecue (using a tiny little George Foreman was not fun).  It also takes some prep work.  So I'll have to plan ahead to put in rotation.  So it'll prolly be for Saturdays.

Here is what I'll do different next time:
I'll knock out the salt & ground pepper and use just Cajun seasoning and Sriacha sauce instead.
For the marinade I'm going to try brown sugar instead of white.
Switch out the Parmesan cheese for mozzarella or ricotta cheese.

Pork Roast

So the past little while I've been laxidasical with my meal planning. Now that I have a handful of recipes under my belt for slow & regular cooking I've been slacking off and just rotating them out. Tomorrow is that story again. We had a busy weekend without a chance to do groceries.

Thankfully I plan ahead for this. Whenever I see a Marc Angelo pork roast on sale I buy it and throw it in the freezer. So today I pulled it out to defrost at noon and we stopped by Sobeys on the way home so I could grab some potatoes.

Ingredients:
5 medium new potatoes
2 large carrots
3 cups of waters
1 package of Beef Bouillon

Chopped potatoes & carrots about the size & thickness of my thumb. Placed the roast on top. Mixed water & bouillon and poured over the veggies.

I set the slow cooker on low for 5 hours.

Caches, Waymarks, & Challenges (Oh My!)

Since logging my 100th find a few weeks ago I've found about a dozen more caches and yesterday I was able fit in a few more.

On my last post I said that I had found my largest cache container yet and possibly ever.  Well I was wrong.  Two weeks ago I had some time to kill before the appointment at the garage for my cars scheduled maintenance so I decided to grab a nearby cache that was on my to do list.  It wound up being a shed in someone's backyard (yes a shed!).  There is even a wooden trunk dedicated to travel bugs and signature items.  After a few minutes of letting me discover the bountiful cache one of the people who lived there came out and we talked for a bit before i had to leave.  I even got a container I plan to use for a new hide.  Saweeet!

Well a few days ago Geocaching.com sent out an email to members saying that they are discontinuing Challenges.  Challenges had been their answer to replacing virtual caches where instead of going somewhere to sign a logbook you are 'challenged' to go somewhere and DO something.  I had accepted a few challenges since signing up for geocaching.com but had never actually done one.

When I had to go to a nearby town for work yesterday I decided to leave a little bit early and do some caches over my lunch hour beforehand.  The cool part was that one the caches I had picked was also the site of a waymark AND challenge.  w00t w00t!  Now I can kill THREE birds with one stone.  Well, technically log three different finds with one smartphone and one location.  But who is splitting hairs? (you'll get that joke later on).

The cache is near the site of a mill 125 years ago.  The miller decided it was a shame to waste the energy of the water flowing out of the mills turbine.  So downstream he built a tower where water twisted the turbine under the tower, a series of gears and shafts spun a large sheave [shEEv] near the peaked roof. Like a giant laundry line with a cable looped around two wheels, water power was transferred from the small tower to the main mill.  What makes this site even MORE unique is that it's one of the only surviving examples of auxiliary water power still standing.  Now that's a cool waymark!

I think the creator of the challenge thought it was pronounced [shAve] instead of [shEEv] because the challenge read:

Stand in front of the Tower and take a picture of you cutting someone's hair with either clippers or scissors and then upload the picture.  No need to actually fully shave, but would be a bonus for sure!

Well I didn't have someone else or scissors with me.  So, not to split hairs (get it now?) I just took a picture of myself pretending to cut my hair with my fingers.

The cache itself was about 40 ft downstream.  I had a bit of a tumble on the way there due to frozen moss on the path (note to self... frozen moss is S-L-I-P-P-E-R-Y).  But it was well worth it for a find at this kind of location.  I dropped one of my signature items, signed the log, took some pictures of the tower for the logs and went on my way.

The rest of the day was a couple simple caches (an LPC) and a DNF on the final of a multi (the way to find the coords for the final was well done).  All in all it was a good day of caching.  I'll leave you with a few more pictures of the tower and a short (I mean SHORT) video of the water running under the bridge.

100th Find

Just over a week ago, for the first time in a long time, I spent the day Geocaching.  The wife was off scrapbooking with a friend and the little one was spending the day with my mom.  I had a HUGE list of caches I wanted to tackle but precious time to find them.  the day wound up being far from what I had planned but much more.


Biggest Container Yet (Ever?)



I had made a Pocket Query a few days beforehand.  So I loaded it into my iPhone and off I went.  However, I forgot to check on the recent logs of the caches.  Or else I would have known that many of the caches of the one series I was interested in were in somewhat disrepair.  Oh well, there are plenty of caches on my 'To Do' list.

So after dropping the little one off with Grammy I whipped out the iPhone, loaded up the GC.com app, and did a search for nearby caches.  Up came 'Sticking Around For The Beer'.  Yup, sounds like a good cache to start the day off.  It was a nice and easy walk into a suburban park and (aside from the familiar feeling of pine needles on my skin) was a nice start to the day.



Very Clever Hide



Next up were some caches in the Caching Migraine series.  You see (up-to-this-point) I logged my one and only FTF (First-To-Find) on #2 in the series.  So I've wanted to try some more and show that it wasn't just a fluke.  This is when I found out that many of the caches in the series are in need of some maintenance.  I'm not about to spend a rare day of caching hunting for hides that may not even be there.  The 2 caches I did find in the series were worthy of their name.  It was nice to check a couple of them off my list.



