disjoint thoughts

Thanks for fattening us up for Thanksgiving Preston!

I love grilling. It is by far my favorite method of cooking. It’s simple, quick, and requires very little cleanup. Grilled steak is a classic meal and one of my favorites, but what to do with the leftovers? Leftover steak always gets cold and hard in the fridge and I’ve never known the best thing to do with it. It usually ends up in the trash after a week or so.

The days of thrown out steak are numbered! Fear not leftover steak! I will save you from the evil clutches of the trash bin! How will I do it? By using these delicious recipes:

http://leftoversteakrecipes.com/

During the last weekend of July Gina, Justin and I hiked the Grand Canyon and stayed the weekend at Phantom Ranch. All day Saturday was spent fishing the Bright Angel creek for some tasty trout dinner. We ended up with six decent sized trout for dinner (most between 8 and 10 inches). All of which were caught by Justin! It became very obvious that there are plenty of fish to be caught, but only if you know what you’re doing. Here’s some tips that should help anyone wanting to fish that creek:

Bait: Spinners
The Bright Angel creek is small, shallow, and fast flowing in all the areas we explored. The deepest pools were perhaps at most 3 or 4 feet deep, and the water was moving through them very fast. I had brought meal worms as my bait of choice. Rigged on a small hook with a bobber a foot or two up, I wasn’t able to get more than a few bites here and there. I have a feeling that the water was just flowing too fast for live bait, and the fish weren’t even noticing my meal worms. I attempted to add weight to the setup and anchor it in a given place, but this only resulted in snagged lines and meal worms getting ripped from the hooks by the force of the water.

Justin initially tried using power bait, but didn’t have any luck. He later switched to using a Panther Martin spinner, and started catching fish where we had previously though there were none. He pulled fish from the pools we had tried fishing earlier, as well as the shallow, broad areas of the stream where we didn’t think there were fish at all.

Location: Upstream past the bridges or at the confluence with the Colorado
According to the ranger we talked to, the best places to fish the creek is up stream past the bridges in the “deep pools” or down stream at the confluence with the Colorado. We hiked up stream past a couple of bridges and fished the creek in that area. We never found any pools we would consider “deep”, but regardless we caught fish.

Cooking: Salt, Pepper, Lemmon
Ok, this is less important, but I thought I’d add it anyways. I prepped the fish by cleaning them, then sprinkling them with a mix of salt and pepper I had brought down in a small ziplock, and placing sliced lemons in their bellies. We cooked them by individually wrapping the fish in tin foil and cooking them in a small pan over a small camp stove. They turned out amazing.

Now this is what I was talking about:

Ingredients include pepperoni, chicken, mozzarella, pepper jack, onions, tomatoes, pickles, avocados, bell pepper, and lettuce, sprouts. Designed and hand built by Benjamin Smith.

I’m usually not picky about where I eat… except when it comes to sandwiches. I tend to make epic sandwiches on my own: a couple types of meat and cheese, tomatoes, avocados, bell peppers, olives, lettuce, sprouts, onions… mmmmmmm. So when it comes time to choose a place for the JumpBox crew to go to lunch and the choice of food is sandwiches, I only like to go for the best. And in Tempe, the best I’ve found is Sacks.

Another great sandwich place in Phoenix is Duck and Decanter. So yes, I am a sandwich snob Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m hungry.