Filed under: Angling, Fly Fishing | Tags: fly fishing, Raymond Carver, The Current
These fish have no eyes
these silver fish that come to me in dreams,
scattering their roe and milt
in the pockets of my brain.
But there’s one that comes–
heavy, scarred, silent like the rest,
that simply holds against the current,
closing its dark mouth against
the current, closing and opening
as it holds to the current.
-Raymond Carver
There are still some days of summer light left… make sure you get out and fish.
Filed under: Wearables | Tags: Grateful Dead, parking lot, t shirts, vintage
Just to good not to re-post this. Vince Dugar’s collection of Grateful Dead Parking lot t-shirts. Just a small sampling shown here, I recommend viewing the whole collection.
Filed under: Books, Outdoors | Tags: Dennis Bleything, guidebook, Life Support Technology, Ron Dawson, wilderness, Wilderness Pcket n' Pak Library
The Wilderness Pocket n’ Pak Library is a set of 5 small books containing essential wilderness survival skills created by Dennis Bleything and Ron Dawson. The collection of books was first published in 1972 by what was then the authors’ company Life Support Technology. The set of books comes in a fold-up plastic sleeve that protects them while stuffed in a backpack or back pocket while out in the woods.
If you want a set of these excellent books you could probably find them used online or something, or instead you could try to order them from this 1974 issue of Backpacker. Its your choice but either way you should probably have these pocket sized lifesavers with you next time you hit the trail.
Filed under: Eats | Tags: brining, canning, corning, cucumbers, homemade, jar, pickles, pickling
This past weekend my brother and I did a little pickling with the bumper crop of cucumbers we have grown in our garden this year. We like to keep our pickles pretty simple both in the ingredients and in the process. We skip the whole canning thing and instead opt for refrigerator pickles since we would prefer to eat them in a weeks time not sometime next year. The end result is a crisp half-sour style pickle.
The recipe is pretty simple. Layer in dill and crushed garlic cloves followed by several cucumbers. Build up several layers of the ingredients until you get to the top of the jar and then add a bunch of whole pepper corns, a few table spoons of salt, and then fill the jar up with boiling water. Of course you can also add other spices, with this batch I threw in a few dried cayenne peppers we grew in last summer’s garden for some extra spice. Close the top of the jar and give it a good couple shakes and turns to make sure the salt dissolves well. Then the tough part comes, stick them in the fridge and wait a few days. Start tasting them over the next few days until the reach the desired flavor. You’ll find the longer they sit in the brine the stronger the flavor gets…however chances are they wont be sitting in the brine for that long.
Hope you all are having a good 4th of July, drinking plenty of beer and eating grilled meats. Happy 4th from Cape Cod!
One of my favorite ways to prepare greens during these warm months is on the grill. The smokiness from the fire is a flavor you can’t get when the skillet is on your range top. After you have finished cooking your meats on the grill remove it entirely so you can get at the coals. Take a cast iron skillet and put it right on top of your coals which should still have plenty of heat to cook up some greens.
Let the skillet get nice and hot then throw in some smoked bacon. Let that cook awhile and get nice and crispy before adding any greens. As for the greens themselves and what you should use you really can’t go wrong. I happened to have a lot of leftover kale and mustards from our spring garden this year so I took what was left and put it in the pan.
You’ll want to start with what seems like an obscene amount of greens because as they cook they will reduce in size. Start by filling the pan up and continually stirring until the cook down a bit and then repeat. You will probably looks a few pieces to the fire during the cooking process but consider it a small sacrifice for some of the best greens you will ever eat.
