Pasta Sausage Sauce...

This is what we've been calling this recipe from Simply Recipes (Fettuccini with Creamy Tomato Italian Sausage Sauce). I've made it several times now, but with whatever pasta I have on hand and with regular Italian sausage (Publix brand), no hot or spicy (the recipe calls for half regular, half spicy Italian sausage). It's been a huge hit every time, and we highly recommend it. I actually prefer mine without parmesan cheese on top (I know, something must be wrong, me not wanting cheese!), but C prefers his with parmesan.

Anyway, we highly recommend this one.

Jacksonville Jaguar

Out and about town are these jaguars, similar to the oranges of Riverside. Each is painted differently. This particular cat hangs out in Neptune Beach.

Puerto Rican Dinner

A couple of weeks ago (way back in November), along with some friends, we decided to try the Puerto Rican menu out of a recent Gourmet magazine. These are the results, and they were quite tasty. Unfortunately, my poor food photo taking skills don't show off the results to their best advantage.

First was a pineapple, mint, and rum concoction that was very, very tasty. This would go down very nicely on a lovely summer day, particularly while sitting outside on the veranda enjoying the afternoon breeze.

Then there was schrimp escabeche. I really liked this dish. The shrimp were cooked prior to mixing with the other ingredients, so it wasn't a ceviche where the fish and shellfish are cooked in an acidic liquid, but the taste was similar.

Avocado salad with a lemon dressing, with bibb and romaine lettuce. Since I'm not a big fan of avocado, I picked around it. The dressing was light and tasty.

Calabaza (baked pumpkin). This was done with butternut squash, rather than the traditional Caribbean pumpkin.

This is the rice and peas dish that I made. I started with a sofrito made of cilantro, onions, and peppers which was pureed in the blender. Then added the rice and sauteed all of that together. Then added pigeon peas. It was a bit of work, and I thought that there wasn't enough water in the recipe, but I followed the instructions exactly and the dish came out perfect.

The main course was roasted pork. Yummy. I didn't care too much for the skin, which apparently, in some places, people fight over. Maybe because it needed to go back in the oven to crisp up a bit. The piece I had was a bit chewy. But the pork was excellent. And was cooked with garlic under the skin. And the leftover pork mixed with the rice and peas was absolutely delicious. So delicious in fact, that I plan on making the rice and peas and the pork again. I'd even go so far as to say that next time with the leftovers, I might toss them in a corn or flour tortilla and eat them that way.

For dessert, there was a coconut rum cake. I'm not sure if there was coconut in the cake or just in the frosting. The cake was good. It was so good apparently, that I never even got to have any of the leftovers. Not shown in a photo is the tropical fruit that was also there. The menu called for a guanabana sherbet, but because none of us had an ice cream maker nor do the stores carry guanabana (aka soursop) sherbet, we made do with mango sherbet and vanilla ice cream. The tropical fruit was mango and papaya with pomegranate seeds sprinkled throughout.

For beverages, we had a Spanish tempranillo, a white Spanish wine, and an Argentinean malbec. Unfortunately, I have no more details of those, although I wish I did because they were very tasty and went well with the food.

For our next cooking adventure, we're heading to Vietnam. Hopefully my food photo taking skills will have improved by then so I can do the food justice.

Advertising Manager Needed...

Unfortunately this picture is a bit blurry (I was trying to take this quickly from across the street on my way to work). This is the sign outside the local gentlemen's club, and it reads: "Hot Beer, Cold Women, Home Away from Home!"

Gator Sighting

On Sunday, we saw a gator in the river. He was pretty big, and moving quite quickly upriver. Unfortunately, I didn't move fast enough to get a picture. But he was just a few feet from the side of the river, just beyond the trees.