By now I was getting close to that triple digit number and I could almost taste it.  But I needed a couple more so I went for cache known to be rather large.  Judging from the maps I thought it was just on the outskirts of a sports field.  However, it proved to be quite the trek through bush with many trails going this way & that.  When I finally arrived at GZ I was slightly disappointed that part of cache that made it interesting (other than it's size) had been disabled :(  On the way back to my car I realized that I had parked about 10 metres from another cache.  And despite being out in the open it had me scratching my head for a few minutes.



Caching Down Memory Lane



With 97 finds I started to head towards my goal cache.  On the way I grabbed a cache beside one of my favourite burger joints and met another cacher while I was there.  I then grabbed a cache from my high school stomping grounds.  Then I headed off to the goal cache.



I had been here once before and had left only slightly stumped because I had forgotten the tools I had known I'd needed.  This time I didn't leave anything to chance.  But the cache was right behind a persons backyard, with a low fence, and a muggle relaxing on a lawn chair DOH!  This is going to take some stealth.

Armed with a multitool I made my way to cache in a semi crouch style walk.  I carefully released the cache from its resting place.  All the while watching the muggle to ensure I don't draw any attention.  Once in hand I dash back to the car.  A clever cache indeed!  I signed log and carefully put it back.  Not before taking some photos for personal reference.

I wound up grabbing one final cache before going to have dinner with the family.  A great ending to a great day!

Testing

I'm just testing my new IFTTT.com Recipe for sharing blog posts to Facebook and Twitter.

If this had been a real test I would have provided you with the answers.

1:18 pm 2012-10-29

If This Then That (Part 2)

So about 2 weeks ago I first posted (see post here) about this website called If This Then That (iftt.com).  I've now had some time to play with it and I have a few uses for it.  But it could be really useful for business professionals or artists.  Basically anyone connected to more than 1 social network could benefit from this.  Even just for the sake of archiving things.

The way the site works is by connecting your various accounts across the internet.  Then, using a simple If-Then statement (called a 'Recipe') you "put the internet to work for you" (the websites slogan).  By simple I mean SIMPLE:

Step 1:

Once you've created an account, click the Create button at the top.  To create the first part of your Recipe click the this in the ifthisthenthat logo.

Step 2:

Select from the list of channels you've activated (coloured) to create the trigger.  This is where you set the action that will trigger a recipe.  It can be that you published a new blog post, recieved a new type of email, have a new follower on twitter, etc


Step 3:
Now you need to click the that part of the logo and then the channel you want it to affect.  For example, I've selected my trigger to be when I publish a new post on my Blogger account.

Step 4:
This is the part where you tell the recipe what to do with the trigger.  Do you want to announce your new post on Twitter with a shortened url?  Do you want to post a link to it on Facebook?  Do you want to email it to a group of people?  Do you want to create a backup copy in Google Drive?

Step 5:
Write a description (so you know what it does) and then press Create Recipe.

I think the best use of this website is for people who use Twitter and Facebook.  There are even some work-arounds to connect your Google Plus account.  But it can be as simple as getting a text message before you leave for work to take your umbrella because it's supposed to rain.

iPod Touch Resurrection (In Progress)

Over the past few years I've come to appreciate the quality that comes with an Apple product.  Especially when my wife and I bought each other a 32 GB iPod Touch 3G for Christmas/Birthday a couple years ago.  In fact, when it came time to buy a new family cell phone 6 months later I decided to go with an iPhone because I knew it would one less new technology I would have to teach my wife.

Well a couple days ago my 15 month old daughter was walking around the house listening to her favourite music, The Gigglebellies, when followed my wife into the bathroom and threw my iPod in the toilet. AHHHHHHHHHH!

I was only a few steps behind her but not quick enough to keep my iPod from being fully submerged.  I scoop it out quickly, towel it dry, power it off, and shove it in a ziplock bag full of rice.  Everything said wait a full 24 hours but after 16 hrs I figured I was safe.  So I pulled out my iPod pressed the home button (nothing).  Pressed the power button (nothing).  pressed and held the power button (still nothing).  No!!!!!!!!!

Still hopeful, I plugged it into a USB charger and after a few minutes I heard the familar ping of an iPod coming back to life.  Woooohoooo!  But my celebration was short lived.  Because after 5 hours of charging it still only showed the smallest charge it could possibly have.

I finally began to accept that my iPod is no more.  That I'd be stuck with only 8 GB of music at a time with my old iPod Nano.  But the next day I decided to plug it in overnight to see what would happen.  low & behold it came back (kindof)!

I had to do a full restore to factory settings on my wife's netbook (because the stupid wireless card in my desktop doesn't see any networks).  So I downloaded the latest iOS for my iPod (5.1.1), loaded up the apps my wife had on her laptop, hit sync, and went to bed.

When I woke up this morning it looked ready to go.  But not exactly:

• The power button doesn't seem to work.  It won't turn it on or off.  I have to plug it into a computer to power the device on.
• The headphones level indicator is superimposed over everything until I press the down volume button
• I can't even send the eror messages to Apple because the wifi and bluetooth options are greyed out under settings

I've tried reseting the network settings.  I even selected to reset ALL the settings.  It comes back on but with the exact same issues.  I'm going to try another restore tonight.  Maybe even a backup from my desktop.  If all else fails I'm going to try a local shop that does iPod/iPhone repairs.