Authorship

Monday, May 23, 2011

Foraging Fun

It's morel season in parts of Montana. Unfortunately, not any of the parts that I have been scouring the past weekend.

However, before my trek to Bozeman, I did have a successful hunt with my friends.


Having encountered the slightly toxic False Morels in my initial search, and little else, I was about to give up. But fortunately, we stumbled upon one in a small patch of scrabble and pebbles away from where we had previously trained our eyes. The thing with hunting mushrooms, once you spot one, you typically can't stop seeing them. 



In the end, we ended up with just under a half-pound of nice sized morels. Not too bad for searching over four different spots, and figuring we were about to get skunked. 



So here is my little recipe for a quick and tasty morel treat.

  • Half an apple
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • Butter
  • 1/2 pound morels, cleaned and split in half length wise
  • Freshly cracked black pepper
  • Salt
Chop the apple into a small dice and mince the garlic. Saute both in butter until the apples begin to brown. I would only use a small amount of butter maybe small pat. And the morels and let cook. Very quickly, the moisture from the mushrooms will begin to cook out and the morels will begin to soften. Once the liquid begins to bubble, drain it off the liquid and save it for later (you might want to use a strainer or something to keep the morel/apple mixture separate). Return the mushrooms to the pan on high heat add a bit more butter and re-saute the mushrooms until they brown up a bit.  Add freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste. Serve as a side.

Mushrooms contain a ton of water. If you try to cook them in oil right away, they just get soggy from essentially stewing in their juices and oil. Removing and saving the liquid that comes off from cooking not only allows you to concentrate the mushroom's flavor, it provides you with the base of a good mushroom broth you can use to flavor stocks and sauces at a later point in time.





If all goes well, I will be finding a new batch next weekend and coming up with some kick ass recipes for y'all.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

The Future...

With all this talk of the "End of the World," happening at some point today, I have to turn to my thoughts of one of the best documentaries ever made about the inevitable fate of man, The Planet of the Apes. Of course there were multiple sequels to this documentary, Battle of the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Dinner with Andre from the Planet of the Apes, Look who's Talking from the Planet of the Apes, ad infinitum, but if we have learned anything from these factual representations of our future, is that once man has disappeared from Earth, North America will become a desert wasteland, and Gorilla will develop opposable thumbs and kick our asses.



Which brings me to this photograph of our evolutionary family tree taken at the what was once known as the Washington Park Zoological Gardens, i.e. the Oregon Zoo, circa 1987. I believe this sign and many others like it have been long since destroyed or mothballed, which is a shame. 

But since today, is now the date of the rapture, and only the worthy are going to be taken up to heaven, I believe our ape and simian overlords are finally looking for their opportunity to take their rightful place as the rulers of those left behind. I, for one, hope that this shows that I fit into their hierarchy and that they ignore my previous posts about evil monkeys. If not, I'm screwed.

Happy end of the world everyone. If we all survive, more posts coming soon.
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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Ride the Bronze Buffalo: The Trash Eating Goat

This is not Bozeman...
This is Spokane.
Though I may be pointing toward Bozeman, if I knew my the orientation of this sculpture and had any sense of direction. But let's just say, I am pointing to...the infinite.

Spokane is a magical land of brick where the statues eat garbage.



And after five hours of driving, there is nothing better than to get out of a car, stretch your legs, and to crawl upon a trash eating statue of a goat, and point to the infinite...


Yes people, this is what Spokane has to offer. 


Brick and statues that eat trash. Kind of poetic if you ask me. 

Something Bozeman related will be up soon. Once I figure out what that might be...
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Thursday, May 12, 2011

Change of Scenery

For the next sixteen months, I abdicate my title of Portlander and become a Montanan.

What does that entail?

  • Buckskins
  • Shotguns
  • Taxidermy
  • Taming Elk, Bear, and Antelope (otherwise known as Pronghorn)
  • Nursing School
  • and assorted other things.
What else might happen? Who the hell knows? I sure as hell don't. All I know is that it took a long ass time to drive out here and now I am in in Montana. I fed and rode a garbage eating goat in Spokane. I saw a deer. I was briefly Italian in Idaho. And I think that is about all I can say.

Pictures to come.

And the motto of the trek has been: Tally-Ho!

Thursday, May 5, 2011

The Final Farewell Song Batch: Hot Rods, The Future, and Humor

So this is it people...
No more posts of me plaguing you with my angelic voice. But before I put up the final three songs, let me tell you what songs were unfortunately culled from the list.

"Tick Tock" by Ke$ha was unfortunately removed from the list because, well, I didn't learn the song in time. I tried to let every song be a true representation of my future life, wishes, hopes, and fears. And since I don't "brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack" and have the popo shut me down, I figured I would be putting up a facade.

Also culled from the album was "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" by Tracy Adkins. The reasons for including this song on the list are just as numerous as excluding it. Besides being probably one of the worst songs written at this point in the century, it is just really, well stupid.

