Mexican food is one of my favorite cultural diversions. I love traditional Mexican cooking. The spices, textures, heat and aroma make for an intoxicating meal. This story would be much more fun if I could say that I got my recipe from some family in northern Mexico on an extended stay there. That is not the case. It is however adapted from a Rick Bayless recipe, and I can assure you, HE got it from some family in Northern Mexico on some extended stay there.

Barbacoa usually refers to meat including goat or sheep that are slowly cooked over fire. Rick Bayless is even more traditional and cooks the meat in a covered pit at low temperature for many hours. The result is tender meat that is well spiced and excellent as a base for many Mexican foods.

The recipe that I use for barbacoa uses the crock pot and a three pound beef or pork roast. The recipe that I use can be found here. It makes excellent barbacoa and is easy to prepare and serve.

I make fresh salsa as well. A couple of tomatoes diced, four cloves of garlic, eight sprigs of cilantro, a couple of green onions and the juice of one lime. Add salt and pepper to taste and WOW.

Serve with CORN tortillas, lime wedges, salsa, sour cream, optionally rice or beans. It is a great meal that makes great leftovers.

Mark

World Famous, (Well it ought to be), Palm One.

Palm One, E202, Sapphire Beach

My son Zach’s prom was this weekend. It is hard to believe that he is a senior in high school. He has always been the best child and now he is the best young adult a parent could have. He is active in many things including scouting, Taekwondo, and school. Currently his plan is to go to Iowa State for undergrad and the University of Iowa for medical school.

His graduation and 18th birthday are both coming up next month and I am writing a longer post with a lot more pictures…..

Zach Miner, Prom 2010

Coffee is is the heart of the productive part of my day. The posts on this blog are almost universally written after my daily java dose. Coffee will take me from lounging around with no real direction to being pumped up and looking for something to get done.

I use a French press to make coffee. It could not be any easier. Simply put ground coffee in the press, add hot water, wait four minutes, and then press the grounds to the bottom with a mesh filter and pour the coffee off the top. I make a huge serving of coffee, put ice in a carafe and pour the hot coffee in it. I have a huge cup and the rest goes in the refrigerator. I make coffee once every three days and keep it in the fridge and drink it over ice. YUMM.

Zak Evans, my great CS  friend from Utah ordered a box of random stuff from woot.com when I was there in December.  I wrote a little post when I was intoxicated that described the ordeal.  This is a link to that post…. <-be sure to read this post to get up to speed on THIS post. 

This is the video of the hip-hoppin-hippies.

My aunt Florine has lived on the same farm for the last seventy years.  She moved there with her husband, (my uncle K.C. (short for Kenneth Chaloupka)) when she was 18 years old.  She is 88 and still does daily farm chores.  This clip is from last summer when we all paid a visit.  Here she talks about one of the tractors that has been on the farm for 60 years.

The trip down the highway 1 (more commonly called Pacific coast highway or PCH) was a fantastic part of my December road trip.  The coastline is so beautiful that I was compelled to stop every few miles to shoot video.  This is from the PCH near Eureka, California just after dawn on December 9, 2009.

Hi-Def video from Sapphire Beach, St Thomas, USVI.

I have several pieces of software that I use when editing photos. First and foremost is photoshop. I have learned a great deal about this fine program over the last year. I still probably only use one third of its capability. There are a very large number of excellent tutorials on the web for using photoshop. I usually wait until I really need to do something with PS and then look on the web for a tutorial on how to do it.

For HDR, I use several programs. To truly do HDR, you need to take several photos in rapid succession with varying exposures and then combine them into one HDR photo. This does not work very well with human or other moving subjects. For this you make your HDR from a single exposure. (This is actually pseudo-HDR because it comes from just one exposure) Even with one exposure you can get some truly interesting HDR photographs. My single favorite HDR software that I use when I only have one exposure is Dynamic PhotoHDR by Mediachance. It does an excellent job of spicing up photos and if you play with it enough, it looks great. There is a lot of customizing that you can do within software, yet it is very simple to use.

White Bay, Jost Van Dyke, BVI (British Virgin Islands)

Almost all of the photographs that I take today end up getting at least a little HDR manipulation. It adds drama and extra “pop” to a photo. It takes a photo that I like anyway and makes me love it.

Flowers from Grays lake. Converted to black and white and photoshopped for a while. I am going to make an art print of this one.

"Flowers for Ryan" 2010

A friend recently asked if I could take a few interior shots of a property that she has for sale. (E5W in the East Village, Des Moines)  I decided that if I shot in HDR it would add drama to the photos. I am really pleased with how they turned out. Taking the photos in HDR probably adds fifty percent to the overall time spent processing each photo.

Link to all the photos

E5W in the East Village, Des Moines

Last evening was beautiful and a great time to hit Grays lake. During the spring summer and fall Gray’s lake is busy with people enjoying the beautiful park in the heart of the city. I brought my camera and got a few photos that I like. Obviously I am a fan of HDR, although I usually do not like that grainy over-the-top-look of HDR done poorly. With that said, I really like one of the pictures of Ryan that I took while I was out and I like this photo with the over-the-top-look.

Grays Lake Des Moines, Early Evening

Ryan Carney, Des Moines, Grays Lake

Random Folks, Grays Lake Des Moines

Two weekend’s ago I had a couple of couchsurfers in town. They were from the San Francisco Bay area. They are currently trekking across the country to start a new life as CSA farmers. CSA stands for community supported agriculture and they made it sound pretty great. They hope to take over a farm from an ailing couple in Michigan and start a CSA program there.

The basic idea of CSA means individuals buy a ‘share’ of a farm at the beginning of the season. For this, they receive a weekly basket or box of fresh vegetables from the farm as the season progresses. Participants also get special trips to the farm, fresh flowers in season, etc. In return the farms get a good cash flow at the start of the planting season when they could use it most. It also helps to spread the risk. In a drought year, people who bought into the farm help absorb the decreased production. To me what CSA really does is connect the community to the plight of agriculture in a more transparent and fun way.

Learn more about community supported agriculture.

About the pictures.. I noticed that they had their lives packed into this car and thought it would make a great photo. We got back from hitting downtown and they ‘posed’ in the garage for a few pictures. They have been HDR’d because, well, I really like HDR.  They are Matthew and Molly.

Matthew Benjamin, HDR, Des Moines 2010

Molly and Matthew Benjamin, HDR. Des Moines 2010

Spring is here. It has been a wonderful two weeks in Des Moines. The weather has been warm and sunny. The days are getting longer with plenty of outdoor time to be had. I am learning the extensive bike trails around the city, a lot of these run along the riverbank. (A few stretches still have four inches of mud covering them from the flooding a couple of weeks ago making them nearly impassable.) The goal here is to be ready for RAGBRAI this summer. The Registers Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI), is a week long bike ride that tracks across the state of Iowa in daily stages from east west to east. This year the seven day trek will cover 442 miles. RAGBRAI is a great way to see Iowa and rural Americana.

Ok, so, I wrote every day of my road trip and I looked forward to my daily post. I vowed ahead of time that I would and I did. Setting the goal of writing daily and then saying so on the blog made it more important for me to actually write a daily post. Now for the commitment. I am going to post daily for the next year. I really like writing, I really like photography and videography. The posts are going to be a bit of all of these things. If I don’t, I’m just lazy….