So I decided to take a stab at making my own version of Lakeside Farms’ squashy-apple bisque as a first course to Thanksgiving dinner. The family complained hardly at all about it, so I decided to share my recipe here:

INGREDIENTS:
stick o’ butter
olive oil
celery bunch
large sweet onion
container of chicken stock
2 containers of veggie stock
3-4 medium-sized butternut squash (save seeds and stringy stuff)
4-5 cored and peeled tart apples (Granny Smith, Rome Beauty or Arkansas Black)
salt-N-pepa
thyme (fresh or dried)
tarragon
maple syrup

HOW TO:
In a big friggin’ pot (BFP), add a healthy splash of olive oil and half a stick of butter. Simmer until butter is melted and add chopped onion and bunch of celery (all but the heart sticks). Sautee until soft. In a smaller saucepan, melt the remaining half stick of butter and add squash stringies, seeds and a cup or two of water. Stir often and leave on heat until buttery liquid takes on essence of squash guts. When the buttery squash-gut liquid is nice and orange, strain out the chunks and add liquid to your BFP. Mix thoroughly. All at once, add cubed squash, apples, 1 part chicken stock and 2 parts veggie stock to the BFP, cover, and crank the heat. Stir frequently and add thyme, tarragon, salt and pepper (thyme and tarragon at a ratio of 3:1 and salt and pepper to taste). When squash is soft enough to mash, pour off into a blender and puree. If your blender is like mine and way too small for the job, you’ll need a container (large tupperware joint or similar) to hold the puree before you add all pureed contents back to the BFP to finish. Now that your back to the BFP, add additional quantities of said spices, or just leave it alone. Let it simmer over low heat while flavors develop and add a quick squeeze of maple syrup. I don’t like mine to be too sweet, so I take it easy with the syrup. You can always add more. You can’t take any out without suffering significant burns to the hands and lower forearms. Keep on stirrin’. When it tastes good, you’re done! Top with cinnamon and chive. Serve with bread and beer.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! There’s so much to be thankful for this year, but without having ingested my morning dose of caffeine, I can’t begin to make a list. Since I am still trying to clean out under my fingernails from “processing” this year’s deer harvest, I can’t help but be thankful for a successful hunt and a bunch of tasty meat on the cheap. Here’s a short video of the field dressing of one of our deer. The time-lapse takes the edge off so it’s not real gorry….enjoy!

We just spent the last little while trying to make what sense we could of the reality that Kalen will be 7 months old tomorrow. What is it about your sense time as you age? Remember when you were kid and the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed to last longer than the previous 11 months? That’s what is was like for us anyway, and I think it was because we were conciously aware that each day was one closer to getting some sweet gifts…the anticipation made the clock spin backwards. Fast forward to today – I look forward to each day with Kalen and I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do next and for some reason the oposite is true as a 30-something…time is flying faster than ever! Wish I could turn that on and off, but I can’t (yet). Enough said – Here’s some recent pics of Kalen to celebrate 7 months:

Finally…After 10 months I found enough time in the schedule to compile some of the pictures and short videos from the most recent winter trip to the Rockies. My brother Seth and his wife Sarah let my good buddy Ed and I invade their neck of the woods after the holidays and, with the help of friends and family, we certainly made the best of it. Here is a video compilation to commemorate that trip:

Can’t wait to get back out there this January and bring the little guy for his first Rocky Mountain winter!!

Check it out – My buddy Sam is a pretty talented RC plane operator (which is pretty much like saying someone is really good at Star Trek trivia), but every once in a while even the best “pilots” hit people. In this case it was two people (including himself!!)…

So I was scouring this site for some new tunes and I came across this Basement Jaxx video. This is probably the worst song of all time, but the video is hilarious. Check out the drummer and keep an eye out for when a piece of the keyboard flies off:

Today we went apple picking. The weather was perfect – temps in the 60’s and blue sky sll day. We went to Windy Hill Orchard in Great Barrington, MA. Hot cider, cider donuts, apples of all types and tons of pumpkins made it worth the ride and Kalen slept the entire trip there and back. I’m not sure how many exclusively Fall activities there are, but apple picking has to be best thing going this time of year – sure beats the piss out of raking! Anyway, here are a couple pics: