Crayfish Pie, Jambalaya, Me Oh my Oh!

CRAYFISH PIE

Yield: 8 individual 3-1/2 to 4-oz pie shells

Cornmeal Pie Dough
2-1/2 cups All purpose flour
3/4 cups Cornmeal
3 tsp Sugar
1-1/4 tsp Salt
8-1/4 oz cold Butter, cut in small pieces
3/8 cup Sour cream
1/4 cup Ice-cold water (or more as needed to work dough)


Mix dry ingredients in bowl of food processor. Pulse to combine. Add butter small pieces at a time to dry mix. Transfer to a large bowl. By hand, work in the sour cream and ice water, small amounts at a time. Dough should be soft and pliable, but not sticky. Adjust with flour. Divide dough into 8 equal parts. Chill before rolling out. Roll dough very thinly. Blind bake the pie crusts in 4-ounce tart pans or gratin dishes. (Blind bake means that you line the dough with foil & put dry beans or coffee beans on top of the foil, so that there is weight to hold up the sides of the tarts during the baking process.) Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes depending on how fast your oven is. Remove the beans & foil; bake 1-2 minutes longer to finish. Dough should no longer be translucent. Do not get too much color on them now because remember that once you fill them, they get baked again.


Crayfish Filling
1 lb. Crayfish tails
1/2 stalk Celery, small dice
1/2 Onion, small dice
1/2 bulb Fennel, small dice
1 tsp Garlic, minced
2 tlb flour
1/4 cup Shrimp stock
1-1/4 cups Heavy cream
zest of 2 Lemons
juice of 1 Lemon
1 tlb Parsley, chopped
Salt, Pepper & Tabasco, to taste
2 Scallions, finely sliced
Whole butter


Sauté onion, celery & fennel in whole butter. Add garlic; cook 5 minutes. Sprinkle with flour just to coat lightly. Stir to combine. Add stock, cream, zest and juice. Cook 10 minutes or so to reduce cream a bit. In a separate pan, sauté crayfish tails in whole butter. Add scallions and parsley. Add the crayfish to the cream mixture. Adjust seasonings with salt, pepper and Tabasco. Sometimes a splash of Worcestershire is good too. Fill pre-baked cornmeal pie shells with 4 ounces of filling. Bake until hot and bubbly. Optional garnishes are crispy bacon bits, brunoise jalapeno & sliced scallions.


Susan Spicer, Chef and Owner, Bayona (New Orleans)
Seafood Choices Alliance - www.seafoodchoices.com/


300px-Jambalaya

MickeyD's takes on Starbucks

Somebody is smokin something at McDonald's Corporate offices. Plan's are to offer a similar coffee menu to that of Starbuck's. Not that I'm a peticular Starbuck's fan but I doubt that it will go over all that well but I could be wrong.

Starbuck's just opened a store down the road and across the street from McDonald's here. Being right next to the freeway ramp seems to be good for thier business in this small town. We are tha last real town if you are going north for about 40+ miles or so and often a hangout when the road closes.

McDonald's is trying to capture the traffic for people who can affor $4/cup for a cappichino. I think one major flaw is in the plan....atmosphere.

So much for swimming in Ocean Shores on the north side of Gray's Harbor..

So much for swimming in Ocean Shores on the north side of Gray's Harbor...
southwest of Seattle.

Great White

While the ocean vessel 'Dawn Raider' was commercial fishing for dogfish, this Great White was hooked in the mouth but only resisted slightly for 15 minutes  before it came up alongside the boat to have a look; long enough for one of the crew members to slip a rope a round it's tail !!! 'And that's when the shit hit the fan!!

 The Shark took off towing the 42 foot fishing boat backwards through the water at about 7 Knots. Just like in JAWS, the boat was taking on water over the stern and the crew watched in horror as the shark would actually jump completely out of the water at times. This went on for an hour before the shark finally drown ed. She weighed in at 1035 LBS. It is suspected she followed a weak El Nino current into local waters in search of food.  Although mid 60 degree water is considered ideal for these sharks, the larger ones can tolerate water in the low 50s. 

The Ocean Shores' Great White Shark Hoax 

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 16 May, 2005 : - - There is a  good story that has been circulated on the Internet about a large Great White Shark that towed a vessel backwards after being tail looped. The story, a hoax, is posted below. In fact the photographs (above and below) are of a large short-fin Mako shark that was captured off of Nova Scotia.

Image - 20080113_144401

The close up of the sharks head and mouth clearly show lower dentition that is narrow and pointed, which are characteristics of the Mako shark, unlike the broad, somewhat triangularly serrated teeth of a white shark.

Ralph S. Collier, of the Shark Research Committee has kindly provided the link to the Urban Legends page outlining this particular hoax entitled Yarmouth, Nova Scotia: Urban Legend based on This Years Shark Scramble Catch.

More images of the real event are to be found at the Florida Museaum of Natural History Ichthyology Department and this provided by a Surfersvillage visitor after noticing the hoax story..... Thank you Anonymous.

 

Had you going for a little while!

Laptop Coolers - Do they really work?

What I generally find with portables and desktops is over time, there eventually is a buildup of dust at the heatsink which blocks airflow. This is the biggest contributing factor to heat related issues. Airflow is literally choked. Cooler units won't prevent that. A little occasional preventive maintenance can go a long ways.

Commonly a portable will draw air from the bottom. Pass though the fan and then through the heatsink fins and exhaust out the rear or side of the portable. What I do with mine (power is off) is open a thin paper clip and poke it though one of the little holes as far as I can up into the fan. Then using canned air, blow through the exhaust to dislodge the dust buildup. Then blow air back in through the bottom real good. I do this a couple times generally. The paper clip prevents the fan from overspinning and getting damaged.

Portables may have more than one fan...one for the CPU and one for the Video.

Laptop Coolers can effectively reduce the overall heat you may feel from your laptop. But they lack the capacity to improve the internal airflow that must be maintained to prevent damage to the processor, and/or video chip.

A typical symptom of a blocked heatsink is that the processor fan runs unusually fast or noisily.  Most office supply  and computer stores sell canned air. for $5-$10 and works well for dusting off monitors and keyboards also. The propellant quickly evaporates and is totally safe to use on electronic equipment.

Open-Source Alternatives.

Let's face it, mortgaging the house to purchase commercial software is not an option. In lot's of instances, there are high quality open-source software alternatives that are every way as good if not better than its' commercial counterpart.
Finding the alternative is sometimes a challenge.

Over at http://www.osalt.com, they maintain a list of open source software and looks like a good starting place in your search. For instance, if you’re looking for an alternative to Photoshop, you can see a list of open source alternatives that are available that may fit what you’re looking for