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Sufferin’ Succotash!
‘Oh what a beautiful morning…….
The corn as is high as an elephant’s eye…’
It’s only been there barely a month and it’s trying to break out.
Squash + Pluot
Whoop de do! We harvested these guys from our garden plot yesterday. I’m so impressed with myself that a little nuclear fusion from the sun, and a little free irrigation water from the Colorado River has made these veggies for us.
But, what to do with them? I did the standard ‘put them under the grill (broiler) and throw salt, pepper, garlic and olive oil on them’ yesterday, but they still didn’t taste of much.
But today, we got a Porterhouse steak from Staters, and I sauteed the roundels of squash with, guess what, garlic and salt and pepper, but also a chopped up Pluot from our CSA box. Yummee 🙂 Seriously.
Chromecast – muy cool
So we got the Google ChromeCast dongle yesterday, and having read the reviews, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. Certainly, Roku and Apple TV have way more things that you can do.
Not so fast. The way it works is that you can use any device (I tried Nexi 4, 7 and 10, and iPod touch) to direct a stream from Youtube and Netflix to the device, and here’s the kicker, you can literally turn off (hard shut down) the controlling device, and the Chromecast will keep playing. So the stream is going directly to the Chromecast, not via the controller. The quality is excellent, even over our congested 2.4 GHz wireless neighborhood.
The downsides are 2:
1) There aren’t many apps yet that implement the ChromeCast API – for Android, it’s the above Netflix and YouTube, as well as Google Play Movies. For iOS, it’s just YouTube and Netflix.
For PC’s and Macs (I don’t know about Linux) it’s just the Chrome browser with the downloadable Chromecast extension (which can be used in ‘incognito’ mode, for those of us who are paranoid about Google tracking our usage).
2) This Chrome implementation, in beta as yet, is a bit lame, as it simply ‘mirrors’ what you see in a Chrome browser tab, but it does let you browse local and network files for media content. Functionally, it’s not as comprehensive as an HDMI cable from the back of your computer to the TV, or even Miracast, but hey, it’s only $35 for the ChromeCast dongle.
What’s really neat is that the API for it is now out there. It is to be hoped (and prayed) that apps like Skifta and all the other media players will implement it so that we can wirelessly watch all of our device, local, network and ‘cloud’ content on our HD TVs.
Promising.
Community Garden update
In a few short weeks, our garden has grown. It’s pushing up hard against the dry hot season. so we’re not really sure what’s going to work and what isn’t. But, everything is growing like crazy. However, nothing except the Jalapeno is anything like ready to crop yet.
Indian Flats
Indian Flats campground is an isolated place. About 7 miles North of Warner Springs, CA along a choppy, twisty road, we’d been there many times in the Westfalia camper. This was the first time using the Xterra. Quick comparison: for getting there, there is none, the Xterra blows the VW out of the water in terms of handling, sure-footedness and performance; for ‘style of residence’, oh, we do miss the convenience of the Westfalia.
But here’s a thing, it’s early fire season hereabouts. There’s only one way out of Indian Flats in the VW, because it probably couldn’t cope with the gnarly dirt/rocky road over to Chihuahua Valley Road westward. But the Xterra can, and that’s a comfort thing.
Anyhow, the place was deserted except for us, and it was oh, so quiet, not even aircraft to disturb us. Idyllic.
And brunch at the Orchard Restaurant at the Santa Ysabel Casino for $9.09 for two (Country Breakfast). Outstanding.
Keyless Entry
The Xterra comes with a keyless entry remote control – and a key. Together they are cumbersome, in your pocket, purse, whatever. The Nissan Rogue comes with a combined key/keyless entry control. The Rogue key is on the left in the photo, and the Xterra combo is on the right.
Guess what? For less than $20 each from eBay, you can buy a blank Rogue key, and we paid our local Nissan dealer $100 to program 2 keys to work with our Xterra, and now we have not only the working Rogue keys, but the originals as backups. Sweet 🙂
Attribution: original idea but our approach does not cannibalize the original keys.
We have a garden!
Yes we do. And it is a community garden plot, rented from the county for $10 a month. The photo shows it as it was handed over to us. Key features are that it is protected from wild animals via the top, bottom and sides, has premium soil, drip irrigation and no extra charge for water. Yay, San Diego Parks. As a bonus, it’s located in the ‘historic’ Penasquitos Adobe Ranch property. This is a little outpost of rural California as it was 50 years ago, in a sea of bedroom communities. More later…
Tacos Sabrosas (Tasty Tacos)
Oh my. Oh my.
We last tasted these guys about 10 years ago. Since then, there has been alleged ‘drogas’ hell in northern Baja California, and B.’s work had banned her from visiting. A little while ago, that ban was lifted, and we ‘tested the waters’ with a quick trip to Tecate and its Zocalo. So far, so good, the natives were not restless.
This time, we were double experimenting. Renting a simple 4×8 foot trailer from U-Haul, and seeing how that works for camping (at Potrero), and testing out how it is to sleep in the back of the Xterra.
Short answer is i) U-Haul enclosed trailers don’t work very well, as they keep tipping up as you try to work with whatever is inside, and ii) sleeping in the back of the Xterra works just fine 🙂
But, and this is a big but, all of this pales into obscurity. View this image:
These guys have the best, and I mean the best, fish and shrimp tacos anywhere to be found. Period. Full stop. Less than $2 each, with a table tray of salsas, limes, onion, cabbage, mild and medium and hot sauces.
Holy cow, these are the pinnacle of tacos (her indoors insisted I remove ‘dog’s bollocks’)!
And then I had a tostada with shrimp ceviche. Oh, man.
Shake Out, Shake Down, Part II
Well, it turns out that we are carrying a whole pile of legacy stuff from the VW that we don’t really need, much of it heavy as heck.
We headed back home from Dos Picos, having slept well, and having been only grossly annoyed by the selfish wails of the 6 year old in the adjacent camping spot at 5:30 am. (Note to self, go where other people aren’t)
After a freshen up, we headed out to Cibbets Flat (http://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/cleveland/recreation/camping-cabins/recarea/?recid=47426&actid=29). This is a delightful gem of a place in the Cleveland National Forest with a creek (Kitchen Creek) running through it that, in our previous experience, never ran dry.
I was concerned that on such a lovely weekend, the campground would be full, but, as it turned out, we had very nearly the pick of the place. Here’s where we ended up:
Neat shady area 🙂
B. hauled a huge rock from an adjacent camp site to stop the ‘Little Guy’ from rolling forward, and admonished me that I would have to put it back! Which I did, and it was heavy, brother.
Usual camping stuff followed, hot dogs for lunch and so on, and then Jill and John showed up. Ostensibly, John wanted to find out how all this ‘hook-up’ stuff for towing things works, but in reality, they were decompressing from a really truly terribly stressful week. As can be seen from the following:
After J & J left, we started a campfire, cooked steaks and had a couple of glasses of wine, and successfully watched a movie, using Bluetooth (yea).
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The great thing is that the ‘Little Guy’ is a metal tent, no less, no more, and that’s the bad thing – what do you do on a rainy day?
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It was fine and fun, but I don’t think that a $280 rental price for 3 nights is going to cut it compared to Motel 6. And I don’t think that a purchase price of $6,500 is going to cut it against the purchase price of a small Nomad (http://www.skylinerv.com/?q=node/97)
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Trod Bogs Sadly - Oddstray's Blog 
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