"Superstar" would have made it on the list if it hadn't become so damned popular because of American Idol. Curse you American Pop Cultural Happenings that I refuse to take part in. I shake my angry fist at you.

There were a number of rap/hip-hop songs I considered including as well. The list included "Whoomp There It Is"; "Baby Got Back"; "Fight the Power"; and "Planet Rock."

"Purple Rain" almost made the list and so did "Living on a Prayer," but they didn't, so cry tears of what may have been at another point in time.

Today I leave you with three songs.

Rob Zombie's "Dragula," is a song that makes no sense whatsoever. I can't explain what it is about. I think it's about a drag race...a drag race through HELL...or maybe Idaho. Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All" is about children, not about HELL...and the BeeGees, "I Started a Joke," is about tears, traumatic brain injury, and strange looking men singing in falsetto voices. Well, at least that is how I interpret these songs. Your interpretations may be different than mine. And that is your choice.



Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Patrick Sings Farewell: Three-In-One Spectacular

For today's presentation, I bring you songs that try to make a rhyme scheme using the name Serengeti, persistent midgets, and departures via air travel.

To be honest, I really don't know what the song "Africa" is really about. Yet when I listen to this song, knowing that Toto wrote this amazing track and also did the soundtrack to Dune, makes me want to climb a distant pile of sand in an arid desert and wait for a giant sandworm... The song is that EPIC!

"Little Willy" by Sweet is a song about the most persistent and popular midget around town. Apparently, the man is incredibly stubborn as well because he never really wants to leave...or go...or do much of anything as far as I can. To make it worse, Willy is apparently indecisive. And nothing in this world is more annoying that a stubborn hipster midget unable to make up his mind. As a complete aside, try and find "Little Willy" on the Sweet's Greatest Hits album, it isn't there. One on wonders, Why?

And for today's final video, we have "Leaving on a Jet Plane," by Peter, Paul and Mary, a folk song that I believe has been banned from karaoke bars near airports for numerous reasons. I have heard stories of tour guides in Bangkok being subjected to drunken German tourists croon this tune numerous times in one evening as they ended their summer holiday....This can be considered one of the true gifts that American folk music brings to the world, drunken annoyance via foreign travelers.

And with that, I present three videos.



Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Robots and The Seasons...or...My Battle Versus the Copyright Elves

Apparently the copyright elves don't like my harmonious voice, for today I received notice that the videos that I have been posting of me singing the sweet songs of farewell are being tagged by YouTube as possible infringements of the rights' holders property.

Ah, if only they knew...If only they knew that I was singing these songs in the realm of fair use as a declaration of love for my fellow colleagues, friends, and assorted and sundry strangers who occasionally stumble upon my blog.

So you should watch these videos while they are proverbially "hot." They may not last forever if the copyright elves decide to strip them away from me.

So first we have "Mr. Roboto" by Styx a song about robots and overcoming oppression. Following that proud anthem, we have the wonderfully cheerful song "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks, which is about telling your father how hard it is to die. This isn't an easy thing to do, nor is it an easy song to sing, but it has a lot of crooning about seasons. And we all love the seasons.

Therefore, I present...music.


Monday, May 2, 2011

Singing Songs of Love, Hope, Surfing, and Iambing

As promised, here are the first two videos from the album, "Patrick Sings Farewell."

The first song is a symbolic tribute to taking flight, as the introduction to the video explains, and is a proud declaration that a certain word, "Bird," happens to be the word.  The following song is a proclomation of identity of saying, "I Am." Well, actually, of having said "I Am," to inanimate objects such as chairs. While Neil Diamond likes to make such self-assured statements to furniture, I will never know. But for me, I was to proudly to declare that "I Am the Bird," or something like that.

I wish I could say that there were fancy live videos to the singing portion of the song, but there aren't. Just a black screen, a future unknown. It's poetry, I think.





Now With Extra Elk...

Presented for your viewing pleasure is a copy of the sleave for the one-of-a-kind album "Patrick Sings Farewell."

Click on the image to embiggen it and see all of the glorious details...


So what is this "Patrick Sings Farewell" that I have heard so much talk about on the street and boardwalks about town?  Well let me tell you.

Recall those Youtube videos of various songs posted a few weeks back with little explanation? Well, this is my very own artful rendering of those very same songs.
  1. "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen
  2. "I Am I Said" by Neil Diamond
  3. "Mr. Roboto," by Styx
  4. "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks
  5. "Africa" by Toto
  6. "Little Willy" by Sweet
  7. "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Peter, Paul, and Mary
  8. "Dragula" by Rob Zombie
  9. "The Greatest Love of All" by Whitney Houston
  10. "I Started a Joke" by the BeeGees
As an extra bonus, viewers of this blog will get to see the video introductions and  the live-action-films that accompany each of six of these tracks!

It's kind of like buying Ginzu Knives but without having to cut through a tin can and then slicing the perfect tomato for a sandwich. Which is always something magic. Also you don't have to worry about getting stichest from these songs unlike said Ginzu Knives. At least I don't think you will.

To  be continued...