Author: admin

I’ve been gathering blueberries from my 6 bushes for the last week or so. Thus far I’ve gather 3 quarts and I suppose that In the next day or two I’ll gather another quart. After that I believe that the bushes will have given all they can this year. Not bad (I guess) given that this is the first year the plants have been in the ground.

After each day of picking I’d lay out the harvest on a rimmed cookie sheet (a single layer thick) and place them in the freezer for a few hours. Once frozen they were transferred to a quart baggie. This keeps the berries from freezing together.

The very simple recipe I’ve chosen from the array of ‘internet people’ is at Taste of Southern. You can cruise over there and see how simple it is. Ingredients are:

10 cups of blue berries (results in 6 cups of crushed berries)
4 cups of sugar
2 Tablespoons of lemon juice

I’ll let you know how it comes out !

I took the photo of two young hawks perched together on a pine a little while back. I thought it unusual as I’ve never seen haws pal around together. The image on the bottom has been slightly modified in PaintNet to produce a more surreal feel.

Linda B has sent along a recipe for Pesto that works well for folk that are not big on Basil. I’ll be trying this when I can get some Arugula into the ground.

Thanks Linda !

Ingredients

4 cups packed fresh arugula
1 tablespoon minced garlic
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 cup pure olive oil
2 tablespoon pine nuts, toasted, plus 1 tablespoon
1/8 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Directions

Prepare an ice water bath in a large bowl, and bring a large pot of water to a boil. Put the arugula in a large sieve and plunge it into the boiling water. Immediately immerse all the arugula and stir so that it blanches evenly. Blanch for about 15 seconds. Remove, shake off the excess water, then plunge the arugula into the ice water bath and stir again so it cools as fast as possible. Drain well.

Squeeze the water out of the arugula with your hands until very dry. Roughly chop the arugula and put in a blender. Add the garlic, salt and pepper to taste, olive oil, 2 tablespoons of the pine nuts, and the vitamin C, if using. Blend for at least 30 seconds. In this way the green of the arugula will thoroughly color the oil. Add the cheese and pulse to combine. The pesto will keep several days in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator.

Pull out before dinner to get to room temperature. Before serving, add the remaining 1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts.

I did get the opportunity to put the boat in the water today and managed to catch a few catfish. Here is a lesson learned for those of you that have a boat: check and make sure that you have the drain plug with you before you drive all the way to the water. I got down to the launch site and no drain plug. That’s really odd in that it is permanently attached to the drain fixture. So I lash the boat back down to the trailer and off I go to my dealer (The Boat House in Athens, AL) who, with a smile, told me that they don’t make those drain plugs or drain fixtures anymore. They did sell the the new model and saved me a small fortune by providing me the silicon and tools that I’d need to swap out the assembly. Half an hour later I was on the water.

The fishing was worse than uneventful, I was using chicken liver on circle hooks and fishing roughly 18 foot deep in 20 feet of water. My line was tied to ‘jugs’ and I had 10 of them set out. The catfish loved the bate! The only problem was that they could grab the bait and would slide right off of the hook. Only two of the catfish were dumb enough to actually get caught (a blue and a channel cat), in the end I gave them back to the lake (no one wants to eat dumb fish).

I’ve got chicken gizzards in the freezer so weather permitting I’ll put it back into the water tomorrow.

Looks like I’ll finally be able to get the boat back into the water this week; Monday and Wednesday may prove to be the best. I changed the engine and gearbox oil last month and then ran it for about an hour to make sure all was well. I don’t relish being on the water during a thunderstorm so wherever I put in will be where I can make a short run back to the ramp.

Speaking of ramps, the ramp at Elk River Mills (my favorite launch site for Elk River fishing) was completely wiped out in March. Huge logs had washed down the river and piled up against the dock and then the millions of gallons of water pushed against the drift and destroyed it. I can still get in the Elk at the Al Hwy 99 launch, but there is no dock and the ramp sucks. So will put in at Second Creek (the first creek east of Wheeler Dam) or First Creek (the second creek east of the dam). Both are good launch points and while I cannot go fishing where I would like, it’s a short run from the fishing zones to the boat launch. The diagram below shows how all of this lays out.