View From a Hotel Room Window - Miami, FL - October 2007

"Damaged Pavement"

One of the differences in driving between California and Florida (in fact, between California and most of the rest of the country that I've seen), is that in California, you take your chances with the road. The assumption is made that you're paying attention to the road and can see that the pavement changes ahead. Or that you can see the pothole that might swallow your car. But in other parts of the country, the DOT folks are kind enough to place signs that warn you of imminent car swallowing sections of road, or that there might be a slight bump in the road.

Here in Florida, though, while driving north on I-95 I saw a sign that said Damaged Pavement Ahead. I spent miles waiting to see a section of damaged pavement. I think I was in another county by the time I realized they were probably referring to this very slight section of cracked pavement that I'd passed way back when that I barely noticed. Now, in California, cracked sections of pavement don't merit whole entire signs, so I was quite curious to see what they meant by damaged pavement, and wondered if I was going to have to detour or something. But no, they were just being kind and considerate, and letting drivers know that up ahead, the feel of the pavement was going to change slightly and that it wasn't anything to be concerned about.

Keyless Cars

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending upon your perspective) I get to drive rental cars for work every now and then, which gives me an opportunity to test drive new cars. Based on my purely unscientific observations, American made cars are gas guzzlers. It takes me a whole tank of gas to get to Orlando in an American made car. But the Nissan Altima I got to drive the other day took only half a tank of gas to go all the way to Orlando and beyond AND back.

Not only that, the car was keyless. And if you haven't used a keyless car before, it definitely takes some getting used to. I'm completely conditioned to using a key to start my car. It's a habit. Anyway, this particular keyless car has a key ring type thing that you use to unlock and lock the car. And you MUST keep this key ring thing with you to start the car. One of the nice things about a car key is that you place the key in the ignition, which provides a handy place to put the key. With a keyless car, there's no convenient place to place the key ring thing. I was very worried that I was going to lose the key ring thing IN the car.

Despite the weirdness of a keyless car, I really enjoyed driving the Altima.

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

It is dumping water outside at the moment. It's raining so hard that were I to sit in my car at this particular time, it would seem as if I was going through a car wash -- even though the car isn't moving. It's actually been raining pretty steadily, which doesn't seem to happen very regularly when it rains here. Usually when it rains, there are pockets of car wash type dumping mixed in with lighter rain drops with large areas of very clear blue sky visible. Sometimes it will look nice and sunny outside the window, yet if I walk outside, it's pouring rain.

This is also different from the summer rains. Summer rains come in the afternoon/evening, and follow a standard pattern with some parts of Jacksonville getting dumped on and others bone dry with thunder and lightning. This is consistently dumping rain on both sides of the river and for a long period of time.

Anyway, I love listening to the rain, I'm just hoping that by the time I have to go to work tomorrow, that it will have stopped.

A Gaucho in a sea of Gators

I meant to post this one a while ago, when it was more relevant. But with football season winding down, the Gator mania has lessened.

I now live in north Florida. The University of Florida is in Gainesville, is just down the road. Many, many people from north Florida that go to college go to UF. The UF mascot is the Gator. (It's also the home of Gatorade, by the way.) UF is also known as Florida.

Florida won the football championship last year (2006). They also won several basketball championships recently, as well. (And I'm setting myself up for a lecture on the history of Florida sports by not providing specifics, here.)

Anyway, the majority of my coworkers, with a few exceptions (a couple of FSU (Florida State University Seminoles), an Ohio, a University of Colorado, a Temple University, and a few other universities thrown in for good measure) ,are Gators. They wear Gator colors on Fridays (blue and orange if you were curious). They have Gator signs on their desks. One even has blue and orange Christmas-style lights around their cubicle.

Now, not only are these people Gators. But football is serious business out here. The grocery stores have huge tailgating sales before big games. People with RVs line up to get in the prime tailgating locations before big games for days. Yes, days.

So here I am, from a college that disbanded its football team way back in the late 80s. Surrounded by people that take their football team's wins and losses very, very seriously. It's been a culture shock.

But I have been thinking about printing out a UCSB Gaucho logo and putting it on my cubicle, much like these folks have their Gators.