Tag Archives: fire

Feb19

Camping out at Crotty’s Lake

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Tuesday, 08-April-2025


Dear Lord, how long has it been since I’ve slept in a tent?

Sat by a fire?

Enjoyed the cool air outside of a city?



Well, that last one I was able to get every so often by sneaking out to Howth, or Bray… but they’re still close to the city, you know? You can feel the city nearby, if not actively smell it in the air… and getting out into the woods outside of Waterford meant that we couldn’t really even see any city lights!

Now, this is Ireland, of course. And so you’re never ACTUALLY away from a town. We could still see some farmhouses in the distance, and there were some lights that shone nearby in the evening once dark fell. But you know what? I could smell the trees, hear the gurgling of a nearby brook, and we had an absolutely lovely fire going on to keep warm and to amuse us with the crackling of the logs.

That’s right – City-girl Andrea came camping too! Now, to be clear, this wasn’t nearly her first time camping – and while I was cooking up burgers for dinner, she was handily getting the fire started and the camp chairs set up. A good delegation of labor, a hallmark of us brilliant MBA students.

The next day, we even had chance to hike up to Crotty’s lake itself!

Now’s as good a time as any to introduce my dear readers to Crotty – a highwayman and bandit from the… well, from the unknown history of the Waterford region. According to the owner of the land (yep, this is Ireland, and so everything is privately owned. Including the lake, and the mountain it resides on), Crotty was one of the inspirations for Robin Hood – an assertion I’m not completely convinced by… but I’ll leave this link for my readers to peruse at their own leasure:

https://waterfordtreasures.com/crotty-the-robber-a-waterford-legend/


What I can say, though, is that the lake is beautiful, and very much worth the short walk up to.

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May9

How to cook steak – Filet Mignon

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Warning: This is a cooking post, and involves meat. If you’d prefer not to read about, or see photos of, carnivorous dining… please pull back now.



My friend Lea hasn’t cooked steak before.

I know, I know… heresy, right? But bear with her – At one point, I hadn’t cooked steak either.

At one point, I thought salting a steak was silly. I thought… forgive me… I thought that putting BBQ sauce on a steak was delicious. And it was! By my right hand, it was delicious! Simply because I didn’t know what glory I was destroying in search of that sweet tangy deliciousness!

I once… Once, I even marinated a steak in vanilla extract. Forgive me, cow-who-sacrificed-for-that-horror.



I feel bad admitting those transgressions, but I have to be honest. At least Lea knows what she doesn’t know, unlike a rash and foolish younger version of myself.



So, I present these recipes for cooking steak.



Next up, we have a rather complicated option – I’ve heard it called Steak Au Poivre, but it doesn’t really involve pepper… so let’s just call it “Steak in a flambé sauce”.


The Steak:
– Buy a small filet, maybe half a pound maximum.
– Bring it up to room temperature, with a generous helping of salt and sage. Ideally, Kosher salt or Sea Salt… large grains are the key. Go gentle on the sage, but doing skimp – this adds an excellent desert flavor, which goes great with the sweeter sauce.
– Let it sit for ~60min
– Heat the oven to 450 Deg.F, and heat up your cast iron skillet ’till it’s smoking.
– Add some butter to the skillet, and toss the steak in, searing it for 30s per side. If you’re feeling fancy, use a kitchen blowtorch to sear the edges. Add more butter as necessary to keep the pan “wet”.
– After both sides are seared, flip once more and toss the whole skillet into the oven for 2min and 30s, approximately.
– Flip the steak, and let it cook for another 2.5min.
– Take it out, remove from the pan, and cover the steak to keep it warm and let the residual heat continue cooking it.

Next up is the sauce…


The Sauce:
– Starting with the butter and steak drippings in the pan from the segment above, CAREFULLY add in a quarter-cup of cooking brandy. Make sure you’re not under anything flammable, and that you have something to smother the flames if things get out of control. Then, light the evaporating brandy up!
– Continue cycling, until you’ve flambe’d approximately 1cup of brandy. Add extra butter if the pan gets even remotely dry!
– Add in some heavy cream, approximately 1 cup, and begin whisking constantly. Never let it burn!
– Toss the steaks back into the pan, while still whisking the sauce constantly. Flip as needed, until the sauce has a nice dark-ish brown coloration and the streaks are medium rare.


The finished set:
– Serve with steamed broccoli, potatoes, or your sides of choice.
– Serve the steaks with a bit of sauce on top, and the remainder on the side… and maybe with a glass of nice red wine.

Sep25

Driving toward Crater Lake

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Driving toward Crater Lake

A Crater Lake adventure!

Sarah had planned a glorious adventure: We would drive down to Smith Rock to climb for a day, then spend a day at Diamond Lake exploring, and then hit the jewel of the trip – a sunrise exploration of the Crater Lake rim.  From the rim, we’d stay nearby, explore Crater Lake, relax, take a boat ride, and have a great time.  We’d packed the car, made trip itineraries, and Ollie was safely at camp for the week.  All we needed to do was drive…

 

Tuesday, 29-August-2017

After our evening adventure, we slept in.  It was glorious.

We drank Dunkin’ Donuts, we ate breakfast, and even made sandwiches.  It was awesome.  And best part – we woke up to a glorious sunrise over Smith, thanks to the campsite we’d snagged, and the fact that we’d been too tired to actually set up a tent.  We’d slept under the stars, and could roll over and see the sunbeams shining onto the rock.

Or… in theory we could.  I didn’t have contacts in.  So I couldn’t see anything.

Also, there were forest fires that made everything hazy and thick with smoke.

 

That last part was the big theme of the day, unfortunately.  Thick, cloying smoke that messed with breathing and vision and plans.

 

We had debated staying at Smith an extra day, but since we’d burnt most of our energy on the epic the previous day, and since the smoke was already wafting in from the nearby fires, we decided to travel South, pressing on toward our destination of the evening: Diamond Lake.

As we drove though, the smoke didn’t get better.  It actually kept getting worse… we stopped in Bend to catch our breath (literally, in Sarah’s case), and pick up some nasal sprays to try and make the air breathable.  They didn’t work so well, unfortunately… but having lunch in an air conditioned (and thus filtered) cafe was definitely a pleasant reprieve.

 

The final decision came when we stopped for gas in a town called Crescent.  While filling up, we heard some subtly pertinent news – specifically, that the highway ahead of us was on fire.  And closed.  But mostly the fact that it was on fire.  That’s subtly pertinent when on a roadtrip.

We turned around and went home.  Cooked steak in the kitchen, drank some beers, and got annoyed at the Northwest for being on fire.